I was unable to reach Sgt. Bulmer for a followup interview to last year’s, so as a thank you to my dad and father-in-law who were drafted and who served, as well as my uncle who is a Master Sergeant in the Kansas Reserves and nearing retirement, here some choice phrases from Martin Luther’s “Whether Soldiers, Too, Can be Saved.” The short treatise is worth the read; if someone can find me a better translation than this one, I’d appreciate it.


Although slaying and robbing do not seem to be a work of love, and therefore a simple man thinks it not a Christian thing to do, yet in truth even this is a work of love. By way of illustration, a good physician, when a disease is so bad and so great that he has to cut off a hand, foot, ear, eye, or let it decay, does so, in order to save the body. Looked at from the point of view of the member that he cuts off, he seems a cruel and merciless man; but looked at from the point of view of the body, which he intends to save, it turns out that he is a fine and true man and does a work that is good and Christian, as far as it goes. In the same way, when I think of the office of soldier, how it punishes the wicked, slays the unjust, and creates so much misery, it seems an unchristian work and entirely contrary to Christian love; but if I think of how it protects the good and keeps and preserves house and home, wife and child, property and honor and peace, then it appears how precious and godly this work is, and I observe that it cuts off a leg or a hand, so that the whole body may not perish. For if the sword were not on guard to preserve peace, everything in the world must go to ruin because of lack of peace. Therefore, such a war is only a little, brief lack of peace that prevents an everlasting and immeasurable lack of peace, a small misfortune that prevents a great misfortune.

Self-protection is a proper cause of war and therefore all laws agree that self-defense shall go unpunished, and he who kills another in self-defense is innocent in everyone’s eyes. Again, when the people of Israel willed to smite the Canaanites without necessity, they were beaten (Numbers 14:45); and when Joseph and Azarias wanted to fight in order to win honor, they were beaten; and Amaziah, king of Judah, also desired to war against the king of Israel, but read, in 2 Kings 14:8, what happened to him; also King Ahab began to fight against the Syrians at Ramath, but lost and was destroyed (2 Kings 22:2); and the men of Ephraim would have devoured Jephthah and lost 42,000 men (Judges 12:6); and so on. You find that the losers were almost always those who started the war. The good king Josiah had to be slain because he began to fight against the king of Egypt, and had to make good the saying. “The Lord scattereth those who desire to war.” Therefore my people in the Harz have a proverb, “I have verily heard that he who smites is smitten.” Why so? Because God rules the world powerfully and leaves no wrong unpunished. He who does wrong has his punishment from God, as sure as he lives, unless he repents and gives compensation to his neighbor. I believe that Muenzer and his peasants would have to admit this.

Thank you, soldiers.