After considering, in succession, first, the character of war, secondly, the miseries it produces, and, thirdly, its utter and pitiful insufficiency, as a mode of determining justice, we shall be able to decide, strictly and logically, whether it must not be ranked as crime, from which no true honor can spring to individuals or nations. To appreciate this evil, and the necessity for its overthrow, it will be our duty, fourthly, to consider in succession the various prejudices by which it is sustained, ending with that prejudice, so gigantic and all-embracing, at whose command uncounted sums are madly diverted from purposes of peace to preparations for war. The whole subject is infinitely practical, while the concluding division shows how the public treasury may be relieved, and new means secured for human advancement.
[I.]
First, as to the essential character and root of war, or that part of our nature whence it proceeds. Listen to the voice from the ancient poet of Bœotian Ascra:—
"This is the law for mortals, ordained by the Ruler of Heaven:
Fishes and beasts and birds of the air devour each other;
Justice dwells not among them: only to MAN has he given
Justice the Highest and Best."[14]
These words of old Hesiod exhibit the distinction between man and beast; but this very distinction belongs to the present discussion. The idea rises to the mind at once, that war is a resort to brute force, where nations strive to overpower each other. Reason, and the divine part of our nature, where alone we differ from the beast, where alone we approach the Divinity, where alone are the elements of that justice which is the professed object of war, are rudely dethroned. For the time men adopt the nature of beasts, emulating their ferocity, like them rejoicing in blood, and with lion's paw clutching an asserted right. Though in more recent days this character is somewhat disguised by the skill and knowledge employed, war is still the same, only more destructive from the genius and intellect which have become its servants. The primitive poets, in the unconscious simplicity of the world's childhood, make this boldly apparent. The heroes of Homer are likened to animals in ungovernable fury, or to things devoid of reason or affection. Menelaus presses his way through the crowd "like a wild beast." Sarpedon is aroused against the Argives, "as a lion against the crooked-horned oxen," and afterwards rushes forward "like a lion nurtured on the mountains, for a long time famished for want of flesh, but whose courage impels him to attack even the well-guarded sheep-fold." In one and the same passage, the great Telamonian Ajax is "wild beast," "tawny lion," and "dull ass"; and all the Greek chiefs, the flower of the camp, are ranged about Diomed, "like raw-eating lions, or wild-boars, whose strength is irresistible." Even Hector, the model hero, with all the virtues of war, is praised as "tamer of horses"; and one of his renowned feats in battle, indicating brute strength only, is where he takes up and hurls a stone which two of our strongest men could not easily lift into a wagon; and he drives over dead bodies and shields, while the axle is defiled by gore, and the guard about the seat is sprinkled from the horses' hoofs and the tires of the wheels;[15] and in that most admired passage of ancient literature, before returning his child, the young Astyanax, to the arms of the wife he is about to leave, this hero of war invokes the gods for a single blessing on the boy's head,—"that he may excel his father, and bring home bloody spoils, his enemy being slain, and so make glad the heart of his mother!"