It would be impossible for Erasmus to go through any treatise on public affairs without saying something about the wickedness and folly of fighting, and so we find him concluding his Institutio with a chapter on the undertaking of war. It is his familiar argument, but especially follows the point that war should not be undertaken until all other methods of composing differences shall have failed. "If we were of this mind there would hardly ever be a war anywhere." He shows very clearly how seldom the alleged cause of war affects the people of a country. Such causes are usually the private affair of princes.
"Because one prince offends another in some trifle, and that a private matter, about relationship by marriage or some such thing, what is this to the people as a whole? The good prince measures all things by the advantage of the people, otherwise he were not even a prince. The law is not the same towards men and towards beasts.... But if some dissensions arise between princes why not rather resort to arbiters? There are so many bishops, so many abbots, scholars, serious magistrates, by whose judgment such a matter might far more decently be composed than by so much murder, pillage, and misfortune throughout the world."
Here is international arbitration, pure and simple, a doctrine not appearing in the Utopia, and, so far as I know, not to be found in any modern writer before Erasmus; a dream as yet in his time and long to remain so, but, in the vast ebb and flow of human affairs, coming ever nearer to some definite realisation.
Perhaps the most striking argument of Erasmus against war is the utter hopelessness of it as a means of gaining the ultimate good of the state.
"'But,' they say, 'what safety will there ever be, if no one pursues his right?' By all means let right be pursued, if this be of advantage to the state, but let not the right of the prince be too costly to the people. And pray what safety is there now, when everyone is pursuing his right to the very death? We see wars arising from wars, war following upon war, and no limit or end to the confusion. So it is clear enough that by these means nothing is accomplished. Therefore other remedies ought to be tried. Even between friends there would be no bond unless they sometimes made concessions, one to the other. The husband often pardons certain things to his wife, that harmony between them may not be broken. What does war breed, but war? while gentleness calls forth gentleness and equity invites equity."
The closing paragraph has almost a ring of irony in view of the future course of the young prince, for whose edification all this wisdom was put forth.
"I doubt not, most illustrious Prince, that you are of the same mind; for so you were born and so you have been taught by the best and most sincere teachers. As for the rest, I pray that Christus optimus maximus may prosper your noble efforts. He has given you an empire without bloodshed; his will is that you preserve it ever free from blood. May it come to pass that through your goodness and wisdom we may at last have a rest from these mad wars. Peace will be made precious to us by the memory of evils past and our gratitude to you will be doubled by the misfortunes of other times."
All this to Charles of Burgundy, already Most Catholic King of Spain, within a year to be elected Holy Roman Emperor, and destined for the next generation to turn Europe into a battle-field for objects in which no one of his numerous subject peoples had the remotest interest! Evidently the man who could give only such counsel as this was not likely to be sought as an intimate adviser of the prince. In fact we have no reason to suppose that Erasmus' settlement at Louvain had more than a nominal connection with his appointment as imperial councillor. He was a councillor much in the sense of the modern German "Geheimrath."
