...and Gandalf suddenly had a brilliant idea of how to win the war.

[Kuruharan]

There is an interesting remark on orcs in Letters that I’d never paid much attention to before but it suddenly struck me that it has odd implications.

The Eldar and the Númenóreans believed in The One, the true God, and held worship of any other person an abomination. Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world. So even if in desperation ‘the West’ had bred or hired hordes of orcs and had cruelly ravaged the lands of other Men as allies of Sauron, or merely to prevent them from aiding him, their Cause would have remained indefeasibly right.

Letter 183, emphasis mine

Compare this to Letter 153 (as an example)

…He does not stop or make unreal sinful acts and their consequences. So in this myth, it is ‘feigned’ (legitimately whether that is a feature of the real world or not) that He gave special ‘sub-creative’ power to certain of His highest created beings: that is a guarantee that what they devised and made should be given the reality of Creation. Of course within limits, and of course subject to certain commands or prohibitions. But if they ‘fell’, as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things ‘for himself, to be their Lord’, these would then ‘be’, even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other ‘rational’ creatures like Elves or Men. They would at least ‘be’ real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even ‘mocking’ the Children of God. They would be Morgoth’s greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad.

also…

[the creation of orcs] it may be was the vilest deed of Melkor, and the most hateful to Ilúvatar.
The Silmarillion

Here we have an interesting contrast. How is it possible for the West to remain indefeasibly right by engaging in an activity that is specifically condemned as Melkor’s worst deed? Admittedly, Tolkien is discussing the West using this means to defend the right of Eru to the divine honor, but I find it odd that they could do so and not draw the same condemnation for the same activity that Morgoth received such harsh condemnation (laying particular emphasis on the possibility of the West breeding orcs.)

[the phantom]

Boy, something about this seems so familiar.

Hmm... something about ends and means.

Oh, I'm sure I'll remember later.

[The Saucepan Man]

The excerpt from Letter #183 which Kuruharan quotes simply says that, had the West bred or hired Orcs to do their dirty work, their Cause would have remained right. It does not follow that their chosen means of pursuing that Cause would have been right.

[Kuruharan]

their Cause would have remained right. It does not follow that their chosen means of pursuing that Cause would have been right.

But that is just the thing that puzzles me. It seems to me that by employing or (especially in my view) breeding orcs, the West would be repudiating the very Cause they are trying to uphold.

[Child of the 7th Age]

You can't read this passage in a vacuum. I think we need to look at the section of the Letter that comes immediately after the Orc comment. It's clear that what Tolkien is doing is answering those critics who had complained about the way he had depicted his characters in LotR. He is stating an extreme position to say, even if the situation had been different his characters would still have been justified in their opposition to evil.

First, he relates it to a contemporary political situation: the elevation of the State-God and the need to oppose that. I believe the reference below concerning "Marshal This or That" is to Stalin who died in 1953; the horror of his crimes was just being fully revealed by 1956 when the first draft of this comment was written. As a result, Stalin was repudiated not only by the US and UK, but also by the successive Russian government. We are also presumably talking Cold War here: the Soviet Union vs. "The West". Tolkien was understandably suspicious of a country that then discouraged open Catholic worship. This section starts immediately after the sentence on breeding and using Orcs....

...As does the Cause of those who oppose now the State-God and Marshal This or That as its High Priest, even if it is true (as it unfortunately is ) that many of their deeds are wrong, even if it were true (as it is not) that the inhabitants of "The West", except for a minority of wealthy bosses, live in fear and squalor, while the worshippers of the State-God live in peace and abundance and in mutual esteem and trust.

He then goes on to tie this in with what the critics have to say about the "good guys" in LotR. Here is a portion of this...

So I feel the fiddle-faddle in reviews, and correspondence about them, as to whether my "good people" were kind amd merciful and gave quarter (in fact they do), or not, is quite beside the point. Some critics seem determined to represent me as a simple minded adolescent, inspired with, say, a With-the-Flag-to-Praetoria spirit, and willfully distort what is in my tale. I have not that spirit and it does not appear in my story......I have not made any of the peoples on the 'right' side, Hobbits, Rohirrim, Men of Dale or of Gondor, any better than men have been or are, or can be...."

Sounds like Tolkien was a little angry with those critics. It should also be noted that this essay (it wasn't a Letter) was written only for himself and was shown to no one during his life. JRRT seems to have been letting off a little steam and frustration.

Perhaps, with the reference to the 'Marshall' and contemporary politics, he's also implicitly acknowledging that in the real world there are times we do use Orcs to fight evil, not a good thing but, regardless, evil still has to be opposed.

Still, to see those remarks on paper, even in a theoretical context, did give me pause...

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

It seems to me that by employing or (especially in my view) breeding orcs, the West would be repudiating the very Cause they are trying to uphold.

No. The Cause and the means of upholding it are separate. The West's Cause was to prevent Sauron's victory, which would have gone against the Will of Eru. That is a just Cause and a right one to pursue. But the means by which they seek to realise it may be right or it may be wrong.

[Kuruharan]

Child

I agree with the general direction of your comments that he is largely referring to the situation in the world current at that time. However, I am still a bit puzzled. The statement itself relates directly to Middle earth. Even if it was not in a letter he sent to someone, I believe it reflects some measure of his thought on the matter.

I guess the center of my perplexity (and this relates to the astute comments made by Saucepan Man) is that it almost smacks of a justification of the actions of Saruman. Admittedly, Saruman was driven for lust for the Ring into employing and breeding orcs, however, the idea of Gandalf or Aragorn going out and hiring Ugluk and crew to help fight the war seems dangerously close to seizing the great weapon of the enemy and using it against him.

There is another aspect of this and it hinges around the word "breeding." I think that if the opponents of Sauron, in an attempt to defeat him, engaged in this breeding are engaging in the same type of perversion of life that Melkor engaged in at the very beginning. In view of the phrase "most hateful to Ilúvatar" I think this might in some way be worse than seizing the Ring.