CHAPTER ONE. THE CAUSE AND PURPOSE OF WAR IN PRIMITIVE TIMES. HUNTING AND WAR↩

The natural laws of the economy of forces and of competition. — How they combined to produce the phenomenon of war. — Difference between hunting and war. — The profits of war for competing species of the animal kingdom. — Determining cause of hunting men. — Human sacrifices. — Determining cause of war between competing varieties of the human species. — Profit it yielded to the victor. — That it met the general and long-term interests of the species, in other words, that it was useful.

It is in the nature of man and in the conditions necessary for existence which were assigned to him from the moment of his appearance on the earth that we must seek the causes of the phenomenon of war. Man is, like all other creatures, made up of matter and [4] forces. Like them as well, he is obliged to continually renew the material things necessary for life. He renews them through the consumption of material things and forces that can be digested. But these things necessary for life are not obtained for free. He must discover them and appropriate them for his consumption. This discovery and appropriation require a preliminary expenditure of the forces necessary for life. [3] Now, every expenditure of the forces that make life possible causes suffering and hardship, while every acquisition of these same forces brings enjoyment. If the sum of the forces necessary for life expended exceeds the sum acquired, the difference constitutes a loss, and in the opposite case, a profit. It is with a view to the excess of pleasure over pain, represented by profit, that man sets the forces necessary for his life in motion, that he labors and strives to obtain, in exchange for a minimum of expenditure, that is of hardship, a maximum of life-sustaining material, that is of pleasure. This is the natural law of "the economy of forces" or of the least effort, which governs the activity of man just as it governs that of all other creatures. [4]

But to this law, which comes from man’s nature, is added another, which comes from the state of the environment in which he draws his means of existence: it is the law of life-giving competition. [5] The phenomenon of war is the [5] product of the combined operation of these two natural laws. And its reason for being becomes plainly visible when one examines the conditions under which the human species could survive.

Our globe is populated by an immense multitude of living creatures, some forming the kingdom of plant species, others that of animal species. Plants are the food of herbivorous animals, and these in turn feed the carnivores. Man, who occupies the summit of the animal hierarchy, feeds on both: he is omnivorous. As a result, from the beginning he was in competition for his food with the herbivorous species, who like him sought the natural fruits of the soil, and with the carnivorous species, who like him lived by hunting the weaker species of the animal kingdom. But while he was a competitor for the latter, he was also prey for those who were stronger and better equipped with natural weapons. He therefore had either to elude their pursuit or to engage in a mortal struggle with them.

Driven by the necessity of defending himself against individually stronger animals, man formed associations with his fellow men; he formed societies, [6] in its primitive form of herds, [6] clans, or tribes. In this, he behaved no differently than most other species, but what raised him above the rest of the animal kingdom was the invention of artificial weapons which, by compensating for the inadequacy of his natural weapons, enabled him both to fight without disadvantage against the species for whom he was prey, and to reach with less effort those on which he fed.

Here we can see the difference between hunting and war. Man hunts the animals he eats. He wages war on those for whom he is food. But it is not only in order to guarantee his security [7] that he strives to eliminate [8] them; it is also to rid himself of the competition they pose as hunters.

To be sure, the elimination of competitors for food implied a struggle, and hence a cost in his forces and a risk. Men found it worthwhile to engage in this struggle only to the extent that they had, or believed they had, sufficient chances of emerging victorious. These chances depended on the strength, intelligence, and above all the courage with which they were endowed, as well as on the effectiveness of the artificial weapons they could use against the natural weapons of their competitors. In all likelihood, it was only after having invented the first machines [9] [7] for hunting and waging war that they undertook a struggle which, until then, had remained too unequal. This struggle, between the strongest and bravest men and their competitors from the great species of the animal kingdom, continued throughout the long period of primitive times, and the annals of all people have recorded these events. It is Hercules, armed with his club, who triumphs over the Nemean lion and the Hydra of Lerna; it is Theseus who pierces with his arrows the Minotaur of Crete. The profit that this war against monsters brings man is twofold: it is, first, the security it guarantees him; it is, second, the economizing on labor and effort he achieves in acquiring game that he is no longer obliged to share with his starving competitors. This double profit compensates for—and beyond—the sum of life-sustaining forces which are expended, the risk which is incurred, in a word, the hardship the struggle has cost him.

This is the cause that shaped the first war, the one man waged against the animals for whom he was prey and who competed with him in acquiring his food.

But the same need that gave birth to the industry of hunting and the same motive that incited man to wage war on his competitors [8] in the animal kingdom, had to arouse the desire to hunt and wage war against men themselves.

First of all, there is hunting. Human flesh is a food, and in regions where edible animals were scarce, it could be obtained with less effort than that of other species. However, hunting humans would not have offered sufficient profit if all men had been equal in strength and the skills of combat; but the varieties within the human species are in this respect essentially unequal. Some resemble carnivorous animals; they possess the combative faculties of the lion, the tiger, the wolf, the fox; others reproduce the types and peaceful aptitudes of herbivores. Lacking skills in combat, the latter were easy prey for the carnivorous varieties of the species.

Human sacrifices, which persist among people who are on the path to civilization until the era when raising livestock provides them with a cheaper, and probably also healthier, source of food, bear witness; not to mention the other evidence offered by the traditions of primitive times, to the existence of a period when hunting other men was the principal if not the sole food industry of the superior varieties of the species. A portion of the products of this hunt was offered to the [9] divinities who protected the tribes and was used to feed their priests. This was the first form of the tithe. When this kind of food was abandoned in favor of the nourishment which was made more abundant and obtained with less effort through the raising of livestock, human victims were gradually replaced by the livestock that had taken their place in the people's diet. However, in certain circumstances—for example, when seeking the cooperation of the Divinities for some important undertaking—people continued to offer human sacrifices, which were thought to be more pleasing to them, given the superior value of this kind of food compared to that of livestock.

Meanwhile, the tribes that lived by hunting animals and men found themselves in competition for the acquisition of food. As their populations increased, they felt more strongly the need to enlarge their hunting grounds, and they could only do so at each other’s expense. Hence, there were inevitable and continual struggles. According to the testimony of missionaries who traveled through North America in the 16th and 17th centuries, the hunting tribes that occupied this vast continent were perpetually at war, and their conflicts always had the same objective: the conquest or defense of lands rich in game [10] which were necessary for their subsistence. The victors exterminated the vanquished and took their place.

This shows the distinction between hunting and waging war. Hunting consisted of the pursuit of game for the immediate satisfaction of the need for food. War had as its purpose the suppression of competitors, to make that satisfaction easier to attain. The profit in hunting was direct; the profit in waging war was indirect, and ultimately it amounted to an increase in the yield of the food industry. A tribe of hunters that could scarcely obtain, within the now too narrow limits of its domain, the quantity of food necessary for its growing population, could, by seizing a game-rich territory occupied by another tribe, obtain the same quantity in exchange for a lesser sum of labor and hardship. To be sure, this conquest implied a struggle in which it had to expend a certain amount of force and run a certain risk. If it were defeated, it ran the risk of being stripped of the territory that provided its means of existence, and even of being eliminated. On the other hand, if it achieved victory, it realized a gain equal to the difference between the sum of life-sustaining force expended in the struggle and that which the enlargement of its food-supply territory [11] allowed it to acquire or to save. It could increase its population in proportion to the growth of its means of subsistence and, by thus becoming more powerful, extend its hunting grounds still further through subsequent conquests. However, when one considers that the loss resulting from defeat far exceeded the gain that victory could procure, it becomes clear that war ought not to be undertaken except after mature deliberation and as accurate a knowledge as possible of the enemy’s strength. If a tribe, whose means of existence became insufficient due to the growth of its population or the diminishing of its food resources, found itself too weak to undertake a war of conquest with a reasonable chance of success, the instinct of self-preservation compelled it to slow the growth of its population through infanticide, or again to limit the number of mouths to feed through the sacrifice of the elderly. This was the origin of customs that rightly seem barbaric to us, but which were dictated by an imperious necessity.

In sum, during this first period of humanity’s existence, when man depended entirely for his subsistence on the food resources which nature offered him, war alone provided the means of increasing those resources. It had to be [12] so until he succeeded in multiplying them by means of industry. In the meantime, war was useful in that it gave victory to the strongest—that is, to those best able to ensure the survival of the human species, in its struggle against those species for whom man was both a competitor and a prey. But is it even necessary to add that this character of general usefulness was not perceived by the strong and courageous men who fought to enlarge their food-supply territory at one another’s expense? They simply obeyed the natural law of the economy of forces, striving to obtain a greater quantity of things which provided pleasure in exchange for a lesser sum of labor and pain.

[13]

CHAPTER II. THE REASON THERE IS WAR IN SOCIETIES ON THE ROAD TO CIVILIZATION↩

The productive capacity unique to the human species. — Saving and the progress it stimulated in the acquisition of the means of subsistence. — Increase in the productivity of the food industry and its consequences. — How it led to the founding of political States. — That competition imposed itself upon them in its destructive form, war. — The two kinds of struggles they had to sustain. — Objective of these struggles. — That they implied the necessity of developing the destructive power of the State, under the most effective of penalties: elimination or enslavement.

From the economic point of view what distinguishes the human species from the lower species is that man possesses the capacity to produce, whereas plants and animals possess only that of destroying. He can, consequently, increase the quantity of goods necessary to his subsistence and to the satisfaction of his other needs, whereas the lower species are forced to content themselves with what nature places at their disposal.

However, this capacity to produce, stemming from a [14] way of thinking which was superior to that of the animal kingdom, only appeared and developed through a slow and steady increase. In the beginning, men, like animals, drew their supply of food from purely destructive industries: hunting, fishing, and gathering the natural fruits of the earth. But they gradually increased the yield of these industries—industries they shared with the animal kingdom—by inventing weapons and methods of destruction or capture which enabled them both to eliminate their competitors from other species and to obtain a greater quantity of food in exchange for a smaller sum of labor and hardship.

Yet it is important to note that while these devices and methods made it easier to get game and other foods, they did not multiply them. On the contrary, they made their destruction more rapid. This was, in all likelihood, what led the most intelligent individuals to multiply them artificially. They retained a certain number of edible animals for reproduction and set aside a portion of the grains they gathered in the wild to sow, instead of consuming both in their entirety. It is from this “saving” that the industries of livestock breeding and plant cultivation were born, and from which the phenomenon of civilization emerged.

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As soon as this progress had been accomplished in acquiring his means of subsistence, a complete change took place in the conditions of existence of the human species. Until then, human societies had not significantly differed from animal societies. They provided for the same needs of mutual assistance and material cooperation. Their activity was entirely absorbed by looking after their security and the ever-precarious search for food. Like most animal societies, they were still strictly limited in number, for it took, in even the most game-rich regions, an area of a thousand square kilometers to feed a tribe of a hundred individuals. [10]

When agriculture replaced hunting as the food industry, societies were able to become incomparably more numerous within a [16] much smaller territory. The same area of land that barely sufficed to feed a single hunter could nourish several hundred farmers; and at the same time, the amount of labor each individual needed to obtain his food was reduced by nearly the same proportion. By spending his entire day in pursuit of game, the hunter could scarcely provide food for three or four people. A farmer, by expending the same amount of labor on land of average fertility, could produce enough wheat to feed ten times that number. Consequently, he could devote part of his time to the satisfaction of other needs—or provide for them more economically still by exchanging his surplus wheat for the products or services of others. Thus, the tribes of a few hundred hunters scattered over vast territories, there followed—once agriculture was invented—by nations of several million men, concentrated in much smaller regions.

This progress in the food industry of primitive societies not only increased their number and the goods necessary for their well-being; it led to further progress in the forms of property and family, and in [17] political and economic organization. Agricultural and industrial enterprises necessitated the individualization of property along with that of the family, and led to the organization of society into corporations or castes, [11] some sovereign, others subordinate, among whom were divided, according to their aptitudes, various functions and industries.

However, those societies—herds, clans or tribes of hunters of men, animals, or plants—that abandoned these primitive food industries for agriculture, and thereby acquired an extraordinary abundance of the means of subsistance—in a word, that grew rich—while others, having made no such progress, remained poor, became an increasingly tempting prey for the latter as their wealth grew. They were also an easy prey, for populations devoted to the peaceful labors of production could not withstand societies whose special industry was the hunting of animals and men. They were bound to succumb in the struggle. Civilization would therefore have perished at its birth had another form of progress not intervened to save it: instead of massacring the defeated populations and seizing the movable riches they had accumulated, the more intelligent societies of hunters and pillagers [18] understood that they would get more profit in permanently occupying the territories where they conducted their raids and in compelling the defeated to share regularly with them the products of their industry. Thus were founded, through the transformation of primitive brigands into policemen, most of the establishments or political States. [12] However, the conquering firm [13] could only maintain its State on the condition of remaining organized like an army, always ready to repel external aggression and suppress internal revolts. To this firm, corporation or caste of warriors—was joined, to fulfill the equally necessary functions of government and administration of the conquered domain, a caste that shared power with it, whether it was recruited from within its own ranks or from the intelligent elite of the conquered nation. These two corporations or castes, sometimes of the same origin, sometimes of different origins, shared the ownership and management of the State.

But their ownership always remained precarious. According to time and place, the firms which owned and governed States have had to maintain more or less frequent struggles—most often unavoidable—against two types of competitors.

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First, against societies less advanced in the techniques of production but in possession of the particular aptitudes that warfare demands. These often emerged from unknown regions—their origin and number were unknown. Those that still bordered on the animal kingdom would descend, unexpectedly and like a swarm of locusts, upon a populous and wealthy region and would not retreat until they had turned it into a devastated wasteland. Those with the beginnings of civilization—and such were, for example, the Hyksos who invaded Egypt—massacred or enslaved the owners of the States that fell into their hands and took their place.

Until recent times, civilized people remained exposed to these invasions by barbarian people. It was a peril they could not escape, against which they had to defend themselves on pain of destruction or enslavement, and which would continue to threaten them until the day when their power of resistance became strong enough to deprive the invaders of all hope of success and profit—and thus compel them to abandon an industry that had become unproductive.

These struggles against the barbarians had a defensive character. Even when civilized people resorted to offensive action, it was to prevent [20] incursions, always to be feared, and to guarantee their security. Nevertheless, it was rare for them to push foresight so far, for wars against poor barbarians seldom paid for themselves.

It was otherwise with the wars fought between the firms which each owned a territorial domain which was cultivated by a subject population.

In such cases, the usual objective of the struggle was territorial expansion, in the expectation of the profit that such expansion was capable of yielding—in the form of taxes and dues in kind, labor, or money, which was furnished by the subject population—not to mention the accumulated wealth of the vanquished, upon which the victors seized by virtue of the right of war. Sometimes the struggle would break out between the firms which owned the States who were competing to expand their domains at the expense of other States coveted by them. This was the cause of the struggle between Rome and Carthage, a struggle whose objective was none other than the monopoly of domination and exploitation over the Mediterranean world.

But to prevail in these struggles—some burdensome but unavoidable, others profitable—what was necessary? It was necessary to develop the power of the State to the highest point possible. This was a sine qua non condition [21] for the preservation, the life or death, of its owners. And the more exposed they were to the pressure of military competition, the more they were driven to increase that power, upon which depended not only their well-being, but their liberty and very existence.

[22]

CHAPTER III. THE FORMATION OF A BODY ORGANISED FOR FIGHTING [14] OR AN ARMY↩

Vital necessity that led to the creation of a body organised for fighting. — The constituent elements of this body. — Personnel. — How military value is produced and maintained. — Materiel. — Command, hierarchy, and discipline. — The capital advance necessary for the formation and operation of a body organised for fighting. — That this advance can occur only with the aid of security and requires the institution of a government.

The existence of a firm which owns a political domain—whether that domain had been acquired by conquest or otherwise—depended, as we have just seen, on the power it could deploy in the struggles of competition in its destructive form, [15] that is of war. The strongest firms prevailed over the others, conquered territorial domains, or enlarged their own by replacing their previous owners, whom they exterminated or reduced to slavery or subjection. It was therefore essential that every firm which owned a State [23] should possess—under penalty of being dispossessed, eliminated, or subjugated—a body organised for fighting in which the greatest possible amount of destructive power was invested.

The formation and operation of this body required the assembling and cooperation of personnel suited to the work of war, and of matériel equally suited to the work of destruction it involved. The qualities that constitute aptitude for war are partly physical, partly moral: the strength to endure fatigue, combativeness, contempt for danger, etc.—and these qualities combine to produce military value. Like any other value, this one is measured by its utility. It is therefore understandable that it should have been held, in universal estimation, in the highest regard, since it corresponded to the most urgent need of societies—the need to guard against dispossession and elimination. But the production of military value required, in addition to a stock of natural qualities, an artificial training. The natural qualities were a matter of race: they abounded in certain races—those that resembled predatory animals—they were absent or less developed in others; they were transmitted by heredity, and were lost or weakened through interbreeding with races that lacked them. It was therefore necessary for the [24] conquering firm which owned the State, [16] from which the army was recruited, to forbid its members from entering into unions with the inferior elements of the population that would have altered the purity of the blood. As for training, it consisted of an education intended to develop, through exercise, the physical and moral qualities that make up military value, and to teach the use of machines of destruction, and the procedures or methods of combat.

A body of personnel possessing military value to the highest degree—that was the most important factor in the production of destructive power. But it was also necessary that this personnel be equipped with artificial weapons to make up for the inadequacy of their natural weapons. The role of tools is no less important in war than in industry. However great the value of an army’s personnel, if it possesses only inferior weaponry in destructive power, it will have little chance of prevailing in the struggle.

However, the value of the personnel and the power of the matériel are still not sufficient to ensure victory. These factors and tools of destruction must be organized and operated in such a way as to produce the greatest possible amount of destructive power. The organization of an army [25] implies the establishment of a command structure, a hierarchy, and a discipline that coordinates the forces and makes them act with the least waste and the greatest useful effect. The aim pursued in combat is the destruction or repulsion of the opposing force, and this aim can only be achieved by coordinated movements that bring to each point of the conflict a contingent of forces superior to those of the enemy. Command must detect the weak points of both armies and direct movements that reinforce its own and break through those of the enemy. Finally, for command to possess all necessary effectiveness, it must be exercised by a leader with the required aptitude; his orders must be quickly communicated to an intelligent hierarchy and passively executed by disciplined troops. These are the conditions for the success of a military operation.

That is not all. Like all other enterprises, war requires a capital advance. What does this advance consist of? First, in the sum necessary to train the personnel and create the matériel; then in the upkeep of both until the war yields a return that covers these two categories of costs. Now, military ventures are inherently uncertain. When they [26] end in defeat, the defeated State suffers a more or less considerable loss. On the other hand, victory brings a profit, which must be proportional to the risks of loss in order for the enterprise to be truly profitable.

But while awaiting the realization of this profit—in one form or another: spoils, tributes, acquisition and exploitation of additional “subjects,” etc.—the formation and operation of the instrument of war required a capital advance. This advance must be covered by the resources of the firm which owns the State. [17] These resources are created by productive industries, [18] and such industries can arise and survive only if a certain degree of security already exists. Hence the necessity of a government whose purpose is to provide it.

[27]

CHAPTER IV. THE GOVERNMENT OF A POLITICAL STATE↩

Why security cannot establish itself spontaneously within human societies. — Necessity of a government charged with producing it. — How and for what purpose governments were instituted following conquest and the founding of political States. — Analogy of conquest with other enterprises. The sharing of its fruits. The necessities of preservation imposed on conquerors and founders of States. — That governments originally had no other purpose than to ensure the security of possession for conquering societies. — The three periods in the formation of political States. — That their transformation led to the enlargement of the sphere of security.

The abuses of governmentalism, [19] the excessive charges that governments impose on the consumers of their services, have in our day given rise to a sect of anarchists who claim they should be abolished. But the anarchists take no account of the imperfect nature of man, nor of the requirements of social life. If individuals knew the natural limits of their sphere of activity, and if they possessed the moral strength necessary to resist the impulses that [28] drive them to overstep it—if, as a result, an order founded on justice were to establish itself spontaneously—then one might dispense with government. But as long as the individuals who make up a society do not freely fulfill these necessary conditions of sociability, a superior power will be needed to compel them to do so. [20] Now, if after so many centuries of living in society, man still has not acquired a just idea of what he ought and ought not to do—nor the capacity to force himself to stay within the bounds of his rights and fulfill his duties—how much more must this have been true in humanity’s infancy? From the day that several individuals gathered together under the impulse of the need for mutual assistance, when a society was formed, a power became necessary to oblige its members to cooperate in its preservation and to use their liberty and property without infringing upon those of their associates. Such a power existed in embryonic societies like clans and tribes, where it was held by the strongest and most capable individuals. When clans or tribes—comprised of a small number of individuals of common origin and living off nature’s meager offerings—gave way to political States, almost always formed by a conquering race [29] and a subject multitude, and within which industry multiplied the means of subsistence, the necessity for a government charged with ensuring both the internal and external security of the State became even more pressing.

If we wish to understand how governments of political States were constituted and to grasp the transformations they underwent, we must return to an analysis of the phenomenon that gave birth to the State—namely, conquest.

The conquest of a territorial domain and the founding of a political State are no different from any other enterprise. Like industrial and commercial enterprises, they are carried out by the cooperation of labor and capital and have as their goal the making of a profit. Here one can make the distinction between the labor of management, assigned to the enterprise’s leader and his officers, and the labor of execution, performed by the soldiers, who act as the workmen in industrial enterprises. One can also make the distinction between fixed capital—arms and other machines of war—and circulating capital, made up of the provisions and maintenance needed to sustain the conquering army until the product of the enterprise is acquired and realized. These two kinds of capital are usually supplied by the leader of the enterprise and his financial backers, who have acquired them through [30] saving or borrowing. But once the conquest is achieved, the question arises of how to divide its fruits. As in an industrial enterprise, this division occurs more or less in proportion to the value of each participant’s contribution or cooperation. If the goal of the enterprise is mere pillage, the army divides the spoils of movable goods upon returning from the expedition. But, as happened when the pillaging armies realized that the appropriation and exploitation of a territory and its population would be more profitable than a raid for movable goods, the division then extended to immovable property. The history of the conquest of England by the Normans shows that this division differs in only one respect from that of industrial enterprises: in the latter, the laborers receive their share in the anticipatory and guaranteed form of a wage. [21] And the analogy becomes complete when conquest is undertaken on behalf of the firms or “houses” owning the political States, [22] by paid armies. In such cases, the share of the conquering army consisted only of its pay, to which was often added an officer’s bonus and, frequently as well, permission [31] for soldiers to plunder the countryside and sack cities. Finally, in our own day, under the regime of compulsory and unpaid service, soldiers have virtually no share in the proceeds of conquest; officers alone share in them, through campaign pay, promotions, and honorary or other rewards. [23]

However, once the division was made, the problem arose of how to preserve the conquered territory—against both external aggression and internal revolt by the subject population. How did the conquerors address this dual necessity? By establishing a government specifically tasked with doing so. As far as the insufficiency of historical records allows us to judge, the constitution of States has everywhere and always passed through three stages: an initial period of fragmentation and seignorial independence; a period of feudal insurance; [24] and a period of the unification of the government of the State.

To guard against the ever-threatening risk of dispossession, the conquering army remained organized and always ready to regroup to defend the conquered domain. Each of its members retained his functions and rank, and passed them on to his descendants by way of heredity and primogeniture. But until necessity [32] compelled them to confront a common danger, many constant causes of dissension arose among them: personal enmities resulting from unequal division of the spoils, disputes over domain boundaries, ambition to expand at the expense of neighbors, etc., etc. Hence local wars, in which the weaker fell victim to the stronger; hence, too, the need for the smaller landholders to seek protection from the more powerful. It was to meet this need that the system of political insurance known as feudalism was established. Yet feudalism, while providing some degree of security to the weak, did not put an end to struggles among the strong. It was bound to result—and in fact did result everywhere—in the absorption of feudal sovereignties by the leader who, having received the largest portion of the conquered domain as compensation for his services, also retained, as hereditary leader of the conquering army, the supreme command should it ever need to be reassembled—whether to repel foreign aggression, conquer new territory, or suppress a revolt by the subject population. This process of absorption and unification was accelerated in States particularly threatened by external competition, [33] or in which the need for expansion of the common domain was especially acute—where, consequently, subordination to a single leader appeared indispensable, along with the durable establishment of internal peace to avoid the waste of their forces.

Now, internal peace could only be established on condition that attacks on life and property, as well as all other offenses provoking internal struggles within the partnership of the owners of the State, [25] were prevented or repressed. That was the purpose and result of unifying the apparatus of justice and police, [26] the creation of which had been spurred by the need for security in each seigneury. The jurisdiction of the leader—duke, king, or emperor—after being confined to his own domain, gradually encroached on that of the lords; he first claimed judgment and punishment of the most serious crimes, and eventually of all offenses—beginning with those that harmed his own authority. The sphere of peace thus expanded gradually within States, at the expense of that of war—now confined, except in cases of revolt and civil war, to struggles between the States which were on the path towards civilisation, or with barbarian people.

[34]

These struggles continued to have as their principal—if not exclusive—objective the defense or enlargement of the territory that provided the conquering association, the owner of the State, with its means of existence. Let us now see in what those means consisted.

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CHAPTER V. THE PRODUCTS OF THE EXPLOITATION OF A POLITICAL STATE↩

That the co-sharers of a political domain derived their means of subsistence from the product of labor and the dues they imposed on the subject population. — That their well-understood interest obliged them to moderate their demands and improve their regime of exploitation. — Gradual transformation of this regime. — That the policy of the owners of States aimed at increasing their power and their wealth.

Once the division of a conquered domain had taken place, each of the co-sharers [27] settled on the lot assigned to him, accompanied by a number of companions who preferred to attach themselves to his wealth and live under his roof, rather than undertake the exploitation of one of the small plots allotted to the simple laborers who participated in the conquest. The population of each of these plots had to provide food for its lord and proprietor, either because he reduced them to slavery and set them to work in the trades and professions whose products or services he required—undertaking to provide them in return with the necessities of life— [36] or because he left them the use of their land and trades, while imposing fees to be paid in labor, in the products of their industry, or in money. As the seigneurial proprietors were the stronger, they dictated the terms, and the most greedy did not fail to abuse their power. Nevertheless, experience showed them that by increasing their levies too much on labor and its fruits, they weakened the productive capacity of the subject population and thereby, over time, diminished the income they derived from them. [28] The more intelligent sought to make these levies proportional to the ability to pay of their subjects—whether slaves, serfs, or tenant farmers—and to improve the system for exploiting their productive faculties: the slaves were put to the kinds of labor for which they were best suited, and those who practiced trades or professions whose products or services exceeded the needs of the master and his household were authorized, in return for dues, to establish an external clientele; they formed guilds and generally obtained their freedom through purchase. The lord also reserved to himself monopolies over certain goods or services, such as the minting of coins and the milling of grain; he set customs duties or tolls at the entry and exit points of his domain, and so on. At the same time, the necessity for [37] order—and above all for obedience to the master's authority—led in each domain to the establishment of a code—most often borrowed from the customs of the subject population—of justice and police, with the sanction of penalties ranked according to the seriousness of the offenses or crimes, and especially harsh for those that threatened the security of the lord and his “State.” In short, it was a natural organization responding to the needs of the preservation and the management of the seigneurial domain. The revenue from this domain was higher to the extent that the soil was more fertile, the population more diligent and industrious, the seigneurial administration more intelligent, and the taxes better proportioned to the capacity of the taxpayers to pay. Alongside the wealthiest seigneuries, others, less favored by nature and more poorly administered, remained poor; but the conquering class, [29] as proprietor of the land, nonetheless retained for a long time, along with its superiority of rank, a superiority of income compared to the other classes of the population.

It was from the product of their domains that all members of the army who had received an allotment of land in the division lived, starting with the leader himself. There existed only local dues, taxes, and monopolies. [38] When a war arose—whether the shared establishment or firm, that is the State, was threatened with aggression, or a conquest appeared that might be advantageous—all the landowners participated by contributing their contingents of forces and resources. They bore their share of the campaign’s costs and, in case of victory, received a portion of the booty in proportion to their contribution.

So it went until the strongest had brought under his authority the majority of the seigneurial proprietors, and the feudal fragmentation gave way to a single form of political domination. Then, to the revenues of his personal domain, which had previously constituted his only means of subsistence, the leader or the king added a portion of the taxes collected by the lords who now helped to pay for the services which henceforth would be unified. [30] He assumed, notably in France, the monopoly on minting and issuing currency, the salt tax, the customs duties established at the frontiers of the State. However, he could only strip the lords of this portion of their income on condition that he reduced the taxes required for their common security. Thus he exempted the seigneuries from providing contingents of men and resources by instituting [39] a permanent army, the maintenance of which was funded by a general tax—the aides.

But whether the State was fragmented into a multitude of independent seigneuries, or loosely united by feudal bonds, or whether it had entered its period of political unification, those who held it obeyed, like other owners of industrial or other enterprises, the motive of self-interest and the lure of profit. They continually strove to increase the importance of their establishments or firms, and thus their power and their wealth. That was the goal of their policy and the foundation of that peculiar morality which has been called raison d’État.

[40]

CHAPTER VI. THE POLITICS AND MORALITY OF THE STATE OF WAR↩

The risks that the firms which owned political States [31] had to confront. — The natural antagonism of these firms and the practices it required. — Political alliances. — Why they were precarious. — Matrimonial alliances and the motives for concluding or preventing them. — Political morality, founded on raison d’État. — How it differs from ordinary morality. — That the difference, or even opposition, between its practices and those of ordinary morality is determined by the state of war. — That it is justified only insofar as war is useful—that is, conforms to the general and long-term interest of the species.

As we have already noted, the founding and running of a political establishment, [32] a “State,” following a conquest—and such was the origin of most States—was an enterprise like any other. It was, to be sure, a naturally uncertain enterprise, but one that yielded, precisely for that reason, benefits to the conquering firm surpassing those of any other industry. A State was a vast farm from which the owners harvested [41] the crop—after deducting the bare minimum of subsistence they were obliged to provide to their labor force—and this net product, in countries favored by nature, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, or India, could be very high and offer ample means of subsistence to the firm which owns the State. However, it was not enough to conquer a territorial domain—it had to be preserved and, if necessary, enlarged when the firm had grown to the point that it exceeded the number of senior positions which made up its market. Now, every firm in possession of a political establishment, that is a State, was continually exposed to two kinds of risks. Externally, it was subject to the aggression of other warrior firms [33] in search of the profits of pillage or exploitation. Internally, the conquering firm might have to suppress revolts by those it had defeated and dispossessed—if it had not taken the precaution of eliminating them—as well as by the multitude of slaves and serfs tied to the land; and finally, it might be weakened by divisions and ambition among its own members, their quarrels and attempts to usurp the supreme management of the State. The principal aim of politics was to guard against these internal and external risks; it also consisted in devising the best means of increasing the [42] strength and resources of the State for its defense and its expansion.

