This point of view is expressed by S.R. Steinmetz in his "Philosophie des Krieges." War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential function of the State, and the only function in which peoples can employ all their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save as the resultant of a totality of virtues; no defeat for which some vice or weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health and vigor—there is no moral or intellectual point of superiority that does not tell when "God holds His assizes, and hurls the peoples one upon another" (Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht); and Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the long-run chance and luck play any part in apportioning the issues.
It is urged that international hostility is merely the psychological stimulus to that combativeness which is a necessary element of existence, and that though, like other elemental instincts—our animal appetites, for instance—it may in some of its manifestations be ugly enough, it makes for survival, and is to that extent a part of the great plan. Too great a readiness to accept the "friendly assurances" of another nation and an undue absence of distrust would, in accordance with a sort of Gresham's Law in international relationships, make steadily for the disappearance of the humane and friendly communities in favor of the truculent and brutal. If friendliness and good-feeling towards other nations led us to relax our self-defensive efforts, the quarrelsome communities would see, in this slackening, an opportunity to commit aggression, and there would be a tendency, therefore, for the least civilized to wipe out the most. Animosity and hostility between nations is a corrective of this sentimental slackness, and to that extent it plays a useful rôle, however ugly it may appear—"not pretty, but useful, like the dustman." Though the material and economic motives which prompt conflict may no longer obtain, other than economic motives will be found for collision, so profound is the psychological stimulus thereto.
Some such view as this has found lurid expression in the recent work of an American soldier, Homer Lea.[42] The author urges not only that war is inevitable, but that any systematic attempt to prevent it is merely an unwise meddling with the universal law.
National entities, in their birth, activities, and death, are controlled by the same laws that govern all life—plant, animal, or national—the law of struggle, the law of survival. These laws, so universal as regards life and time, so unalterable in causation and consummation, are only variable in the duration of national existence as the knowledge of and obedience to them is proportionately true or false. Plans to thwart them, to shortcut them, to circumvent, to cozen, to deny, to scorn and violate them, is folly such as man's conceit alone makes possible. Never has this been tried—and man is ever at it—but what the end has been gangrenous and fatal.
In theory international arbitration denies the inexorability of natural laws, and would substitute for them the veriest Cagliostroic formulas, or would, with the vanity of Canute, sit down on the ocean-side of life and command the ebb and flow of its tides to cease.
The idea of international arbitration as a substitute for natural laws that govern the existence of political entities arises not only from a denial of their fiats and an ignorance of their application, but from a total misconception of war, its causes, and its meaning.
Homer Lea's thesis is emphasized in the introduction to his work, written by another American soldier, General John P. Storey:
A few idealists may have visions that with advancing civilization war and its dread horrors will cease. Civilization has not changed human nature. The nature of man makes war inevitable. Armed strife will not disappear from the earth until human nature changes.
"Weltstadt und Friedensproblem," the book of Professor Baron Karl von Stengel, a jurist who was one of Germany's delegates at the First Hague Peace Conference, contains a chapter entitled "The Significance of War for Development of Humanity," in which the author says:
War has more often facilitated than hindered progress. Athens and Rome, not only in spite of, but just because of their many wars, rose to the zenith of civilization. Great States like Germany and Italy are welded into nationalities only through blood and iron.
Storm purifies the air and destroys the frail trees, leaving the sturdy oaks standing. War is the test of a nation's political, physical, and intellectual worth. The State in which there is much that is rotten may vegetate for a while in peace, but in war its weakness is revealed.
Germany's preparations for war have not resulted in economic disaster, but in unexampled economic expansion, unquestionably because of our demonstrated superiority over France. It is better to spend money on armaments and battleships than luxury, motormania, and other sensual living.
We know that Moltke expressed a similar view in his famous letter to Bluntschli. "A perpetual peace," declared the Field-Marshal, "is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream. War is one of the elements of order in the world, established by God. The noblest virtues of men are developed therein. Without war the world would degenerate and disappear in a morass of materialism."[43]
At the very time that Moltke was voicing this sentiment, a precisely similar one was being voiced by no less a person than Ernest Renan. In his "La Réforme Intellectuelle et Morale" (Paris: Lévy, 1871, p. 111) he writes: