Germany and the Next War

by Friedrich von Bernhardi

Two questions in this connection are at once suggested: On what right is the finding of this Arbitration Court based? and what sanctions insure that the parties will accept this finding?

To the first question the answer is that such a right does not, and cannot, exist. The conception of right is twofold. It signifies, firstly, the consciousness of right, the living feeling of what is right and good; secondly, the right laid down by society and the State, either written or sanctioned by tradition. In its first meaning it is an indefinite, purely personal conception; in its second meaning it is variable and capable of development. The right determined by law is only an attempt to secure a right in itself. In this sense right is the system of social aims secured by compulsion. It is therefore impossible that a written law should meet all the special points of a particular case. The application of the legal right must always be qualified in order to correspond more or less to the idea of justice. A certain freedom in deciding on the particular case must be conceded to the administration of justice. The established law, within a given and restricted circle of ideas, is only occasionally absolutely just.

The conception of this right is still more obscured by the complex nature of the consciousness of right and wrong. A quite different consciousness of right and wrong develops in individuals, whether persons or peoples, and this consciousness finds its expression in most varied forms, and lives in the heart of the people by the side of, and frequently in opposition to, the established law. In Christian countries murder is a grave crime; amongst a people where blood-vengeance is a sacred duty it can be regarded as a moral act, and its neglect as a crime. It is impossible to reconcile such different conceptions of right.

There is yet another cause of uncertainty. The moral consciousness of the same people alters with the changing ideas of different epochs and schools of philosophy. The established law can seldom keep pace with this inner development, this growth of moral consciousness; it lags behind. A condition of things arises where the living moral consciousness of the people conflicts with the established law, where legal forms are superannuated, but still exist, and Mephistopheles' scoffing words are true:

"Laws are transmitted, as one sees,
Just like inherited disease.
They're handed down from race to race,
And noiseless glide from place to place.
Reason they turn to nonsense; worse,
They make beneficence a curse!
Ah me! That you're a grandson you
As long as you're alive shall rue."
Faust (translation by Sir T. Martin).

Thus, no absolute rights can be laid down even for men who share the same ideas in their private and social intercourse. The conception of the constitutional State in the strictest sense is an impossibility, and would lead to an intolerable state of things. The hard and fast principle must be modified by the progressive development of the fixed law, as well as by the ever-necessary application of mercy and of self-help allowed by the community. If sometimes between individuals the duel alone meets the sense of justice, how much more impossible must a universal international law be in the wide-reaching and complicated relations between nations and States! Each nation evolves its own conception of right, each has its particular ideals and aims, which spring with a certain inevitableness from its character and historical life. These various views bear in themselves their living justification, and may well be diametrically opposed to those of other nations, and none can say that one nation has a better right than the other. There never have been, and never will be, universal rights of men. Here and there particular relations can be brought under definite international laws, but the bulk of national life is absolutely outside codification. Even were some such attempt made, even if a comprehensive international code were drawn up, no self-respecting nation would sacrifice its own conception of right to it. By so doing it would renounce its highest ideals; it would allow its own sense of justice to be violated by an injustice, and thus dishonour itself.

Arbitration treaties must be peculiarly detrimental to an aspiring people, which has not yet reached its political and national zenith, and is bent on expanding its power in order to play its part honourably in the civilized world. Every Arbitration Court must originate in a certain political status; it must regard this as legally constituted, and must treat any alterations, however necessary, to which the whole of the contracting parties do not agree, as an encroachment. In this way every progressive change is arrested, and a legal position created which may easily conflict with the actual turn of affairs, and may check the expansion of the young and vigorous State in favour of one which is sinking in the scale of civilization.

These considerations supply the answer to the second decisive question: How can the judgment of the Arbitration Court be enforced if any State refuses to submit to it? Where does the power reside which insures the execution of this judgment when pronounced?

In America, Elihu Root, formerly Secretary of State, declared in 1908 that the High Court of International Justice established by the second Hague Conference would be able to pronounce definite and binding decisions by virtue of the pressure brought to bear by public opinion. The present leaders of the American peace movement seem to share this idea. With a childlike self-consciousness, they appear to believe that public opinion must represent the view which the American plutocrats think most profitable to themselves. They have no notion that the widening development of mankind has quite other concerns than material prosperity, commerce, and money-making. As a matter of fact, public opinion would be far from unanimous, and real compulsion could only be employed by means of war—the very thing which is to be avoided.

We can imagine a Court of Arbitration intervening in the quarrels of the separate tributary countries when an empire like the Roman Empire existed. Such an empire never can or will arise again. Even if it did, it would assuredly, like a universal peace league, be disastrous to all human progress, which is dependent on the clashing interests and the unchecked rivalry of different groups.