Those purposes are first to secure order within, second to make war without. It might almost say that its purpose is to make war without. In no sense of the word does it make war without so that it can keep order within. Its purpose therefore is to make war for it keeps order within so it can better make war without. It might almost say, in fact, it does say that if it did not make war it would have no right to exist. If it doesn’t make war better than another it has no right to exist. It makes war that it may grow, that it may develop, that it may progress, that it may enlarge itself. It ceases from war for the time being only that it may prepare to make war again. War is its health, its vocation. Its provisional peace is its novitiate, its apprenticeship, its years of training. Should it cease to grow and enlarge itself, it would thereby cease to be healthy and true to its main purpose.
An axiom with many people is that the truth or falsity of many if not all contentions can be found by magnifying them or trying to make them universal. If the contention of the world state is valid this axiom would seem to have found its Waterloo, for it is obvious that if the perfect war state is ever achieved it must constantly grow, it must extend its boundaries continuously. When the war state shall have reached its zenith it will fall into the inevitable decay and degeneration that comes with peace, unless it should divide the World state up into tiny and imperfect war states and begin over again the centuries which were spent in warfare, to see from which centre of the globe the new war state shall spread itself. For it is apparent that since war is necessary, a world of peace would almost be worse than no world at all.
If wars cannot come with the inevitableness with which astute ministers try to clothe them they must be consciously and openly caused merely for the sake of having war.
It may be said and it indeed often is that such a conclusion is impossible, that no constantly growing war state can evolve. War’s spokesmen say that power too widespread places the beneficent uses of conflict beyond the reach of the majority of such a state and malign peace causes inner decay. Eternal bloodshed it would appear is the price of national health. And several hostile war states must forever rock progress in its crimson cradle.
This presents to us the other horn of the logical dilemma. All states owe it to themselves and to the world to become thoroughly militarized. Hatred and rivalry must be constantly cherished. Socialism’s dream of an international brotherhood that has beguiled the hearts of many who fear most of its other principles is indeed only a dream to be dispelled when the State’s real function is exercised.
Iron, hinting its own scarcity, must be primarily used for Busy Berthas, submarines and breast piercers. Motor trucks which it was hoped were to be the disseminators of food and strength are to become the swift germs of international disease.
Much of the ever-growing spring of inventive geniuses must be turned from its natural channel of construction to flow through the ways of death and destruction. The works we glory in in times of peace must become the enemies of life. Ships that float upon the bosom of the air deal their horrible and flaming shafts. The dove-like aeroplane becomes the eye of the army dragon.
War states shall build this commerce but to destroy it as children knock down their toy houses. Philanthropists shall attempt to soften and heal the sore spots of society but to see the nations’ statesmen tear and rend the living flesh, leaving ulcers that cannot close for years.
The war state of course has satisfactory reasons for making war for growth and development. It must make war to spread its civilization and destroy other civilizations. There could be no concert or symphony of civilizations properly speaking. Civilizations serve their purposes only as they die and pass away. The myriads of philanthropists, social workers, statesmen and jurists in various states that have not received the gospel of war are not building for all time. They are building primarily to render more glorious the victory of the war state. Artists that create, architects that build are only making structures whose rôle in man’s history is to be noble ruins.
Physicians and scientists shall study man’s body, make warfare upon his unseen enemies, plan and plot the life of health, spend years in study and research, that they may save a few from the plagues of typhoid, of pneumonia, consumption and the other afflictions of man’s body only to see man’s latest death dealing toy destroy in seconds the healthful tissues it has taken years to build. They shall see their systems of sanitation and hygiene fall like a phantom castle in the air. Disorder, rapine and lust shall spread more disease than health boards could cure or prevent in a decade, and last of all they shall find themselves marshalled and arrayed as one of the brigades in the cohorts of death.