The Case for Italy

Extract

An American newspaper has described the attack on Abyssinia as the wickedest war in history. And indeed few wars have seemed less excusable or aroused more universal disgust. Apart from all questions of British interests involved, and apart from the hypocrisy suggested by such an attitude (for it is undeniable that Britain has repeatedly done much that Italy is doing to-day), nothing could be better calculated to offend the sentimental-sporting instincts of the British public of 1935 than the spectacle of a well-equipped modem army with planes, bombs, tanks and (it seems) poison-gas invading a primitive, independent African state.

But though sentiment may give, up to a point, a trustworthy indication of objective right and wrong, it is in the light of dispassionate reasoning and the unbiassed examination of facts that the ethics of Italy’s attack must be scrutinized. What is to be said of it in the light of Catholic teaching? The ethical aspect of the conflict (which the Christian knows to be the most fundamental one) has received insufficient attention.