Among the firms either seeking or in possession of States, there existed a natural antagonism, since they could only acquire or enlarge a domain at one another’s expense. Each one’s policy was therefore necessarily aimed at weakening its rivals—either by fomenting internal conflicts within them, or by limiting or closing the markets for their industries, thereby reducing the resources they could allocate to war, which was always imminent or at least likely. Nevertheless, there were circumstances in which the interests of two firms which own States might temporarily align—for example, when both were threatened by a third stronger than either alone, or when they aimed to enlarge themselves at its expense. They would then conclude a temporary association or alliance until they achieved their objective. Finally, in countries where the ownership of seigneuries and of the State was hereditary in the same house [34] —and sometimes divisible among heirs like any other property—matrimonial alliances acquired considerable importance. To the primitive mode of expansion by war there was added expansion by inheritance. [43] Thus, in particular, were formed the vast domains of the House of Austria. Hence the saying:

Tu felix Austria nube. [35]

This method of expansion was, however, peaceful only in appearance. State successions, owing to their significance, became a fertile source of disputes. Among private individuals, such disputes were settled in the courts. Among Houses which owned States, they were settled by war. In addition to the benefit of expansion, matrimonial alliances could also secure the support of the allied house in the event of war—though experience often showed that ties of blood were weaker than those of self-interest. Until recent times, the ability to arrange or block matrimonial alliances figured among the principal merits of professional politicians. Today, as sovereignty has passed—nominally at least—from most royal houses to nations, and as political domains can no longer be inherited, although they are still sometimes sold or exchanged, matrimonial alliances have lost most, if not all, of their political importance. Is it even necessary to say [44] that for as long as they did retain this importance, the personal inclinations of the betrothed were subordinated to political interests—or rather, counted for nothing at all? In our time, political alliances are determined solely by the real or supposed interests of national defense or the expansion of domination; but at no time have such alliances ever had the character of persistence, or even of duration. No owner of a State has ever hesitated to abandon one alliance to make another he judged more advantageous, or to treat yesterday’s ally as today’s enemy. Moreover, it is rare that the public or secret commitments stipulated in an alliance are faithfully carried out. They are typically honored only so long as each party considers them consistent with its interest.

This leads us to examine what constitutes political morality and how it differs from ordinary morality. Both have the same objective, namely the general and long-term interest of the human species; but under the regime of a state of war, they entail different, even opposing, sets of rules. Political morality is that which is held by the firm which owns the State and of the government that exercises power in its name and in its [45] interest. Now, that interest entails, first and foremost, the adoption and enforcement of the rules best suited to ensure the security of ownership of the political domain and, if necessary, its expansion. Secondly, the interest of the firm or house also requires maintaining the subjugated population of the domain in obedience—and doing so with the greater severity the more the security of ownership of the State is threatened by external competition. These rules of conduct, imposed by the necessity of preserving this form of property and applied by governments, have their rationale in the requirements of the state of war; their aim is to cater for this possibility. By contrast, the morality that governments prescribe for individuals has for its aim the maintenance of peace within their domain. It is thus understandable that the rules of raison d’État and those of ordinary morality often conflict, even though both ultimately aim at the same thing: the preservation and prosperity of the State. Thus, the maintenance of peace among men commands respect for the life and property of others, whereas war involves the destruction of life and the confiscation of enemy property by means of pillage or conquest. Likewise, the preservation and enlargement of a [46] political domain may necessitate measures and rules that raison d’État approves and ordinary morality condemns. The security of ownership of this domain may, for instance, require various restrictions on the exercise of liberty and property, or even formal violations of ordinary moral principles, such as espionage and denunciation, in order to forestall conspiracies or revolts among subjects or to guard against hostility from competing firms or houses.

Yet morality does not have as its objective the general and long-term interest of a single State or nation alone, but of the entire human species. The practices required by war can therefore only be morally justified to the extent that war itself is moral—that is, in conformity with the interest of the species. From the moment war ceases to be useful, raison d’État and the practices it authorizes must and will be condemned as immoral. This is, moreover, what has happened with a great many practices once considered and even commanded as moral, such as cannibalism, infanticide, abduction, slavery, etc., until the progress made in the conditions of social existence stripped them of their utility.

Thus, the question becomes whether war has continued to conform to the general and long-term interest of the species, [47] and therefore whether the morality of raison d’État has retained its justification. The examination of the progress that societies have accomplished under the pressure of this primitive form of competition will provide the answer to that question.

[48]

CHAPTER VII. THE CAUSES OF WAR AFTER THE FORMATION OF POLITICAL STATES↩

Cause of the invasions of Asian hordes into Europe. — Why they ceased. — Motives behind the Crusades. — Wars of the European people up to the modern era. — Wars of internal and external conquest. — Wars of succession. — Wars of religion. — The struggle between Paganism and Christianity. — The Reformation. — Role of economic motive in the wars of religion. — That these different wars brought about progress which stripped war of its rationale.

The driving force behind politics and that particular morality called raison d’État is the interest of the associations that own and run firms [36] —in other words, “political States.” This same motive, that is the lure of profit, appears in all the wars that broke out between such States or which they had to wage against barbarian invaders. To not go back any further, it was the lure of profit that drew the successive invasions of [49] Asian hordes to Europe. These invasions ceased only because the power of the European States reached the point where attempts to invade their territories for plunder or conquest eventually resulted in losses rather than profits. If the firms which own the States of the Middle Ages in turn invaded the territories of Asian people, if they banded together to undertake the Crusades, it was with a view to profit—both moral, that is, the satisfaction of their religious feeling, and material, that is, the acquisition of the fabulous riches which they imagined existed in the lands from which commerce brought its most precious goods. Once experience had shown that the Crusades “did not pay,” as the American phrase goes, they were abandoned, and the expansionary wars of the people of Europe did not resume until the discovery of America and the new route to India. We find the same motive in all the wars waged or supported by the castes or “houses” that owned the States, [37] down to the modern era: wars of internal conquest or unification, wars of external conquest, wars of religion, wars of succession, colonial and commercial wars. We will see, in briefly reviewing them, that they had no other objective than the acquisition or preservation [50] of the means of subsistence—or at least that this objective, however much it might be disguised, was always predominant.

This motive is plainly visible in the internal wars that preceded and brought about the establishment of the feudal system, and in those that ended feudalism by absorbing the seigneuries into the unified State. When the Franks, Burgundians, and other barbarian tribes had divided among themselves the greater part of the Roman State, and when, on the other hand, the invasions having ceased, the bonds linking the conquering armies to their leaders had weakened, each co-sharer of the conquered domains sought to enlarge his lot at the expense of his neighbors. Hence the local wars that multiplied under the weak successors of Charlemagne and led to the establishment of the system of protection of the weak by the strong that came to be known as feudalism. But while this system had the effect of reducing the number of competitors struggling to enlarge their States and revenues, it left the strongest still in conflict, and it necessarily led to the absorption of their political domains—and thus of the revenues derived from taxes, monopolies, etc.—into the domain of the strongest of them all, that is, the hereditary leader of the conquering army. In France, [51] this work of absorption was the principal, if not the sole, preoccupation of the “house” that owned the political domain of the Île-de-France, which it gradually enlarged to the limits of modern France by the internal conquest of feudal seigneuries, by external conquests, and by inheritances.

The owners of political domains could, of course, increase their power and wealth by means other than territorial annexation—by adopting a more economical system for exploiting populations, by lightening the tax burden, by better protecting their subjects against theft and brigandage, not to mention corruption by their own functionaries. The most intelligent owners of the State did not neglect this means, certainly the most effective one, of securing their domination and increasing their revenues. Thus, over time—and not without frequent reversals—slavery was transformed into serfdom, the bonds of serfdom loosened once experience showed that this regime of exploitation was less advantageous than simple subjection, tax collection by direct management was replaced by tax farming, only to be later reinstated as a reform when tax farming became corrupted by bribery; but, following the example of owners of industrial or commercial establishments, it was still to the expansion of their operations that [52] the owners of political establishments primarily looked for increased power and wealth. In vain did experience convince them that, by expanding their State beyond what might be called the economic limits of this kind of enterprise, [38] they made its administration more difficult and less productive, while increasing the costs of its defense—they placed their pride in surpassing their competitors by the extent of their domains. And such was the goal they invariably pursued, both through war and through the method of matrimonial alliances. These contributed greatly to the formation of the States we see today, though not without provoking the long series of wars known as the wars of succession.

To the wars of internal and external conquest and the wars of succession were added—especially beginning with the Reformation—the wars of religion. But it is a mistake to think that these wars were the exclusive product of religious passion. Like the others, they were determined mainly by an interest in domination, which ended up becoming the search for a purely material profit. One need only consider what, until recently, and still today in some backward countries, the relationship between Church and State has been.

[53]

We have studied elsewhere the role religion has played in the formation of societies and States. [39] It was thanks to the intervention of Divinities—whose concept was suggested by the religious sentiment, more or less elevated and pure depending on the intellectual and moral development of a people, but whose presence in the human heart attested to a higher power to which man was bound to submit—that men were made to fulfill the duties required by social life and to accept the sacrifices it demanded, beginning with the sacrifice of life itself. Religion has thus always been the necessary factor in the government of societies. At times, religious and political power were in the same hands; at others, they were in separate but closely allied hands, due to the mutual support they offered each other. Until recent times, this intimate union of the two powers, which together maintained social order, was regarded as indispensable. One could no more conceive of two or more religious governments coexisting in the same [54] State than of two or more political governments. [40] What followed from this? That a new religion could only be established in a State by way of conquest and dispossession. The clergy, which formed the army of the new faith, took over the functions and properties of the clergy of the old faith—and hence their means of existence. It was a struggle for life, and that struggle implied the elimination or at least the expulsion and dispossession of the defeated. It is reasonable to suppose that this temporal interest in preserving their means of existence outweighed, among the pagan priests, concern for the spiritual welfare of their flocks, or even love of their gods. As for the emperors, their conduct in the struggle between the old and new cults was certainly guided by self-interest: they defended paganism so long as they thought it stronger, but did not hesitate to abandon it and claim their share of its spoils once the victory of Christianity appeared assured. Christianity then became the religion of the State in turn, and it waged the same war of elimination on its persecutors as they had waged on it. It did the same in the States that arose from the ruins of the Roman Empire, and up to the sixteenth century it succeeded—thanks to the cooperation of its partner, temporal power, [55] to which it gave, in tight reciprocity, the support of its spiritual authority—in preserving itself from all attempts at dispossession by schismatic sects. But while political government underwent the salutary pressure of competition in the form of war, religious government, lacking that indispensable stimulus for preservation and progress, grew lax and corrupt. Among its subjects, those in whom the religious sentiment was deepest and most enlightened eventually rose against it: a demand for reform emerged, especially among the upper classes in France, Germany, and England—and like all demands, this one gave rise to an enterprise to meet it. [41] The promoters and leaders of this enterprise—Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melanchthon—established religious governments that entered into conflict with the government of the Catholic Church. In countries where the reform movement attracted only a small number of adherents, such as Italy and Spain, the political government had no hesitation in lending its power to the ecclesiastical government, providing it with the support of the secular arm to eliminate the heretics. In France, where heresy spread more widely, it provoked a civil war in which the established religion [56] ultimately triumphed—but only after enduring, for nearly a century and up to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the competition of heresy. In Germany, England, and Sweden, on the contrary, where the reform movement had won the majority, and especially the most influential part of the nation, the temporal government early lent its support to the new spiritual government—and was even more inclined to do so since it took a share of the spoils of the old. While allowing the Protestant clergy to take over churches, tithes, etc., it confiscated the property of the monasteries for its own benefit; and one may reasonably suppose that the lure of the immense wealth of the regular clergy contributed at least as much as religious passion to Henry VIII’s decision to join the Reformation.

No doubt the orthodox clergy were concerned with the salvation of souls when they provoked the elimination of heretics, but the preservation of their means of existence—of which heresy would have deprived them—must naturally have sharpened their zeal. For the soldiers, if not for the leaders, of the Reformation, the material goods that made up the victor’s booty could not have been wholly indifferent either. Finally, if heads of State were to some degree caught up in religious passion, they were guided above all by their [57] self-interest: Henry IV converted to the stronger religion, declaring with naïve cynicism that Paris was well worth a Mass, and the most Catholic Cardinal Richelieu allied himself with the Protestants of Germany, subordinating religious interest without the slightest scruple concerning political interest.

In sum, just as with the wars of the earliest age, the wars of this phase in the life of States—wars of conquest, unification, succession, and religion—have invariably had as their main, if not sole, motive the lure of profit. But whatever their motive, they led to a series of advances—in both destructive and productive industries [42] —that ultimately deprived war of its justification.

[58]

CHAPTER VIII. THE PROGRESS OF THE INDUSTRY OF DESTRUCTION AND ITS RESULTS↩

The growing role of intelligence in the art of war. — Causes that gave victory to the hordes of hunters and warriors in their struggles with people on the path to civilization. — Why these conquering hordes later lost their warrior qualities. — The wars of the Greeks and Persians. — Causes of the expansion, decline, and fall of the Roman State. — The origin of the invention of gunpowder. — Why this invention secured the predominance of civilized people in the art of war. — That this predominance became decisive with recent advances in weaponry. — Transformation these advances produced in the things which constitute military value. — That these advances have secured civilized people against the risk of barbarian invasions and allowed them, in turn, to invade the territories of barbarian or backward people. — That with the security of civilization thus guaranteed, war has lost its reason for being.

In primitive times, when the art of war was still in its infancy, it was the physical vigor and courage of the combatants that appeared as the decisive factors of victory; but soon intelligence acquired a [59] predominant influence by organizing and disciplining forces, combining and directing their movements under a single sovereign command. Then, disciplined, hierarchical, and well commanded troops triumphed over a confused and anarchic mob—even when the latter surpassed it in number, strength, and courage.

The superiority of weapons, likewise due to the intervention of intelligence, also exerted an influence on the outcome of battle—but it was only with the invention of firearms that this influence increased and acquired, all other factors being equal, a decisive importance. As for the capital advances necessary for creating the personnel who are suited to war, for creating matériel, for maintaining and operating the army, they were, in the beginning, relatively modest. It is thus easy to understand how hordes of hunters or herdsmen could defeat the much larger armies of empires established in the fertile river basins of India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. These barbarians prevailed over their adversaries by superiority in physical strength and skill in combat and were not significantly inferior to them in terms of discipline and weapons; finally, the abundance of food resources in the regions they invaded [60] compensated for the inadequacy of their own food reserves. It is also easy to understand how, after having conquered a flourishing State and divided it among themselves, these barbarians later proved powerless to resist the invasions of other barbarians, accustomed, as they themselves once were, to a harsh life. The abundance of goods they enjoyed and abused—by exploiting a fertile region and a hardworking population—gradually caused them to lose the skills most necessary for fighting. The wars between the Greeks and the Persians furnish us, in this respect, with a characteristic example. Thanks to their superior physical strength and skill in combat —enhanced by training and sustained through internal strife—the Greeks repelled Persian armies which were ten times more numerous. Encouraged by this success, the Greeks of Macedonia, in turn, invaded the territories of the Great King and conquered them with astonishing ease, despite the enormous disparity in numbers.

If we likewise examine the causes of the successive expansion of the small State founded by a band of brigands in Latium into the largest empire of antiquity, and then consider how this empire—despite the numerous armies it could raise and the immense resources it possessed—was able to be invaded and carved up [61] by barbarian troops inferior in number and in all kinds of resources, we again find the explanation in the comparison of the elements of power that determine victory. The Romans possessed to a high degree the qualities that constitute military value: strength, combativeness, endurance, and obedience among the soldiers; leadership ability and, frequently, military genius among the commanders. The political constitution of Rome, by concentrating governing power in the hands of a patriciate particularly apt for rule, further contributed to victory in Rome’s conflicts with less solidly organized and less ably led States. Finally, up to the time of Augustus, Rome was continually at war, and during that long period the native combat skills of its citizens were preserved and developed through constant exercise. It was otherwise once the temple of Janus had been closed. Then, for more than three centuries, the Pax Romana was disturbed only by partial wars. The martial qualities that centuries of near-continuous conflict had developed in the Roman armies weakened under the enervating influence of the peace to which they were confined, while the barbarians they had once defeated were learning [62] from them. If Marius could destroy the undisciplined hordes of the Teutons and Cimbri, and Caesar defeat the still imperfectly organized armies of the Gauls, the Franks and other barbarians, who later supplied recruits to the imperial armies, learned to overcome them by adopting their organization and tactics. To these causes which weakened the instrument of war was added the precarious condition of the ruling power in an empire whose borders had become excessively extended, and the diminishing resources caused by over-taxation and the excessive concentration of property in the hands of an idle and degenerate aristocracy. Under the influence of these weakening factors, the Roman Empire succumbed to the assault of the barbarians just as earlier empires had fallen. But it was too vast and attacked by too many diverse people to continue as a single State. The barbarians carved it up into many States, which competed with each other, and from their struggles emerged the military, political, and economic advances that changed the conditions of society’s existence and prepared the coming of a new era in the life of humanity.

The Germanic and Slavic people who divided most of the domains of the Roman Empire had, in the early centuries [63] of the founding of their States, to defend them against other invaders—the Huns, then the Saracens. After repelling these invasions, they in turn united, under the double impulse of religious passion and the lure of profit, to conquer the regions occupied by the enemies of their faith and which were celebrated for their wealth. It is to these attempts at conquest, renewed over two centuries, that we must trace the origins of the advances that transformed the art of destruction and secured for civilized people preeminence in that art, as in other branches of human activity. Apparently, the invention of gunpowder descends from that of Greek fire—but whatever its origin, it profoundly altered the conditions of warfare. Before this invention, the least industrially advanced people could manufacture weapons which were nearly as effective as those machines of destruction made by civilized people, such as spears, bows, arrows, javelins, etc. The making of firearms, by contrast, required specialized knowledge and industrial tools that barbarian or backward people did not possess. At the same time, creating this advanced matériel entailed a considerable capital investment. Not only were rifles and cannons more costly than spears, bows, arrows, and javelins, but gunpowder and projectiles [64] increased the cost of their use. On the other hand, while firearms made cuirasses and shields obsolete, they required more expensive fortifications; simple walls had to be replaced by thick ramparts able to resist artillery.

In our own time, an even more decisive advance has been achieved through the invention of explosives and long-range weapons. Not only does this new matériel—whose destructive power increases daily—require more science and capital, it has also brought about, to the advantage of civilized people, a radical shift in the relative importance of the elements that constitute military value. Physical strength and courage—which are common to man and predatory animals and which decide victory in hand-to-hand combat or at distances that can be closed by a short charge—now play only a secondary role, since the danger zone that must be crossed to drive back the enemy and hold the battlefield has tripled or quadrupled in extent. It is moral strength, drawn from a sense of duty, that alone can master the instinct for self-preservation in this prolonged ordeal. [43] Now science, capital, and moral strength [65] are the benefits of a superior civilization.

The effects of these successive advances in the tools of the industry of destruction have developed and intensified over the past few centuries. After being confined to the narrow domains they occupied in Europe, the people of our civilization have invaded the vast regions occupied by inferior or backward people; they have brought under their dominion the Americas, Oceania, most of Asia, and are now seizing Africa. The time is not far off when they will be the undisputed masters of the globe. The ease with which they expand their conquests and overcome resistance from the most warlike people attests that the danger of invasions has completely vanished—in short, that civilization is now fully secured against barbarism. War has completed this work of guaranteeing the security that it alone could accomplish—or at least it has only a few final tasks remaining to complete it—and, in ceasing to be useful, it has lost its reason for being.

It nevertheless continues to exist and seems even to threaten more than ever the prosperity of civilized people. But we will now see that, after transforming the industry of destruction, it has prompted progress in the productive industries that work to make it impossible.

[66]

CHAPTER IX. THE PROGRESS OF PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES — THE ORIGIN OF INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION↩

Recapitulation of the causes that gave rise to war and of the advances that have deprived it of its purpose. — That it would nevertheless have continued to be necessary if it had not been replaced by a higher form of life-giving competition: productive competition. — Origin of productive competition. — The division of labor and exchange. Natural obstacles to the extension of exchange. — How these obstacles were successively overcome. — How the expansion of markets where exchange takes place developed and made productive competition general. — That it replaced war as the vehicle of preservation and progress.

Birth of the idea of peace and the decline of war.

Before examining why war is destined to disappear after having played a necessary role, let us recapitulate the causes that brought it into being and those that have worked to strip it of its reason for existing.

The natural laws that govern plant and animal life—the laws of the economy of forces and of life-giving competition—have as their goal the preservation and progress of the species (albeit progress which is limited by the purpose assigned to each). This goal [67] is reached by granting victory to the strongest—in other words, to those most capable of preserving the species and causing it to progress.

Under the pressure of life-giving competition, men, like most other species, form associations of mutual assistance. [44] These associations come into conflict with each other in the acquisition of food. The strongest, those who have acquired the greatest amount of power by conforming more precisely than others to the law of the economy of forces in the way they go about their activity, prevail and survive for the benefit of the species. But by making them necessary the struggle has generated advances that modify the constituent elements of power. At first, superiority in strength and physical courage secures victory. But intelligence intervenes: it invents artificial weaponry that progressively increases the destructive capacity of combatants, and it creates the art of employing and combining their forces so as to produce the maximum useful effect. Then victory ceases to belong to physical strength and passes to mental superiority.

However, intelligence does not stop at increasing man’s destructive capacity—it turns to creating and developing his productive capacity. After having helped him discover the most effective methods [68] of capturing the food that nature has placed at his disposal, it teaches him how to increase the supply of that food. The productive industries come into being, but their existence and development are conditional on one thing: security. What is security? It is the guarantee of the survival of the tools and products that are used to feed him. When that guarantee is lacking—when the weaker is constantly exposed to being stripped of the products of his industry by the stronger—he is not inclined to expend the labor required for any production, nor to endure the hardship that such labor entails. For the motive of his activity is profit—that is, the excess of pleasure over pain. Security is thus the indispensable condition of production. But who can provide it to the weaker, if not the stronger? And what can lead the stronger to impose on themselves the labor and risks involved in the production of security, [45] if not the lure of profit? They were drawn to it by the promise of a profit greater than what they had obtained by destroying the weak and appropriating their means of subsistence. They obtained this higher profit by conquering a territory and subjugating its population, once agriculture and the other productive industries had increased the productivity of labor [69] to the point that it yielded, in addition to what was needed for the worker’s subsistence and reproduction, a net product. This net product became the profit of the conquering firm—the price it charged for providing security to the subjugated population, which it now had an interest in preserving from destruction and pillage. This same self-interest dictated that it should not demand, in the form of forced labor or other dues, more than the amount of the net product, for fear of encroaching upon and destroying the fund of productive forces from which it drew its own subsistence. It even dictated that part of this net product be left to the subjugated population, in order to stimulate them to increase the gross product by more assiduous and active use of their productive powers. However, the members of the conquering firm that owned the State were naturally inclined to abuse their power, and they would eventually have exhausted the funds from which they drew their livelihood if the competition of other firms—seeking territorial expansion—had not forced them to find the best means of increasing the power of their State under the most effective of sanctions: elimination or, at the very least, expropriation and subjugation. Competition drove them to perfect their military, political, and economic institutions, and this stimulus [70] was all the more powerful and fruitful as the pressure of competition was more constant and intense. The firms that achieved these necessary advances to a higher degree than their rivals became the most powerful, enlarged their domains at the expense of those less capable of progress, and in enlarging them, extended the sphere of security.

Finally, in transforming the art and matériel of destruction, progress definitively assured victory to the superiority of science, capital, and moral value—that is, to elements of power that are products of civilization and which barbarian or backward people can acquire only by rising to the level of the most advanced nations in these three respects. Civilized nations having thus become the strongest, security is now guaranteed, and competition in its destructive form of war has ceased to be necessary to bring it about.

Yet competition is the necessary tool for the preservation and progress of the human species, as of all others. One might then ask whether war, after having guaranteed the security of civilization, might still have another indispensable role to fulfill: that of preventing the stagnation of human activity [71] and the arrest of its progress. It would indeed be so if war, in extending and consolidating security, had not brought into being another form—no less vigorous and more economical—of life-giving competition: productive or industrial competition.

This competition arose from the political and economic advances brought about by its predecessor. Let us briefly summarize its origin. Just as destructive competition arises when two or more individuals covet the same prey and engage in conflict to appropriate it, productive or industrial competition appears when two or more individuals vie to obtain—by way of exchange—the product or service they need. They offer a product or a service in exchange for the one they seek. Which one prevails and completes the exchange? The strongest—that is, the one who can supply the greatest quantity of the product he offers. But what enables him to offer more than his competitors? It is his capacity to create the product or service with less expenditure—in other words, at lower cost—by employing more effective and economical tools and methods. Productive competition thus has the effect of encouraging, by making it necessary, the improvement of tools and production methods—just as destructive competition [72] brings about advances in the means of destruction.

It is exchange that gives rise to productive competition, and exchange, in turn, arises from the division of labor, which is itself determined by the law of the economy of forces and the lure of profit. Labor is divided when it becomes more economical and profitable to produce a given article in quantities exceeding one’s own needs, and to obtain, by exchanging the surplus, another article whose production would require more labor and hardship if produced directly. However, the division of labor and exchange only became possible once the food industry—which satisfies man’s primary need—had become productive enough to provide a surplus of food for the amount of labor man could expend; that is, once he had learned to increases the things needed for subsistence. Then, producers of this article of the first necessity, able to dispose of a surplus, found it profitable to exchange that surplus for other products or services.

But it was not enough that man had learned to produce—he also had to be guaranteed of enjoying at least part of the products of his industry. This guarantee, as we have seen, was established by the stronger through conquest and appropriation [73] of a territory, the formation of a State, and the subjugation of the population devoted to productive labor. In the initial period of conquest, each co-owner of the territory lived off the products of his own domain and obtained only a small number of items by way of exchange—those whose raw materials were not found within the bounds of his domain. The sphere of exchange seldom extended beyond the limits of each seigneury. The lack of security and of the means of transportation posed further obstacles to its extension—obstacles that only the lure of high profits could eventually overcome.

Commerce developed despite these obstacles and multiplied markets where exchanges could take place. The political advances that led to the formation of the feudal system, then the unification of States, successively widened these markets, and as they expanded, competition within them became more active. The number of competitors in each branch of production kept increasing, and the profits that exchangers [46] could obtain by making the advances necessary to become stronger grew with the extension of these markets. Finally, when security and transportation began to internationalize and to create—despite the obstacles of taxation and protectionism—a “general market” [74] of unlimited extent, productive competition in turn became universal, and across the globe and in every branch of production, it became a powerful stimulus to progress. As it developed, all societies were driven to make the advances needed to sustain it—on pain of being excluded from an increasingly unified market and having their means of subsistence expropriated, as they once were by war.

Thus, war completed its work by engendering a series of advances that ensured the security of societies in the process of civilization and brought forth a new, more economical and more effective form of life-giving competition: productive competition.

(gap)

Once the superiority of civilized people in the art of war became evident, the idea of establishing universal and permanent peace began to take root in the minds of those most receptive to the concept of progress. Like all new ideas, it was at first dismissed as pure utopia. [47] Nevertheless, it spread during the eighteenth century; it inspired the generous apostles of the fraternity of people at the beginning of the French Revolution and shortly thereafter led to the founding of peace societies. [48] However, the realization of this utopia was contingent on advances still in their infancy, and war, before disappearing, was about to enter a period of resurgence. Yet it was no less a period of decline, for in ceasing to be useful, war had become harmful, and from now on it was to inflict—without the compensation of increased security—ever-growing damage on the whole of civilized society.

[79]

CHAPTER I. THE OLD REGIME OF CIVILIZED STATES — WHAT IT WAS AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY↩

How security was produced through the subjugation of the weak by the strong. — That it could not have been produced otherwise. — That the producers of security at first obtained only the payment necessary for their industry. — Causes of the steady increase in the price of security. — How the subjugated classes succeeded in limiting it. — Struggle between the subjugated classes and the firms which owned the political States. [49] — Vicissitudes of this struggle. — Revolutions and wars of emancipation — in the Netherlands, — in England, — in America. — Political situation of the civilized States on the eve of the French Revolution. — Decline of the state of war. — Its resurgence provoked by the premature overthrow of the Ancien Régime in France.

A necessary condition for the advances that raised the human species above the animal kingdom was security, and this was created through the subjugation of the weak by the strong. Given human nature, the inequality of the varieties of people within the species, and the diversity of their aptitudes, could it have come about any other way? Would the strong not have continued to strip the weak and make them their prey if they had not [80] found it more profitable to exploit their productive abilities—which implied the necessity of protecting them after subjugating them? This protection, no doubt, was costly for the races it shielded from the perils that threatened their existence in an age when only force could restrain force. They paid for it with their liberty and the greater part—if not the entirety—of the net product of their labor. But can it be said that the cost was too high? What would have become of these races who were incapable of defending themselves, if they had not found defenders? However high the price of the service of security they were provided, it remained below its value, since they could neither do without it nor produce it themselves. Can one even state that it exceeded the costs and the necessary profit of the production of security? [50] The firms made up of strong men [51] who ensured the survival of the weak through the founding of political States were exercising a naturally dangerous and uncertain industry. The conquest and maintenance of a territory and its population involved risks that constantly threatened the existence of the conquering and governing firm. As in any other industry, the profits had to be in proportion to the risks. It is true that the members of the firm which owns the State were naturally inclined to [81] abuse the discretionary power they held over the subjugated population. But, firstly, their interests as owners (of the state) worked to prevent them from overburdening their subjects with forced labor, dues, taxes, and monopolies to the point of exhausting their strength and thus drying up the very source of their revenues; secondly, the ruling power of the society—the government—had an interest in preventing abuses of exploitation that would result in weakening the power of the State by diminishing its resources. The moderating influence of this higher interest was especially felt when competition, in its destructive form of war, was constant and pressing. If one also considers that the productivity of most industries remained very low as long as the limited size of markets hindered the division of labor and the use of advanced machinery, one will recognize that the costs of feeding, maintaining, and governing the subjugated population—however minimal they may have been—left the class of the owners of the State only a bare minimum of net product, so that in reality, with rare exceptions, it obtained hardly more than the payment necessary for its services. The situation changed when the extension of security brought about the expansion of markets and spurred the advances that [82] steadily increased the productivity of most branches of industry. Then the net product grew, and the firm which owns the State—its government as well as its members—was able to raise the rate of its levies on the gross product. But at the same time, the increase in industrial productivity gave rise, from among the subjugated multitude, to an intermediate class whose wealth—and the influence which is attached to wealth—steadily grew. In countries where this class failed to rid itself of the yoke of servitude, or where it could not unite its forces, it remained—and with it the multitude from which it had emerged—at the mercy of the demands of the owners of the State. In countries, by contrast, where this industrious and frugal elite had bought its freedom and combined its strength in corporations or communities, it was able to create a check to these demands. It first claimed the right to consent to taxation and to negotiate its amount—just as the price of its own products or services was agreed upon after bargaining. Finally, as its wealth and influence grew with the rising productivity of its industry, its ambition also rose: it sought admission to the very management of the political establishment. Hence a series of reforms that led to the transformation of the constitutions of States and [83] to the institution of the representative and parliamentary regime.

At all times, the abuses of power by the firm which owns the State and its members—the excessive taxes and harsh regime imposed on the subjugated multitude to keep them obedient—had spurred the latter to cast off a yoke too heavy to bear. Rome had its slave revolts, and the States of the Middle Ages had their peasant and serf uprisings. But neither slaves nor serfs possessed the resources or the capacity needed to prevail in their struggle against the firm which owns the State and to establish a government which would replace theirs. Their uprisings were suppressed without gaining them any guarantee against the oppression and exactions they suffered. In a certain number of centers of production, where important branches of industry had gathered a population that was enterprising, energetic, and frugal, and where wealth had grown considerably, the outcome of the conflict between masters and their subjects was different. The subjects obtained—whether by persuasion or by force—charters that limited the power of their masters, especially with regard to dues and taxes, and granted them the right to provide for services which had previously been monopolized by the owners of the State. [84] It must be said, however, that in the cities where they succeeded in freeing themselves from an oppressive and burdensome rule, the new rule they established was no less so for the lower classes of the population. And when this new rule extended further downward, it resulted, as in Florence, in an anarchy that made people long for—and ultimately restore—the government of the old masters, that is the sovereign houses or oligarchies. It was only when a series of inventions and discoveries had expanded the markets of industry and the sphere of commercial operations that the struggle between the subjects and the masters of the State [52] resumed with new energy, and that the era of revolutions and wars of emancipation began. In the Netherlands, where commerce and thrift had produced a bourgeoisie which had become powerful through its ability and wealth, the struggle broke out between this "general staff" [53] of the subjugated multitude and the sovereign “house” of Spain. It ended in the victory of the revolution and the establishment of a State that belonged no longer to a house but—at least nominally—to the nation. In England, where the dictatorial concentration of governmental powers had not taken hold thanks to the shelter that the country’s insular position gave its conquerors against the risk of dispossession from abroad, and where, as in the Netherlands, the rapid development of industry and [85] commerce had brought forth, starting with the reign of Elizabeth, a middle class [54] conscious of its strength—the reckless attempts by the head of the sovereign house to import into England the practices of continental absolutism provoked a revolution. After a dictatorship followed by a restoration, this resulted in the establishment of a so-called constitutional and parliamentary monarchy. The defining feature of this regime, which was later adopted by most European States, lies, as is known, in the obligation imposed on the sovereign to entrust the administration of the State to a ministry that enjoys the confidence of the majority in a parliament which represents—or is supposed to represent—the nation. Finally, in America, where the governments of the colonizing people had established a system of subjugation and exploitation that conferred on the governing class of the mother country a monopoly on civil and military positions, and likewise reserved the import and export trade either entirely or partly to a privileged fraction of the industrial and commercial class—where, moreover, the government claimed the right it had retained in Europe (except in England) to tax its subjects without their consent—in America, we say, the subjects of the English colonies demanded the right their fellow citizens enjoyed [86] in the mother country. Unable to obtain it peacefully, they resorted to force and, with France’s help, freed themselves from British rule.

