On War and Peace

"Indeed I was a warm admirer of Gilbert Chesterton.…When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit. Blessings to his memory."
—Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, American Jewish Leader, 1937.

~From: Chesterton on War and Peace.

• View and download this PDF selection (free): Chesterton on War and Peace

• Or purchase the complete book from Amazon

Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements That Led to Nazism and World War II

"The book contains 101 articles that Chesterton wrote on war and peace for one of the most respected magazines of that day, the Illustrated London News. The articles were written between 1905 and 1922 and have numerous comments explaining the context in which Chesterton wrote. Appendices contain remarks about war from Thomas Aquinas, Winston Churchill, Norman Angell, Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Mahatma Gandhi, and H. G. Wells." —Inkling Books (Publisher)

"Modern war is much greater"

"I DO NOT KNOW whether Martin Luther invented mustard gas, or George Fox manufactured tear-shells, or St. Thomas Aquinas devised a stink-bomb producing suffocation. If wars are the horrid fruits of a thing called Christianity, they are also the horrid fruits of everything called citizenship and democracy and liberty and national independence, and are we to judge all these and condemn them by... their fruits? Anyhow such a modern war is much greater than any of the wars that can be referred to religious motives, or even religious epochs. The broad truth about the matter is that wars have become more organised, and more ghastly in the particular period of Materialism."

~G.K. Chesterton:  Illustrated London News, July 26, 1930.

"War is a dreadful thing"

"WAR is a dreadful thing; but it does prove two points sharply and unanswerably -- numbers and an unnatural valour. One does discover the two urgent matters; how many rebels there are alive, and how many are ready to be dead."

~G.K. Chesterton:  What's Wrong with the World.

"The only defensible war"

"IT IS NOT the point to put wild and visionary questions about whether the world has been vastly improved by the War; whether Utopia or the New Jerusalem have come out of the War; to ask in that apocalyptic fashion what has come out of the War. We have come out of the War, and come out alive; England and Europe have come out of the War, with all their sins on their heads, confused, corrupted, degraded; but not dead. The only defensible war is a war of defence. And a war of defence, by its very definition and nature, is one from which a man comes back battered and bleeding and only boasting that he is not dead."

~G.K. Chesterton:  Autobiography.

"The only sort of war I thoroughly despise"

"Mr. H. G. Wells; then a sort of semi-detached Fabian... went out of his way to scoff at the indignation of the Pro-Boers against the Concentration Camps. Indeed he still maintains, while holding all wars indefensible, that this is the only sort of war to be defended. He says that great wars between great powers are absurd, but that it might be necessary, in policing the planet, to force backward peoples to open their resources to cosmopolitan commerce. In other words, he defends the only sort of war I thoroughly despise, the bullying of small states for their oil or gold."

~G.K. Chesterton: Autobiography.

"I positively rebel"

"I HAVE put up, as best I might, with millionaires of my time when they decreed war, sudden and sensational war, as everyone admitted; mean and immoral war, as I believed. I have got used to millionaires when they dictate war. But if they begin to dictate peace I positively rebel."

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, Dec. 31, 1910.