henry v

Last night, I watched (for the first time since high school) Sir Laurence Olivier's Henry V.

It's a 1944 movie that actually made me tear up about WWII and the Battle of Britain a couple of times, all the while thinking about the much more anti-war overlay of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V of 1989.

One thinks about war, leadership and the differences between those who have courage and those who do not when watching Henry V. In the scene in Act IV in which King Henry walks through the camp, disguised in Sir Thomas Erpingham's cloak, I was much struck by the words of one of the soldiers, who's telling the king (without knowing it's the king) his views on the responsibilities of the king towards his men who die in battle.

WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle.

So. Is the cause good? Is it just?