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It was only of this political peace between civil[p. 100]ised nations that Kant thought.[103] In this form it is bound to come. The federation of Europe will follow the federation of Germany and of Italy, not only because it offers a solution of many problems which have long taxed Europe, but because great men and careful thinkers believe in it.[104] It may not come quickly, but such men can afford to wait. "If I were legislator," cried Jean Jacques Rousseau, "I should not say what ought to be done, but I would do it." This is the attitude of the unthinking, unpractical enthusiast. The wish is not enough: the will is not enough. The mills of God must take their own time: no hope or faith of ours, no struggle or labour even can hurry them.
It is a misfortune that the Peace Society has identified itself with so narrow and uncritical an attitude towards war, and that the copious elo[p. 101]quence of its members is not based upon a consideration of the practical difficulties of the case. This well-meaning, hard working and enthusiastic body would like to do what is impossible by an impossible method. The end which it sets for itself is an unattainable one. But this need not be so. To make unjustifiable aggression difficult, to banish unworthy pretexts for making war might be a high enough ideal for any enthusiasm and offer scope wide enough for the labours of any society. But the Peace Society has not contented itself with this great work. Through its over-estimation of the value of peace,[105] its cause has been injured and much of its influence has been weakened or lost. Our age is one which sets a high value upon human life; and to this change of thinking may be traced our modern reform in the methods of war and all that has been done for the alleviation of suffering by the great Conventions of recent years. For the eyes of most people war is merely a hideous spectacle of bloodshed and deliberate destruction of life: this is its obvious side. But it is possible to exaggerate this confessedly great evil. Peace has its sacrifices as well as war: the[p. 102] progress of humanity requires that the individual should often be put aside for the sake of lasting advantage to the whole. An opposite view can only be reckoned individualistic, perhaps materialistic. "The reverence for human life," says Martineau, (Studies of Christianity, pp. 352, 354) "is carried to an immoral idolatry, when it is held more sacred than justice and right, and when the spectacle of blood becomes more horrible than the sight of desolating tyrannies and triumphant hypocrisies.... We have, therefore, no more doubt that a war may be right, than that a policeman may be a security for justice, and we object to a fortress as little as to a handcuff."
The Peace Society are not of this opinion: they greatly doubt that a war may be right, and they rarely fail to take their doubts to the tribunal of Scripture. Their efforts are well meant, this piety may be genuine enough; but a text is rarely a proof of anything, and in any case serves one man in as good stead as another. We remember that "the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." This unscientific method of proof or persuasion has ever been widely popular. It is a serious examination of the question that we want, a more careful study of its actual history and of the possibilities of human nature; less vague, exaggerated language about what ought to be done, and a realisation of[p. 103] what has been actually achieved; above all, a clear perception of what may fairly be asked from the future.
It used to be said---is perhaps asserted still by the war-lovers---that there was no path to civilisation which had not been beaten by the force of arms, no height to which the sword had not led the way. The inspiration of war was upon the great arts of civilisation: its hand was upon the greatest of the sciences. These obligations extended even to commerce. War not only created new branches of industry, it opened new markets and enlarged the old. These are great claims, according to which war might be called the moving principle of history. If we keep our eyes fixed upon the history of the past, they seem not only plausible: they are in a great sense true. Progress did tread at the heels of the great Alexander's army: the advance of European culture stands in the closest connection with the Crusades. But was this happy compensation for a miserable state of affairs not due to the peculiarly unsocial conditions of early times and the absence of every facility for the interchange of ideas or material advantages? It is inconceivable that now-a-days[106] any aid to the development of thought in Europe should come from war. The[p. 104] old adage, in more than a literal sense, has but too often been proved true:---"Inter arma, Musae silent." Peace is for us the real promoter of culture.
We have to endeavour to take an intermediate course between uncritical praise and wholesale condemnation, between extravagant expectation and unjustifiable pessimism. War used to be the rule: it is now an overwhelming and terrible exception---an interruption to the peaceful prosperous course of things, inflicting unlimited suffering and temporary or lasting loss. Its evils are on the surface, apparent to the most unthinking observer. The day may yet dawn, when Europeans will have learned to regard the force of arms as an instrument for the civilisation of savage or half-savage races, and war within their continent as civil war, necessary and justifiable sometimes perhaps, but still a blot upon their civilisation and brotherhood as men. Such a suggestion rings strangely. But the great changes, which the roll of centuries has marked, once came upon the world not less unexpectedly. How far off must the idea of a civil peace have seemed to small towns and states of Europe in the fifteenth century! How strange, only a century[p. 105] ago, would the idea of applying steam power or electrical force have seemed to ourselves! Let us not despair. War has played a great part in the history of the world: it has been ever the great architect of nations, the true mother of cities. It has justified itself to-day in the union of kindred peoples, the making of great empires. It may be that one decisive war may yet be required to unite Europe. May Europe survive that struggle and go forward fearlessly to her great future! A peaceful future that may not be. It must never be forgotten that war is sometimes a moral duty, that it is ever the natural sequence of human passion and human prejudice. An unbroken peace we cannot and do not expect; but it is this that we must work for. As Kant says, we must keep it before us as an ideal.
We need not try to decide whether this satirical inscription, (once found on a Dutch innkeeper's sign-board above the picture of a churchyard) is aimed at mankind in general, or at the rulers of states in particular, unwearying in their love of war, or perhaps only at the philosophers who cherish the sweet dream of perpetual peace. The author of the present sketch would make one stipulation, however. The practical politician stands upon a definite footing with the theorist: with great self-complacency he looks down upon him as a mere pedant whose empty ideas can threaten no danger to the state (starting as it does from principles derived from experience), and who may always be permitted to[p. 107] knock down his eleven skittles at once without a worldly-wise statesman needing to disturb himself. Hence, in the event of a quarrel arising between the two, the practical statesman must always act consistently, and not scent danger to the state behind opinions ventured by the theoretical politician at random and publicly expressed. With which saving clause (clausula salvatoria) the author will herewith consider himself duly and expressly protected against all malicious misinterpretation.
