The following is quoted from "Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain," by the late Professor J. A. Cramb:
"War may change its shape, the struggle here intensifying it, there abating it; it may be uplifted by ever loftier purposes and nobler causes. But cease? How shall it cease?
"Indeed, in the light of history, universal peace appears less as a dream than as a nightmare, which shall be realized only when the ice has crept to the heart of the sun, and the stars, left black and trackless, start from their orbits."
Max Müller has told us that the roots of some of our words are older than the Egyptian Pyramids. Far older still are the essential traits of human nature. The human nature of today will be the human nature of tomorrow, and the human nature of tomorrow will be in all essential respects the same as it was in ancient Rome, Persia, and Egypt, and even in the palmy days of sea-sunk Atlantis.
The best of us are at heart barbarians under a thin veneer of civilization, and it is as natural for us to revert to barbarous war as for the hog to return to his wallow.
If we were able to apply to the upbuilding of our Army and Navy the money that goes to political graft throughout the country, and the money that has been squandered, and is still being squandered through our notorious vote-purchasing pensions, we could place ourselves upon a war footing that would be an absolute guarantee of permanent peace. It is not, therefore, very encouraging, to enlarge this failing system of laws, in order to save an annual expenditure certainly less than what the defects of our laws now cost the country.
Even though international wars may be prevented by a court of arbitration, can rebellion and civil war be prevented, and ought they always to be prevented?
Justifiable Wars