Book Reviews : Berlin — Pivot of German Destiny. Translated and edited by CHARLES B. ROBSON. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1960. Pp. xvi, 233. $5.00.)

• Published date: 01 December 1961
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296101400438
• Date: 01 December 1961
• Author: Carl E. Hein
• Subject Matter: Articles

992
batants were the soldiers and a few civilians, and the rules of war were limited to
the attainment of justice. Now all this has changed. Thermonuclear warfare
creates weapons that cannot be used except with the hazard of self-destruction,
with the killing of innocent people, and with damage to the lives of unborn
children of many future generations. The weapons themselves are stockpiled
more to create terror and possibly to deter war than to bring justice and peace.
Plainly, the threat of disaster somehow has diverted current thought from the
Christian view of warfare -
to aggressive, suicidal, and mass warfare. Military
planners think of nuclear weapons in terms of deterrents when these weapons
cannot be used to limit war. The problem of our day, Mr. Ramsey concludes,
is the formulation of a national policy in line with the conduct of a just war.
The solution is not artifical arms limitation, pacifism, or world government; it is
&dquo;returning war to the limits of legitimate military and political policy.&dquo; Nations
will need to sit down at a conference table and draw up rules for fighting each
other that will allow for a just settlement of rights and a condition of justice
after the war.
The author presents a powerful analysis of religious attitudes toward present
military policy. Though his theology may be sympathetically Protestant, it rises
above sectarianism; the chapter on Catholic views toward war is eminently
fair. Except for the author’s final conclusions, the book is most satisfying and is
a bright piece of contemporary thought on Christian morality and the state. The
reader will be dissatisfied, however, with Mr. Ramsey’s unwillingness to discuss
the form of just warfare in our nuclear era - or to speculate on policies other
than war that can be utilized by nations in settling their foreign affairs. He is
obviously opposed to pacifism, but pacific policies (protected by the cover of
nuclear weapons) of education, aid to underdeveloped nations,...