This was the political situation of the civilized States on the eve of the French Revolution. The State belonged to a house or an oligarchy that governed it sovereignly, like the owner of a commercial firm or the board of directors of a company governs its business, seeking to increase its clientele and extract the highest possible profit. In England alone, the subjects had obtained guarantees against the abuse of power by their masters, and the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie was represented in parliament. In fact, however, the government of the State still remained in the hands of the aristocracy, whose wealth and influence were, at that time, still absolutely predominant.

But throughout Europe, and particularly in France, this regime—which had adapted to the state of war—was in full decline. Since the lifting of the siege of Vienna (1683), the military superiority of the civilized people had become clear; the danger of invasions had disappeared; and the internal wars of civilization—made more costly by the combined advances in the tools of destruction and of production, and more [87] damaging by the expansion of markets—now visibly benefited only the ruling class, while increasing the burden of taxes and debts upon the multitude. At the same time, the industrious and thrifty bourgeoisie was growing richer, while the aristocracy impoverished itself through habits of idleness and dissipation. The Third Estate became conscious of its strength: it was nothing, but it aspired to be everything. Writers from its ranks, who had remained in subordinate positions despite the enormous increase in influence they owed to the invention of the printing press, shared and supported its ambition. They stirred popular passions by denouncing the vices and abuses of a regime that was no longer suited to the new conditions of existence, which an extraordinary efflorescence of progress had begun to create for societies. Thanks to the weakness and ineptitude of the head of the sovereign house, and the lack of unity and cohesion in a nobility whose capacity for resistance had been destroyed by the monarchy itself in subjugating it, this campaign of demolition—pursued with growing fury—culminated in the premature overthrow of the Ancien Régime. Premature, we say, because the instigators and authors of the Revolution had—and indeed could not yet have—any idea of the institutions suited to the regime of liberty and peace that they [88] intended to establish. Instead of instituting liberty, they resurrected despotism in its most brutal form; instead of establishing peace, they provoked a resurgence of war.

[89]

CHAPTER II. THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANCIEN RÉGIME↩

Retrospective overview of the motive guiding the owners of political States. — In what respects the interest of the subjugated classes aligned with that of the class owning the State — and in what respects it differed. — The fiscal rate and the barrier it posed to the greed of the owners of the State. — That if the immediate interest of the producers of security was in immediate conflict with that of the consumers, these two interests aligned over time. — Characteristic difference between the old regime of the production of security and that of other branches of industry. — That there was no relation between the taxes imposed on the subjects and the payment for the services provided to them. — That these services were of two kinds. — Why the owners of the State focused preferentially on those relating to the preservation and extension of their domination. — Causes necessitating reform of this regime. — How the problem was posed. — Ignorance of the facts of this problem at the time of the Revolution. — The two general forms of government under the new regime of political States.

If one wishes to understand the difficulties involved in transforming the old regime, one must bear in mind the motive that guided the firm of powerful men who had founded the State and [90] who governed it. That motive was the same as that which determines the creation of all enterprises and the conduct of those who own and direct them: it was self-interest. The enterprise of founding a State consisted in the conquest of a territory, the subjugation and exploitation of its population, with a view to the profit such an enterprise could yield. Once the State was founded, the primary concern was to ensure its preservation, and thereafter to derive the greatest possible profit from it. It could only be preserved on the condition of maintaining, on a permanent basis, a body organised for fighting which was powerful enough to keep the subjugated population in obedience and to repel the aggressions of other firms of powerful men who lived by pillage or who sought to enlarge their own States at the expense of others. The profits of the enterprise could be increased in two ways: through enlargement of the territory — and the consequent increase in the number of exploitable subjects — or through increasing the yield extracted from them in the form of forced labor, dues, or taxes.

Did the interest of the owners of the State align with that of their subjects or not? This is the first question that arises in studying the economic characteristics of this regime.

The physical inferiority of the subjects provides the answer [91] to this question. The conquest of their territory and their subjugation showed that they were not strong enough to safeguard their own lives and means of subsistence. They were thus interested in getting this service of security, which they were incapable of producing themselves, from a firm run by men stronger and more capable of protecting them. They were also interested in the fact that this firm which provided protection [55] would maintain and even increase its power, in order to better shield them from the risk of invasions, massacres, pillage, or subjugation by conquerors who were more uncivilized, more brutish, and more greedy than those to whom they were already subjected. On this essential point, their interest aligned with that of their masters. Conversely, for this service of security which was provided to them, they were — and on this point there was an immediate opposition between the two interests at stake — interested in paying for it like any other service, at the lowest price possible.

But as they were the weaker party, they had to submit to the conditions and bear the taxes that their masters chose to impose. It was the master who set the price for the protection he granted his subjects, and he was naturally inclined, like any other producer of goods or services, to set it as high as possible — that is, to get the entirety of the net product of the [92] subjugated population, leaving them only the bare minimum necessary for their upkeep and reproduction.

However, the long-term interest of the association of the owners of the State [56] tempered this immediate interest of the producer of services toward the consumer. If this association, as a long-term owner of the State, [57] was interested in drawing the greatest possible profit from exploiting its subjects, it was no less interested in not exhausting their productive capacities; on the contrary, it had an interest in increasing them — and therefore in not raising the taxes, forced labor, and dues that provided its revenue to an excessive rate. It had an interest in not exceeding what would later be called the fiscal rate — that is, a rate which yields the highest return without diminishing that return through the weakening of the productive faculties that are its source. [58] The fiscal rate was not a measure of the actual price of the service; it could — and in fact usually did — rise even higher when the productivity of the subjects’ industry increased due to the security they enjoyed. But at least it imposed a check on the unconscious greed of the masters and their discretionary power.

In summary, then: if the immediate interest of the owners of the State conflicted with that of their subjects, the long-term interest of both [93] parties aligned — the subjects being interested in the preservation and increase of their masters’ power because it protected them from invasions and the evils that came from that; and the masters being interested in preserving and increasing their subjects’ productive capacities, because these provided them, along with the resources necessary for the defense and expansion of the State, with their means of subsistence.

But here is a feature that characterized this old regime of the production of security [59] and that distinguished political enterprises from industrial and commercial ones: [60] there was no relation between the forced labor, taxes, and dues that the owners of a State demanded from their subjects and the services they provided in return. These forced labor duties, taxes, and dues they commanded by virtue of their status as owners — just as they commanded the labor of their beasts of burden — without believing themselves obliged to provide any service in exchange. They protected their subjects and ensured their survival as they did with their cattle; but, as we shall see, solely in view of their own self-interest and to the degree that this interest merited.

The protection of the subjugated population comprised two types of services: services of guardianship and internal security, and services of external security. Now, although the former were no less [94] necessary to them than the latter, the masters of the State attached to them only secondary importance. They were far less concerned with protecting the lives and property of their subjects against internal threats than with defending their territory against external invasion. This was because the loss of any portion of their territorial domain caused them a significant reduction in revenue and power, while the individual abuses suffered by their subjects — murder, theft, etc. — caused them comparatively insignificant harm. [61] While they continually strove to increase their defensive and offensive power by improving their military institutions — sparing no expense on that front — they paid little attention and allocated meager funds to the services of justice and police. And even then, their concern was primarily, if not exclusively, with their own security. The most serious attacks on the lives and property of subjects were lightly punished, while the slightest offenses against the masters of the State were repressed with inexorable severity, and the police were chiefly employed to hunt down violators of laws [95] aimed specifically at ensuring the submission of the subjugated population. Bands of thieves and brigands could ply their trade undisturbed — sometimes even with the connivance of an underpaid police force — in States that possessed formidable armies. This was because the masters of the State considered their services solely from the standpoint of their own interest, without concern for that of their subjects. Only those who understood that the security of the subjects was a necessary element of the State’s prosperity — or who had some vague notion of the moral obligation they had contracted toward them — concerned themselves with justice and police services in any way that went beyond their own domination.

But in the minds of the majority of the owners of the State, there existed no more connection between the taxes they imposed on their subjects and the services they provided than there was between the labor demanded of their beasts of burden and the food and care they gave them. It was in his own interest, not that of his animals, that the owner of a herd of oxen or sheep bore the cost of their food and maintenance. Likewise, it was in its own interest that the firm which owns the State provided for the protection and security of its subjects. And the [96] tribute it demanded from them, in various forms, was measured not by the services it provided, but by their capacity to pay.

Despite its crude imperfections, this regime of the production of security — founded on the appropriation of the weak by the strong — had been the only one possible. Initially interested in stripping the weak and making them their prey, the strong, in appropriating them, became interested in protecting them. This interest was carried to its highest point, since the firms of powerful men [62] who had founded States by seizing territory and subjugating its population drew from them their means of existence. So long as the risks of a civilized world being overthrown by barbarian invasions persisted, and so long as the productivity of the industries to which the subjugated populations were assigned remained low, one cannot claim that the share appropriated by the partnership of the owners of the State from the labor of its subjects exceeded the costs of the production of the service of security, [63] with the necessary profit included. But these risks gradually diminished under the influence of advances in matériel and the art of destruction, while labor productivity rose under the influence of improvements in the productive arts. Then a moment had to come when the taxes and dues levied by the firm which owns the State [64] [97] on its subjects, exercising its power as owner, would exceed the value of the service it provided them — and the gap between price and value of that service would continue to grow. Reform of this regime thus became necessary, and the need for it was increasingly felt.

The problem to be solved consisted, on the one hand, in establishing a direct relation — which did not yet exist — between the service and its payment; and, on the other, in compelling the firms that produced this service to reduce its price to the level of the lowest cost of production plus the necessary profit, and at the same time giving them incentives to improve its quality.

We know how this problem has been resolved for the majority of other products and services, and we can glimpse how it might be resolved for those falling within the domain of the State; but no such understanding existed at the time the French Revolution broke out. Some believed the reform should consist in limiting the sovereign's power and modifying, more or less profoundly, the civil, military, and fiscal institutions; others thought it should lie in the dispossession of the governing class and the institution of a republican government founded on the sovereignty of the nation.

These are the two forms of government — constitutional and parliamentary monarchy and the [98] republic — which today prevail among civilized nations. Let us now consider what differences separate this new regime from the old and what influence those differences have on the question of peace or war.

[99]

CHAPTER III. THE CHANGES MADE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF STATES SINCE THE END OF THE 18TH CENTURY↩

How the new regime differs from the old. — The appropriation of the State by the nation. — The rights that derive from it. — Declarations and constitutions that proclaim these rights. — The two objectives pursued by constitutions. — The rights and guarantees of the governed. — That constitutions have erased, in this respect, the distinction between the governing and the governed classes. — That they have established a theoretical link between the services of the State and the taxes which are used to pay for them, and declared that such taxes must be in proportion to the services and reduced to what is strictly necessary, but that the old tax system was allowed to survive. — Why this dual objective was not achieved.

That a nation can own its State but not govern it. — That under the new regime the State remained what it was under the old: an enterprise, and that it must be constituted and governed as such. — How government has been organized in modern States. — The political parties that have arisen under the new regime, although the constitutions made no provision for them. — That their objective is to conquer the State and enjoy the benefits it provides. — That they are organized like armies. — Conditions under which they can achieve victory. — The electorate and the motives guiding the social groups composing it. — That each group follows its particular and immediate interest, even when that interest is [100] in opposition to the general and long-term interest of the nation. [65] — That each group is represented by a party that it compels to serve its particular interest. — That the parties have, moreover, a common interest, which consists in expanding the functions of the State and encouraging them to extend its domain.

In what way does the new regime differ from the old, and what influence can the features that distinguish it exert on the resolution of the question of peace or war? That is what we now need to examine.

The essential character of the old regime, as we have seen, was the appropriation of the State by a firm made up of powerful men whose powers eventually came to be concentrated in a family or an oligarchy, which governed it—or rather, which had the mission and the duty to govern it in the general and long-term interest of that firm which owns the State. The change that political reforms or revolutions accomplished in England, in the Netherlands, in the North American colonies, in France, and later in nearly all civilized States, consisted in attributing to the nation in constitutional monarchies a right of co-ownership—albeit undefined—of the State, and in republics a complete right of ownership, and, as a consequence, the sovereign right to govern the State in accordance with the general [101] and long-term interest of the nation. This change of regime was enshrined in bills or declarations of rights and in constitutions granted by the former sovereign or drafted and voted upon by delegates of the now-sovereign nation. These constitutions, whether they developed gradually without being codified in a specific document—as in the British constitution—or whether they were improvised following a revolution, as in most other States, consist of two distinct parts: one concerning the rights and guarantees of the governed, the other concerning the organization of the government.

Over the centuries, as the threat of destruction that loomed over nascent civilizations waned and the material and moral condition of subjugated classes improved, these classes obtained various guarantees against abuses of power by the masters of the State. Customs became established that in particular limited the rate of dues and taxes to which they were subject; rights concerning the exercise of their activity and the ownership of its fruits were granted and guaranteed to them in the form of privileges. These rights and guarantees were made general and completed by the constitutions, thus erasing the distinctions between the class of the owners of the State [102] and the subjugated classes. However, the old tax system was retained everywhere: in France, for example, it was almost entirely reinstated, with only the names changed after an unsuccessful attempt to abolish it. [66] But whereas under the old regime there was no link between the taxes imposed by the State’s owners on their subjects and the services provided to them, the constitutions established that link, if only in theory. The tax was no longer to be a tithe levied on subjects in accordance with the discretionary and sovereign power of their masters, limited only by their capacity to pay; it was to be payment for the services of the State, and each individual was to contribute in proportion to the amount of wealth he possessed and which the State was tasked with safeguarding against all internal or external aggression. It was no longer a tax—it was a contribution. Finally, the nation, now the owner of the State, had an interest in making its services as effective as possible and in reducing their cost to the lowest rate, by finding the best means to achieve both objectives.

But the nation could not govern its political establishment itself. The nature of things [103] forbade it. Under the new regime, as under the old, the State remained an enterprise—and the most important of all. The State employed a large civil and military personnel charged with the functions required by its nature and purpose—internal and external security—not to mention ancillary services that could, rightly or wrongly, be assigned to it rather than to other enterprises. Like the shareholders of an industrial company, the multitude of the members of a nation that had become, in whole or in part, the owner of the State, could govern and manage it only through delegates. We know how the constitutions provided for this necessity. They conferred on an electoral body—comprised of a more or less substantial portion of the nation—the right to elect delegates to govern the State. These delegates, in concert with the head of the former ruling house or a new one of their choosing in monarchies, and in accordance with the full sovereignty delegated to them in republics, formed the governing authority—but with the obligation, under penalty of dismissal, to conform in all their acts to the will of the majority of their delegates. This majority represented the will of the electoral body, and the latter, the majority of the nation—each presumed to be most capable of governing the State [104] in accordance with the general and long-term interest of the nation. This is, in its essential features, the mechanism of government in the majority of modern States.

The reformers and revolutionaries who instituted the new regime were convinced that this mechanism would fully achieve its goal. Experience, unfortunately, has shown that they attributed to it an effectiveness it does not possess. If the quality of government services has improved in some measure, that improvement has not been general; and the price paid by nations for these services has risen in far greater proportion than their improvement. And, to confine ourselves to the particular concern of this study, instead of ensuring peace among civilized people at a time when it has become both possible and necessary, governments have prolonged—and even now threaten to perpetuate—the state of war.

If we examine the causes of this twofold failure, we will find that the first lies in the importance of the State itself—in the power and advantages it naturally provides to those who manage it. In the great States, its functionaries number in the millions; its budget is reckoned in the billions of francs. Consequently, the government of this colossal enterprise, once [105] it became accessible to all members of the nation, became the object of ambition for all those who believed they had a reasonable chance of attaining it. For this purpose, they formed associations known as political parties, which differ from those of the early conquerors only in the methods they employ to achieve their aim: namely, the conquest, occupation, and exploitation of the State. How are they organized, and how do they proceed?

The goal that they pursue and their organisation are no different from those of the old conquering firms. They are veritable armies commanded by a leader or a committee of leaders, with a general staff and troops; their aim is the conquest of the State, in order to obtain the means of existence and the superior status that public office can confer. As General Jackson cynically admitted in the United States, public office constitutes the spoils of victory. The only difference is that, unlike the old conquering firms, modern political parties take care to conceal this self-serving aim. If they wish to seize power or retain it once gained—if, in the struggles they wage against rival parties, they resort to violence, cunning, and corruption—it is [106] because the nation is supposedly interested in their victory, and its prosperity, or even its survival, depends on it; because the triumph of their rivals would bring about the most disastrous consequences. It is to avert that peril that they fight, even sacrificing—when necessary and without hesitation—their own interests for those of the nation. Typically, they publish a platform containing the most appealing promises, particularly those of radically improving the State’s services and significantly reducing the taxes used to pay for them. Sometimes these promises are sincere, but whether or not they are kept does not depend on them. Once victory is won—once the State has fallen into the hands of the conquering army—its leaders and troops must be rewarded. Instead of improving services, jobs are multiplied; [67] instead of reducing public taxes, they are increased. This hypocrisy, which characterizes the conduct of modern political parties, is dictated by the very conditions of the struggle. The old conquering firms had no need for it because they did not have to consider the opinion of the subjugated multitude. Things are different in countries where the former subjects have become [107] the owners of the State, where, by constitutional right, they exercise the sovereign right attached to this property—like any other—to choose the agents tasked with managing it in their name and on their behalf. The outcome of the struggle between the party currently holding government and the rival parties seeking to wrest it away depends on the vote of the electorate. Victory requires conquering the majority of the electorate. It is therefore to the interests and passions of the predominant elements of the electorate that political parties must appeal.

To understand the motives that determine the choice of agents to govern the State in a constitutional country, one must consider first the intellectual and moral condition of the nation, and then the composition of the electorate.

Like the individuals that comprise them, nations are essentially unequal in intellectual and moral capacity. But even among those that occupy the higher rungs of intelligence and morality, the ability to rise above the individual’s private interest, that of his family, and his trade, in order to extend their concern to the interest of the nation or even more particularly to humanity itself —is rare, and still more rarely accompanied by a moral sense [108] powerful enough to subordinate private and immediate interest to the general and long-term interest of the community. Now, as we have noted, every society is comprised of groups or classes whose interests are immediately opposed, even if they align over time. In Europe, the aristocratic landowning class descended from conquest—which had almost exclusive control over the civil and military governing functions until the end of the 18th century—had an immediate interest in territorial annexations that would expand its market. It resorted to war to satisfy that immediate interest, without examining whether the benefits it derived from expanding territory compensated for the increasing taxes and damage war imposed on the nation, or considering whether those taxes and damage would eventually lead to the State’s decline—and thus to its own. Although it has lost its former privileged position, it still holds a more or less substantial share of senior civil—and especially military—positions, and its particular and immediate interest inclines it toward the continuation of a state of war that has become increasingly contrary to the general interest. Likewise, the class of industrial entrepreneurs has interests that are immediately [109] opposed, on the one hand to consumers and on the other hand to workers. It is interested in raising the price of the goods it sells to the former and lowering the price of the labor it buys from the latter. However, if one considers its interest over time, it aligns with that of the consumers and the workers, for the impoverishment of the former and the weakening of the productive abilities of the latter must inevitably bring about its own ruin. Nonetheless, under the impulse of its immediate interest, it has everywhere used its influence to erect a dual system of protectionism against both consumers and workers—which is, as we shall later see, simply another form of the state of war. Finally, the working class, which earns its means of existence by hiring out its labor, is immediately interested in using its influence to establish some system that increases its share in the fruits of production, at the expense of the class of entrepreneurs and capitalists who are their patrons.

In summary, then, for the majority—if not the near-totality—of individuals belonging to the various classes into which a nation is divided, the consideration of private and immediate interest outweighs that of the general and long-term interest of the community. [110] Each class or group is therefore naturally inclined to support the party that promises to wield the power of the State on its behalf, to impose its interests on those of other classes with which it is in opposition.

That being the case, the composition of the electorate takes on easily understandable importance. If it is drawn only from the upper and middle classes, the parties vying for control of government will serve exclusively the particular and immediate interests of those classes. If it extends to the masses, a party will emerge to serve their interests in exchange for their vote.

But however divergent or opposed the interests they represent may be, the parties nonetheless have one interest in common: to increase the size and importance of the enterprise over which they compete for ownership—one that offers to those who possess it, to their followers and their dependents, an easy means of existence and a degree of influence that no other enterprise can bestow. In all modern States—except for the few where the old regime still survives—a new governing class has formed, one that, like the one it replaced, tends to become hereditary, namely the class of politicians. Now, whether they are conservative, [111] liberal, radical, or socialist, politicians get—or aspire to get—their means of existence from the State’s budget. They are, to use a vivid expression, tax-eaters. [68] Even if the necessities of the struggle to conquer the state did not compel them to expand the spoils used to pay for these electoral services, they would still have an interest in enlarging the enterprise that serves as their market—and that interest becomes more pressing as their numbers increase, whether by birth or by the influx of recruits whom State-provided education renders unfit for any other profession or trade. But the market provided by the State can only grow in two ways: by extending its functions at the expense of other enterprises, or by enlarging its territorial domain—in other words, through war. Depending on circumstances, the governing class resorts to one or the other of these two methods, obeying its particular and immediate interest—without inquiring, any more than other social groups do, whether that interest aligns with the general and long-term interest of the nation.

What conclusion can we draw, except that the new regime of the government of the States is no more conducive to the establishment of peace than was the old? In fact, these two regimes differ less, even in [112] the countries where they seem furthest apart, than political theorists suppose. We shall have proof of this as we review the governments of the principal civilized States, and as we analyze the dominant interests within them, we will be able to understand why war has survived and threatens to survive for a long time even after having lost its reason for being.

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CHAPTER IV. THE INTERESTS THAT DETERMINE THE PEACEFUL OR WARLIKE POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE PRINCIPAL MODERN STATES↩

Overview of the political institutions of civilized states from the standpoint of the question of peace or war. — The predominant interests in the political organization of Russia. — That they are more warlike than peaceful. — Germany. Causes maintaining the predominance of the military element: the danger of socialism, the question of Alsace-Lorraine. — England. Circumstances favoring the progress of its institutions. — Resurgence of the power of its aristocracy, brought about by the French Revolution. — Peaceful tendencies of its industrious classes. — The setback they suffered after the war of 1870. — The Necessity for defence imposed on England by continental militarism. — France and its political revolutions. — Peace guarantees resulting from the current form of its government. — The two kinds of American republics. — That in the entire civilized world, the multitude devoted to productive industries is interested in peace, but that nowhere does it possess the power to maintain it.

If we study, from the standpoint of the question of peace or war, the state whose political constitution has remained the closest to that of the [114] old-regime states, namely Russia, we will find there a sovereign "house" supported by a body of military and civil functionaries recruited from a so-called "civilized" class, relatively small in number, beneath which lies a multitude of peasants and workers barely freed from servitude and exercising no appreciable influence. Of what is this civilized class comprised, whose opinion directs, far more than the particular will of the sovereign — nominally an "autocrat" — the policy of the government? For the most part, it consists of families whose market is public office and who live off the budget; [69] only a minority constitutes the general staff of the owners and managers of financial, industrial, and commercial enterprises. If we remember that opinions, save rare exceptions, are shaped by particular and short-sighted interests, we will see that the current political state of Russia offers very weak guarantees of peace. Indeed, the group made up of many military functionaries — comprised of officers of all ranks — is immediately interested in war. The profession of arms, which constitutes their industry and provides their means of existence, provides them in peacetime, except in the upper ranks of the hierarchy, with only meager profits. These profits, both material and moral, [115] are increased by war, which raises their pay during campaigns and increases the chances of promotion and honorary distinctions. Civil functionaries, while remaining guaranteed of the preservation of their salaries, gain a discretionary power over those they administer during the tumult of war; finally, if the war is successful, it opens up further markets for them in the conquered country. As for the minority of owners and the managers of production enterprises, their interests are not significantly harmed by war in a country like Russia, where foreign trade, hampered by protectionism, has yet to acquire much development. War even opens up an additional market for a large number of industries that supply the matériel and provisions to the armies — not to mention capital — and if it eventually increases their taxes, it provides them with immediate extra profits, which exert a warlike influence on the opinion of industrialists and financiers far more potent than the pacifying effect of foreseeing increased future costs.

But Russia remains alone in Europe — for Turkey is more Asian — as a state of the old regime. Most of the states on our continent have one by one adopted the regime of [116] constitutional monarchy. Though this regime differs from one country to another, it possesses essential characteristics common to all. As under the old regime, the State belongs, at least nominally, to the hereditary head of the sovereign house. But this property, which was once complete and legally unlimited, if not always so in fact — at the time when Louis XIV could say "L’État, c’est moi" — is now limited in various ways, even in the most politically backward states, and in the others it is subordinated to the higher right of the nation. First, the head of the sovereign house has lost the right to divide his political domain among his children or even to exchange or cede part of it, unless compelled to do so by force; he is required to bequeath it intact to his heir. Secondly, he no longer draws a discretionary share from State revenues to meet his and his family's expenses: he is allocated a civil list and endowments which constitute fixed salaries like those of other public functionaries. He governs the State with the aid of a Parliament, generally divided into two chambers. It is Parliament that votes on the laws and the budget of revenues and expenditures. Relieved of all responsibility in the internal and external management of public affairs, the head of State, constitutional king or emperor, [117] can act only through a responsible ministry that he appoints but must select from the majority within Parliament. In fact, he possesses a more or less considerable influence on the direction of State affairs, but this direction still belongs to the members of Parliament, who represent — or are supposed to represent — the nation which is the consumer of public services. This is, in its general features, the mechanism of the so-called constitutional monarchy.

But among the existing constitutional monarchies, we find differences more or less marked, depending on the degree of importance and influence of the various classes of the population. In the most powerful of all, Germany, an aristocracy owns the greater part of the land and holds almost all the senior posts in the military hierarchy, as well as most of the senior posts in the civil hierarchy. In this double capacity, it enjoys an influence wholly disproportionate to its numerical importance. It is true that in Germany, industry and commerce — far more developed than in Russia — have created a large and educated middle class, beneath which, the progress that has, as it were, "intellectualized" labor in large industry has brought about an aristocracy of the working-class whose intelligence [118] is beginning to open up to questions of general interest. Suffrage, having become nearly universal, grants these two increasingly numerous classes the power to intervene with some efficacy in the government of the German states. Unfortunately, the pacifying action they might exert in the event of foreign conflict is weakened, if not nullified, under the influence of two causes: first, the clash of interests, so far unresolved, between the class of entrepreneurs and their capitalist backers, and the working class; second, the critical situation Germany has faced since the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine. Against the socialism that is rapidly spreading within the working class, the industrial and financial bourgeoisie naturally seeks a safeguard in the army, whose leader is the Emperor and whose hierarchy is supplied by the landowning and military aristocracy. The same safeguard is sought by both bourgeoisie and working class — socialist or not — against the ever-looming revenge of the defeated of 1870. Hence the near-dictatorial power of the Emperor, master of the organized force that guarantees the nation’s security, threatened by the latent state of war between the bourgeoisie and the working class on the one hand, and between the victors and the vanquished of 1870 on the other. No doubt the Emperor must take into account the [119] peaceful interests of the great majority of his subjects, but in the meantime, can he be refused the resources necessary to sustain a defensive war, and even to take the offensive if he judges it indispensable for the nation’s future security?

England offers us a different — and almost opposite — model of constitutional monarchy. After the Norman conquest, the need to concentrate the powers of the class possessing the State was less pressing than it was in continental states, the conquerors’ domain being naturally protected by the sea. The hereditary head of the conquering army was forced to grant his companions and, later, the influential elite of the subjugated classes, guarantees against abuse of his sovereign power. A Parliament, drawn from the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, was invested with the right to consent to taxes and laws. However, until about the mid-nineteenth century, the aristocracy — owning most of the land — shared the government of the State almost alone with the head of the sovereign house. It held the top positions of the State and Church, and customs stronger even than laws forbade it from engaging in industry or commerce. Its particular and immediate interest — this time aligning to some extent with the general and long-term interest of the nation — incited it to expand [120] the nation’s domination abroad. After losing its continental possessions, England sought compensation in the conquest of the New World that the discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries had opened up, and there it carved out an immense domain. Thanks to these markets that the ruling class opened to the industry of other classes of the nation as well as to its own — and thanks especially to the exceptional security that its island position provided to Great Britain — various branches of production received a strong impulse during the 18th century. The industrious classes, [70] interested in peace, grew in number, wealth, and influence, when the security of England, threatened by revolutionary and imperial France, restored to the political and military aristocracy its former preeminence. Its statesmen managed to preserve England from this peril by organizing and funding coalitions under whose repeated blows the warlike and domineering power born of the Revolution eventually succumbed. It then seemed that control of the English government would remain forever in the hands of the aristocracy. But the restoration of peace and the tremendous expansion of industry, transformed by the application of science, soon shifted the axis of political power to its detriment. Economic reforms, [121] and in particular the repeal of the Corn Laws, dealt a significant blow to its influence — both by diminishing its wealth and by increasing that of the classes who drew their means of existence from industry and commerce. These classes, interested in peace, obtained an increasingly large share in government, and the England of Cobden and Bright became the center of pacifist propaganda. However, since the Franco-Prussian War, a marked reversal of opinion can be observed. The continual increase in armaments among the continental powers has forced England to increase its means of defense, particularly its navy. For it is not within England’s power alone to preserve peace. The invasion and systematic plundering of England has remained the favorite dream of continental militarists and politicians. [71] [122] No enterprise would, obviously, be more lucrative. The victor could not, no doubt, plunder the vanquished as brutally as the Vandals, Franks, or Visigoths once did. But the methods of plunder currently used by civilized people differ more in form than in substance from those of their barbarian ancestors. Populations are no longer reduced to slavery or forced labor, but they are subjected to war indemnities, which amount to a levy on the annual product of the nation’s labor — that is, a collective corvée imposed for the benefit of the victor. In 1871, the victorious Germans imposed on France an indemnity of 5 billion francs, and their statesmen later regretted not having doubled it. Could not England supply a sum five or even ten times as large through annually staggered payments, while also providing for the upkeep of an [123] occupation army of several hundred thousand men? It is thus understandable that England imposes upon itself the necessary sacrifices — however heavy — to protect itself from the peril that might one day arise from some new William the Conqueror. But must not this fear — and does it not in fact — have the effect of restoring to the class from which the political and military hierarchy is mainly recruited the influence it was losing, and thus of rolling back, in the principal stronghold of peaceful interests, the cause of peace?

Do republics today offer more certain guarantees of peace than absolute or more or less constitutional monarchies? These guarantees depend, as we have said, less on the form of government — though it is not without importance — than on the level of advancement of their industry and the nature and composition of their population.

In France, the Republic, born of the Revolution, has experienced various fortunes, and one cannot say that it has definitively taken root. At first, it was only the dictatorship of a minority as brutal as it was ignorant, and it imposed itself only through terror. An imperial dictatorship supported by the army and accepted by the nation, which it delivered from [124] Jacobinism, succeeded it. Then came two constitutional monarchies — the first brought about by invasion, the second by revolution — and after a brief interlude of a republic, another imperial dictatorship, then finally, following an invasion and a revolution, a third republic. Under these different regimes, peaceful interests certainly outnumbered and outweighed warlike interests, and they prevail today more than ever. But under the Jacobin and imperial dictatorships, they were condemned to silence. Under the two constitutional monarchies, they managed to assert their influence, thanks to the nation's exhaustion under the first, and to fear of revolution under the second; likewise, under the interim Republic of 1848, thanks to the terror inspired by the Red Specter. But the interests of the military hierarchy — accomplice to the coup d’état of December 2nd — took their revenge under the Second Empire and provoked the series of wars that led to the disaster of 1870, despite the peaceful will of the nation’s majority — a will formally confirmed by the plebiscite of May. If peaceful influences have regained the upper hand, if peace has been maintained for more than a quarter of a century despite the provocations of chauvinism, it is due far less, it must be said, to public opinion than to the [125] self-interest of the republican party in power. The politicians who make up the various factions of this party know full well that a war would inevitably bring about its downfall. If it were unsuccessful, it would give rise to a demagogic and socialist Commune, soon followed by a reactionary dictatorship; if successful, it would elevate the victorious general to power through irresistible acclaim. The Republic thus offers, under current circumstances, special guarantees of peace. Unfortunately, no one can say whether it will long withstand the financial wastefulness and lax practices of its politicians.

In America, where two kinds of republics exist — those belonging to the people of Latin race with a substratum of an indigenous race, and those founded by the Anglo-Saxon race with contingents of Irish, Germans, French, Italians, Blacks, etc. — the ruling class of the former constitutes a political and military oligarchy, divided into rival parties that fight, often arms in hand, for the exploitation of the budget and remain continuously on a war footing, without encountering any counterweight in the peaceful interests of an [126] ignorant and passive mass. The latter republics are comprised overwhelmingly of an industrious population whose interests are essentially peaceful, but which abandons the conduct of public affairs to politicians — to whom war causes no harm and who gain in importance by it. On every occasion, they display, under the pretext of patriotism, a hostile stiffness in their relations with foreign powers; after having unleashed civil war in pursuit of ambition, did they not, even recently, show their unwillingness to give up the power to unleash foreign war by rejecting the arbitration treaty proposed by England? [72]

In the final analysis, in the entire civilized world, peaceful interests outnumber and outweigh those that still benefit from the state of war and war itself — but the direction of state affairs continues, in spite of all revolutions and political reforms, to belong to a class whose professional interests have remained, in this respect, in immediate opposition to those of the multitude it governs. In this state of affairs we will find the true cause of the wars that have, more than ever, ravaged the world since war lost its reason for being.

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CHAPTER V. THE WARS OF CIVILIZED STATES SINCE THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY↩

Recapitulation of the determining motives behind wars under the old regime. — Why war continued under the new regime, even though it had lost its raison d’être. — The immediate opposition of interests between rulers and the ruled. — How this opposition was mitigated by the long-term possession of government. — How this ceased to be the case once that possession became precarious. — Determining causes of the wars of the French Revolution. — Necessities faced by the parties that succeeded one another in power. — Economic character of the wars of the Empire. — That all these wars were provoked by particular and immediate interests in opposition to the general and long-term interest of the nation. — That the same has been true of all the wars that have followed since the beginning of the century. — The Crimean War. — The Italian War. — The Franco-German War. — The American Civil War. — That these wars were undertaken without the nations who bore their costs being consulted or having the power to prevent them.

Until the end of the eighteenth century, wars had been undertaken in the interest of the sovereign house [128] and the ruling class, that is the nobility and the clergy, on which it relied. The heads of sovereign houses undertook wars to extend their domain and thus increase the profits that the industry of government [73] provided for them and their allies, namely the military and civil functionaries. Though these profits had decreased since conquest no longer involved the confiscation of the property of the defeated and their reduction to slavery, they still exceeded those of most other industries. To the material profits were added moral profits consisting in the glory acquired by the victor and the increase in prestige and influence that victory brought. It is true that war had become more expensive as it came to employ more sophisticated matériel and as a nations’ resources, which were growing thanks to industrial progress, enabled governments to increase their armaments. War, then, inflicted ever heavier taxes on nations—but these taxes weighed only lightly on the class whose opinion decided matters of war and peace. It was the multitude who were engaged in agriculture, industry, and commerce that bore almost the whole burden, and this multitude had no share or, as in England, only a negligible and almost infinitesimal share in the government of the state. One might have believed that [129] this situation would change completely when the nation claimed ownership of the political establishment, after having stripped the sovereign house of it, as happened in France. But if a nation can, like a house or an oligarchy, own a state, it cannot govern it by itself. It is forced to entrust its administration to representatives. The nation has the right to choose these representatives, but in fact, this choice soon comes to lie in the hands of associations or parties that organize to seize control of the government, drawn by the profits and advantages which its very nature is able to provide. We have remarked—and we cannot stress this enough—that the ruling personnel, [74] in its capacity as a producer of public services, finds itself in immediate opposition to the interest of the nation as a consumer of these services, just as any other producer is vis-à-vis his customers. Under the old regime, this immediate opposition of interests was tempered by the long-term ownership of the state by the sovereign house, which thus had a long-term interest in the nation’s preservation and prosperity. A party whose hold on government is temporary and precarious is not restrained by such long-term considerations, and the same can be said of dynasties implanted by a revolution, which another revolution [130] might just as easily uproot, and which therefore seek above all to build up a reserve fund against the risk of being deposed. Moreover, a party must, in order to maintain or attain power, increase its following and consequently expand the market for jobs and favors used to reward its supporters. So, if the nation lacks the intelligence and energy needed to defend its interests as a consumer of public services, it will hardly be better off if it became the owner of the state itself, as it will be more poorly and more expensively served than it was when the state belonged to a sovereign house which is interested in not ruining its clientele because of its long-term ownership of the state. This consideration must not be lost sight of when evaluating the behavior of parties deciding whether to undertake or prolong a war. We see this influence clearly in the series of wars initiated by the Revolution of 1789.

When the reform movement prepared by the philosophes and the economists culminated in France with the convening of the Constituent Assembly, political parties immediately arose within it, each expressing the divergent or immediately conflicting interests which were dividing the nation. On one side stood the nobility and high clergy, who were intent on defending their privileged position; on the other, [131] stood the bourgeoisie or Third Estate, aspiring to supplant them and promising the masses relief from the crushing taxes they bore. Each party was quick to identify its own interest with that of the nation, and resorted to whatever means it thought likeliest to secure victory: some sought the aid of foreign sovereign houses and ruling classes, others enlisted the urban and rural mobs with money and the lure of plunder. In this violent and chaotic conflict, which the feeble and inexperienced holders of power were powerless to control, war first appeared as a diversion, then as an economic necessity. Industry, paralyzed by the revolutionary crisis, left multitudes of workers and employees without work or resources. They filled the ranks of the armies, which became national workshops [75] supported by assignats [76] and requisitions. But assignats soon depreciated and requisitions ran dry. The invasions of Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Italy furnished external resources to replace the internal ones that were running out, sustaining these masses who were "without work". [77] Thanks [132] to the nation’s military aptitude and to the extraordinary abundance of men that the crisis—and later, conscription—placed at the disposal of the generals (enabling them to squander soldiers’ lives), the revolutionary armies achieved victories and enriched the country with the spoils of war that renewed its popularity.

Under the direction of the brilliant and unscrupulous man who seized the Republic for himself, war once more became what it had been in earlier times: the most profitable of industries. Conquered countries provided crowns for the imperial dictator’s family, grants for his generals and cronies, [78] well-paid jobs for the numerous politicians bequeathed by the Revolution and transformed into functionaries; and finally, provisions and indemnities to support the armies. Only conscription caused the nation appreciable harm, draining its most vigorous blood—but this damage would not be felt until later, in the weakening of future generations. In the present, war, by absorbing the surplus population, raised wages overall. [133] No doubt, under a regime of peace, the regular and normal development of industry would have broadened the demand for labor even more; but the people, intoxicated by victory, failed to see this, and war retained its popularity as long as the sovereign master of the state remained successful.

But what was the driving motive behind the instigators of the wars of the Revolution and the Empire? Under the Republic, it was the immediate interest of their party in seeking domination; under the Empire, it was the interest of the Emperor and of the dynasty he aimed to found. Certainly, each believed that this private interest of party or dynasty coincided with the general and long-term interest of the nation. The Jacobins were convinced they were saving France by resorting to Terror to remain in power, and Napoleon undoubtedly held the same belief when he returned from Elba. This is the excuse of all those who strive per fas et nefas [79] to seize or retain ownership of a state—and it is sometimes sincere; but rarely do the two interests coincide, and rarely does the particular and immediate interest that dictates a party’s or individual’s actions fail to be satisfied at the expense of the general and long-term interest that party or individual claims to serve.

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So it was during the period of civil strife and foreign war that began with the dispossession and ended with the restoration of the French monarchy. Under the Republic, members of the ruling parties and their supporters rose to ranks and made fortunes they could never have reached without revolution and war. Under the Empire, war created and enriched a new aristocracy of military and civil functionaries, along with the addition of the class of buyers of nationalized property who were only moderately interested in this. But what did the nation gain? It is beyond doubt that reform of the old regime could have proceeded more broadly and securely had peace been maintained at home and abroad, and had France not been weakened by the terrible bloodletting of the Terror and conscription, by the costs and damage of two invasions, and by the heavy indemnity it had to pay its conquerors. If Revolution and war served the immediate private interest of the ruling personnel of the Republic and the Empire, they ran counter to the general and long-term interest of France.

The same can be said of all the wars that followed, in Europe and across the civilized world. All were driven by the immediate private interest of the leader [135] and the ruling class of the state—an interest satisfied when victory came, but always in opposition to the general and long-term interest of the nation, whose resources they depleted and whose taxes they increased, without offering in return the compensation they had once offered through providing greater security.

After an interval of nearly forty years of peace, interrupted only by revolutionary flare-ups, the age of great wars resumed: the Crimean War, the Italian War, the Austro-German War, the Franco-German War, the Russo-Turkish War, etc., in Europe; and, in the New World, the American Civil War, not to mention the internal struggles of the South American states. All these wars were undertaken by state leaders backed by ruling classes, in pursuit of a particular and immediate interest in domination—an interest they always claimed aligned with the general and long-term interest of their nations. But while victorious governments may have profited from these wars, the people who paid for them did not. None of these wars brought their nations anything near what they cost them. If the Crimean War, undertaken under the pretext of protecting the Holy Places, served to [136] consolidate the regime born of the coup d’état [80] by boosting its prestige and brought promotion and honors to the military hierarchy, what did it bring to the French nation in return for the blood and money it cost? Was it more advantageous to the English nation? Did it stop the rise of Russian power or the decay of Turkey? The Italian War, fomented by conspirators, adventurers, and cunning politicians with the help of a crowned dreamer, had the consequence of politically unifying the various states of Italy. In France, this war gave the Empire a brief resurgence in popularity; but did the creation of a new military power, governed by politicians who quickly proved that gratitude is no political virtue, enhance France’s security? In Italy, unification immediately benefited the middle class by raising it to the status of a ruling class, placing at its disposal the hierarchy of civil and military offices, along with the machinery of legislation—machinery it was quick to use to protect a handful of industrialists and capitalists at the expense of consumers. But what benefit did the mass of the governed derive from this elevation and enrichment of a ruling class? Government expenditures [137] quadrupled, the debt increased tenfold, and no one could claim that public services improved in proportion. [81] Corruption flourished in parliament as much as it had in the courts of old; justice became subject to politicians; the law of forced domicile enabled them to treat their radical and socialist rivals as they themselves had once been treated by the tyrants of the old regime; and poverty, blacker than ever, drove increasing numbers of starving emigrants from Italy. The only excuse for the instigators of this war is that most of them sincerely believed they were serving the nation while serving themselves.

That excuse cannot be claimed by the instigators of the Franco-German War. This war, undertaken for a trivial and almost ludicrous pretext, had a single motive: the immediate and particular interest of the imperial establishment in its decline, and one aim: the conquest of the Rhine provinces. Had it succeeded, it would certainly have consolidated the Empire—but even then, what would France have gained in return for the blood and treasure expended? Would the profits that annexing one or two provinces [138] brought the ruling civil and military hierarchy have offset the increased costs and risks of a German revenge? The attempt failed, and the nation bore, first, the enormous costs of the war and the indemnity it was forced to pay, and then those of rebuilding and massively enlarging its war machine. The only compensation for this disaster was the replacement of the Empire’s ruling personnel by that of the republican party—but only time will tell if that compensation was sufficient. As for the German nation, what did it gain from its victory? The five-billion franc indemnity paid by France served to reward the military hierarchy and expand its apparatus of war; [82] the two conquered provinces offered an additional market to the class of functionaries, [83] but national taxes have steadily grown due to the elevated risk of war created by ever-present fears of revenge by the defeated. Did the benefits received by the class which owns the government of Germany and the class which the revolution of 4th September brought to power in France, outweigh the losses sustained by the two nations?

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In America, did the Civil War produce better results for the nation? It resulted in the emancipation of the negroes—but placed them in a condition materially and morally worse than the one they had under slavery, and even those who emancipated them now threaten them with mass expulsion. [84] It ruined the Southern states and spread across the Union a system of political and economic corruption without precedent, implanting "politicianism" [85] in its worst form and protectionism in its worst excesses.

At least, one might ask, did the nations involved in these costly wars of the past century actually want them? We have seen that they were declared without the governed multitudes—those who would pay with their blood and their money—being consulted, or even having the power to prevent them. Just as under the old regime, the power to make war belongs to the leader and the general staff of the ruling class; and though they never fail to invoke the interest and honor of the nation, it is their own interest they serve. If that interest, considered over time, happens to coincide with that of the nation, it is in immediate and actual terms opposed to it—and it is this immediate, selfish interest [140] that habitually guides their conduct. If the French nation had been consulted by its rulers, would it have gone to war with Prussia to prevent a Hohenzollern from becoming king of Spain? Was the American Civil War any more truly desired by the American people? It is well known that the Southern politicians initiated secession because they had lost hope of governing the entire Union, and that Northern politicians insisted on preserving the Union because they were now certain of the supremacy they would have in it. But would the mass of the nation, on either side, have chosen to fight had it been consulted? No one can say for sure. In any case, the outcome proved that separation would have been less harmful than the war and its consequences for the Northern states—and so too, maintaining the Union, for the South.

In former times, war was indirectly useful to all classes which made up a nation—not just to the oligarchies who owned and ruled the states, but even to the subjugated classes—because it was the vehicle which was necessary for the progress of the destructive arts and thus the only means of securing protection against invasion by barbarous people. [141] Once that security was achieved, these classes could gain no more from war; they now suffer, without any appreciable compensation, the taxes and damage it inflicts.

What situation have the useless wars we’ve just reviewed left these nations in? What is the scale of the taxes they bear, and of the premium they pay to insure themselves against the risk posed by the dominant interests that continue to perpetuate a state of war within the civilized world, against both the interests and the will of the industrious masses? How, finally, might those masses prevail against those interests? This is what remains to be explored.

[142]

CHAPTER VI. THE BALANCE SHEET [86] OF MODERN WARS. ARMED PEACE↩

The liabilities of the state of war. — Difficulty of calculating the costs and damages caused by war. — Direct losses and expenses. — Indirect damages. — Steady increase of the debts and budgets of civilized States since the beginning of the century. — The growth of military forces. — The blood tax and the burden it imposes. — The assets of the state of war. — The market it provides for personnel in the military and civil hierarchy. — That the governed multitude draws no appreciable profit from it. — Steady rise in the risk of war and the corresponding increase of the insurance apparatus of armed peace. — Causes contributing to the increase of this risk. — Colonial policy. — Protectionist policy. — Absorption of small States by large ones. — That the risk of war and the armaments it provokes are now carried to their maximum.

Statisticians have undertaken to calculate the cost, in men and capital, of the wars that have devastated the civilized world since the end of the eighteenth century. These estimates are inevitably incomplete, however, as they can only apply to the loss of life and the extraordinary expenses [143] directly occasioned by war. It is impossible to evaluate the indirect damages caused by the industrial, commercial, and financial crises that war generates, and which extend and worsen as international relations multiply. Nor can one account for what the fluctuations and final depreciation of paper money cost nations, paper money being what governments usually resort to in times when they cannot obtain by ordinary means the resources necessary to continue the war. But even if all estimates are necessarily inaccurate and incomplete in this matter, one can still form an idea of the burden with which modern wars have saddled nations by examining the state of the budgets and public debts of civilized States. In the aggregate budgets of the European States, military and naval expenditures and debt service absorb more than two-thirds of revenue, and the total debt accumulated over the past century—contracted almost exclusively to cover war expenses—exceeds 130 billion francs. [87] To meet this enormous increase in costs, governments have been forced to increase taxes, and they have [144] mainly resorted to indirect taxes, which are more easily accepted because they are not seen. To speak only of France, this category of taxes, which provided about one-third of total revenue under the Ancien Régime, now provides two-thirds. No doubt, the extraordinary progress of industry has considerably increased the wealth of nations; they can today bear taxes that would have crushed them a century ago; but it remains true that, instead of declining, the proportion that governments levy from national income increases daily, and tends more and more, as under the regime of slavery, to absorb the net product of their industry. The burden of the blood tax, [88] or conscription, has increased in even greater proportion. This, at a time when the peril of barbarian invasions—the only thing that could justify the sacrifices imposed on people to ensure their security—has completely ceased to exist.

It must further be added that the amount of these taxes, meant to guarantee a security which is no longer threatened, constitutes only part of the tax and damage they inflict. The collection of customs duties and other indirect taxes requires restrictions and constraints that hamper the development [145] of production. As for the blood tax, besides the loss and damage it directly causes by levying a infertile tithe upon labor, it strikes at the very vitality of nations by removing from reproduction their most vigorous individuals, at the age when they are most suited for it, to offer them up to the dangers and the corruption of the lowest form of prostitution.

In the face of this enormous liability of taxes, debts, and all kinds of damage—in which we have not even included the physical and moral sufferings that the very nature of war will cause—what can we set on the asset side of the continuation of the state of war? What benefits have civilized nations derived from it over the past century?

Here appears the immediate opposition of interests that exists between the governors and the governed. If one considers the particular and present interest of the governing classes of civilized States, one must acknowledge that these classes have benefited from the continuation of the state of war—though the establishment of a regime of peace would likely have been even more advantageous to them. It has provided a guaranteed market—if not a lucrative one, at least in the lower ranks of the hierarchy—for the families from which, generation after generation, the [146] vast majority, one might even say nearly all, of military and civil functionaries are recruited. It has increased the prestige of sovereigns and politicians who have retained the unlimited power to dispose of taxpayers’ resources and even to mortgage their future resources in order to undertake wars in clear opposition to the general and long-term interest of the nation. We have just given a brief overview of what these wars have cost the civilized community. What material and moral progress have they produced? The account would be easy to draw up, and it would almost invariably close with a further deficit. Throughout Europe, the wars of the Revolution and the Empire delayed the reform of the old regime by investing heads of state with the dictatorial power that war necessitates and allowing them to postpone the reforms demanded by their people. Only after a long period of peace did public opinion become strong enough to force them to reckon with it. If these wars and those that followed favored a certain number of interests—more or less defensible—they delayed the general development of wealth and civilization.

Finally, in addition to the costs they entailed and the damages they caused during their duration, these wars have made peace increasingly precarious; [147] in other words, they have raised the level of risk of war.

“We remarked in one of our earlier works [89] that the risk of war, heightened by the Revolution and the Empire, declined and even fell to its lowest point from 1815 to 1830. The revolution of 1830 raised it by several degrees, under the influence of fear that bellicose passions and interests would again gain the upper hand in France, but the resolutely pacific policy of King Louis-Philippe brought it back down. Moreover, one could draw a fairly accurate picture of its fluctuations by noting the opposite fluctuations of the stock exchange at each of its movements. It spiked sharply in 1848, but it is from the restoration of the Empire that its almost uninterrupted upward trend dates. Since the war of 1870, this upward trend has intensified further, although one can note many fluctuations in its development.

“As the risk of war has risen, the apparatus needed to address it has grown proportionally: military service, initially limited in practice to the lower classes, has been extended to all classes; each country [148] has surrounded itself with a ring of fortifications, as in the Middle Ages each lordship did; and the budgets of armed peace have risen to levels previously never reached even by wartime budgets.”

This steady rise in the risk of war is not, however, caused solely by war itself.

Among the causes that have generated it, we must note first the multiplication of opportunities for conflict since the extraordinary development of communications and commercial relations has brought people closer together and internationalized their interests—since, moreover, the governments of civilized States have undertaken to subject to their domination regions of the globe occupied by inferior or less advanced people. These conflicts are stirred up now by the jealousy felt by nations less capable of exploiting their territorial acquisitions at the success of those more apt at leading colonization ventures, and now by the spirit of monopoly, which incites tariff increases and tariff wars, condemning to ruin populations which are ever more numerous whose means of existence depends on foreign markets. These confiscations of clientele, voted daily by politicians in the pay of influential interests, maintain [149] among people the hateful passions created by past wars, by exacerbating the difficulties arising from their increased proximity and the growing multiplicity of their relations; they thus furnish heads of State or political parties who believe they will benefit from war with an opportunity to provoke it, invoking national interest or honor. Secondly, the absorption, carried out after the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, of a multitude of small States which served, so to speak, as buffers between the great powers, has had the effect, if not of making wars more frequent, at least of increasing their risks and consequences. Europe is now divided among six great powers, none of which is separated from a rival, and in most of which the interests tied to the maintenance of the state of war outweigh—in influence if not in number—the pacific interests. How could the immediate contact of bellicose interests not raise the risk of war and cause a corresponding increase in the apparatus of insurance required to cover it? Each time one of these great powers developed or improved its armaments, the others felt compelled to follow suit. Each time a war broke out, by heightening the risk of further ruptures of the peace through the hateful passions and [150] desires for vindication or revenge that it naturally engenders, the apparatus of insurance against that risk was reinforced. Matters have now reached the point that, since the Franco-German War raised the risk to its maximum, armaments have also been brought to the maximum level compatible with each power’s resources, both in personnel and matériel, and with what has been made possible by taxation. The small States—even those whose neutrality seemed to offer protection—have believed, perhaps not without reason, that they could not avoid imitating the great ones. Thus Europe has become a vast armed camp, bristling with formidable fortifications, and maintains in peacetime armies ten times larger than those that formerly were sufficient to shield it from barbarian invasions.

Under this regime of extreme armed peace, it would be, as we shall see, rash to affirm that the chances of peace outweigh the risks of war.

[151]

CHAPTER VII. THE CHANCES OF PEACE AND THE RISKS OF WAR↩

Present state of Europe. — The great powers and the secondary states. — The neutral states. — The European Concert. — That the power to decide on peace or war is concentrated in the hands of the great powers. — Their present division into two groups. — The chances of peace under this regime. — Chances stemming from the risk of loss of government following an unsuccessful war, — from the financial situation of states, — from the rising cost of war and the taxes it requires. — Insufficiency of these brakes to halt the pressure from bellicose interests. — Facilities which the development of credit brings to the action of these interests. — Banks transformed into war treasuries. — Paper money. — Mandatory military service. — Assessment of the power of resistance of peaceful interests. — That these interests have not increased in greater proportion than bellicose interests. — Conversely, that the damage caused by war to the industrial classes has increased in proportion to the progress of industry.

If one wants to understand the chances of peace and the risks of war at the present time, one must examine the political situation of the states that have the power to unleash war, and evaluate the influence [152] that peaceful and bellicose interests exert over the direction of public affairs.

In Europe, the mediation of disputes, annexations, and unifications have successively reduced — as in other branches of human activity — the number of small political establishments in favor of large ones. There were several hundred a century ago; today there remain scarcely twenty. These include, first, the great powers: France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia, and England; and second, the medium or small states: Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway, politically united for foreign relations), Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, the Balkan States, Turkey, and Greece. Among these secondary powers, Belgium and Switzerland form a distinct group of neutral states that are forbidden to make war, except in the case where their neutrality might be violated. In practice, the maintenance of peace in Europe depends exclusively on the great powers. They constitute what has been called the European Concert, and each time a dispute arises between two secondary states, they attempt to reach an agreement to resolve it, and, if necessary, to impose the solution they deem just and useful. At times, they allow conflict to be engaged in, as recently [153] occurred in the case of the Greco-Turkish war, only to intervene to prevent the victor from abusing his victory and to settle the terms of peace. This right of intervention, which they have assumed in the interest of the European community — for it can have no other foundation — they have even exercised upon one of themselves, at the end of the Russo-Turkish war, by revising and modifying the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano. They could have revised the Treaty of Frankfurt in the same way, and it is permissible to regret that they did not.

These great powers, who sovereignly decide questions of peace and war in Europe, are currently divided into two groups: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy form the Triple Alliance; France and Russia constitute the Dual Alliance; England remains isolated. These two alliances were concluded solely in the interest of the mutual defense of the states that are part of them, if one is to believe the formal declarations of their authors; and England’s isolation would itself bear witness, if needed, to the essentially peaceful character of her foreign policy. Let us add that on every occasion the sovereigns and statesmen who direct the affairs of the great powers have solemnly affirmed their firm resolve to preserve peace. Since no one intends [154] to break it, it would seem to be forever guaranteed, and one might ask why these same heads of state continuously work to strengthen the apparatus of war which none of them intends to use, and why they burden their people with the weight of military expenditures by invoking the need for defense, when no one wishes to attack.

But peaceful declarations, however solemn and even sincere they may be, offer only weak guarantees of peace. Was it not after those reassuring words — the Empire means peace — were spoken that the series of wars of the Second Empire began? It is the comparison of the relative strength of bellicose interests and peaceful interests that alone allows us to assess, with some approximation, the chances of peace and the risks of war.

The chances of peace lie first in the interest that the governments themselves may have in maintaining it. The first of these interests is that of their own preservation. If a successful war has the effect of increasing the power and prestige of a government, an unsuccessful war can, as occurred in France, provoke a revolution that topples it. This risk of dispossession, however, is very unequal. In Russia, Germany, [155] Austria-Hungary, and England — where the ruling houses have a centuries-old existence and where considerable interests are tied to their preservation — they currently seem to have nothing to fear from an unfortunate war. It is different in Italy, where the unitary monarchy is of recent date and not firmly rooted, and in France, where the republic is even less so. A more general guarantee of peace would seem to lie in the financial situation of the states, in the weight of their debts and the enormity of the expenditures required by the rising cost of war — in an age when armies are no longer counted in the thousands but in the millions of men, and when they employ matériel whose cost has risen along with its fire power. But experience shows that the additional taxes a war may add to those a nation already bears exert only a weak influence on the decisions of its government. That the increase in taxes does not immediately or materially affect the rulers themselves; it does not reduce the size of the civil list of the sovereigns nor the salaries of the civil and military functionaries. If it inevitably weakens and impoverishes the nation that provides their means of existence, and thus endangers the future of their own descendants, [156] that result occurs only gradually; and even if they vaguely foresee it, would such a consideration be sufficient to halt the pressure of the interests and passions that drive them to war? The insufficiency of the resources currently available to governments for war would, without a doubt, be more effective. But war today finds, in the development of credit institutions and the monetary system of civilized people, extraordinary and ever-ready resources that it lacked in the past. In former times, sovereigns had to go to great lengths to accumulate a “war chest” and to request additional subsidies from their subjects before embarking on a military venture; they could only rarely and at great cost resort to loans. It is no longer so today. Governments no longer need to accumulate a war chest. Only the German government has resorted to this outdated practice, by placing in reserve at the fortress of Spandau a sum of 120 million marks, taken from the 5-billion franc indemnity paid by France. The state banks or the privileged banks place at the service of war far larger sums. Instead of holding in metal only the necessary amount — that is, at most one-third of the value of their [157] banknotes — these banks, run or granted privileges by the state and staffed with a governor loyal to it, accumulate, under the government's open or covert pressure, a metal reserve nearly equal to the value of their banknotes, thereby unnecessarily raising the cost and price of their lending and discount services. [90] In time of war, governments have no qualms about seizing these reserves that they have not bothered to accumulate themselves, by authorizing the banks to suspend specie payments. After exhausting these metal reserves, they may still turn to paper money, either by issuing it directly or by forcing the banks to expand their issuing of money. No doubt these excessive issues cause the depreciation of the currency, but this depreciation only becomes noticeable after paper has completely displaced metal currency; and in the meantime, they can first yield a sum equal to the amount of metal suspended, then another sum equal to the difference in purchasing power between the depreciated paper and the metal it replaces. Finally, governments with solid credit can continue to raise [158] loans even during war, though at higher cost than usual. Thanks to these various expedients, they can avoid increasing taxes — which would surely provoke strong opposition — and in any case would provide only a nearly negligible increase in revenue. The great European powers could thus, in the event of war, immediately obtain resources that can reasonably be estimated at fifty billion francs. On the other hand, universal compulsory military service would instantly furnish them with ten or twelve million soldiers. Insufficient resources in men or money, then, would not be what stops bellicose interests from turning Europe into a vast battlefield.

That being so, the question is what resistance these interests might encounter from the peaceful interests. The factors one must consider in calculating the potential power of this resistance are, first, the size of the peaceful interests; then, the scale of the damage war may cause them — and, therefore, the intensity and extent of public opinion that fear of such damage might generate.

The extraordinary growth of production over the past century has led to a corresponding increase [159] in the population that lives off the product of its capital and labor. But while this population — which is called upon, generation after generation, to bear the burden of war — has grown significantly, so too has the number of civil and military functionaries, to whom war causes no harm and, on the contrary, offers additional benefits, power, and influence. One cannot claim that the ratio between these two social groups, as it existed under the old regime, has changed markedly. If it has changed at all, it is rather to the advantage of the population that lives off the budget, rather than of the one that feeds it.

Yet even if peaceful interests have not increased more than bellicose interests, we shall see that war has become infinitely more damaging to them than it was before the modern expansion of industrial and agricultural markets and the steady transformation of its equipment — in short, that it has become ever more incompatible with the current conditions of existence of the industrious classes.

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CHAPTER VIII. THE CHANCES OF PEACE AND THE RISKS OF WAR (continued)↩

How the damage caused by war, once merely local, has become general. — Disruptions caused by war in the internationalized markets for goods, capital, and labor. — War has become a universal nuisance, but one that is unequal in its effects, as is the resistance of pacific interests. — Peace finds its firmest support in the capitalist class, especially among holders of securities. — The division of the great powers into two blocs is only an uncertain guarantee of peace in Europe. — Peace is no more guaranteed in America or the rest of the world. — The classes interested in maintaining peace have not yet acquired the necessary power to put an end to the state of war.

Since the rise of large-scale industry, [91] and especially since the improvements in land and sea transport, the losses and damages caused by war have spread gradually through every region of the civilized world, which is interconnected and [161] interdependent through the multiple ties of exchange. From being local, these harms have become general.

