So that it is permissible to think he did not lightly pen those sentences on peace which stand as oases of wisdom in a desert of extravagant rhetoric.

"War never leaves where it found a nation," he wrote, "it is never to be entered upon without mature deliberation." That was a lesson his generation had still to learn; nor did it take to heart the even nobler passage that follows.

"The blood of man," he said, "should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man.

It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for mankind.

The rest is vanity; the rest is crime." It is perhaps the most tragic wrong in that century's history that these words were written to justify an effort of which they supply an irrefutable condemnation.
V Criticism of Burke's theories can be made from at least two angles.