The events which I have here described will perhaps one day be regarded as the transition into a new era. But specially here, in the Old World, with its many unsettled accounts, we cannot rely upon bright pictures of the future. We are convinced of nothing beyond the range of our own knowledge and experience.
I have thought so myself, and therefore I have endeavoured to keep to facts which no one can deny.
It is a fact that wars continually diminish in proportion as peoples are brought nearer to one another by trade and commerce. The old warlike condition has ceased. Formerly not a year passed without war in Europe—in the Middle Ages hardly a week. After 1815 an international peace reigned over most of the European States for forty years. In the Scandinavian peninsula that peace is continuing still. Before that time, at least until 1721, Sweden was almost continually involved in war. We reckon two hundred and sixty years of war to the Kalmar Union, and the proneness to invade and defend the countries on the other side the Baltic.
The old causes of war are being removed. Certainly new ones arise as a result of selfish patriotism, breaking out in new acts of violence. But these outbreaks of barbarism become continually more rare. Unhappily, they are so much the more horrible when they do occur, but yet much More transitory. This is applicable to all the great wars in the last half of the present century. No thirty years' war is known now.
In consequence of the shorter flow of blood the wounds get time to heal, and the divided interests are allowed to grow together again. The levers of civilization are again in motion; commerce spreads over land and sea by steam, electricity, and other motive powers. The victories of Alexander and Napoleon are cast into the shade by the triumphal procession of the tiny postage stamp around the world. Trade and industry, art and science, efforts in the direction of universal morality and enlightenment, all branch out and weave around the nations a boundless web of common interests, which, though at certain intervals violently torn asunder by brute force, grows together again with increased strength and in broader compass; until one day, under the majesty of law, it will form an irresistible civilizing power.
This is what in reality is taking place. Men do not in general see it; and this, because they busy themselves so much with warlike notions, and trouble themselves so little about events of the character that I have dwelt upon in the foregoing pages.
The friends of peace ought to stimulate one another, especially when there is gloom over the great world, and no one knows whence the approaching calamity may spring. Once it was warded off from our land by a wise measure of one of our kings. I refer to Oscar I., when he saved us from being embroiled in the chances of war, by drawing up a declaration of neutrality in 1854, which was approved by the united powers, and earned for him the homage and gratitude of the Swedish Riksdag, in an address which lauded him as one of the wisest and noblest of kings.[38]
But there is little security that the same expedient will always lead to a like successful result, if people wait till war is at the door before setting to work.
In time of peace, and during the specially good relations which obtain between the two English-speaking nations, as well as between France and America, our fellow-workers on both sides the Atlantic are making use of the favourable opportunity for trying to get this good relation established by law.