In his article “Morality and Modern War,” published last December, John Courtney Murray anatomized several of the central elements of the problem—and he did it in his characteristically clear and coolheaded way. Beyond this, he argued that there is a sane middle ground between the extremes of pacifism and bellicism, and that the health of the nations demand that they occupy this middle ground. I have no inclination to part company with Father Murray's judiciousness and perceptiveness, in order to traffic either with sentimentalists or with cynics, with those who piously believe that love can dispense with force or with those who scornfully believe that love, and even justice, merely complicate the efficient and decisive use of force in pursuit of national self-interest. Accordingly the questions which I raise here reflect, I hope, great sympathy for the stabilizing and moderating claims of reason, whose voice is too seldom and too impatiently heard in the land in our troubled times.