POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY choicest wives Priests, male and female, take charge of the education of children, have the power to excommunicate for immoral behaviour, and serve as chaplains to the army On great festivals they wear vestments made from birds’ feathers, like those of American Indian chiefs The service culminates in a solemn prayer in which the worshippers thank God that they belong to the happiest commonwealth and profess the truest of all religions (U, 145) Like the Platonic Republic, Utopia alternates attractive features with repellent ones, and mixes practicable institutions with lunatic devices Like Plato, More often leaves his readers to guess how far he is proposing serious political reforms, and how far he is simply using fantasy to castigate the follies and corruption of actual society Just and Unjust Wars When discussing the Utopians’ attitude to war, More states: ‘Their one and only object in war is to secure that which, had it been obtained beforehand, would have prevented the declaration of war’ (U, 120) Such a maxim would rule out all demands for unconditional surrender, and other forms of mission creep But More, who was himself involved as a politician in more than one of Henry VIII’s wars, did not work out systematically the ethical principles which make the diVerence between just and unjust wars This was done later in the century by the Jesuit theologian Francisco Suarez Suarez, developing ideas to be found in Aquinas, summarizes the classic theory of the just war as follows: For war to occur honourably several conditions must be observed, which can be reduced to three heads First, it must be declared by a lawful authority; second, there must be just cause and title; third, the proper means and proportion must be observed in its inception, prosecution and victory (De Caritate, 13 1.4) The condition of lawful authority means, for Suarez, that wars may be waged only by sovereign governments Individuals and groups within a state have no right to settle their diVerences by force of arms The pope, however, as a supranational authority, has the right to intervene to settle disputes between Christian sovereigns 281