Phantom Alibi

Abstract

But what exactly, it may be asked, is the practical importance of the distinctions between the committee and its members, and between leaders individually, leaders collectively, government, people and state? The importance of these distinctions may be seen wherever a judgment is being passed upon the moral merits of some step in, say, a foreign policy. The country concerned is, let us assume, in the language of those whose criticism we are discussing, a ‘Christian’ country. For the individual Christian citizen the question might have been: What, as a Christian, can I countenance, and of what is it incumbent upon me publicly to wash my hands? The question raised, however, is neither: What am I, a Christian, nor: What are we, a Christian people, to do? It is: What is ours, a Christian country, to do? A Christian country—among countries not all of them Christian! Do countries, as such, have any distinctively Christian responsibilities to one another? Could we sensibly expect our non-Christian fellow-citizens to agree with us that they have? And, Christian criteria apart, have countries any kinds of responsibilities, other than legal ones, to one another? Have they in fact? Have they in theory? If so, in what kinds of theory?