military

69:5.2The early banker was the val­or­ous man of the tribe. He held the group trea­sures on de­posit, while the en­tire clan would de­fend his hut in event of at­tack. Thus the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of in­di­vid­ual cap­i­tal and group wealth im­me­di­ately led to mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tion. At first such pre­cau­tions were de­signed to de­fend prop­erty against for­eign raiders, but later on it be­came the cus­tom to keep the mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tion in prac­tice by in­au­gu­rat­ing raids on the prop­erty and wealth of neigh­bor­ing tribes.

71:4.17Ide­al­ism can never sur­vive on an evolv­ing planet if the ide­al­ists in each gen­er­a­tion per­mit them­selves to be ex­ter­mi­nated by the baser or­ders of hu­man­ity. And here is the great test of ide­al­ism: Can an ad­vanced so­ci­ety main­tain that mil­i­tary pre­pared­ness which ren­ders it se­cure from all at­tack by its war-lov­ing neigh­bors with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to em­ploy this mil­i­tary strength in of­fen­sive op­er­a­tions against other peo­ples for pur­poses of self­ish gain or na­tional ag­gran­dize­ment? Na­tional sur­vival de­mands pre­pared­ness, and re­li­gious ide­al­ism alone can pre­vent the pros­ti­tu­tion of pre­pared­ness into ag­gres­sion. Only love, broth­er­hood, can pre­vent the strong from op­press­ing the weak.

133:1.5But Ga­nid was not fully sat­is­fied. Many times they talked over these mat­ters, and Je­sus told him some of his boy­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and also about Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son. On learn­ing how Ja­cob ap­pointed him­self to de­fend Je­sus, Ga­nid said: “Oh, I be­gin to see! In the first place very sel­dom would any nor­mal hu­man be­ing want to at­tack such a kindly per­son as you, and even if any­one should be so un­think­ing as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to be near at hand some other mor­tal who will fly to your as­sis­tance, even as you al­ways go to the res­cue of any per­son you ob­serve to be in dis­tress. In my heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had been Ja­cob, I would have en­joyed pun­ish­ing those rude fel­lows who pre­sumed to at­tack you just be­cause they thought you would not de­fend your­self. I pre­sume you are fairly safe in your jour­ney through life since you spend much of your time help­ing oth­ers and min­is­ter­ing to your fel­lows in dis­tress—well, most likely there’ll al­ways be some­one on hand to de­fend you.” And Je­sus replied: “That test has not yet come, Ga­nid, and when it does, we will have to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.” And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to say on this dif­fi­cult sub­ject of self-de­fense and non­re­sis­tance. On an­other oc­ca­sion he did draw from Je­sus the opin­ion that or­ga­nized so­ci­ety had ev­ery right to em­ploy force in the ex­e­cu­tion of its just man­dates.

133:4.12To the con­demned crim­i­nal he said at the last hour: “My brother, you have fallen on evil times. You lost your way; you be­came en­tan­gled in the meshes of crime. From talk­ing to you, I well know you did not plan to do the thing which is about to cost you your tem­po­ral life. But you did do this evil, and your fel­lows have ad­judged you guilty; they have de­ter­mined that you shall die. You or I may not deny the state this right of self-de­fense in the man­ner of its own choos­ing. There seems to be no way of hu­manly es­cap­ing the penalty of your wrong­do­ing. Your fel­lows must judge you by what you did, but there is a Judge to whom you may ap­peal for for­give­ness, and who will judge you by your real mo­tives and bet­ter in­ten­tions. You need not fear to meet the judg­ment of God if your re­pen­tance is gen­uine and your faith sin­cere. The fact that your er­ror car­ries with it the death penalty im­posed by man does not prej­u­dice the chance of your soul to ob­tain jus­tice and en­joy mercy be­fore the heav­enly courts.”