What was the character of industry until the recent period, when the transformation of its tools greatly increased its productive power? It was, with rare exceptions, extremely localized. The inadequacy and high cost of transportation, combined with a lack of security, limited markets. Foodstuffs, which made up — and still make up — the bulk of human necessities, were generally consumed where they were produced. The foreign trade of even the most industrious nations rarely went beyond secondary or luxury goods, accessible only to the wealthy classes. Barely two centuries ago, the entire commercial value of Europe did not equal that of one of today’s smallest states — Belgium, Holland, or Switzerland. What followed from this localization of production and consumption when war broke out? That nations not involved in the conflict, having only minimal economic relations with the belligerents, felt little impact. Even in countries at war, only the localities [162] where fighting took place suffered significantly from disrupted trade and the supply of provisions. When Louis XIV’s armies ravaged the Palatinate, the rest of Germany barely felt it. This is no longer the case since all nations are now bound together by a dense network of exchanges and loans. It is during this century — especially since the application of steam and electricity to transportation has so vastly expanded industrial markets — that this internationalization of interests has occurred, despite the artificial barriers that protectionism has erected in place of the natural one of distance. At present, the external trade of the world’s civilized nations exceeds 80 billion francs, and the value of loans made by capital-producing nations — England, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, etc. — to those where capital is lacking — Russia, Spain, Italy, North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia — is probably no less. A circulation of labor has also begun to emerge, both between European nations and between Europe and the rest of the globe. In times of peace, this internationalization [163] of goods, capital, and labor proceeds steadily, and all nations benefit. What enormous savings in labor and effort England, for instance, achieves in acquiring life’s necessities by buying over half its food from countries where they are cheapest! And do not those countries, which in return receive goods they could only produce at greater cost, benefit just as much from the exchange? Likewise, countries with abundant capital and where loans are made cheaply, profit by exporting it to places where it is scarce and expensive, while the borrowing nations can found and finance productive enterprises more cheaply and increase their number. The same applies to the import and export of labor. Both importers and exporters of goods, capital, and labor enjoy greater access to the things essential to life, increased wealth, and improved well-being.

But let war break out in any part of this international market, and disruption follows inevitably and spreads [164] throughout the rest. Relations between the warring nations and the others slow or even halt completely, harming both consumers and producers. During the whole of the American Civil War, U.S. cotton stopped arriving in Europe. Lacking this vital raw material, many cotton mills were forced to shut down; thousands of workers in England and elsewhere in Europe lost their means of existence. And this crisis in the cotton industry then reverberated, to varying degrees, across nearly all sectors of production. The income — and hence purchasing power — of entrepreneurs, capitalists, and workers in that industry dropped, forcing them to reduce their consumption of all goods, which in turn reduced the purchasing power of producers overall. In the capital markets, war causes a disruption similar to that seen in markets for goods. Industries whose markets shrink demand less capital or become less able to pay for it. It is true that war generates extraordinary demand which drives up interest rates. [165] But war destroys this capital instead of reproducing it. Had it remained invested in productive industries, it would have contributed to growing wealth. Spent on war, it disappears — yet the need to repay it, with interest and amortization, remains. Thus current and future generations must pay taxes that not only consume part of national income but also slow down the development of the very enterprises that fund them. Finally, war causes the same disruptions and losses in the labor market. It removes multitudes of people from farms and factories to destroy rather than produce — a double loss: the wealth they destroy and the wealth they fail to create.

War thus inflicts upon nations, now bound together by exchange, ever greater losses as their economic ties become more numerous and intimate. When we consider that the most industrially advanced nations — England, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland — rely on imports for the means of subsistence of a [166] growing share of their populations (in England and Belgium, already nearly a third), we see how war, by disrupting the globalized market of production, endangers the livelihoods of millions. In short, under the old industrial system, war was a local nuisance; under the new, it has become a universal one.

Yet it would be an illusion to believe that this nuisance which is inherent in war can effectively restrain bellicose passions and interests. First, it must be noted that the damage caused by war varies widely from country to country. It is much less severe and less apparent in nations where commerce remains largely localized than in those where it has become internationalized. Second, the power of pacific interests to respond — and the influence of the public opinion which is aroused by them — is also highly unequal. Finally, the classes most interested in preserving peace have only a vague and confused idea of the harm war might cause them, and they are especially prone to be swept up in bellicose excitement.

If we ask which class of society best understands its interest in this [167] matter, the answer is undeniably the capitalist class — especially that portion whose wealth is chiefly in securities. This is because war’s harm to them is immediate: it is felt even before war begins through the rapid and almost catastrophic fall in the value of government bonds and industrial shares. Warmongers, patriots, or chauvinists delight in denouncing the selfishness and lack of patriotism of capitalists on such occasions. During the Revolution, they shut down the stock exchange, and under the First Empire, Napoleon tried — in vain — to stop the market’s decline, using Treasury funds to buy annuities and threatening speculators with his wrath. The opinions of the working masses, who live from day to day, have far less influence on government policy than those of the so-called capitalist class. And while the workers are even more interested in peace than capitalists, they are easily stirred by chauvinist passions. Nevertheless, intelligent workers are beginning to understand that laborers need peace even more than capitalists do, and amid the chaff of false and subversive ideas propagated by socialism, opposition to war has crept in as a kernel of good grain.

[168]

Finally, universal military service, by subjecting the wealthy and influential classes to the harshest and cruelest form of servitude, has certainly become an important and active force for peace. But in countries like Germany and Russia, is not the interest of the masses, who pay the blood tax, balanced or even outweighed by that of the far more powerful military hierarchy whose principal market is found in it?

If, then, pacific interests and the opinions they inspire outweigh bellicose ones in England, for example, we cannot say the same of the Continent. People take comfort in the fact that the great continental powers are divided into two blocs of roughly equal strength, as if this ensured peace. But is it really a reliable guarantee? In any case, this division implies the continuation of the heavy burden of the armed peace. Even if the Alsace-Lorraine question were resolved — a most desirable outcome — it would be naïve to believe that such a resolution would lead to disarmament. Other causes of conflict exist and new ones emerge daily: questions in the East and Far East, colonial disputes, etc. And if one of the two alliances were weakened or broken, would this not [169] incite the other to use its strength to provoke war?

Is peace more secure in America? In the South American states, government rests in the hands of an oligarchy which is descended from the conquistadores, which monopolises civil and military positions and which is, as a result interested in increasing their number. Thus a successful war offers them an increase in the size of their market. The populations they rule — Indians, Blacks, mixed-race people, and immigrants — wield no counterbalancing influence. This situation may change over time through immigration and industrial development. But for now, the balance of power clearly favors the maintenance of a state of war.

In the United States, by contrast, pacific interests would seem to be preponderant. Yet during the secession crisis, Northern protectionist interests decisively supported the war, allying themselves with politicians who, like them, faced diminished prospects if the Southern states seceded. Though they have not yet succeeded in increasing the number of size of the army and navy, they have raised military spending to nearly the levels of [170] Europe’s most militarized states, by granting pensions to the more or less genuine veterans of the Civil War, the level of which instead of decreasing is increasing as death thins the ranks of the generation who took part in this war. [92] These pensions have become mere political currency for them. Toward Europe — and especially England — American politicians routinely adopt an arrogant and hostile stance. It is not for lack of trying on their part that the Venezuela and Bering Sea fisheries disputes did not end in war.

Even now, they are trying to rally public opinion in favor of coastal fortifications and naval expansion. Though the class of politicians is a tiny minority, the powerful party organisation is shared among them and, in spite of their struggle to seize control of the power it has, they have an interest in common, which is to increase the budget from which they make their living. This class, we say, makes up for its small numbers with its unscrupulous activity, and it finds zealous allies among the protectionist interests whenever a dispute arises between the Union and a country whose goods compete with domestic industry. Thus, [171] just as in the political situation in Europe, America offers no firm guarantees of peace.

We need only mention the current state and tendencies of the Asian and African powers. Russia in northern Asia, England and France in the south, now joined by Germany, possess overwhelming dominance, constantly expanding at the expense of native states. The Tartar conquest in the 17th century, the wars that opened Chinese ports, and the Sino-Japanese War all show how little resistance China could offer European domination. Even Japan is too weak to halt this inevitable spread across the Asian continent. In Africa, native people are even less able to resist white invasion. And as in Asia, the division of vast territories between European powers remains a permanent source of conflict.

What conclusion should we draw from this survey of the political state of civilized nations in regard to peace or war? That in all of these states, whatever their form of government — whether it be absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, [172] or republic — the management of public affairs remains in the hands of a class which is interested in the persistence of the state of war and of the enormous and costly apparatus of destruction which it requires; and that the multitude, whose interest lies in establishing a permanent regime which can guarantee the peace, has not yet acquired the influence needed to make governments do this.

Yet the state of war takes other forms beyond just that of militarism. It appears — driven by the same self-interest, if by different means — in protectionism, statism, and socialism. A brief analysis of these modes of invading other people’s property will provide the proof of this.

[173]

CHAPTER IX. THE OTHER FORMS OF THE STATE OF WAR. PROTECTIONISM, STATISM, AND SOCIALISM↩

Various modes of acquiring wealth. — Protectionism. — The harm it inflicts on domestic consumers and foreign producers. — That it proceeds by way of confiscation and its effects are analogous to those of ordinary war. — That it provides a partial and immediate benefit to protected interests at the expense of the general and long-term interest of the civilized community. — Statism and Socialism. — The harms they cause and the dangers they pose to societies. — What these various forms of the state of war cost the industrious classes.

War consists of the use of force to acquire the things necessary for life and well-being, whether its purpose be, as in primitive times, cannibalism and pillage, or, as in a more advanced stage, the conquest of territory and the subjugation of its population in order to obtain the means of subsistence—in other words, wealth—furnished by that conquest and subjugation in the form of forced labor and taxes paid in kind or in money. So long as war was the necessary tool [174] for the production of security, [93] this method of using force to acquire wealth was, as we have seen, fully justified. It ceased to be so once civilized nations acquired productive and destructive powers that put them out of reach of predatory people. In this new state of things, war imposes taxes on the classes that employ their capital and labor in production—taxes for which no service compensates. We shall now see that the same is true of the methods of acquiring wealth through the use of the organized force of the State. Everywhere, the class that holds power over this force has used it to protect its particular interests at the expense of the general interest of the nation and the civilized community. This protection takes the form of an annual tribute levied on the general stock of life’s necessities, as in the case of protectionism, or the appropriation or confiscation of the tools used to produce them, as in the case of statism and socialism. But in both cases, those who abuse—or intend to abuse—the power of the State to “conquer” wealth never fail to justify their actions by appealing to the interest of the very nation they are plundering and, if need be, of humanity itself, which they would plunge back into barbarism. A brief analysis of protectionism, [175] statism, and socialism will show us the worth of this justification for these pale copies of militarism.

I. Protectionism — All governments surround the territories which are subject to their domination with a ring of customs houses; they maintain an army of customs officers who are tasked with collecting duties according to a tariff that has two contradictory aims: the first, to provide the highest possible revenue—these are fiscal duties; the second, to prevent or restrict the importation of a more or less extensive range of products—these are protective duties; sometimes prohibitions are even added to forbid entirely the entry of the targeted goods. Customs duties are purely fiscal when they apply to items not produced in the country, and both fiscal and protective—which is the case for the majority—when they aim to shield domestic products from foreign competition.

Let us set aside the fiscal aim of customs duties; let us simply note that the English tariff, by taxing only a dozen articles that have no domestic equivalents, is as productive as most protective tariffs, although the latter [176] apply to thousands of articles. Let us consider at whose expense and to whose benefit the protectionist regime operates.

It immediately strikes two groups of interests: those of domestic consumers and those of foreign producers.

The tax or burden it imposes on domestic consumers consists in the difference between the price they are forced to pay for protected domestic goods and the price they would pay under a regime of free trade. On staple goods of general consumption, the price increase resulting from the protection of wheat alone exceeds 500 million francs in France: for all protected goods combined, it certainly rises to several billion. And this is only the current surcharge. For the protectionist regime, by restricting the markets of all industries, impedes their progress and thus the reduction of their costs of production.

Along with domestic consumers, protectionism harms foreign industries that produce the goods those consumers demand. Two cases may arise when a protective tariff is introduced or raised. Either the foreign industry had not yet contributed [177] to the supply of national consumption, in which case it is harmed only in its potential development; or—and this is the general case, which usually motivates the enactment or increase of a protective tariff—it does contribute to that supply. In this case, the protective tariff inflicts a real loss: that which results from the partial or total confiscation of its clientele in favor of domestic industry. Suppose its share in supplying the nation amounts to 100 million francs, and its goods are suddenly hit with a duty or a duty increase of 25% ad valorem, so that the price rises by a quarter: its market will inevitably shrink, both due to the drop in consumption caused by the higher price, and due to the domestic protected industry capturing part of the supply. The resulting loss from these two factors will be more or less severe depending on how necessary the taxed article is and how capable the domestic industry is of producing it. On importats worth 100 million francs, the loss will amount to 10 or 20 million francs, and it will increase as the domestic industry, stimulated by the bounty of [178] protection, grows; but this uncompensated expropriation of a share of their foreign clientele will translate—whatever the amount—into a drop in profits for the affected foreign industrialists. It will ruin some of them and deprive their workers of wages and employment until they manage to find work in other branches of production. If one assumes—and this estimate is at least very close to reality—that the creation of one million francs in products provides income to one thousand individuals, entrepreneurs and workers, then a 20 million franc decrease in exports deprives 20,000 families of their means of existence, thereby impoverishing the nation to which they belong.

On the other hand—and this explains the favor enjoyed by the protectionist regime and the fervor with which, in countries where domestic production relies to a significant degree on imports, farmers and industrialists producing the same goods clamor for protective duties—it is because protection immediately yields extra profits for them and even enables them at first to amass great fortunes. [94] So if the foreign industry loses, the domestic one gains; if [179] the former provides fewer profits and wages to its partners, entrepreneurs and workers, the latter provides more to its own, and protected industrialists never fail to boast of having enriched the nation by enriching themselves.

It is true that consumers, having to pay more for protected goods, can no longer buy the same quantity of other goods, leading to reduced output in the industries that provide those other goods, and thus less profit and wages. But to this, protectionists reply that the price increase is only temporary; that protective duties, by attracting the spirit of enterprise and capital to the protected industry, bring about advances that lower production costs; and that domestic competition soon forces market prices down to reflect these lower costs. If there remains a long-term difference between the prices of protected domestic goods and those that consumers could buy from abroad under a regime of free trade, the deprivation inflicted on consumers and the harm caused to other sectors by their reduced purchasing power is, they say, amply compensated—in terms of the general interest of the nation— [180] by the creation or growth of an industry that offers the population new opportunities to employ its capital and labor and thereby increases its overall means of existence. By confiscating from foreign industry the market it had built and transferring it to domestic industry, the nation visibly grows in wealth and power, while foreign nations grow poorer and weaker—and this is a double benefit.

But when we wish to judge the value of an economic or other system, we must not limit ourselves to its partial and immediate results; we must examine its general and long-term consequences. [95] If we were to look only at the immediate effects of a spendthrift who squanders his capital on extravagance, we would no doubt find that he increases his present enjoyments and helps along the businesses that cater to them—but if we consider the future as well, we will see, on one hand, that if he has increased his present pleasures, it is at the cost of his future welfare, and that the poverty awaiting him in old age will tilt the balance of pleasure and pain against him; and on the other hand, that if his spending has helped certain branches of industry, [181] it has made capital necessary for production scarcer and more expensive, to the detriment of all.

The same can be said of the protectionist system. Though it provides a partial and immediate benefit, it causes general and long-term harm to all members of the civilized community, in their dual roles as consumers and partners in production. It suffices, to be convinced of this, to cast a glance at the later consequences of its application.

Industries in the countries that have one after the other adopted the protectionist system fall into two very distinct groups: those capable of defending their domestic market against foreign competition—and which demonstrate it by gaining clients abroad, in countries without tariffs to shield them—and those that could not survive without the safeguard of customs duties. Now what has happened as the protectionist system has spread? It has encouraged weak industries everywhere and discouraged strong ones—those best suited to the country’s soil and climate and to the aptitudes of its population—by preventing them from expanding as much as they would have under a regime of free trade. Suppose the system succeeds completely in its goal of closing off each country to foreign industries that compete [182] with its own—what would be the final outcome? It would be to reduce all branches of production to serving only the national market and thus to shrink the market of the strongest industries while expanding that of the weakest. Hence there is a twofold harm: first, to the consumer, consisting in: 1) the difference between the prices he must pay for the goods of the weakest domestic industries and the prices he would pay for the same goods from the strongest foreign industries; 2) another, less visible but no less real, difference in the prices he pays for the goods of the strongest domestic industries compared to what he would pay if their market were not artificially restricted and they could make greater use of economies of scale and better equipment. Second, for the partners in production—the entrepreneurs and workers—in the entire civilized community, another harm arises from the general decline in consumer purchasing power, which is the natural consequence of artificially inflated prices. A decline in purchasing power entails a decline in productive capacity: the final outcome of a generalized protectionist system would be a reduction in both production and consumption.

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To these harms which are inherent in protectionism must be added those resulting from the instability of protective tariffs. Every time a nation changes its tariff—either raising or lowering duties, and such changes are constant—it causes a disturbance [96] in markets, with some contracting and others expanding, and a series of crises arising from the shift of part of these markets from one country to another. Hence there is an ever-present risk of ruin for entrepreneurs, of unemployment for workers, and the necessity for insurance against this risk, in the form of higher payments required by both capital and labor, which raises the cost of goods and reduces the ability to purchase them.

Lastly, we must mention—if only in passing, despite its deleterious effect on national morality—the self-serving cooperation of politicians in building a system of protection. Protectionists need politicians’ support to obtain the passage of tariffs that aim to—and instantly do—increase their profits. Politicians need the support of protectionists to secure or renew their mandate which is the foundation of the powers of the nation, and thus to enjoy all the material and moral benefits which this mandate brings. [184] From this comes bartering in kind, to which in new countries like the United States, where politicians and industrialists are not deterred by the outdated moral scruples of the Old World, is added a cash payment intended to cover the election expenses of pro-protectionist candidates. This traffic in votes and laws does not, as we have just seen, help increase the wealth of nations, and it is doubtful that it raises their moral standards either.

II. Statism. — Just as protectionism aims to increase the profits of a more or less numerous group of producers by confiscating the clientele of their foreign competitors, statism likewise aims to increase the resources of the State and the influence of those who govern it by taking control of branches of labor that belong to the domain of private industry. Sometimes the State seizes them for a purely fiscal purpose, that is to raise the price of their products for its own benefit—as in France with the monopoly on tobacco and matches; sometimes, on the contrary, as in the case of education, it aims to lower the price of the services it takes over in order to bring minds under its control, and in such cases, it operates at a loss. Under the influence of causes we have [185] analyzed elsewhere, [97] the productive capacity of the State being naturally inferior to that of private industry, the expansion of statism leads to an artificial rise in the cost of goods or services, whether the costs of production of state-run industries are covered directly through increased prices or indirectly through taxation. This is a price increase which is analogous to that caused by protectionism, and it produces the same consequences: a reduction in purchasing and productive power, and the general impoverishment of the nation.

III. Socialism. — Just as protectionism uses the law to confiscate the clientele of foreign industry for the benefit of domestic industry, and statism to lay hands on the branches of private industry that suit the State, socialism—which, rightly considered, is merely an extension of statism—aims to use the same method to transfer to the State the entirety of the means of production, thereby making it the universal producer and distributor of wealth. But whereas protectionism and statism are already in full operation, socialism is still in its period of incubation and propaganda. Since it can only achieve its goal by first [186] seizing the power to make laws, and consequently by dispossessing existing governments, the latter are obliged to insure themselves against this risk. Under certain circumstances, when the invasion of socialism appears particularly imminent, the premium on this insurance suddenly rises to an extraordinary height. It is the "red specter"—that is, the more or less well-founded fear of a socialist revolution—that gave rise in France to the coup d'état of December 2nd and the restoration of imperial dictatorship. [98] At all times, it requires the maintenance of an expensive apparatus of defense against the invasion of internal barbarism, which today is more threatening than external barbarism.

The father of the main sect of socialism, Karl Marx, strove to demonstrate that labor creates a surplus value of half, which is surreptitiously taken from it by capital. One could, with greater accuracy, demonstrate that labor suffers a negative value of half, owing to the burdens imposed upon it by militarism, protectionism, statism, and socialism.

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CHAPTER X. THE PEACE QUESTION: HOW IT CAN BE SOLVED↩

Progress that has made the solution of the peace question possible. — How the establishment of a collective body to guarantee the security of nations would eliminate most of the risk of war. — That the right of war, from which this risk comes, was originally absolute. — The burdens and obligations it imposed on neutrals. — That it has been steadily limited under the influence of the interests of neutrals and even belligerents. — That it has nonetheless had increasingly harmful effects on neutrals. — That since war has ceased to be useful, they have acquired the right to intervene to prevent it. — Historical overview of the right of intervention. — That it was first exercised to maintain the balance of powers. — The Holy Alliance. — The European Concert. — Two modes of exercising the right of intervention. — The League of Neutrals. — The general association of civilized States. — Consequence of this progress: enormous reduction in the cost of guaranteeing nations' external security. — Why its realization cannot be expected soon.

If, as we have attempted to demonstrate, war was the necessary factor for the production of security [99] — without which the human species could not have risen to civilization — if the progress it [188] fostered in both the art of destruction and that of production definitively protected civilized people from the threat of destruction or regression caused by barbarian invasions, if it has been replaced in its role as a driver of progress by a more effective and less costly form of competition, if it has now become incompatible with the new conditions of existence created by the development of industry and the internationalization of trade among civilized societies, if, after having been useful, it has become harmful to them, and if it is within their power, if not to eliminate this nuisance completely in the present state of the world, at least to reduce it to a minimum by ceasing to wage war among themselves, then the solution of the peace question no longer appears to be a mere utopia — it becomes the most desirable of realities.

Defined within these limits, the peace question implies only the elimination of the portion of the risk of war related to the relations between civilized States. But this portion is by far the principal one, and it is the one that necessitates at least nine-tenths of the vast apparatus of insurance that consumes a growing share of the revenues of civilized people and continually increases the burden of their debts.

Suppose, indeed, that the great and small States [189] belonging to our civilization in Europe and the rest of the world no longer had to fear attacks from anyone except those people who still escape their domination but who are notoriously incapable of offering serious resistance; suppose that peace were established under the guarantee of a collective power which was superior to all the individual powers within the vast community that already occupies most of the globe — it is evident that the external risk against which it would have to be protected would be minimal, and that a greatly reduced apparatus of insurance would be enough to cover it.

The question is, therefore, first, whether it is possible to establish a collective body that could securely and permanently guarantee peace among civilized nations, and second, in what this insurance mechanism of peace should consist.

We shall see that the solution to the peace question, remote as it may seem, has long been prepared by the steady limitation of the right of war.

Founded on the interests of warlike firms — which, as long as war was the necessary factor for establishing security, aligned with the general interest of the species — the right of war began by being absolute and unlimited. At first, and [190] for many centuries, the customs that make up the law of nations placed the vanquished entirely at the mercy of the victors; and even to the present day they have imposed on neutrals, in relation to belligerents, far more obligations than those placed on belligerents in relation to neutrals. This was because war was the industry of the stronger firms and provided their means of existence, either through destruction and pillage or through the subjugation and exploitation of the weaker. Any restriction on the right of war over the lives and property of the defeated, any interference in the full exercise of that right by third parties, any intervention on behalf of one or other of the belligerents, was condemned — just as today interference with the freedom of industry and honest participation in competition would be. For firms that lived by war had a vested interest, on the one hand, in collecting all the profits that were in its power to get, and on the other hand, in preventing the balance of forces and the chances of success in battle from being upset by the intervention or assistance of a third party — which would have interfered with all their expectations and upset all the calculations that led them to undertake their campaign of plunder or conquest. Nor should we forget that these third parties, [191] these spectators of a war, often became participants. Thus we see the rationale behind human sacrifices offered to the gods of ancient times, the burdens and obligations imposed on neutrals — and accepted by them without resistance: prohibitions against providing belligerents with military personnel or matériel (including food supplies); commercial restrictions such as the blockade of ports and coasts; bans on carrying enemy goods on neutral ships, or neutral goods on enemy ships, etc., etc., all under penalty of confiscation or indemnities in proportion to the damage caused. These burdens and obligations, moreover, were of little cost at a time when trade rarely crossed national borders and when the interests that mandated such rules vastly outweighed those harmed by them.

It was the interest of the belligerents themselves — and later that of the neutrals — that led to the steady limitation of the right of war, until finally the general interest of civilization now demands its suppression.

Instead of massacring their prisoners and [192] offering them as sacrifices to the gods, the belligerents eventually found it more advantageous to ransom or exchange them, taking into account differences of rank or status. Similarly, their interest led them to spare the lives and property of non-combatants and to refrain from sacking undefended towns, for experience had shown that their own supply lines were more secure and their operations less hindered when they refrained from exercising the full brutality of the right of war against unarmed civilians in an invaded country. Still, it must be noted that whenever belligerents see more advantage in killing prisoners, destroying private property, or looting, they do not hesitate to do so. Even today, this remains the typical behavior of so-called "civilized" people when waging war against those they claim to be bringing the benefits of civilization.

The burdens and obligations imposed on neutrals under the right of war were likewise eased as the growth of international trade made them more damaging. The nations most affected by these restrictions banded together repeatedly to demand reform, and they obtained it on [193] several points: belligerents renounced the right to seize neutral goods on enemy ships and enemy goods on neutral ships; blockades were only recognized if they were effective; and the list of items considered contraband of war was somewhat curtailed. [100] Moreover, the internationalization of credit, following that of trade, has made in large part null or unenforceable many of the traditional restrictions placed on neutrals in giving aid to belligerents : while neutrals may still be forbidden from selling rifles, cannons, and explosives to warring States, it is now practically impossible to prevent them from participating in the loans that provide the capital with which those rifles, cannons, and explosives are produced or purchased. [101]

Despite these reforms, the exercise of the right of war has become increasingly harmful to neutrals. We have already noted the damage inflicted by the American Civil War on populations dependent [194] for their means of existence on the cotton industry, and the general economic crisis triggered by the Franco-Prussian War. Should a conflict erupt between the powers of the Triple and Double Alliances, neutrals around the world would feel its aftershocks. Losses from the disruption of trade and the fall in asset values would amount to billions of francs, and millions of entrepreneurs, workers, and employees would be left without their means of existence.

Now, if war has ceased to be useful to the civilized community — ever since the combined advances of military and industrial technologies have shielded it from barbarian invasion — and if the growing harm it causes to neutrals can no longer be justified by any necessity or general utility (for every war between civilized people is a matter of choice and can be avoided), then the neutrals have a right either to demand compensation for their losses or to intervene and form coalitions to prevent the war that causes them.

This right of intervention and of forming coalitions has not only been exercised by neutrals seeking to reform the burdens imposed on their trade. It has also — and continues to be — exercised by those powers [195] strong enough to assert it, when they judge that war and its consequences run counter to their interests. Originally, it was invoked to prevent a single State from acquiring overwhelming power that would endanger the independence and security of the others; it was applied against the expanding dominance of the House of Austria, and later against that of Napoleonic France; it served as the basis of the Holy Alliance and, more recently, the intermittent and fragile institution known as the European Concert.

The powers that have exercised and still exercise the right of intervention have not, to be sure, always concerned themselves with whether their particular interest aligned with the general interest of the civilized community. Interventions and coalitions formed to preserve the European balance of power against an excessive aggrandizement of one power were motivated solely by the interests of the powers who joined the coalition. The Holy Alliance, though initially inspired by religious and humanitarian sentiments, soon degenerated into a mutual insurance pact against revolution. The European Concert, which includes only the great powers and excludes the small ones, intervenes less to prevent war than to revise the terms of peace treaties deemed dangerously favorable [196] to the victor, as in the revision of the Treaty of San Stefano or in the settlement of peace between Turkey and Greece. Yet whatever motives drive those who exercise it, the right of intervention is ultimately based on the shared interest of nations, and it is easy to conceive that it could one day entirely override the right of war — when it becomes clear that war among civilized people is definitively contrary to the general and long-term interest of civilization.

This progress may take place in one of two ways: either through the association and intervention of those nations most committed to peace, via the formation of a League of Neutrals in Europe that would align itself with either the Triple or the Double Alliance should either initiate war — thereby making war impossible; [102] or through a general agreement among all powers to submit their disputes to a tribunal whose judgments would be enforced by a collective force stronger than the party (or parties) against which it ruled, and which could compel obedience if necessary. [197] In either case — and in all likelihood the creation of a permanent peace association would first emerge from the initiative of a League of Neutrals — the immense military establishments maintained in anticipation of war between civilized States could be drastically reduced to the scale necessary to defend the external security of the civilized community, implying a decrease of nine-tenths or more of the total war budgets. [103]

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This is the progress that the increasingly evident incompatibility between war and the new conditions of civilized life will eventually impose. But does that mean this progress is likely to be achieved as soon as peace advocates would hope? If we examine and compare the power of the class directly interested in maintaining the state of war and its costly apparatus, with that of the much larger, but politically less influential classes that have a stake in peace and disarmament, we are sadly [199] forced to conclude that only the horrors of another great war will finally enable the peaceful interests to triumph — and compel governments to establish a true institution of peace.

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CHAPTER XI. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE ELIMINATION OF THE RISK OF WAR WITHIN THE CIVILIZED COMMUNITY — CONCLUSION↩

Other advances resulting from the elimination of the risk of war among civilized people. — Limitation of the sovereign right of governments over the lives and property of their subjects. — Reform of the tax system becomes possible. — Linking taxes to their purpose. — Abolition of the regime of subjection. — Historical justification for this regime. — Why it has continued to exist. — Consequences of lifting the political servitude it imposes. — Moral progress resulting from the disappearance of the necessities on which raison d’état and its practices were based. — Obstacles to solving the problem of peace. — Conflict between the particular and immediate interest of ruling classes and the general and long-term interest of nations. — Analogy of their situation to that of workers confronted by the invention of a new machine. — How their opposition can and will finally be overcome. — The two periods in the life of war. — Its grandeur and its decline.

It has often been observed that every advance achieved in one branch of human activity generates others, by providing a science or an industry with [201] ideas, tools, or materials essential to its further development. The day when civilized nations replace the costly apparatus of isolated guarantees of their external security with an economical apparatus of collective guarantee, other advances, which are currently deemed chimerical, may be realized in their political institutions and in their fiscal systems.

It will become possible, first of all, to limit the sovereign right that governments have not ceased to possess over the lives and property of their subjects. This right is based on the risk that war poses to the existence of nations. So long as this risk remains evident and unlimited, it is necessary that governments possess the likewise unlimited right to impose on their subjects all burdens and sacrifices, including that of life itself, that the common safety requires. But once a system of collective guarantees of the security of the civilized community replaces the system of isolated guarantees of individual states, and the risk of war consists only in possible attacks by people who remain outside the domain of civilization, then the insurance of this risk will require only a reduced premium, nearly fixed and capable of further reduction as the domination of civilized people extends. In this new state of affairs, the unlimited [202] right of governments over the lives and property of their subjects will cease to have a rationale. The guarantee of external security — which today may demand virtually limitless sacrifices in the case of a war among civilized people — will now require only a limited amount, and the power to tax may be reduced to this limit. Then, the system of taxes which are disconnected from the services which are provided — which those who impose and those who pay them do not understand — a true black hole from which governments draw until the taxpayers' resources are extinguished, may be replaced by a system of contributions tied to each specific service, starting with the service of external security, which can now be evaluated and which implies only reductions rather than increases in expenditure. [104] If one considers that this service currently absorbs the largest share of public revenues in most civilized nations for the upkeep of their defensive and offensive apparatus, and for the interest and amortization of war-related debt, one may grasp the enormous savings they will be able to achieve in this regard. Moreover, linking contributions to their purpose will allow taxpayers to judge whether the premium they pay for the guarantee of their security and other collective services provided by the government is proportional to [203] the value of those services, as it is with goods consumed individually. This will presumably mark the end of statism and protectionism.

