Of the Punishment of Cowardice

I have heard of military men who, when they have discovered some fault or failure of courage in a soldier, have not immediately condemned him to death, but have kept him for some time in a post where danger was most exposed, to give him the opportunity to redeem himself. Many have indeed done so. But those who have been utterly routed by fear, and have fled headlong without ever looking back — these are in a different case, and the law has little mercy for them.

The philosophers in general distinguish between the man whose courage fails him in a particular encounter and the man who is constitutionally a coward; between the temporary failure of nerve and the settled disposition. The first is a mishap; the second is a fault of character. It is not fair to judge all cases by the same standard, nor to punish equally the soldier who was surprised by an unusual terror and one who has made a habit of flinching.

“There is some difference between fault proceeding from weakness and fault proceeding from malice; the one deserves compassion, the other severity.”

And yet I am not certain the law can always afford to make this distinction. An army cannot stand if every man who was afraid is excused on grounds that fear is natural. There must be some standard held up, even if in particular cases it falls harder than strict justice would require. The law is a blunt instrument applied to sharp situations; it does not always cut where reason would have it cut.

For my own part, I am readier to pity than to condemn. I have not myself been put to the test in any great extremity, and I am not so confident of my own sinews that I can look down from safety upon those who buckled under what I have not faced. There is more cowardice than we admit in the comfortable man’s contempt for the man who ran.