[130] Saint-Pierre, Projet de Traité pour rendre la paix perpétuelle entre les souverains Chrétiens.
[131] Rousseau, Extrait du Projet de paix perpétuelle, de M. l’Abbé de Saint-Pierre (Œuvres complètes, i. 606 sqq.).
[132] Bentham, A Plan for an universal and perpetual Peace (Works, ii. 546 sqq.).
[133] Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden.
The Napoleonic oppression called forth resistance. Philosophers and poets sounded the war trumpet. The dream of a universal monarchy was looked upon as absurd and hateful, and the individuality of a nation as the only possible security for its virtue.[134] War was no longer attributed to the pretended interests of princes or to the caprices of their advisers. It was praised as a vehicle of the highest right,[135] as a source or national renovation.[136] By war, says Hegel, “finite pursuits are rendered unstable, and the ethical health of peoples is preserved. Just as the movement of the ocean prevents the corruption which would be the result of perpetual calm, so by war people escape the corruption which would be occasioned by a continuous or eternal peace.”[137] Similar views have been expressed by later writers. War is glorified as a stimulus to the elevated virtues of courage, disinterestedness, and patriotism.[138] It has done more great things in the world than the love of man, says Nietzsche.[139] It is the mother of art and of all civil virtues, says Mr. Ruskin.[140] Others defend war, not as a positive good, but as a necessary means of deciding the most serious international controversies, denying that arbitration can be a substitute for all kinds of war. Questions which are intimately connected with national passions and national aspirations, and questions which are vital to a nation’s safety, will never, they say, be left to arbitration. Each State must be the guardian of its own security, and cannot allow its independence to be calmly discussed and adjudicated upon by an external tribunal.[141] Moreover, arbitration would prove effective only where the contradictory pretensions could be juridically formulated, and these instances are by far the less numerous and the less important.[142] And would it not, in many cases, be impossible to find impartial arbiters? Would not arbitration often be influenced by a calculation of the forces which every power interested could bring into the field, and would not war be resorted to where arbitration failed to reconcile conflicting interests, or where a decision was opposed to a high-spirited people’s sense of justice? These and similar arguments are constantly adduced against the idea of a perpetual peace. But at the same time the opponents of war are becoming more numerous and more confident every day. Already after the fall of Napoleon, when there was a universal longing for peace in the civilised world, the first Peace Societies were formed;[143] and the idea of Saint-Pierre, from being the dream of a philosopher, has become the object of a popular movement which is rapidly increasing in importance. There is every reason to believe that, when the present high tide of nationalism has subsided, and the subject of war and peace is no longer looked upon from an exclusively national point of view, the objections which are now raised against arbitration will at last appear almost as futile as any arguments in favour of private war or blood-revenge. There is an inveterate tendency in the human mind to assume that existing conditions will remain unchanged. But the history of civilisation shows how unfounded any such assumption is with reference to those conditions which determine social relationships and the extent of moral rights and duties.
[134] Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation. Cf. Idem, Ueber den Begriff des wahrhaften Krieges.
[135] Arndt, quoted by Jähns, Krieg, Frieden und Kultur, p. 302.
[136] Anselm von Feuerbach, Unterdrückung und Wiederbefreiung Europens.
[137] Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, § 324, p. 317 (English translation, p. 331).
[138] See, e.g., Mabille, La Guerre, p. 139.