War is approved by the young and inconsiderate, by those who are unacquainted with the dreadful waste of life as well as of property that it occasions. «Expertus metuit», by men of knowledge and experience it is deprecated. «Iniquissimam pacem justissimo bello antefero», I prefer, says the sagacious and humane Cicero, the most impolitic and disadvantageous peace, to the justest war; and yet with what precipitancy and on what trifling occasions do countries often rush into war with each another! If sovereigns would weigh the consequences, would put against the object contended for, the numerous lives that must necessarily be sacrificed in the contest; the number of women who would be rendered childless, or would lose their husbands on whom they, and perhaps an infant family, depended for their support, they would surely not think it too much to sacrifice a small portion of their dignity to prevent such accumulated evils; these, however, are a small part only of the miseries of war. They are, indeed, all that this country has for many ages been exposed to experience. On the continent, when an hostile army enters a country, what massacres, what destruction marks its progress! Whole towns pillaged and destroyed, and the miserable inhabitants put to the sword, or the few that escape driven into the fields, without shelter, without clothes, and without food, only preserved for a short time to die a more miserable death than those who perished by the sword. With this kind of destruction we have been long threatened, and who can tell how soon it may fall upon us! In this state of things, how mortifying must it be, to the grave and considerate part of the community, to see the time and energy of those who have the care of the government of the country, employed in rebutting the attacks of noisy and contentious pseudo-patriots; who appear to be moving heaven and earth to embarrass the proceeding of the ministers, solely, it is to be feared, in the paltry expectation of getting into their places: strange infatuation! That men of the largest property in the state should be most forward in occasioning its destruction: surely so monstrous a procedure must portend some dreadful catastrophe! «Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat», God first deprives of their reason those who are doomed to be destroyed. «And God hardened Pharaoh's heart», we are told, «blinded his judgment, that he would not let the children of Israel go»; it being predetermined that the Ægyptians should suffer a severe chastisement.
Fuente: Erasmo, 3001.
