"What has Greece left to us? Books, marbles. Is she great because she has conquered, or because she has produced?
"Is it the invasion of the Persians that kept her from falling into the most hideous materialism?
"Is it the invasions of the barbarians that saved Rome and regenerated her?
"Was it Napoleon I. who continued the great intellectual movement which was begun by the philosophers at the end of the last century?
"Oh, well, if the governments arrogate to themselves the right to kill the nations, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the nations now and then take upon themselves the right to do away with the governments.
"They defend themselves. They are right. Nobody has the absolute right to govern others. This can be done only for the good of the governed. Whoever rules is as much obliged to avoid war as a captain of a boat is obliged to avoid a shipwreck.
"When a captain has lost his boat, he is judged and condemned, if he is found guilty of negligence or even of incapacity.
"Why should not the governments be judged after the declaration of a war? If the nations understood this, if they themselves sat in judgment over the death-dealing powers, if they refused to allow themselves to be killed without reason, if they made use of their weapons against those who gave them to them for the purpose of massacring, war would be dead at once! But this day will not come!" (Sur l'Eau, pp. 71-80.)
The author sees all the horror of war; he sees that its cause is in this, that the governments, deceiving people, compel them to go out to kill and die without any need; he sees also that the men composing the armies might turn their weapons against the governments and demand accounts from them. But the author thinks that this will never happen, and that, therefore, there is no way out of this situation. He thinks that the business of war is terrible, but that it is inevitable and that the demands of the governments that the soldiers shall go and fight are as inevitable as death, and that, since the governments will always demand it, there will always exist wars.