Secondly, another, an even greater advance will become possible: we refer to the abolition of the old regime of subjection, which still persists even among people who consider themselves the most free. This regime of political appropriation was in fact — and has continued to be, in republics as well as in monarchies — a necessity inherent to the state of war. It dates back, as we have seen, to the era when the advances that gave rise to agriculture and the earliest trades made the regular and permanent exploitation of populations incapable of protecting themselves more advantageous than pillage. The stronger varieties of the human race subjugated the weaker; they founded establishments or states, and lived off the net product of the labor of the appropriated population, which they collected in the form of forced labor and dues in kind or money. This property (political appropriation), which the strongest had conquered and which provided their means of subsistence, was the one they had the highest interest in defending and expanding. They thus found themselves in competition with others, and we have also seen that this competition [204] helped to bring about, among other advances, the emancipation of the subjugated classes. These, in turn, dispossessed their former masters, at least in those countries where their power had grown especially strong through the development of their industry. After having been the property of a caste or a house, the state became the property of the nation, along with all sovereign rights, including the right of war. But lacking the ability to govern the state themselves, the nation constituted or agreed to a government responsible for ensuring its security and providing it with various other services. As the right of war continued to survive under this new regime and in order to remain unlimited, governments had to insure against the still unlimited risk of war. Hence the need to preserve and strengthen their offensive and defensive power as much as possible, and consequently to concentrate their forces and prevent any separation or secession of any portion of the populations that supplied them with resources. This was a form of servitude [105] imposed on each constituent part of the nation in the interest of the whole. But suppose that the right of war and, with it, the risk of war comes to be limited; that the security of the civilized community is guaranteed by a collective power superior to any individual power — then the [205] situation changes: the security of the weaker nations becomes just as guaranteed as that of the stronger; as a result, no government can any longer invoke the necessity of the common good to prohibit one or another part from separating from the whole in order to constitute an autonomous nation or to unite with another. One may even imagine that under this regime of free political association, [106] nations will adopt a mode of organizing their collective services analogous to that of the industries that provide for the individual consumption of their members, and that competition will function in the same way to improve quality and reduce cost. [107]

Finally, if the security of civilized states, large or small, were equally guaranteed by a collective power — if they no longer had to protect themselves against the risk of war with one another — they could renounce the underhanded practices, such as corruption and espionage, to which they resort either to ensure their defense or to prepare for aggression. Likewise, if external security were guaranteed, and if the regime of free association [108] came to replace that of imposed association and subjection, political policing would lose its justification, and the morality of the state would cease to be in flagrant contradiction with the morality it is charged with enforcing.

However, one cannot expect that the class [206] which is immediately — if not permanently — interested in preserving and perpetuating the state of war will willingly accept this progress that threaten its means of existence. In this respect, its situation and outlook differs little from those of workers to whom the introduction of a new machine causes present harm, even though it will ultimately improve their condition. Had spinning or weaving workers had the power to prevent the use of mechanical looms, we would still be using the spinning wheel and hand looms. If stagecoach operators and innkeepers had been able to veto advances in transportation, we would still be waiting for the railroads. Now, the ruling class of the states possesses the power that those workers, coachmen, and innkeepers lacked. It can, at will, obstruct the progress it deems contrary to its interest, and we must not delude ourselves into thinking it will voluntarily allow the general and long-term interest of the nation — though its own is included therein — to prevail over its particular and immediate interest.

Therefore, if the multitudes who bear the crushing burden of the old machinery of the state of war wish to reform it, they must first become conscious of the harms and burdens [207] it inflicts upon them and must learn to trace them back to their true cause; and then they must win over the power of public opinion which is capable of overcoming all resistance. This reform may, as a result, be delayed for a long time — but it is nonetheless inevitable, because peace is the necessary condition of existence for present and future societies, just as war was for the societies of the past.

As long as war was the indispensable factor for the production of security [109] and the vehicle of progress, it was rightly regarded as the highest and noblest expression of human activity: warriors were the object of the people’s enthusiastic admiration and, in distant antiquity, were even counted among the gods. War was then in its period of grandeur. But since it has completed its task of destroying obstacles to the establishment of security, and since it has been replaced as a vehicle of progress by another form of competition, more effective and less costly; since, in short, it has ceased to be useful, it has lost its prestige, and all attempts to restore it have failed. After its period of grandeur, war has entered its period of decline, and it is destined to disappear, giving way to the peace it helped make possible.

A. p.64 — The Dangerous Zones of a Battlefield↩

Where does a battlefield begin today, and where does it end? To these questions, Colonel Cherfils gives the following answer:

The battlefield ends at the enemy’s own line and begins where death begins — at the effective range of the cannon, 3,000 meters.

The cannon can reach up to 5,000 meters, but visibility has a closer limit; and the terrain, with its cover and irregularities, further shortens this first boundary of the battlefield.

At 3,000 meters, the three weapons of destruction come into play successively: the cannon, the rifle, morale; they thus divide the battlefield into three successive zones:

1. The zone of the cannon, from 3,000 to 1,500 meters. At 1,500 meters, in fact, begins the effective range of the infantry rifle. It is therefore the cannon's task to operate in this first zone, and when one enters the rifle zone, the cannon must have already triumphed over the enemy’s artillery, so as to prepare the destructive action of the rifle.
2. The zone of the rifle, from 1,500 to 700 meters. This [212] second zone is thus logically limited to the decisive range of the rifle, which is 700 meters. The line of approach, of attrition along the whole battlefront, stops there.

Beyond that point, you are dead if you go there! ...

3. From 700 meters to 0 meters. And yet, one must go there. Nothing is accomplished without it. One can logically cross this zone of death only after disarming the enemy. For that, he must be crushed under a rain of fire and his morale so shaken that, when he sees the tight, silent, threatening masses advancing upon him, their bayonets flashing, he has no choice but to throw down his arms and flee. That is why, after the terrible preparation that represents the last word of the weapons of destruction, there is room only for the moral weapon. This is the zone of the assault, the march into death, for which one needs bared chests and hearts of iron…

B. p.74 — Peace Societies↩

At all times, the propagation of peace has been undertaken by enlightened and benevolent apostles of religion and philosophy, but it is only in recent times that associations have been specifically established for this purpose. It was at the end of the war that had devastated the world at the beginning of our century that the first Peace Society was founded in the United States. The idea was first suggested in a pamphlet entitled Solemn Review of the Custom of War (1814). This pamphlet, which appeared anonymously, was authored by Dr. Noah [213] Worcester. In August 1815, the “New York Society of Friends of Peace” was instituted by a small number of benevolent men belonging to the Quaker sect. In the following December, the Peace Society of Ohio and that of Massachusetts were successively founded. In 1816, the movement that had just been born among the worthy Quakers of the American Union spread to England. On July 14 of that year, the “Society for the Establishment of Permanent and Universal Peace” was founded in London.

These various associations set themselves the principal aim “of spreading tracts and addresses demonstrating that war is incompatible with the spirit of Christianity and the true interests of humanity, and indicating the most effective means of maintaining a permanent and universal peace on the basis of Christian principles.” We quote the exact terms of their programs. The resources of the London Society during its first year amounted to £212 sterling. In that same year, its committee distributed 32,000 tracts and 14,000 addresses; it also established regular communication with the societies of New York and Massachusetts. The following year, the number of printed materials distributed reached 100,000; several of these texts were translated into French, Spanish, and German, and distributed on the continent. The Massachusetts Society also succeeded in sending thousands of tracts into France, Russia, India, and the Sandwich Islands. By 1820, it counted no fewer than 12 branches, and 15 similar associations were operating in the United States. In 1821, the Christian Moral Society was instituted in Paris, partly to propagate the idea of peace. In 1830, Count de Sellon established a Peace Society in Geneva, which undertook the publication of a journal titled Archives of the Peace Society in [214] Geneva. For several years already, the London association had been publishing the Herald of Peace. The propagation of the idea of peace thus continued little by little, though without gaining wide notoriety, when in 1843 the peace societies of both worlds resolved to hold a universal convention in London to give more unity to the movement and greater public visibility. This convention, made up of delegates from the peace societies, met in July 1843 under the presidency of Mr. Charles Hindley; Mr. de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, president of the Christian Moral Society, was in attendance. The members of the convention decided that an address should be sent to all civilized governments, urging them to introduce into their peace or alliance treaties a clause by which they would commit, in the case of disagreement, to accept the mediation of a disinterested third party. This address was presented to King Louis-Philippe, who warmly received the delegates of the congress. “Peace,” he told them, “is the need of all people, and, thank God, war today costs far too much to be entered into lightly, and I am persuaded that the day will come when, in the civilized world, war will no longer be waged.” In January 1848, the same address was presented to the President of the United States by Mr. Beckevith, secretary of the Central Peace Society of America. The President remarked to the delegates that the natural tendency of popular governments was to maintain peace. “Let the people be educated,” he said, “and let them enjoy their rights, and they will demand peace as indispensable to their prosperity.”

In 1848 (September 20, 21, and 22), a second convention, this time taking the name of the Peace Congress, was held in Brussels under the presidency of Mr. Aug. Visschers. Various resolutions relating to arbitration, the establishment of a congress of nations, etc., were adopted by [215] the Brussels Congress. These resolutions were presented on the following October 30 to Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister; Lord John Russell greatly applauded the idea behind the creation of the peace congress, and he declared that, in the case of a disagreement with a foreign nation, if that nation proposed referring it to arbitration, the government would always feel duty-bound to consider such a proposal. The members of the Brussels Congress arranged to meet again the following year in Paris. In the meantime, Mr. Richard Cobden presented a motion to the British Parliament, during the session of June 12, 1849, seeking to establish the principle of arbitration in future treaties between England and other nations. This motion received a minority of 79 votes out of 288. The congress held in Paris the following August (22, 23, and 24 August 1849), under the presidency of Mr. Victor Hugo, and largely organized through the efforts of Mr. Joseph Garnier, one of the secretaries, was particularly brilliant; more than 500 Englishmen, about fifty Americans (some of whom came from the most remote western states), not to mention other foreign delegates and a large French audience, attended. Messrs. Victor Hugo, Richard Cobden, Emile de Girardin, Henry Vincent of London, and several other distinguished speakers addressed the congress. In 1850, the friends of peace gathered again in Frankfurt under the presidency of Councillor Jaup. Finally, the last congress, organized by two tireless apostles of peace, Messrs. Elihu Burritt and Henry Richard, was held in London under the presidency of the illustrious Dr. Brewster. This congress took place on July 22, 23, and 24, 1851, at the same time as the Universal Exposition — that other congress of peace! Twenty-two members of the British Parliament, several members of the French Legislative Assembly and Council of State [216] attended, either in person or through letters of endorsement; six major religious denominations and two municipal corporations were officially represented; thirty-one delegates from the Peace Societies of America, not to mention other visitors, had crossed the Atlantic to attend. More than three thousand spectators filled the vast hall of Exeter Hall during its sessions. We reproduce the resolutions adopted at this last congress of the friends of universal peace; they offer a succinct idea of the goal they pursue and the means they employ to reach it:

“1. It is the duty of all ministers of religion, youth educators, writers, and publicists to use all their influence to propagate the principles of peace, and to root out from human hearts the hereditary hatreds, political and commercial jealousies that have been the source of so many disastrous wars;

“2. In cases of disagreement that cannot be amicably resolved, it is the duty of governments to submit to the arbitration of competent and impartial judges;

“3. Standing armies which, amid declarations of peace and friendship, keep nations in a state of perpetual anxiety and irritation, have been the cause of unjust wars, of the suffering of populations, and of financial strain upon states; the congress emphasizes the need to begin a course of disarmament;

“4. The congress condemns public loans whose purpose is to wage war or maintain ruinous military armaments;

“5. The congress disapproves of any intervention by force of arms or through threats that governments may attempt in the internal affairs [217] of foreign states, as every people should remain free to manage its own affairs;

“6. The congress recommends to all friends of peace to prepare public opinion in their respective countries to achieve the development and improvement of public international law;

“7. The congress condemns the system of aggression and violence employed by civilized people toward semi-savage tribes, these acts of violence being contrary to religion, civilization, and the interests of commerce;

“8. Since the best way to ensure peace is to increase and facilitate friendly relations among people, the congress expresses its deep sympathy for the great idea that gave birth to the universal exposition of industrial products.”

— G. De M. Dictionnaire de l’économie politique

Since this entry was written (1852), peace societies and peace congresses have multiplied, principally aiming to promote the practice of arbitration. One may find in their annual publications a complete overview of their efforts in advocacy.

C. p.94 — The Insufficiency of Internal Security↩

In this regard, modern governments show themselves as negligent as their predecessors; in the United States, for example, the inadequacy and corruption of the police have led to the creation of private enterprises that take on the task of protecting the lives and property of citizens left undefended by the official police. The most famous is the Pinkerton Agency, which played an important role in the Pittsburgh strike. In Europe, such an enterprise [218] would be absolutely prohibited; on the other hand, insurance companies against theft have begun to be established. An example is the Dutch Lloyd, based in Amsterdam, whose highly original prospectus we reproduce here:

“We have the honor of drawing your attention to the danger of leaving, without coverage by theft and vandalism insurance, the goods and possessions of all kinds contained in your properties.

“The long winter nights and the summer holidays are particularly favorable to the operations of burglars.

“Owners are not always safe from thefts carried out via the rooftops by removing tiles, breaking attic windows, forcing doors or garden-facing windows, or entering the house simply with false keys or through cellar vents.

“It also happens that burglars succeed in looting homes by entering through balconies, greenhouses attached to the rear of houses, or again by placing ladders against upper-story windows, creating breaches in party walls of neighboring homes temporarily unoccupied, and by other methods still—sometimes taking advantage of a brief absence patiently watched for.

“Theft of valuable goods displayed in storefronts by breaking the glass, even in broad daylight, is also occasionally to be feared.

“Our insurance compensates for the often considerable consequences of these misdeeds by fully reimbursing, within 60 days of the report of the crime, any loss or damage caused by burglars. More than fifty thefts have been compensated since January 1895.

“Our theft insurance forms a complement to fire insurance, as one has no justification without the other. Indeed, fire or thieves invade our homes entirely unexpectedly and leave behind ravages with many points of similarity.

“On the other hand, and this adds another layer of security for the insured—knowing that they are dealing with a trustworthy institution—there is almost no fear of fraud in the theft branch, for it is much more difficult to simulate a theft for profit than to set fire to one's own house. Breaking and entering requires special tools. Procuring or misusing them risks exposure… It is very difficult to hide supposedly stolen objects; difficult as well to sell them without risking indiscreet complicity.

“We reject any proposal that is in the least equivocal.

“We cover, for total or partial value, with full compensation, the amount of your belongings, according to degree of security, not only against actual theft but also against significant damage caused by thieves.

“We insure all types of goods, such as lace, jewelry, paintings, bicycles, leather goods, linen, works of art, etc., etc., in-store, at an approximate annual premium of one to three thousand. We insure valuables in safes. We also cover theft or damage that may occur to your real estate or all types of movable property—easy prey for burglars who willingly seize linen, bedding, mantel ornaments, silverware, wine, paintings, jewelry, etc.

“Our insurance continues to apply to items left for six months or more without a caretaker.

“Being able to dispense with a concierge is sometimes a certain economy.” [110]

[220]

In his Memoirs, Mr. Goron, former head of the criminal police, offers this explanation for the inadequacy of the criminal police in France, where, he says, all the large sums are devoted to political police:

— Not only is the criminal police inadequate in the provinces, but outside a few major cities it does not exist at all; it is even more lacking than in the past, because the gendarmes now have duties they did not have before—such as delivering military summonses—and therefore have much less time to ensure security in the countryside.

In my Memoirs, I dealt with this question in detail: I explained that the gendarme, who may only operate in uniform, is powerless to track down murderers, and I proposed a method for tracking criminals both in the provinces and in Paris. This method is simple: it consists in increasing the number of agents in the Paris criminal police and sending skilled detectives to all provincial prosecutors' offices as soon as a crime has been committed.

Unfortunately, this method would be rather costly, and—sad to say—money is not spent on the criminal police. We must have the courage to face certain facts. All the large sums are allocated to the political police.

D. p.102. — The Reestablishment and Renaming of Ancien Régime Taxes in France↩

The reform of the Ancien Régime taxes was nothing but a [221] masquerade. First, the old taxes were indeed abolished—but since the revolutionary government had not thought to reduce public expenditures, it was necessary to fill the void left by the abolition of the old taxes. This void they tried to fill through paper money, confiscations, and requisitions; but these revolutionary resources eventually came to an end, and one fine day the public treasury found itself completely empty. So what was done? The taxes that the Revolution had abolished were simply reestablished. Only, care was taken to give them new names so as not to alarm the taxpayers too much. Thus, the taille and the vingtièmes took the name land tax (contribution foncière); the tax on guilds and corporations, the marc d’or fee paid to be allowed to trade or practice an industrial profession, was replaced by the patente; the control tax became known as the stamp tax; the aides were renamed indirect contributions or combined duties; the gabelle, so hated, received the innocuous name salt tax; octrois were at first abolished, but were soon reestablished under the philanthropic label charitable octrois (octrois de bienfaisance); the corvées remained abolished, but the peasants were made subject to in-kind labor obligations. In short, the entire old tax system reappeared; only its names were changed.

Revolutions and Despotism, Viewed from the Standpoint of Material Interests, p. 107.

E. p.106. — Functionnarisme in France↩

How many functionaries / civil servants are there in France? M. Turquan attempted to answer this question, and, in a [222] report he presented to the Congress of the Association for the Advancement of Science, he gave the following figures:

Here is the progression he found since 1846.

In	Functionaries
1846	188 000
1858	217 000
1873	285 000
1886	330 000
1896	400 000

One must add 8,000 departmental officials and 122,000 municipal officials, making a total of 130,000 local civil servants.

The salaries of civil servants have followed the following progression:

In	Functionaries
1846	245 000
1858	270 000
1873	400 000
1876	450 000
1894	545 000
1896	616 000

If pensions are included, we find an annuity debt of 70 million francs per year, of which 23 million comes from deductions and 45 million from the general resources of the budget.

By adding the 43 million to the 616 million in salaries, we arrive at an annual burden of 661 million.

Of the 400,000 civil servants, 136,000 receive less than 1,000 francs per year.

The highest salaries are distributed among only 1,846 individuals.

600 people between	10 000 and 12 000 francs
400	12 000 and 15 000
163	15 000 and 16 000
362	16 000 and 20 000
321	more than 20 000

F. p.126. — The Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty↩

The International Peace Bureau in Bern published the following translation of the official text of the Anglo-American arbitration treaty, signed in Washington by Mr. Olney, Secretary of State, and Mr. Pauncefote, Ambassador of Great Britain, and rejected by the United States Senate.

“The governments of Great Britain and the United States, desiring to strengthen the friendly relations existing between the two states and to establish by treaty the principle of international arbitration, have concluded the following agreement:

Article 1. The high contracting parties agree to submit to arbitration, with the following reservations, all disputes arising between them which cannot be settled through diplomatic channels.

Art. 2. Monetary claims, or groups of monetary claims, whose total does not exceed the sum of £100,000 and which do not also involve territorial claims, shall be submitted to the judgment of an arbitral tribunal constituted as provided in the following article.

The expression “group of monetary claims” mentioned in this and in Article 4 means claims for money made by one or more persons arising from the same transactions or resulting from the same legal or factual situations.

Art. 3. Each of the high contracting parties shall appoint an arbitrator in the person of a jurist of distinction; these two arbitrators shall choose, within two months of their appointment, a third arbitrator. If they fail to do so within the prescribed time, the third arbitrator shall be designated by mutual agreement between the members of the Supreme Court of the United States and the members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of Great Britain, each body making its appointment by majority vote. If these bodies cannot agree within three months from the date they were invited by either contracting party to proceed with the appointment, the third arbitrator shall be designated as provided in Article 10.

The person so appointed shall act as president of the tribunal, and the decision rendered by the majority of the members shall be final.

Art. 4. Monetary claims or groups of monetary claims exceeding £100,000, as well as any other disputes in which either high contracting party asserts rights against the other arising from treaties or any other cause, provided such disputes do not involve territorial claims, shall be submitted to a tribunal as set out in the following article.

Art. 5. Disputes mentioned in Article 4 shall be submitted to a tribunal as set out in Article 3. If the decision of this tribunal is unanimous, it shall be final; otherwise, either contracting party may request a review within six months from the date of the decision. In such a case, the dispute shall be submitted to a new arbitral tribunal comprised of five jurists of distinction, excluding those who participated in the prior decision; each party shall appoint two arbitrators, and these four shall appoint a fifth within three months of their appointment.

If they fail to agree within the prescribed period, the fifth arbitrator shall be selected in accordance with Article 3. If they still cannot agree within three months of being asked to proceed by either contracting party, the fifth arbitrator shall be appointed as provided in Article 10.

The person so appointed shall act as president of the tribunal, and the decision rendered by the majority shall be final.

Art. 6. Any dispute involving a territorial claim shall be submitted to a tribunal of six members, three appointed by the President of the United States (subject to Article 8) from among the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court or federal circuit courts, and three by Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain (also subject to Article 8) from among the justices of the British Supreme Court or members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The tribunal’s decision shall be final if reached by unanimity or by a five-to-one majority.

If the majority is insufficient, the judgment shall nevertheless be final unless one of the powers declares, within three months, that it considers it null and void—such a declaration annuls the judgment.

When a decision rendered by an insufficient majority is thus declared void, or when the tribunal is equally divided, the contracting parties shall not resort to hostilities of any kind before jointly or separately seeking the mediation of one or more friendly powers.

Art. 7. The jurisdiction of the tribunal constituted under this treaty may be challenged only in the following case:

If, before the close of proceedings in a dispute submitted to a tribunal formed under Articles 3 or 5, the tribunal acknowledges, at the request of one of the high contracting parties, that the nature of the claim necessarily entails a decision on a disputed question of grave and general importance concerning national rights, and that the claimant is not acting for private rights but as an international agent, the tribunal shall have no jurisdiction, and the matter shall be submitted to arbitration under Article 6.

Art. 8. If a dispute involves a U.S. state or territory, the President may appoint a judicial officer from that state or territory as arbitrator. Similarly, if it involves a British colony or possession, Her Majesty may appoint a judicial officer from that colony or possession.

Art. 9. Territorial claims, within the meaning of this treaty, include not only disputes over territory but also those concerning servitudes, navigation rights, fisheries, and any rights and interests necessary for the oversight or enjoyment of the claimed territory.

Art. 10. When the bodies designated in Articles 3 and 5 cannot agree on the appointment of the third arbitrator, that arbitrator shall be appointed by His Majesty the King of Sweden and Norway.

However, either contracting party may at any time notify the other that, due to a material change in circumstances, [227] it believes a new appointer should be designated in place of His Majesty. That proposed new appointer may be consulted on this matter.

Art. 11. In case of death or other incapacity of an arbitrator, a replacement shall be made in the same manner as the original appointment.

Art. 12. Each government shall pay its own counsel and arbitrators. However, in important cases, either party may accept submissions without incurring additional costs. The final award shall determine if and to what extent the successful party’s costs are to be borne by the other.

Art. 13. The tribunal shall set its own time and place of session and determine the rules of procedure. Its judgment shall be rendered, if possible, within three months after the conclusion of the hearings; it shall be written, dated, and signed by the concurring arbitrators.

Art. 14. This treaty shall remain in force for five years from its implementation and shall continue thereafter until one of the parties gives twelve months’ notice of its intention to terminate.

Art. 15. This treaty shall be ratified by the President of the United States and Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. The exchange of ratifications shall take place in Washington or London within six months, or sooner if possible.

G. p.132. — The Profits of the Wars of the Empire↩

The external revenues from war contributions constituted an extraordinary domain that Napoleon distributed at will. Here is what we read on this subject in a conversation he had with Lord Ebrington on the island of Elba (from the Revue bleue, December 15, 1894):

“... He (Napoleon) had at his disposal the extraordinary domain, a fund of 200 million, with which he made gifts and rewarded those who distinguished themselves. I asked where this fund came from; he replied:

‘From the contributions of my enemies; Austria, for two peace treaties, paid me 300 million through secret articles, and Prussia as well, enormously.’”

In his journal, Marshal Castellane provides details about one of these distributions of the profits of war:

“On August 15, 1809,” he writes, “we had a Te Deum at the Church of Saint-Étienne for the Emperor’s feast day; Vienna was illuminated. Marshal Masséna was named Prince of Essling; the Prince of Neuchâtel, Prince of Wagram; Marshal Davout, Prince of Eckmühl—each with an endowment of 600,000 francs in annual income; General Mouton became Count of Lobau. The aides-de-camp and adjutants of the Prince of Neuchâtel were made barons with a 4,000-franc endowment; some of these were even made counts. The aides-de-camp of the aides-de-camp generals were made knights with 2,000 francs of income. I was thus made a knight of the Empire; my endowment, first established at Bayreuth, was successively transferred near Hamburg, in Piedmont, in Rome, and at the Restoration, converted into a 500-franc endowment from the public treasury. A great number of general officers, colonels, and civil servants received titles and majorats.”

Alongside the material profits they drew from war, officers and soldiers also found a more or less moral satisfaction in the superiority that was accorded to them over civilians—something they did not fail to abuse. The reports of Count Anglès, director of the police in 1814, contain telling information in this regard:

“The officers and soldiers naturally regretted the leader who, for nearly twenty years, had led them to victory across all of Europe; for a few marshals who were tired and sated, there were hundreds, thousands of men suddenly halted on the road to glory and fortune.” But Anglès also highlights other reasons for the military’s discontent: the double frustration of now having to reckon with civilians and of being subject to regular discipline.

“Napoleon, who needed them, allowed them—among other liberties—that of treating anyone not in uniform as a subordinate, a pariah. His remark to the Minister of the Interior is well known, on the day the famous Lasalle slapped a prefect: ‘I have a hundred prefects and only one Lasalle.’ Under the Empire, it was accepted that an officer entering a café could take the newspaper a civilian was reading; mock the appearance of theatergoers; make eyes at their wives or daughters; in short, allow himself every impertinence—leaving it to the victim to be run through on the dueling ground.”

(Correspondant, November 10, 1897. Article by M. de Lanzac-Laborie on the unpublished reports of Count Anglès.)

H. p.137. — The Increase in Expenditures in Unified Italy↩

If the old governments of unified Italy left something to be desired in terms of quality, at least they were inexpensive. According to M. Minghetti, the Italian populations paid only the relatively modest sum of 500 million francs annually in government expenses, and this sum was more than sufficient to cover those expenses. The finances of the former states of Italy were, in fact, in the most flourishing condition: public debts amounted to very little, and the Kingdom of Naples, for example, possessed, at the moment of the Garibaldian invasion, a reserve of 60 million francs—of which its “liberators” did not fail to relieve it in a matter of weeks. Furthermore, military conscription—which constitutes, for the masses, the heaviest of taxes—did not exist either in the Papal States or in Sicily. As a result, the populations, exempt from the crushing burdens that drive up the cost of life everywhere, lived an easy and gentle existence. If begging was a nuisance to foreigners, that was still a reflection of the mildness of the system: instead of treating beggars as criminals and confining them in shelters that are essentially prisons for the destitute, they were simply considered unfortunate and left free, perhaps without enough concern for the “nuisance” they caused travelers. But if, setting aside the beggars, one examined the mass of the people more closely, one found them healthy, cheerful, and robust; children and women were not compelled to work twelve to fifteen hours a day to make up for the insufficiency of their fathers' or husbands’ wages, and the race remained handsome and vigorous. It is true that intellectual cultivation was lacking among the masses; nevertheless, the proportion of people who could neither read nor write was no greater than in countries most praised for the liberalism of their institutions, and as for secondary and higher education, it was second to none. It is also true that means of communication developed slowly, as governments hesitated to tax the population for enterprises whose benefits initially accrued solely to landowners in the form of increased land value. Nevertheless, the railways not only crisscrossed Lombardy and Tuscany but had begun to be established in the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States. Production and commerce were developing rapidly, and on several occasions, there had been talk of creating a customs union between the various states of the peninsula—a union that would not have failed to give rapid impetus to their productive resources. Moreover, in the “assets” of the Italian revolution—if there are any—it is hard to find a single liberty that Italy could not have acquired, and most likely in fuller measure and more securely, through peaceful propaganda and the power of example.

(Économiste belge, No. 14 March 1863.)

At present, the annual expenditures of unified Italy amount to 1,000 million francs, of which 598 million are for servicing the consolidated and redeemable debt, etc., etc., not including some 125 million in floating debt.

As for the benefits of unification, here is how they are appraised in a letter from Rome published in L’Indépendance belge (2 January 1898):

Italy is preparing to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of two great historical dates. In Turin, next year, the granting of the Statuto will be celebrated; in Palermo, the fiftieth anniversary of the Sicilian revolution that struck the first blow against Bourbon domination. These two dates complement each other: on one side, the dynasty coming into contact with democracy; on the other, the revolution inaugurating its work of demolition—here, the force that was to destroy; there, the power that was to rebuild.

The solemnity being prepared in Turin meets with skepticism: it is said to be a celebration of something that no longer exists, and people wonder whether it is not mockery to commemorate the proclamation of the Statuto at a time when hundreds of citizens are in Italian prisons by virtue of judgments rendered by military tribunals, in violation of the article of the charter that guarantees that no citizen may be removed from his natural judges; and when thousands of citizens are condemned without trial—that is, by simple police order—to domicilio coatto, or forced residence, contrary to the same charter’s provision declaring individual liberty inviolable. The Statuto is, in reality, a collection of liberties granted en bloc by the dynasty and revoked piecemeal by the executive power. It reminds me of a friend of mine, born into a poor family, whose mother gave him a five-franc coin every New Year. You see, this recollection is seasonable, since we are at the time of New Year's gifts. Only, the poor coin had barely entered the child’s purse before the household felt its absence. The very next day, the mother began borrowing from her son to meet household needs, and, sou by sou, the five-franc piece returned to the maternal coffers—a process to which my friend cheerfully submitted, for he was a good son, and that is why he became a good citizen.

The House of Savoy employed the same method on a grand scale: in a moment of popular fervor and under circumstances that forced its hand, it had to appear generous and gave its people truly royal New Year’s gifts. Then, little by little, the executive power, with the complicity of docile and unconscious majorities, clawed everything back from the nation. Laws and special regulations took back all the liberties and franchises: the inviolability of individual liberty became a dead letter through the institution of domicilio coatto; the principle that no one may be taken from his natural judges was overthrown by military tribunals; the inviolability of the private home was nullified by police laws that allow for the invasion of association premises—if necessary, by force; the inviolability of private property was dodged through the seizure of newspapers that are never followed by prosecution precisely because those who ordered the seizures know they violated the law; freedom of assembly and association was abolished through Pharisaic jurisprudence. Only the articles of the Statuto that establish the Civil List and the princes’ appanages remain sacred.

I. p.138. — The Use of the Five Billion Francs of the Franco-Prussian War Indemnity↩

How were our five billion francs used?

The Federal Chancellery explained the matter in the memorandum it sent to Parliament.

But first, how much did Germany actually receive?

First, the five billion francs, then interest at 5% [234] for a sum of 381,191,959 francs, or together—and converted into German currency—1,413,651,189 thalers. To this sum, we must add the war contribution of the city of Paris: 53,500,865 thalers; and further, contributions levied on many other cities. Of these sums, the most substantial part was absorbed by military expenses; however, after all deductions, there remained about 17,394,220 thalers. In total, that makes 1,484,551,274 thalers.

It is true that from this sum, Germany paid us 325 million francs, or 86,666,666 thalers, for the purchase of the railways in the annexed territory; thus, what ultimately remained to Germany was 1,397,804,608 thalers, or 5,142,067,280 francs.

