PAUL ON MARS HILL: God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.
ANDREW CARNEGIE: We have abolished slavery from civilized countries, the owning of man by man. The next great step that the world can take is to abolish war, the killing of man by man.
GEORGE WASHINGTON: My first wish is to see the whole world at peace, and the inhabitants of it as one band of brothers, striving which should most contribute to the happiness of mankind.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive***to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
EMANUEL KANT: The method by which states prosecute their rights cannot under present conditions be a process of law, since no court exists having jurisdiction over them, but only war. But through war, even if it result in victory, the question of right is not decided.
THE SPREAD OF DEMOCRACY
We are apt, in thinking of the consequences of the European war, to consider the readjustment of national boundaries as of prime importance. Such a thought betrays a wrong perspective, or a narrowness of vision, or both. Territorial definition is a small, material factor. The larger, spiritual considerations that affect all mankind are the momentous things. And probably of all the consequences that are evolved out of the horrors and atrocities of the great war, the spread of the democratic spirit must be the most momentous. Despite the fact that the ambitions of the people and the dynasties are in accord, the effect of the war upon monarchical institutions must be momentous. The spirit of democracy is abroad. It has practically abolished the British House of Lords. It has forced the establishment of a parliament in Russia. It is so active and alert in Germany that the Social Democratic party is the largest and most powerful political organization in the empire. In France it overturned the monarchy nearly half a century ago, and is now so firmly established that only the wildest dreamers ever imagine that republican institutions can be displaced. It is regnant in Portugal and nearly so in Spain. A nation in arms, as Germany now is, will not long be content to remain a nation without a ministry responsible to its Parliament. The democratization of German institutions is inevitable after the war, whatever the result. The people, even in Russia, are no longer driven serfs. They think, they reason, and a demonstration of the power of 5,000,000 men on the battle-field will not be lost on the patriots who wish also to demonstrate the power of the same number of millions in deciding at first hand the causes for which they will take up arms. Whether the kings and the emperors remain on their thrones matters little. Great Britain, though it retains the fiction of a monarchy, is as democratic as the United States, and its Parliament responds with greater precision to popular sentiment than the American Congress. The war means the end of autocracy whether the kings remain or not.
DECLINE OF THE WAR SPIRIT
It is significant that the most democratic nations are likewise the most peace-loving. With the spread of democracy must come the decline of the war spirit. The teaching that war is a biological necessity for the preservation of the heroic virtues in men has met its fate in this war, for we have found men, whole regiments of them, who had only been in warlike training a few months, showing just as cool courage and just as stubborn fighting powers as men who had been trained to war from their youth. Even from the standpoint of effectiveness in war the war spirit is unnecessary.