Why Men Fight: A method of abolishing the international duel

Transcriber’s Note Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
A METHOD OF ABOLISHING THE INTERNATIONAL DUEL
BY BERTRAND RUSSELL, M.A., F.R.S.
Sometime Fellow and Lecturer in Trinity College, Cambridge
NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1920
Copyright, 1916, by The Century Co. Published, January, 1917
Le souffle, le rhythme, la vraie force populaire manqua à la réaction. Elle eut les rois, les trésors, les armées; elle écrasa les peuples, mais elle resta muette. Elle tua en silence; elle ne put parler qu’avec le canon sur ses horribles champs de bataille.... Tuer quinze millions d’hommes par la faim et l’épée, à la bonne heure, cela se peut. Mais faire un petit chant, un air aimé de tous, voilà ce que nulle machination ne donnera.... Don réservé, béni.... Ce chant peut-être à l’aube jaillira d’un cœur simple, ou l’alouette le trouvera en montant au soleil, de son sillon d’avril.
Michelet.
To all who are capable of new impressions and fresh thought, some modification of former beliefs and hopes has been brought by the war. What the modification has been has depended, in each case, upon character and circumstance; but in one form or another it has been almost universal. To me, the chief thing to be learnt through the war has been a certain view of the springs of human action, what they are, and what we may legitimately hope that they will become. This view, if it is true, seems to afford a basis for political philosophy more capable of standing erect in a time of crisis than the philosophy of traditional Liberalism has shown itself to be. The following lectures, though only one of them will deal with war, all are inspired by a view of the springs of action which has been suggested by the war. And all of them are informed by the hope of seeing such political institutions established in Europe as shall make men averse to war—a hope which I firmly believe to be realizable, though not without a great and fundamental reconstruction of economic and social life.