To what purposes were these resources—rightly called extraordinary—devoted? Here, at least, is what has been officially admitted:

• 480,777,029 thalers were allocated to the Invalid Fund, the restoration and arming of the fortresses of Alsace-Lorraine, the Alsace-Lorraine and Guillaume-Luxembourg railways, the Military Treasury, naval administration, the standing advance for military administration, endowments for generals and statesmen, aid to Germans expelled from France, and the expenses of the General Headquarters;
• 37,700,000 thalers for war indemnities;
• 5,600,000 thalers in compensation to German shipowners;
• 300,000 thalers for commemorative medals;
• 10,089,774 thalers for invalids’ pensions during the year 1872;
• 5,980,000 thalers also for the invalids, covering the period before the special fund designated for them was invested;
• 9,847,187 thalers for the arming and disarming of fortresses;
• 9,352,512 thalers for naval administration;

[235]

• 1,791,986 thalers for the construction or reconstruction of strategic railways;
• 202,791 thalers for military telegraphy;
• 3,753,714 thalers for expenses of the civil administration in France;
• 815,000 thalers in compensation to the postal and telegraph administration;
• 21,000,000 thalers for additional expenses incurred during the occupation of French territories;
• 23,000 thalers for miscellaneous costs charged to the Empire’s treasury.

This amounts to a total of 600,836,627 thalers devoted to federal military expenditures.

As for the 793,000,000 thalers remaining, they were to be distributed among the federal states, with the exception of 108,596,810 thalers on the one hand, and 6,119,000 on the other, already absorbed by urgent expenditures.

The distribution among the federal states is set as follows:

	thalers
Northern Confederation	530 116 053
Bavière	90 200 411
Würtemberg	28 500 870
Bade	20 444 182
Hesse	9 333 674

Thus, from this immense sum of five billion francs, what portion did Germany allocate to lightening its debt, reducing taxes, or encouraging its commerce and industry? None.

A successful war gave it the means to demand three billion in indemnities—five billion!—a figure that, until then, human imagination could hardly conceive—and not a single centime of those five billion francs was used to increase the well-being of the German population! In this entire long list of how our five [236] billion francs were used, we see only payments for war expenditures—either past or yet to come.

(Alfred NEYMARCK, Les milliards de la guerre, p. 22.)

Let us supplement this information with a striking article from Vorwärts on militarism and its consequences in Germany:

“Until 1876, the Empire had no debt.”

According to Vorwärts, here is the progression of the national debt since 1876, in marks:

1877	16 millions	1886	440 millions
1878	72 —	1887	486 —
1879	139 —	1888	721 —
1880	218 —	1889	884 —
1881	268 —	1890	1 128 —
1882	319 —	1891	1 318 —
1883	349 —	1892	1 524 —
1884	373 —	1893	1 697 —
1885	410 —

Vorwärts adds:

"The accumulation of this debt has been caused, for the most part, by expenditures on the army and the war fleet—for the Moloch of militarism. A relatively small portion of the Empire’s debt results from the construction of railways in Alsace-Lorraine and the building of the canal from the North Sea to the Baltic.

"But even here, it should be noted that these works are primarily of strategic interest. Since 1876, a total of 2 billion 216 million has been spent from the extraordinary budget for the army and navy. That, above all, is what has contributed to the frightening increase of the Empire’s debt.

"Let us not forget, moreover, that the greater part of the five-billion-franc war indemnity imposed on France was spent on the army and the navy."

K. p.143 — The Steady Increase in War Expenditures and Public Debt in Europe↩

Here is a table drawn up by M. Edmond Théry showing the increase in military expenditures in Europe since 1865:

	TOTAL EXPENDITURE (ARMY AND NAVY) (Millions of francs)
NATIONS	1863-1866	1869-1870	1880-1881	1886-1887	1892-1893
France	536.1	549.3	1 016.1	904.7	890.0
Russia	601.2	615.6	872.8	982.3	1 107.1
Germany	472.5	573.6	501.4	539.4	822.7
Austria-Hungary			311.4	342.2	421.4
Italy	247.4	184.4	237.0	342.6	355.1
England	632.0	605.6	760.6	978.4	832.4
Belgium	34.9	36.8	44.1	45.6	47.0
Spain	142.3	127.8	154.0	200.3	170.3
Holland	45.3	50.5	69.7	69.4	75.3
Switzerland	4.8	4.8	14.1	17.2	36.7
	2 716.5	2 748.4	3 981.2	4 422.1	4 758.0

The increase in the nominal capital of public debts from 1870 to 1887 is presented in the following table:

	Millions of francs		Millions of francs
France	12 000	Germany	0,526
Russia	11 000	Saxony	0,388
Prussia	3 217	Greece	0,270
Italy	3 132	Serbia	0,244
Hungary	2 249	Wurtemberg	0,194
Austria	1 770	Sweden	0,181
Spain	1 300	Hambourg	0,024
Belgium	1 089	Finland	0,020
Romania	0,701

According to the Cologne Gazette, for the fiscal year 1892–93, the army and navy accounted for 36.9% of the total budget in England; 28.7% in Russia; 27.1% in France; 22.4% in Italy; 17.8% in Germany; and 17.0% in Austria-Hungary.

Spending on the interest and amortization of public debt represented in Italy 43.8% of the budget; in Austria-Hungary 29.3%; in France 28.4%; in England 27.9%; in Russia 25.7%; and in Germany 12.9%.

On the occasion of the great naval review at Spithead, The Times remarked that the 141 English warships parading before the Queen represented a capital investment of 31 million pounds sterling, of which 21 million had been spent since 1886 on the construction of 99 units. If one adds to this amount the costs of arming, the total cost of the fleet exceeds 40 million pounds—that is, one billion francs. It is interesting to compare these formidable expenditures with the estimate given by Sir William White of the British fleet in 1813. At that time, it included between 480 and 490 ships in active service. One quarter consisted of ships of the line, another quarter of frigates—the cruisers of that era—and the remaining half included mail boats, brigs, sloops, etc. The total cost of this fleet, excluding armaments, did not exceed 10 million pounds.

A kind of frenzy, says M. Yves Guyot, has seized all the nations since the war of 1870. M. A.-J. Wilson, in the March issue of the Investor’s Review, compares current English expenditures with those of the past. They formerly did not exceed 15 to 16 million pounds sterling per year. They now amount to 20 million pounds for the navy alone. In the upcoming budget, army and navy expenditures will reach 45 million pounds (1,125 million francs), the highest in the world. Since 1871, the service of the debt and military and naval expenditures of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia have reached 7 billion pounds sterling—that is, 175 billion francs.

M. A.-J. Wilson may be somewhat mistaken when he says: “Suppose that military and naval expenditures had remained at the levels of 1869; that the debts they caused had not increased—not one of these nations would have thought of establishing a tariff against its neighbors. All of Europe could enjoy a freedom of trade equal to that existing among the states that make up the United States.”

But one thing is certain: there are hardships; people suffer from them; and instead of seeking their causes, one resorts to empirical remedies such as protectionist tariffs.

In addition to the amounts spent, one must consider the waste of human beings: 580,000 soldiers and 100,000 horses for Germany; 370,000 for France and 120,000 horses; 230,000 men for Italy and 30,000 horses; 230,000 for England and 30,000 horses; 700,000 for Russia and 123,000 horses—a total of 2,700,000 soldiers and 230,000 non-productive sailors.

At the same time, these expenditures overstimulate certain industries at certain times, then leave them to collapse. It is the organization of crises.

This deep element of disturbance in the economic life of Europe is never sufficiently taken into account.

Today, all the nations, so fearfully armed, have only one concern: to avoid war. This is clearly an unforeseen consequence of the development of military power. Armies are increased, but in order not to use them. They remain, nonetheless, a crushing burden.

(Le Siècle.) YVES GUYOT.

L. p.157 — Bank Reserves Transformed into War Treasuries↩

Privileged banks are expensive, and they offer only a weak safeguard against the dangers of paper money. Governments in difficulty have no qualms about compelling banks to extricate them; they draw directly from their vaults, authorizing them to suspend the redemption of their notes and thereby to transform their paper currency into depreciable paper money. Did not the notes of the Bank of England—reputed to be the most solid and independent of the privileged banks—suffer a depreciation of 30% during the Continental War?

To this risk, which threatens the business world in times of war, must be added the increased cost of the circulating medium, caused by the transformation of privileged banks into war treasuries. While the amount required to insure them against all eventualities does not exceed one-third, the metallic reserves are currently almost equal to the amount of notes in circulation. As can be seen from the following summary, they have continued to increase in all the banks of Europe, with the sole exception of the Bank of Germany.

Banques	Fin 1891.	Fin mars 1897.	Différences.
	Millions.	Millions.	Millions.
Autriche-Hongrie	139	654	+ 515
Allemagne	1 127	721	– 406
Italie	225	303	+ 78
France	1 337	1 918	+ 581
Russie	1 426	2 421	+ 995
Angleterre	557	996	+ 436
	4 811	7 013	2 292

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Need we add that the cost of insuring the circulating medium is thereby unnecessarily increased to the detriment of the users of money? But who today is concerned with the interests of the consumers?

(Journal des Économistes, 15 June 1897, Chronique)

M. p.170 — War Pensions in the United States↩

Each year, it is claimed that the peak of war pensions has been reached and that both the number of pensioners and the total pension payments are beginning to decline. The peak may indeed have been reached, but the decline is not steady. In the most recent fiscal year (1896–97), thirty-two years after the end of the Civil War, the number of pensions once again increased, and the total amount paid to pensioners was a million and a half dollars greater than the previous year, and nearly identical to the amounts disbursed in 1894 and 1893. More than fifty thousand new names were added to the rolls last year, and the net increase in pensioners for the year was 12,850. In 1878, pension payments amounted to $27,137,019, and until then, they had not exceeded thirty million dollars. Yet the war had ended thirteen years earlier, and there must have been a considerable number of deaths among the surviving veterans. But as they aged, they began to suffer infirmities which they were inclined to attribute to their military service; moreover, each new Congress began to raise pension rates, making them more attractive.

In 1879, the Arrears of Pensions Law was passed, under which men whose names were already on the rolls could obtain back pay on their pensions dating back to the day they might have first claimed them. The prospect of receiving in one lump sum an amount between three and five thousand dollars was very enticing for men who had not thought, for fourteen years, to have themselves placed on these blessed rolls. The total pension payments rose the following year to $56,777,174 — more than double what they had been just two years earlier. With some fluctuations, payments continued to rise as pension rates increased, and it also happened that veterans of the war discovered injuries which they had not been aware of twenty to thirty years earlier. Pensions thus reached $106,936,835 in 1890. That same year, the Dependent Pension Bill was passed, granting pensions to survivors whose infirmities had no connection with the war. Pension expenditures suddenly surged, and in 1893 they reached their peak of $159,357,557. In the following two years, they remained above $141,000,000; in 1896, they were $139,000,000; finally, in 1897, the number of pensioners had risen to 983,525, and the amount paid out was $141,053,083.

(Journal of Commerce, New York.)

N. p.178 — The Origin of the Billions in the United States↩

In the United States, protectionism has given rise to industrial coalitions known as trusts, which have allowed prices to be raised above the level of competition and thereby enabled the coalition members to amass monstrous fortunes at the expense of the consumer. How these coalitions were formed and how they operate despite all the laws prohibiting them is explained quite clearly by the author of an article on the American millionaire world, from which we reproduce an excerpt:

One does not amass millions upon millions through ordinary means; small shovelfuls are not enough — one must use a large and powerful tool: that tool is the trust.

To get an idea of the trust, by analogy, we must take as an example a confederation like the German Empire and suppose that this empire, instead of being political, is industrial and commercial. In a trust, the financial group holds the power that in the German Empire is held by the Kingdom of Prussia. Despite the autonomy of the German states, despite their appearance of independence, they are chained to a power greater than all of them combined; they cannot act without the approval of Prussia, they follow its policy, willingly or not, sometimes against their own interests; it is the same with the secondary industries in America, monopolized by a powerful industrial house, bound to it by the forced pact of the trust, gripped in the vise of an iron chancellery. It is the law of the strongest.

The trust is thus a financial confederation through which big industry seizes all the medium-sized similar industries, formed for the purpose of monopolizing production and thereby killing competition, preventing the low-cost sale of industrial goods, and consequently imposing high prices on the market by forcing commerce to adopt them through refusal to deliver. The consumer is, in the end, the shaved victim of the trusts, the milk cow that enriches them.

The trusts thus fall under the application of the following clause of the American Penal Code: “If two or more persons have formed an association, either to prevent another person from exercising a lawful trade or profession, or to commit an act harmful to public health, morality, commerce, or industry, these persons are guilty of a crime.”

There is hardly a state in the Union whose legislation has not been inspired by this clause to promulgate laws against the trusts. The state of New York, where monopolistic attempts are proportional to the greater concentration of capital, was bound to take the lead in this area. In 1890, 1893, and 1896, laws were passed each time more severe and more explicit against the trusts.

The 1893 law punishes the offense with a fine not exceeding $5,000 or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both penalties.

Georgia and Indiana have recently passed identical laws going so far as to prohibit “central selling agencies,” a new disguise under which some trusts now appear, imagined by legal advisors to circumvent the laws.

But the trusts, absolute sovereigns, do not obey laws — they impose them. They have imposed one law that alone is worth a hundred, that renders powerless all those that aim at their destruction: a law which, by establishing the protectionist regime, has at the same time laid the foundation of their despotism and secured their triumphant impunity. The McKinley Tariff, as everyone knows, was their work, their masterpiece, the instrument that allowed them, by restricting foreign competition, to destroy internal competition. Once rid of imports, the trusts crushed their rivals, stifled initiatives, and prevented the founding of new factories and businesses. Hence, since 1890, a deficit in customs revenue; hence, a huge drop in tax receipts.

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This result, predicted by free-trade economists based on the principle that the most fiscally productive duties are those of moderate rates, occurred right on schedule: during the first three years of the McKinley Tariff’s implementation, the American budget, thanks to its momentum, thanks to the fabulous customs receipts in the months before the protectionist tariff took effect, managed to balance itself more or less. But in its fourth year, 1894, it posted a deficit of 69 million dollars; in 1895, 42 million; in 1896, 25 million; finally, by March 1, 1897, the deficit for these three years had reached $186,061,580 — nearly a billion francs. This was noted in the message of March 13, 1897, by McKinley himself, now President of the United States. One might have thought that, enlightened by experience and by the figures on the “virtues” of a regime that enriched only its instigators at the expense of the general public and public finances, he would have abandoned it, would have made an about-face and returned to a tariff of moderate duties. Far from it — he introduced a bill that aggravated his already infamous tariff. Against this regime, American economists may cry out, the voters may have condemned it twice in six years, but McKinley remains obstinate; he pretends to believe that it is the only way to balance the budget.

The truth is he is not free to act otherwise; he is the prisoner of the trusts, the instrument they used in 1890 to pass the bill that bears his name; he is their president, since they provided more than ten million dollars for his election. His hands are so tightly bound that he can only perform contradictory movements — while in his inaugural speech he pledged to pursue the trusts, at the same time he was consolidating their existence by strengthening his tariff, without which they could not survive. Postponing the vote on anti-trust laws, which in any case are doomed to impotence, he began by calling for the passage of a finance law that consecrates and strengthens their power.

The only effective law against the trusts is a tariff of moderate rates, which, by favoring foreign competition, frees industry and commerce from the grip of domestic monopoly — allowing them to develop and eventually fill the customs and tax deficits. Public authorities whose responsibilities are limited to balancing the budget commit a usurpation, an abuse of power, an attack on commercial and industrial freedom by passing protectionist tariffs that benefit only the privileged of the trusts; in doing so, they set the example of violating the very laws they enacted against interference with commerce and industry, and by logical consequence, they alone are responsible for the deficit.

If, thanks to the McKinley Bill, the trusts were able to defy all the laws forged against them, what laws will they not be able to defy under the new Dingley Bill, which has gone beyond the limits of protectionism? What do they care if a statute anathematizes every suspicious word that might serve as the form of a forbidden pact? It only reaches words, not the thing itself, which is untouchable.

… From the above, it is perfectly clear that the secret of these fortunes — so vast that they confound the mind and seem beyond human possibility — lies entirely in the workings of the trust. Without the trust, without the rake it constantly applies brutally over the whole surface of the country, there would be no great piles; it would be impossible for any to surpass those in countries of free competition. There would only be a multitude of small heaps, equitably spread over the field of labor by the winds of fortune. These tens, these hundreds of millions of dollars have, and can have, no other origin than the conspiracy of the trust.

How could even a single million be earned in industry outside the trust, when all American industries are syndicated — or to borrow an Anglicism, entrusted?

… So, to become an arch-millionaire, one needs more than honest and relentless labor — one must first impose upon the country a protectionist regime ruinous to both the Treasury and private individuals; one must monopolize raw materials and manufacturing, annihilate competition, destroy rival industries, take control of the market, violate commercial freedom, corrupt the people’s representatives, reward the corrupters, and distort the machinery of government.

All this is necessary to create a few fabulously wealthy individuals — and a multitude of poor ones.

(E. F. JOHANET, Around the American Millionaire World, Le Correspondant, No. 25 October 1897.)

O. p.193 — The Laws of War: A Letter from Count von Moltke and the Reply of Mr. Bluntschli↩

The Institute of International Law published in 1877 the following summary of the laws of war, as consecrated by recent treaties or as having obtained general approval and a sort of common sanction in the collective work of representatives of all the European States assembled in Brussels in 1874.

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The Paris Congress of 1856:

1. Abolished privateering;

2. Protected seaports and neutral commerce from the effects of purely fictitious blockades;

3. Declared immune from seizure neutral ships with all their cargo, and neutral goods carried under an enemy flag, with the sole exception of contraband of war.

The Geneva Convention of 1864 protects wounded or sick soldiers, regardless of nationality, neutralizes in principle military hospitals and ambulances along with their personnel, and to a certain extent exempts inhabitants of occupied territories who assist wounded soldiers from the burdens of war.

The Additional Articles to this convention, signed in 1868, were not ratified by the contracting parties. However, those of the articles that extended the 1864 convention to naval warfare were adopted as a modus vivendi by the belligerents during the war of 1870–71.

The St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868 prohibits the use, on land or sea, of any projectile weighing less than 400 grams that is either explosive or loaded with fulminating or incendiary materials.

Finally, and most importantly, the Draft International Declaration adopted by the Brussels Conference of 1874 sets forth the essential rules of the law of war, as currently recognized by civilized states. This act, initiated by His Majesty Emperor Alexander II, reflects consensus not only between the experts representing Russia and Turkey but also all other European states. Though it has yet to receive official sanction, it must nonetheless be regarded — by its nature and origin — as the reasonable expression of obligations that the legal conscience of the European people today imposes upon belligerent armies and on the populations of invaded territories. On that basis, it is particularly well-suited to serve as a foundation for instructions given to armies. In any case, an army that ignores these rules would incur public condemnation and forfeit its honor as a civilized power or force.

In substance, this act consecrates the following rules, whose binding force appears today incontestable:

a) Peaceful inhabitants of a country occupied by the enemy must be respected and protected as far as possible — that is, as much as the security of the invading army and military necessity permit — in their property, institutions, customs, rights, and freedoms.

b) The honor and rights of the family, the lives and property of individuals, their religious convictions and the exercise of their worship must always be respected.

c) The unnecessary destruction or seizure of works of art and science, establishments devoted to religion, charity, education, or the arts and sciences is prohibited.

d) Inhabitants may defend their country provided they bear arms openly, obey a responsible commander, and comply with the laws and customs of war. Irregular combatants who ignore the laws of war and engage in looting and violence are justly punished.

e) The use of poison or poisoned weapons, murder by treachery, or killing a defenseless enemy are not lawful methods of warfare.

f) Only enemy-defended places may be bombarded. Even then, all efforts compatible with military necessity must be made to spare civilians, and under no circumstances may a town taken by assault be subjected to pillage.

g) Only those acting clandestinely or under false pretenses may be considered and punished as spies — not soldiers in uniform or messengers openly carrying out their mission.

h) Prisoners of war must be treated humanely. Their captivity is for the purpose of detention, not punishment.

i) Inhabitants of occupied territories may not be forced to bear arms against their own country.

k) Pillage is forbidden.

l) War levies and requisitions may only be imposed under specific and limited conditions.

m) Parliamentarians (sueing for peace or negotiation) are inviolable. However, measures may be taken to prevent them from gathering intelligence under cover of their status.

n) Capitulations and armistices must be strictly observed. Capitulations must not be contrary to military honor.

For the Institute of International Law:

President: Dr. BLUNTSCHLI (Heidelberg)
1st Vice President: E. DE PARIEU (Paris)
2nd Vice President: T.M.C. ASSER (Amsterdam)
Secretary-General: G. ROLIN-JACQUEMYNS (Ghent)

Sometime later, the Institute published a small manual on the Laws of War on Land, in response to which Count von Moltke wrote Mr. Bluntschli a very curious letter — as one might expect, a defense of war. It seemed worth reproducing along with Bluntschli’s reply.

[251]

Letter from Count von Moltke to Mr. Bluntschli

Berlin, December 11, 1880

“… You have kindly shared with me the manual published by the Institute of International Law, and you hope it will meet with my approval.

“First of all, I greatly value the philanthropic efforts made to mitigate the suffering caused by war. Perpetual peace is a dream — and not even a beautiful dream. War is an element of the world order established by God. It fosters man’s noblest virtues: courage and self-sacrifice, loyalty to duty and the spirit of renunciation — the soldier gives his life. Without war, the world would stagnate and sink into materialism.

“I also fully agree with the proposition stated in the preface: that the gradual softening of morals should be reflected in the conduct of war. But I go further and believe that only this moral evolution can lead us to the goal — a codified law of war cannot. Every law presupposes an authority to enforce it, and such authority is lacking for international conventions. What third power will ever take up arms solely because, in a war between two nations, the laws of war have been violated by one or both parties? For such infractions, there is no judge on earth. Success can only come from religious and moral education of individuals, and from the honor and sense of justice of commanders who voluntarily impose law upon themselves and adhere to it insofar as the abnormal conditions of war allow.

[252]

“That being said, it must be recognized that humanity’s progress in the conduct of war has indeed followed the general softening of morals. Just compare the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War with the wars of modern times!

“A great advance today lies in the institution of compulsory military service, which has brought educated classes into the armies. Crude and violent elements remain, of course, but they are no longer predominant.

“Moreover, governments have two powerful means of preventing the worst abuses: strict discipline maintained in peacetime, to which the soldier is accustomed, and an administration that ensures troop supplies during campaigns.

“If that administration fails, discipline itself cannot be perfectly maintained. A soldier enduring suffering, deprivation, fatigue, and danger cannot be expected to take only 'a proportional share of local resources'; he must take whatever is needed to survive. One cannot demand the superhuman.

“The greatest benefit in war is its speedy conclusion. To that end, it must be permitted to use all means — except those that are positively reprehensible. I cannot in any way agree with the St. Petersburg Declaration’s assertion that 'the weakening of the enemy’s military forces' is the only legitimate means of warfare. No — one must attack all the resources of the enemy government — its finances, its railways, its supplies, and even its prestige.

“It was with such energy, and yet with more moderation than ever before, that the last war against France was conducted. The campaign’s outcome was decided within two months, and fighting only took on a bitter character when a revolutionary government prolonged the war by four more months — to the country's own misfortune.

“I readily acknowledge that the manual, in clear and precise articles, takes better account of military necessities than earlier attempts. Nonetheless, even government recognition of the rules it contains will not suffice to ensure enforcement. The universal custom of war forbids firing on a parlementaire; yet we saw this rule violated on several occasions during the last campaign.

“No memorized clause will persuade soldiers to regard (§ 214) an unorganized population that spontaneously takes up arms and endangers their lives at any hour as a regular enemy. Some demands of the manual may well prove impractical — for instance, the identification of the dead after a large battle. Others might be criticized if not for the inclusion of phrases like 'if circumstances permit', 'if possible', or 'as necessary', which give them a flexibility without which harsh reality would break the bond they impose.

“I believe that in war, where everything depends on individuals, only those rules addressed to commanders will prove effective. These are the manual’s provisions concerning the wounded, the sick, medical personnel, and medical equipment. General recognition of these principles — along with those concerning prisoners — would already be an essential step toward the goal the Institute of International Law pursues with such honorable perseverance.

Count von MOLTKE 426.Field Marshal General”

Reply from Mr. Bluntschli to Count von Moltke

Heidelberg, Christmas, 1880

“I am deeply grateful for the detailed and gracious communication of Your Excellency’s views on the Manual of the Laws of War. The expression of these views provokes serious reflection; I consider them a highly important, historically valuable testimony, and I shall immediately share them with the members of the Institute of International Law.

“For now, I believe the best way to express my gratitude is to briefly outline the considerations that guided the members of the Institute, and to acknowledge the divergence of views.

“It goes without saying that the same issues appear differently depending on whether they are seen from a military or legal perspective. The difference is softened, but not erased, when a distinguished military commander contemplates the broader moral and political duties of states, just as international law scholars strive to apply legal principles to military necessity.

“To the soldier, the security and victory of the army will always outweigh the interests of peaceful populations. But the jurist, convinced that the law is a bulwark for all — especially the weak against the strong — cannot renounce his duty to secure legal protections for civilians in occupied territory.

“Some members of the Institute may not abandon the hope that, with progress, humanity may one day replace war between sovereign states with organized international justice. But the Institute as a whole knows this hope is unlikely to be realized in our time and limits its efforts in this area to two achievable aims:

1. To open and facilitate judicial avenues for minor disputes between states, where war would be a disproportionate means;

2. To help clarify and reinforce legal order even in wartime.

“I readily acknowledge that the customs of war have improved since the establishment of standing armies, which enabled stricter discipline and required better logistical care. I also freely acknowledge that this improvement is chiefly due to military commanders.

“Barbaric looting was banned by generals before jurists had even concluded it was unjust. If today it is internationally recognized that soldiers may not plunder in land warfare, this marks a great advance in civilization — and jurists have played a part in it.

“Since conscription has turned standing armies into national ones, war itself has become national. This has increased the importance and necessity of the laws of war, for amid the diversity of culture and sentiment among individuals and classes, the law is nearly the only moral power recognized by all — it unites citizens under common rules. A heartening, even elevating fact is that we see — within the Institute of International Law — the growing emergence of a shared legal consciousness among all civilized people. Men of often-opposed nations — Germans and Frenchmen, English and Russians, Spaniards and Dutch, Italians and Austrians — are usually in agreement on the principles of international law.

“This is why it is possible to proclaim a law of war accepted by the legal conscience of all civilized people.

“When a principle is generally recognized, it exercises moral authority that restrains base appetites and overcomes barbarism.

“We are aware of the limited means available to enforce international law. We know that war stirs deep passions, unleashing both the best and worst in human nature. That is precisely why jurists feel compelled to present the legal precepts they deem necessary, clearly and precisely, to the conscience of the people and the legal awareness of those who command them. They are confident this declaration will resonate within the consciences of those involved, and find powerful echoes in public opinion across nations.

“It is primarily the responsibility of states, within the bounds of their sovereignty, to enforce international law and punish its blatant violations. The administration of the law of war must therefore be entrusted first and foremost to the state wielding power where the violation occurred. No state will lightly or safely risk the reproach of having violated its international obligations — even if it faces no risk of intervention from third states. Any state, even the most powerful, gains in honor before God and man by being faithful and sincere in upholding international law.

“Are we deluded in thinking that faith in international law as a sacred and necessary regime might help enforce discipline in armies and prevent many harmful excesses? I, at least, am convinced that the ancient error — that during war all law ceases and anything is permitted against the enemy nation — can only increase the inevitable suffering of war unnecessarily and to no useful end, even from the standpoint of vigorous military conduct, which I too believe to be good.

“As for the manual’s reservations — ‘if necessary,’ ‘according to the circumstances,’ etc. — we consider them pressure valves meant to protect the rigid legal norm from being shattered amid heightened emotions and the strain of diverse dangers, and to ensure the rules remain applicable in many other cases. Sad experience teaches us that in every war many violations go unpunished, yet that does not lead the jurist to reject the violated legal principle. On the contrary: if, for instance, a parlementaire is shot in violation of the law of nations, the jurist will reaffirm and more vigorously proclaim the rule that parlementaires are inviolable.

“I hope Your Excellency will kindly receive this sincere statement of our views as both an expression of my gratitude and a token of my personal respect and highest consideration.

Dr. BLUNTSCHLI

Privy Councillor, Professor”

P. p.196. — The League of Neutrals↩

More than forty years ago, the author of this book launched into circulation the idea of constituting a League of Neutrals, aimed at securing peace. He formulated and gradually developed this idea in a series of articles published in the Économiste belge, and in letters sent to the Times, Il Pensiero, etc., which were reprinted and commented upon by a large number of newspapers. However, he must admit that no movement of public opinion has yet declared itself in this direction, and that the “peace societies” have so far confined themselves to advocating the intervention of the moral force of opinion and the use of arbitration to prevent war. The author, while paying tribute to their generous advocacy, differs from them on this point. He does not believe that moral force alone is sufficient to establish peace between States, any more than it suffices to maintain peace among individuals; in short, he holds the view that justice, to be obeyed, must be supported by force.

Here are some of his writings related to the League of Neutrals:

I. — ON THE POLITICAL ROLE OF SECONDARY STATES

(Économiste belge, 3 April 1853)

There is a fact evident to all eyes: as international relations develop, the disruptive influence of war spreads more widely. When each nation lived in isolation, when foreign trade played only a minor role, two people could quarrel and wage war without causing appreciable harm to other nations watching the struggle. No doubt, they might fear that the subjugation of the weaker could later threaten their own security, and thus they had an interest in guarding against this risk. But it was only a risk — or a purely hypothetical harm. In the Middle Ages, for example, war could devastate France and England for years without other European nations feeling the effects much more than they feel today from a quarrel between two petty rulers in Senegal or Guinea. Things are no longer the same. When war breaks out today between two members of the great community of civilized nations, it immediately inflicts an inevitable harm on the entire community. Thus the Eastern War depressed public securities and industrial values throughout Europe, slowed agricultural, industrial, and commercial production, struck a mortal blow to the spirit of enterprise, and — in short — reduced the total private income while helping to increase public expenditures. This harm is not easily quantified, but it is nonetheless real; and if we were to gauge its magnitude by the suffering we witness, we would not hesitate to estimate it at several billions for all the nations that have abstained from participating in the conflict.

What follows from this? That not only are all nations increasingly interested in preventing war, but also — as a consequence — that their right to intervene in the quarrels of others is acquiring greater strength and scope; that the right of intervention of nations watching a dispute or an international conflict is becoming less and less open to dispute; and, to use a comparison from the industrial world, that war is increasingly taking on, for the great community of civilized nations, the character of a “dangerous or unhealthy industry.”

This right to intervene to prevent or end a conflict that harms neutral interests as well as those of the belligerents is not, in fact, denied. More than that: since 1815, the principal powers of Europe — or, to use the accepted term, the great powers (France, England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia) — have arrogated to themselves a genuine political dictatorship in this regard. Whenever a conflict arises between two nations, the great powers immediately intervene, first with their good offices, then with armed force if necessary, and they restore peace by authority.

… This system, which attributes a real political dictatorship to the great powers in the common interest of civilized nations, may be effective in ending quarrels among secondary states, but it is far less effective when one of the great powers is involved. Now suppose that the secondary states, which have hitherto ceded to the great powers exclusive control of Europe’s general policy — suppose that these secondary states, who play in the great community of civilized nations the role of minority shareholders excluded from the management of certain industrial companies on the pretext of their small stake — suppose, I say, that the secondary states cease to be excluded from the higher direction of that great community, and let us see what would follow.

Europe’s population is around 230 million. Of that number, 170 million belong to the five great powers that have assumed control of Europe’s political direction. That leaves the other states with 80 million people — a force equal to that of two or three great powers — whose influence is not taken into account at all. Well then! Suppose that whenever the peace of Europe is threatened or disturbed, the states among whom this force is scattered should come to an agreement, form a confederation, and act in accordance with the common interest — suppose that the number of powers steering European politics, which is now only five, were raised to seven or eight — would general security not be significantly strengthened? If, instead of facing four powers — two of which seemed favorable and the other two divided — the emperor of Russia had had to fear the hostility of two additional powers, immediately interested in preventing any abusive encroachment by a great power upon the domain of a weaker neighbor, would he not have understood that his ambitions in Turkey were doomed to fail? Would he not have abandoned his attempt to open the succession of the Ottoman Empire for his own benefit — and would not the horrors of the present war (the Eastern War, 1854–56) have been spared the world?