140:8.4Je­sus had great dif­fi­culty in get­ting them to un­der­stand his per­sonal prac­tice of non­re­sis­tance. He ab­so­lutely re­fused to de­fend him­self, and it ap­peared to the apos­tles that he would be pleased if they would pur­sue the same pol­icy. He taught them not to re­sist evil, not to com­bat in­jus­tice or in­jury, but he did not teach pas­sive tol­er­ance of wrong­do­ing. And he made it plain on this af­ter­noon that he ap­proved of the so­cial pun­ish­ment of evil­do­ers and crim­i­nals, and that the civil gov­ern­ment must some­times em­ploy force for the main­te­nance of so­cial or­der and in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice.

72:11.2The courses pur­sued by such com­mis­sioned of­fi­cers are four years in length and are in­vari­ably cor­re­lated with the mas­tery of some trade or pro­fes­sion. Mil­i­tary train­ing is never given with­out this as­so­ci­ated in­dus­trial, sci­en­tific, or pro­fes­sional school­ing. When mil­i­tary train­ing is fin­ished, the in­di­vid­ual has, dur­ing his four years’ course, re­ceived one half of the ed­u­ca­tion im­parted in any of the spe­cial schools where the courses are like­wise four years in length. In this way the cre­ation of a pro­fes­sional mil­i­tary class is avoided by pro­vid­ing this op­por­tu­nity for a large num­ber of men to sup­port them­selves while se­cur­ing the first half of a tech­ni­cal or pro­fes­sional train­ing.

72:11.3Mil­i­tary ser­vice dur­ing peace­time is purely vol­un­tary, and the en­list­ments in all branches of the ser­vice are for four years, dur­ing which ev­ery man pur­sues some spe­cial line of study in ad­di­tion to the mas­tery of mil­i­tary tac­tics. Train­ing in mu­sic is one of the chief pur­suits of the cen­tral mil­i­tary schools and of the twenty-five train­ing camps dis­tributed about the pe­riph­ery of the con­ti­nent. Dur­ing pe­ri­ods of in­dus­trial slack­ness many thou­sands of un­em­ployed are au­to­mat­i­cally uti­lized in up­build­ing the mil­i­tary de­fenses of the con­ti­nent on land and sea and in the air.

70:9.42. Mil­i­tary de­fense—se­cu­rity through pre­pared­ness.

71:4.16The ap­pear­ance of gen­uine broth­er­hood sig­ni­fies that a so­cial or­der has ar­rived in which all men de­light in bear­ing one an­other’s bur­dens; they ac­tu­ally de­sire to prac­tice the golden rule. But such an ideal so­ci­ety can­not be re­al­ized when ei­ther the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take un­fair and un­holy ad­van­tage of those who are chiefly ac­tu­ated by de­vo­tion to the ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness. In such a sit­u­a­tion only one course is prac­ti­cal: The “golden rulers” may es­tab­lish a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety in which they live ac­cord­ing to their ide­als while main­tain­ing an ad­e­quate de­fense against their be­nighted fel­lows who might seek ei­ther to ex­ploit their pa­cific predilec­tions or to de­stroy their ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

72:8.75. Mil­i­tary and naval schools. Near the na­tional head­quar­ters and at the twenty-five coastal mil­i­tary cen­ters are main­tained those in­sti­tu­tions de­voted to the mil­i­tary train­ing of vol­un­teer cit­i­zens from eigh­teen to thirty years of age. Pa­ren­tal con­sent is re­quired be­fore twenty-five in or­der to gain en­trance to these schools.

84:3.4Prim­i­tive women also un­in­ten­tion­ally cre­ated their de­pen­dence on the male by their ad­mi­ra­tion and ap­plause for his pug­nac­ity and viril­ity. This ex­al­ta­tion of the war­rior el­e­vated the male ego while it equally de­pressed that of the fe­male and made her more de­pen­dent; a mil­i­tary uni­form still might­ily stirs the fem­i­nine emo­tions.