On Defensible War

It is not the point to put wild and visionary questions about whether the world has been vastly improved by the War ¹; whether Utopia or the New Jerusalem have come out of the War; to ask in that apocalyptic fashion what has come out of the War. We have come out of the War, and come out alive; England and Europe have come out of the War, with all their sins on their heads, confused, corrupted, degraded; but not dead. The only defensible war is a war of defence. And a war of defence, by its very definition and nature, is one from which a man comes back battered and bleeding and only boasting that he is not dead.

— G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography

¹ He talks about World War I