The cause of war is spiritual, not material.... The great wars arose from conflicts as to rights, and the dangerous causes of war are the existence of antagonistic ideas of rights or righteousness.... It is for moral ideas that men are most ready to make sacrifices.[37]
A similar criticism is made by Admiral Mahan.[38]
In the same way the London Spectator while admitting the truth of the principles outlined in the first part of this book, deems that such facts do not seriously affect the basic cause of war:
Just as individuals quarrel among themselves, and fight as bitterly as the police and the law courts will allow them, not because they think it will make them rich, but because their blood is up, and they want to stand up for what they believe to be their rights, or to revenge themselves for wrongs done to them, as they think, by their fellows, so nations will fight, even though it is demonstrable that they will get no material gain thereby.... They want sometimes freedom, sometimes power. Sometimes a passion for expansion or dominion comes over them. Sometimes they seem impelled to fight for fighting's sake, or, as their leaders and rhetoricians vaguely say, to fulfil their destinies.... Men fight sometimes for the love of fighting, sometimes for great and noble causes, and sometimes for bad causes, but practically never with an account-book and a balance-sheet in their hands.
I desire to give every possible weight to this plea, and not to shirk a detail of it, and I think that the pages that follow cover every one of the points here raised. But there is a whole school of philosophy which goes much farther than the Spectator. The view just cited rather implies that though it is a fact that men settle their differences by force and passion, instead of by reason, it is a regrettable fact. But the school to which I refer urges that men should be encouraged to fight, and that war is the preferable solution. War, declare these philosophers, is a valuable discipline for the nations, and it is not desirable to see human conflict shifted from the plane of physical force. They urge that humanity will be permanently the poorer when, as one of them has put it, the great struggles of mankind become merely the struggles of "talk and money-bags."
Parenthetically, it should be pointed out that the matter has a good deal more than academic interest. This philosophy constitutes a constant element of resistance to that reform of political thought and tradition in Europe which must be the necessary precedent of a sounder condition. Not merely, of course, do international situations become infinitely more dangerous when you get, on both sides of the frontier, a general "belief in war for war's sake," but a tendency is directly created to discredit the use of patience, a quality as much needed in the relationship of nations as in that of individuals; and further there is a tendency to justify political action making for war as against action that might avoid it. All these pleas, biological and otherwise, are powerful factors in creating an atmosphere and temperament in Europe favorable to war and unfavorable to international agreement. For, be it noted, this philosophy is not special to any one country: one finds it plentifully expressed in England and America, as well as in France and Germany. It is a European doctrine, part of that "mind of Europe," of which someone has spoken, that, among other factors, determines the character of European civilization generally.
This particular point of view has received a notable re-statement quite recently[39] from General Bernhardi, a distinguished cavalry General, and probably the most influential German writer on current strategical and tactical problems, in his book, "Deutschland und der nächste Krieg."[40] He therein gives very candid expression to the opinion that Germany must, regardless of the rights and interests of other peoples, fight her way to predominance. One of the chapters is headed, "The Duty to Make War." He describes the peace movement in Germany as "poisonous," and proclaims the doctrine that the duties and tasks of the German people cannot be fulfilled save by the sword. "The duty of self-assertion is by no means exhausted in the mere repelling of hostile attacks. It includes the need of securing to the whole people, which the State embraces, the possibility of existence and development." It is desirable, declares the author, that conquest shall be effected by war, and not by peaceful means; Silesia would not have had the same value for Prussia if Frederick the Great had obtained it from an Arbitration Court. The attempt to abolish war is not only "immoral and unworthy of humanity," it is an attempt to deprive man of his highest possession—the right to stake physical life for ideal ends. The German people "must learn to see that the maintenance of peace cannot be, and must never be, the goal of policy."
Similar efforts are being made in England by English writers to secure the acceptance of this doctrine of force. Many passages almost duplicating those of Bernhardi, or at least extolling the general doctrine of force, may be found in the writings of such Anglo-Saxon authors as Admiral Mahan and Professor Spenser Wilkinson.[41]
A scientific color is often given to the philosophy of force, as expressed by the authors just referred to, by an appeal to evolutionary and biological laws.
It is urged that the condition of man's advance in the past has been the survival of the fit by struggle and warfare, and that in that struggle it is precisely those endowed with combativeness and readiness to fight who have survived. Thus the tendency to combat is not a mere human perversity, but is part of the self-protective instinct rooted in a profound biological law—the struggle of nations for survival.