It is therefore not by upholding everywhere and always the principle of non-intervention, as advocated by certain well-meaning but misguided friends of peace, that we can better secure the peace of the world; it is, on the contrary, by extending and generalizing the use of the right of intervention — by emancipating the secondary states, those minority shareholders of the European political community, from the tutelage of the great powers — by assigning them the proportional share of influence that is their due in the higher management of the community’s interests. No doubt, by thus strengthening and completing the machinery that protects against war, we shall not immediately realize the dream of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre — but we shall certainly make peace more durable, if not perpetual. What war of conquest, for example, could still be undertaken if the invading power had to reckon with a coalition of six great powers, two of them formed by the political confederation of secondary states, and both having an immediate interest in resisting any encroachment by the strong upon the domain of the weak? In such a case, would not the policy of conquest visibly become an obsolete and unprofitable policy — a policy that no longer covered its costs? Would it not finally be abandoned, along with part of the military apparatus that is the essential tool of that policy? The great powers would therefore disarm, or at least substantially reduce their armaments, and the small powers could follow their lead without fear for their own security.

This would be, we believe, the inevitable result of the active intervention of the minority shareholders of the European community in matters concerning the whole of that vast political community.

II. — THE RIGHT OF PEACE (Économiste belge, 12 November 1859)

… Whatever one may do, however much respect one may show for the territory and property of neutrals, one can no longer, due to the changes that have occurred in international relations and the growth of a community of shared interests, wage war without inflicting serious and profound damage on the interests of the generality of civilized people. No matter how one tries to reduce war to the proportions of a local event, it becomes, by virtue of the new relations established through the multiplication of capital and the intertwining of commercial interests, a general phenomenon. In other words, war — which in earlier times only sensibly affected the interests of the belligerents — has, in our century, become a universal nuisance.

What follows from this? That the right of war, formerly absolute and unlimited between nations, now finds itself confronted by another right — a new right born from the growing community of international interests — which might be called the right of peace.

Let us use a simple analogy to illustrate the transformation that has occurred in relations between nations and, consequently, in the status of the right of war. Suppose two men fall into a quarrel and, lacking the common sense and morality to settle it amicably before arbitrators, resort to force. They go into a field, far from any habitation, and draw their weapons. No one has cause to intervene. No one has the positive right to stop them from killing each other if that is their desire. They are masters of their own lives — lives which, by all appearances, are of little value — and they may risk or lose them without causing much concern to others. But suppose that instead of exercising their “right of war” in an empty field where they endanger only themselves, our two hotheads — or scoundrels, as one prefers — decide to do so in the middle of a busy street, and further complicate matters by using firearms rather than swords. What will be the situation, and what will happen? Will their “right of war” still be entire and incontestable, as in the previous case? Will the passersby whose safety they compromise, the shopkeepers whose customers they scare away, the property owners whose rents would fall if such antics were prolonged — will they not have the right to charge at them, and to demand compensation if some citizen is maimed or a shop window shattered? In vain would they invoke their natural and inalienable right to shoot each other with revolvers or otherwise — it will rightly be replied that they may exercise their right only insofar as it does not infringe upon the rights of others. They may break each other’s heads and limbs, but they have no right over other people’s heads, limbs, or shop windows. And if they persist, the police will be unleashed on them — or if there is no police, the citizens and passersby, having first prudently stepped aside, will sooner or later band together to rid themselves of these public nuisances who endanger the street and hinder commerce. From this it necessarily follows that any individual — private person or sovereign — who, for any reason whatsoever, legitimate or not, breaks the public peace, thereby becomes an enemy to the peaceful community whose repose he disturbs and whose existence and interests he threatens. In vain will he appeal to the justice of his cause, the purity of his intentions, or the grandeur of his “ideal” — none of this entitles him to fire shots in the street or damage shop windows. And we may further add that those whose safety he endangers have, in turn, the natural and inalienable right to leap upon this public menace, no matter how virtuous his intentions or sacred his “goal,” and to make him incapable of doing harm — exactly as one would with any common criminal.

The right of peace, born of the shared interests created by civilization, has thus emerged in opposition to the right of war, born of the isolation of barbaric times.

III. — PROPOSAL FOR AN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A LEAGUE OF NEUTRALS [111]

The current situation in Europe ought to inspire the gravest concerns in all friends of peace. Since the disastrous war of 1870, this situation has only worsened. Although France has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to a policy of peace, Germany, having become an essentially military nation, was on the verge — in 1875 and again in early 1887 — of unleashing war once more, with the aim of securing the results gained during the 1870–71 campaign and codified by the Treaty of Frankfurt. In the face of this looming threat to general security, all nations have increased their armaments, bringing them to a level never before seen — not even during the great barbarian invasions. Continental Europe has become a vast military camp. The standing armies it maintains in peacetime total the staggering number of 3,860,000 men. In wartime, [266] these forces could rise to 12,455,000. Maintaining such forces — not including the cost of building fortresses or continuously replacing materiel due to the ceaseless perfection of offensive and defensive technologies — absorbs 4.6 billion francs annually. Ordinary state revenues cannot cover this. Since 1870, European national debts have risen from 75 billion to 115 billion francs as a result.

But beyond the rise in military and fiscal burdens crushing the people, the increased threat of war and the ensuing militarization have caused another evil — both moral and economic — that may be just as dangerous for the future. They have rekindled national hatreds that peace and commercial development had soothed, and they have triggered a protectionist backlash that seeks to exclude not only foreign products but foreign workers themselves. At the end of a century marked by so many marvellous inventions — inventions that have brought people closer and made even the most remote regions of the globe accessible to civilization — the foreigner has once again become what he was in times of isolation and barbarism: an enemy.

So dire has the situation become that people now ask whether outright war might not be preferable to the ruinous and demoralizing regime of armed peace. That might be so, perhaps, if a great European conflict could bring about the elimination or even reduction of the risk of war, and lead to disarmament. Unfortunately, experience shows us that war does not breed peace, but war. Every struggle between two nations, whatever the outcome, contains the seed of a future war. That seed germinates during the truce that the exhaustion of their strength and resources imposes upon the combatants; it grows, and [267] eventually bears its poisonous fruit. The war of 1870 increased the stock of political hatred that already existed in Europe. How could a future war, waged between people consumed by even greater animosity, possibly bring them reconciliation? It may well lead them to bankruptcy — it will not lead them to disarmament.

We must therefore not look to war to create a regime of “unarmed peace.” Could such a regime be established, as the International Arbitration and Peace Association believes, by simply creating a court to settle international disputes — without giving that court the power to enforce its decisions? Well-meaning advocates of peace continue to cherish this philanthropic illusion, but without spreading it. Public common sense refuses to believe that powers armed with hostile passions and formidable weaponry will willingly submit to the verdict of a court possessing only moral authority. Whether it concerns nations or individuals, it does not believe in the efficacy of justice without policemen. That is why today’s peace societies attract only a few members, despite the fervent efforts of their admirable promoters — and despite the growing desire for peace among the working classes, who must bear the burdens of armament while awaiting the calamities of war. Practical public sense teaches that one cannot stop a flood with a spider’s web; that moral force can prevail over material force only when backed by a material force of its own, and one of superior strength.

But in the present circumstances of Europe, can one put at the service of peace a material force strong enough to prevent war? Would the creation of such a force [268] be compatible with the law of nations? And are there states in Europe with enough interest in peace to form and deploy such a peacekeeping instrument at their own expense and risk?

The law of nations recognizes the right of states to wage war; but like all rights, the right of war is limited by the rights of others. A state — no more than a private individual — has the right to inflict harm on others, even in pursuit of a goal it considers legitimate. Now, on this point, the progress of industry and commerce has entirely changed the relation of belligerents to neutrals. Until quite recently, the foreign trade and foreign capital investment of civilized nations were minimal: each country produced nearly all it consumed, and invested capital only in its own enterprises. In 1613, for example, the total value of imports and exports for England and Wales was only £4,628,000, and even a century later, the combined foreign trade of all European nations did not equal the present-day trade of small Belgium. Cross-border capital lending was even more limited than trade. Only in Holland did capitalists show much willingness to lend to foreign governments — and even less to invest in foreign enterprises.

As a result, when war broke out between two states, it caused only partial and insignificant harm to neutral populations. A war between France and Spain or Germany affected England little more than a war between China and Japan might. [269] War then had a purely local character, and its harms rarely exceeded the boundaries of the countries — or even the regions — where it was fought. But the progress of industrial machinery, and especially of transportation, has created a wholly new situation. Over the past half-century in particular, both trade in goods and international capital flows have grown and become global. The foreign trade of civilized nations — once no more than 2 or 3 billion — now exceeds 80 billion francs, and foreign capital investments are likewise measured in the tens of billions. In every country, a growing share of the population depends for its means of existence and its food supplies upon relations with foreign countries; whether it be the export of its products or the interest earned on its capital, which supply it, in the form of wages, profits or interest, with the revenue with which it buys consumption goods; or whether it be the import of its food supplies. In France, about one-tenth of the population is directly dependent on foreign trade; in Belgium, it is one-third; and in England, the proportion is likely close to that.

As long as peace prevails, this growth and interconnection of international relations brings only benefits — greater prosperity and civilization. But if war breaks out, what was once a benefit becomes a harm for all. Neutrals suffer not only the extraordinary costs of ensuring their security but also the capital market disruptions and commercial interruptions that [270] every major war unleashes. One need only recall the disaster and appalling misery that the American Civil War inflicted on the manufacturing centers dependent on raw materials from the northern states! War is no longer a local nuisance — it strikes neutral interests almost as hard as those of the belligerents. In short, in a world where commerce has knit people together and increasingly unified their interests, war has become a general nuisance.

That being the case, do the neutral powers not have the right to prevent this nuisance from occurring? In vain would a bellicose government invoke, against this new right born of the progress of industry and civilization, the ancient right of war; since it is no longer in its power to exercise this right without inflicting on the neutrals a harm that no compensation could repair, the neutrals may, in turn, invoke their legitimate interest in self-preservation to forbid its exercise. If two duelists go off to settle their quarrel in a secluded place where their pistols cannot harm anyone, there would be little objection to allowing them to freely exercise their “right of war”; but if they decide to fire their revolvers in a busy intersection, would not the passers-by, in the absence of a police force, be fully authorized to prevent this mode of exercising the right of war, given the danger it poses to them? It is the same with war between states: neutrals had little interest in preventing it when it caused them only negligible damage; one could even contest their right to do so; [271] but has that right not become obvious now that war can no longer be waged without endangering the interests and even the very existence of a growing portion of their populations?

It is further worth noting that in exercising their right to forbid wars that have, by virtue of progress, become harmful to the entire civilized community, the neutrals would have on their side not only the opinion of their own populations but also that of the vast majority of the people who live by agriculture, industry, and commerce in the countries drawn into war. For it is not, in fact, the people themselves who are called upon to decide the justice or necessity of a war in which all citizens are today compelled to take part with their blood and their money; this decision belongs to a small number of politicians and military leaders whose interests are unrelated to those of industry—often it belongs to a single man, and it is no exaggeration to say that the peace of the world today rests in the hands of three or four individuals—sovereigns or ministers—who possess the power to unleash, overnight, the scourge of war and, in so doing, to inflict upon the civilized community, including the neutrals over whom they have no jurisdiction, countless evils and damages. This exorbitant power was not possessed even by the most absolute despots of the barbarous ages; yet the independent and free nations of our civilized era are obliged to suffer it, simply for lack of having agreed to restrain it.

This agreement, to uphold a state of peace commanded by the general interest and in harmony with the desires of the vast majority of even the most warlike populations—this agreement, which the growing development of international relations renders ever more necessary—is there not [272] a pressing need to realize it before a war breaks out, one that already promises to be more bloody and destructive than any that has come before? Would the states that take the initiative not thereby provide humanity and civilization the greatest of services? And is it not from those nations which stand to suffer the greatest damage from war—whether by threatening their economic interests or their political independence—that this initiative must be sought? Such, in the first instance, is England; such are, in the second, the small continental states: Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark.

By inaugurating the policy of free trade, England has, if not created, at least advanced and developed the new condition of mutual dependence among people for the economic satisfaction of their needs. At the beginning of this policy, in 1826, her foreign trade amounted to only £79,426,000; sixty years later, in 1886, it had risen to £361,744,000. It had increased sevenfold. In the same interval, British capital had spread across the globe to create railroads, shipping lines, and industrial enterprises of every kind, to the reciprocal advantage of borrower and lender alike. But if this policy of free trade and growing internationalization of interests has contributed—far beyond expectation—to increasing the welfare of populations, it has also made England more dependent on other nations. A special circumstance has intensified this dependence: most of England’s imports consist of foodstuffs. The abolition of the corn laws allowed the English to obtain, through the exchange of industrial goods for foreign agricultural products, the greater part of their nourishment at a lower cost than they [273] could obtain by producing it themselves. Of the United Kingdom’s 35 million inhabitants, about 20 million are fed on meat, wheat, vegetables, fruits, etc., imported from abroad; and several million Englishmen earn their incomes from the industries whose products serve to economically purchase this sustenance for the majority. So long as peace prevails in the civilized world, this state of affairs offers only advantages; it allows the English people to obtain life’s necessities with less effort than any other nation. But let a war break out—let some of England’s markets for selling or provisioning be closed or even merely restricted—and from what revenues will the workers of Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, etc., live, those who produce the goods used to buy food abroad? What will feed the multitude of consumers whom foreign suppliers can no longer provision? This, as we know, is the principal argument raised by the fair traders against free trade; but at the current stage of development of British industry, would it not be impossible and absurd to go backwards by limiting the production of cottons, woolens, iron, machinery, etc., to the needs of the British and colonial markets alone? The danger pointed to by the fair traders is nonetheless real. The more a country depends on foreign sources for its income and food, the greater the damage and risk it faces in the event of war. The conclusion to be drawn is not that we must return to the commercial policies that prevailed before the advent of steam power and free trade, but rather that we must complete and secure the policy of free trade by guaranteeing peace. And thus it is to England, the pioneer of free trade, that it falls to take [274] the initiative in a policy aimed at preventing war.

To the economic interests threatened by war, the small continental states—Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark—must add a political interest of the highest order: the interest of their independence, or at least the integrity of their borders. The small states have nothing to gain from a European war—on the contrary, for experience shows that territorial arrangements following great-power wars are almost always concluded at their expense.

Now let us suppose that England, relying on international law on the one hand, and on common interests especially endangered by a new European war on the other, allies itself with the small continental states just mentioned to constitute a League of Neutrals, and let us consider what military strength this League would command. In peacetime, the combined armed forces of these five states amount to 453,432 men—of which 200,785 for England and 252,647 for Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark. In wartime, they could be raised to 1,095,223 men. [112] To this army of over one million soldiers would be added, through the union of the navies of England, Holland, and [275] Denmark, the most powerful military fleet in existence. Finally, to deploy this colossal instrument of coercion, the League would have at its service the financial resources of a nation with the world’s highest credit. Assuming a new conflict breaks out between two of the continental great powers—Germany, France, Austria, or Russia—can it not be affirmed with certainty that the League, by joining its forces to those of the state facing aggression (as France was in 1875 and in early 1887, and as any other power might be), would guarantee that state’s victory? Would not this intervention by a pacifying power, possessing a force equal to or even greater than that of the largest continental military power, and supported morally by universal opinion, dissuade even the most bellicose states from disturbing the peace of the world in the future?

And if it were fully understood that no state—however powerful—could henceforth disturb the peace without encountering a superior force, what would follow? We would then witness in modern Europe the same phenomenon that occurred at the end of the Middle Ages in those countries where the sovereign had become strong enough to compel the lords to keep the peace: the most powerful and most ambitious disarmed, having learned by bitter experience that they could no longer disturb the peace without facing swift and certain punishment. Once protected by a force greater than even the strongest, the owners of fortified castles filled in their moats and sowed wheat; the cities dismantled the walls in which they had been stifling and turned them into promenades. In the same way, the presently most aggressive powers would end by disarming if, each time they used their arsenals to threaten peace, [276] they encountered stronger arsenals being used to defend it.

To guarantee peace among civilized people and thereby provoke disarmament by rendering armaments unnecessary—that would be the goal of the League of Neutrals.

This League, it must be said, will not be spontaneously established by governments. Only the pressure of public opinion can bring it about. That is why we turn to public opinion in founding an “Association for the Establishment of a League of Neutrals.” This Association will have the special and limited purpose of provoking, in England, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark—through publications and meetings—an agitation strong enough to exert pressure on the governments to join together in constituting the League, while leaving it open to other states. Once this goal is achieved, the Association will dissolve itself, just as its older sibling, the Free Trade League, did after the abolition of the corn laws—an organization whose work of liberty and peace it seeks to complete.

IV. — How War Can Be Prevented and Peace Disarmed in Europe

(Published in Il Pensiero Italiano, September 1891.)

Our civilized Europe today presents, to the eyes of the philosopher and the economist, the strange and painful spectacle of a near-parallel increase in both the need for peace and the risk of war—this latter entailing the expansion of the military apparatus meant to protect populations from the growing danger. That the need for peace is increasing is a phenomenon that is easy to grasp when one examines the results of the progress achieved especially over the past half-century in both [277] the arts of production and the arts of destruction. Industrial progress has enormously increased the productive power of man and brought about a development of wealth unprecedented in history, but in perfecting the mechanisms of production and distribution of this wealth, it has made them more delicate and more sensitive to all forms of disruption. When the mass of the population in each country subsisted through purely local industries, when the sphere of its exchanges rarely extended beyond the boundaries of a province or even a district, when the combined foreign trade of all civilized nations was no greater than that of Belgium or Switzerland—and such was the state of things less than two centuries ago—the disruptions and harms caused by war were concentrated almost exclusively on the field of battle itself. This is no longer the case today. The mere fear of war provokes a crisis that spreads rapidly throughout the entire civilized community, now interconnected and interdependent through multiple and overlapping exchanges; the business world becomes anxious, credit tightens and ceases to provide industry and commerce with their usual lifeblood, work is threatened with coming to a halt, and those working in the factories are threatened with being left without the means of existence. When war does break out, it requires the immediate requisitioning of all the nation’s forces and resources. The entire able-bodied population is called to take part: armies number in the millions, and the sums needed to set them in motion with their colossal equipment are counted in billions. Ordinary and extraordinary taxes are no longer sufficient; one must resort to borrowing, and when voluntary loans fail, to the disastrous expedient of paper money.

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This new condition of nation-to-nation conflict—this vast increase in the sacrifices demanded and the damage caused—explains why war is today more feared than ever as the worst of calamities, and why the maintenance of peace is the object of universal demand. What is harder to explain is that, despite this growing and evident need for peace, the risk of war has continued to grow, implying a corresponding expansion in the military apparatus meant to contain it.

This phenomenon does, however, have a cause—and one may find its principal, if not sole, origin in the very progress that has brought people closer together and multiplied their relations. When two men have only rare and sporadic business dealings, there are few occasions for conflict or litigation; when their relations become daily and more significant, the risk of conflict and litigation inevitably increases. It is the same for nations—and since there exist no courts with the power to judge their disputes and bring them to an end, they are forced to prepare to defend themselves, each for its own rights—or what it believes to be its rights. Hence the natural increase in the risk of war and the equally natural growth of the armaments designed to protect nations from this mounting threat. To this general and permanent cause is added today a particular one: the dispute between France and Germany, caused by the disastrous war of 1870. But even assuming that this aggravating factor of the risk of war threatening the civilized world did not exist, or that it were to be resolved, the risk would not disappear. Should the level of danger be temporarily reduced, some other quarrel, some other international dispute [279] would almost inevitably arise and, after a brief reduction in armaments, bring about the reestablishment of the same system of armed peace.

This deplorable state of affairs has aroused the concern of both the friends of peace and of statesmen—on the one hand from a purely philanthropic point of view, and on the other from the more practical aim of preserving the status quo of European politics. Accordingly, they have each sought ways—some to permanently guarantee peace while disarming it, others merely to delay as long as possible the outbreak of a European war which they regard, in any case, as virtually inevitable.

The method unanimously recommended by the friends of peace to guarantee peace and achieve disarmament is well known: arbitration and the establishment of an international tribunal, whose decisions would be enforced by the moral force of public opinion. But must the ineffectiveness of this method really be demonstrated? There are no doubt certain international disputes or lawsuits that can be resolved by arbitration—and we frequently see examples of this. But there are others—and these are the most serious and dangerous—that no nation would consent to submit to arbitration: such is the present dispute between France and Germany regarding the possession of Alsace-Lorraine. As for the effectiveness of an international tribunal whose rulings would have no backing other than the moral force of opinion—would it be any greater than that of an ordinary court without police to enforce its judgments? Moral force is certainly worthy of respect, but it is respected only insofar as it rests on a sufficient material force. The practical common sense of nations is not mistaken on this point—and this is why, [280] despite their complaints about the crushing burden of armed peace, they offer only rare memberships and meagre support to peace societies and congresses.

As for the statesmen aiming to preserve the European status quo, their aims are less radical—but have they been more successful in securing peace by forming the Austro-German alliance, to which Italy has joined? Certainly, one cannot doubt their peaceful intentions, and one must credit the words of the German Emperor, who affirmed at the Guild Hall reception that “his goal is, above all, the maintenance of peace.” But despite these repeated declarations of peaceful intent since the creation of the Triple Alliance—also known by the alternate title “The League of Peace”—have we seen the risk of war diminish, or the burden of armaments lighten? Has Europe ceased to be a vast military camp? And if war has so far been postponed, who can guarantee that some unforeseen event will not unleash it tomorrow? The Triple Alliance does indeed concentrate impressive forces—granted. But however powerful it may be, does its power surpass that which France and allied Russia could wield? Between these two formidable coalitions, conflict is possible and its outcome uncertain. Is it any wonder, then, that the formation and renewal of the Triple Alliance are not enough to reassure Europe, and that the risk of war it endures and the insurance premium it pays in the form of armaments have reached their maximum?

Can this perilous and burdensome situation continue indefinitely? Can Europe go on bearing the costs that this imposes? These costs are now greater [281] than any endured even in the days when civilization was threatened by barbarian invasions. The standing peacetime armies of Europe amount to the enormous total of 3,860,000 men. In wartime, this number could rise to 12,455,000. The maintenance of these forces—without counting the costs of fortress construction or the periodic renewal of equipment demanded by the ongoing refinement of weaponry and defenses—absorbs 5,660 million francs annually. Ordinary state revenues are not enought; and since 1870, the debts of European nations have risen, under the influence of this cause, from 76 billion to 120. This is the bill for armed peace.

I am not unaware that the extraordinary development of wealth since the rise of large-scale industry now enables European society to bear burdens that would have crushed it in earlier times. But one may well ask—given the persistence of budget deficits and the steady rise in public debt—whether government expenditures are not growing faster still than the resources of the people. This would seem to be confirmed by the increasing discontent of the lower classes—who, even if they do not see the taxes they pay, certainly feel their weight—by the expanding ranks drawn to collectivism, anarchism, and other forms of socialism. This internal peril, which has begun to seriously alarm farsighted minds, cannot be dispelled except by a real and tangible improvement in the conditions of the working masses. And that improvement cannot be obtained from the artificial and fruitless schemes of state socialism—it will come only through [282] the natural increase and diffusion of wealth. Now, it is impossible to ignore that in recent years the upward movement of production and wealth has, if not stopped, at least slowed—and the main cause of this slowdown is not hard to identify: the rise in public burdens, driven in turn by the excess of military expenditures. Governments have been forced to increase the taxes levied on consumption, and through an inevitable chain reaction, on production as well. Industry, increasingly burdened, has raised louder and louder protests and demanded protection against foreign competition. These demands have been granted, and tariffs have been raised—and continue to be raised each day. But need I point out that protection does not reduce industry’s burdens—on the contrary, it merely lightens the load of some at the cost of imposing an even greater load on others? In short, Europe, having reverted to protectionism, will be less capable of supporting the expenses of the vast apparatus of armed peace than it was under the semi-free trade regime established by the treaties of 1860. Nor is that all. Until recently, European industry had a near-monopoly on supplying manufactured goods to the rest of the world. Today, American industry is beginning to compete. Under the regime of protectionism, worsened by the McKinley bill, this competition may not be too threatening; but if, as seems likely, the free trade movement regains ascendancy in the United States—if American industry, already free from the burden of militarism, becomes free also from the artificial burdens of protection—will it not supplant European industry in the markets where the latter currently holds sway?

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What conclusion can be drawn from this, if not that Europe—under penalty of seeing both the internal peril of socialism and the external peril of competition from the growing industry of the United States worsen, and thereby exposing itself to inevitable decline—must promptly seek means of lightening the crushing burden of its public expenditures, while more effectively guarding itself against the ruinous calamity of war.

We have just seen that the Triple Alliance is incapable of resolving this problem—that it has increased the risk of war rather than reduced it, and that by raising this risk to the maximum, it has likewise raised to the maximum the cost of the insurance apparatus meant to cover it. Let us therefore investigate whether it might not be possible to devise some other political arrangement capable of realizing this universal desideratum: securing peace at an economic cost.

Outside the military powers—Germany, Austria, Italy, France, and Russia—which currently play an active role in European politics and possess the power to unleash war without possessing the power to prevent it, there exists a first-rank power, England, which, following the principle of non-intervention, maintains a posture of neutrality in continental affairs, along with a series of secondary powers—Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, etc.—which play only a passive role and exert no appreciable influence on the general affairs of Europe. These powers, whether voluntarily neutral or merely passive, exercise but a feeble influence on the resolution of questions that concern the broader community; and if a conflict were to erupt between the powers aligned in the Triple Alliance on one side, and France and Russia on the other, it would not be within the power of these neutral or passive states, in their present isolation, to prevent a war [284] that might nevertheless threaten the very existence of some of them and would impose extraordinary expenses on all, while subjecting them to the disruptions and damages of a wartime crisis. These neutral or passive powers may be compared to those voters who refuse to join any political party—either because they wish to abstain from electoral struggles, or because they want to preserve the freedom to vote as they please. However numerous they may be—more numerous, even, than the voters enrolled in any given party—they count for nothing. The nation's affairs are decided without them, and yet they are obliged to submit to decisions in which they had no part and upon which they exerted no influence, however contrary those decisions may be to their views or however injurious to their interests.

I concede that, in refusing to swell the ranks of existing parties, they may be following justifiable scruples; I concede that none of these parties seems to them deserving of their support. But it remains true that, by remaining isolated and following each his own whim, they are as though they did not exist—whereas if they were to join together, to form an association, they might constitute a force with which the parties currently deciding the nation's affairs would be obliged to reckon.

Well then, let us suppose that the powers now playing the role of these neutral or passive voters, recognizing the burdens and perils imposed upon them by the partitioning of Europe into two political camps, were to decide to emerge from their isolation; let us suppose that they associated together with a view to maintaining peace, which has become the primary need of civilized people, and that they formed through this association a force with which even the most bellicose powers would be compelled to reckon; let us suppose that this "League of Peace" did not merely [285] declare, as Sir James Fergusson recently did on behalf of England, that "her sympathies will be with the power that seeks to preserve peace against that which seeks to break it," but that it supported those sympathies with the full material force at its disposal—in short, that it combined its armies and fleets with those of the power under attack against those of the attacking power. Would not this weight, which it threatened to cast into the scale of forces, make the struggle impossible by making the outcome certain in advance? If Italy were to detach itself from the Triple Alliance to join England, Turkey, Spain, and the other currently neutral or passive powers in forming a "League of Peace" truly worthy of the name, would not this League possess such a force that no power, not even any alliance formed for war, could henceforth attempt to disturb the peace of Europe without committing an act of madness? And would not the European community then experience what happened within each nation when a power armed with sufficient strength arose to put an end to feudal anarchy: that the most powerful and quarrelsome lords, no longer able to settle their disputes by force without exposing themselves to certain punishment, gave up keeping expensive bands of men-at-arms on their payroll, let the walls of their fortresses crumble, and moved into open and comfortable dwellings—and that a small number of constables and town watchmen sufficed to maintain internal peace? Would it not be the same for external peace if it were guaranteed by a defensive force greater than any aggressive one? Disarmament, which is impossible today—just as it was during the anarchic era of the Middle Ages—would not disarmament come about of its own accord once armaments had become unnecessary, and would not the problem [286] of securing peace economically be thereby resolved?

I do not overlook the difficulties that the formation of a League of Peace would encounter in the present state of public opinion. I compared just now the powers that follow a policy of non-intervention to those abstaining voters who hold back either out of indifference or because none of the existing parties satisfies their convictions. Everyone knows how difficult it is to bring such people together to form an autonomous party with a program of its own and a resolve to carry it out. Yet the task is not impossible: we have recently seen, in the United States, the formation of a farmers’ alliance outside the old political frameworks which, by allying with the Democratic Party, inflicted a notable defeat on the Republican and protectionist coalition. Would it be any more impossible to unite the non-interventionists and other abstainers of the European community in a common cause? Certainly, it would be necessary to overcome in them certain habits of inertia, if not entrenched indifference, in order to bring them to abandon their passive stance and to take an active role in managing the general affairs of Europe. But whatever their inertia, can they be unaware of the growing danger of the present situation? Do they not bear their share of the crushing burdens demanded by armed peace? And if a war breaks out, will they not suffer from the general crisis that accompanies it—not to mention the peril that may threaten the neutrality or even the existence of some of the smaller states, such as Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland? Finally, if Europe, undermined by socialism and beset in its export markets by American competition, buckles under the weight of its burdens, will they not be swept up in its decline?

The task, then, would be to gather together these isolated and, in their isolation, powerless members of the [287] European community, to associate their forces and form them into a powerful instrument of peace. I wonder why Italy, that newcomer among the nations, justly ambitious to win for herself a place worthy of her glorious past, should not take the initiative in this beneficent undertaking. Within the Triple Alliance, into which she hastily entered, Italy will never play more than a subordinate role: she will be obliged to follow the lead given by her two powerful allies and, meanwhile, will be condemned to bear, without reprieve, a disproportionate burden of armaments that hinders the natural development of her resources. By withdrawing from the Triple Alliance to take the lead in constituting a League destined to secure peace, would she not acquire both a superior moral authority and a political influence that would be the just reward for rendering the greatest service that could today be given to the civilized world?

V. — A PEACE SYNDICATE. ON THE OCCASION OF THE VISIT OF THE RUSSIAN SAILORS TO FRANCE

(Times, 1 November 1893)

The enthusiastic demonstrations that accompanied the visit of the Russian sailors offer me an opportune occasion to return to a proposal for the establishment of a League of Neutrals that The Times published six years ago (issue of 28 July 1887). All those who observed these demonstrations closely can attest that they had an entirely peaceful character. No doubt, France has not come to terms with the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, but the immense majority of the population is just as averse to the idea of running the terrible risk of a war to recover them as to the idea of renouncing them altogether. It was thus not, whatever may have been said abroad, the desire for revenge that was the hidden motive behind the thousandfold cheers with which the crowds greeted [288] Admiral Avellan and his companions at Toulon and Paris. No! This crowd was acting on a feeling easily understood by anyone who knows the temperament of the French nation—a feeling that might be aptly described as a “sense of honorable security.” During the years following the disastrous war of 1870, France felt herself at the mercy of the victor, and such a situation could rightly appear intolerable to a people proud of its past and particularly sensitive to its honor. To this must be added that the victor’s attitude was not of a kind to calm the apprehensions and sensitivities of the vanquished. In 1875, for example, was he not very nearly tempted to abuse his superiority? Was it not thanks to the benevolent intervention of England and Russia that France, barely convalescent, was able to escape the peril of an unequal war? And when she had managed—with what sacrifices!—to rebuild her military establishment, the formation of the Triple Alliance once again tipped the balance of power toward Germany. It is true, the Triple Alliance presented itself to the world as a “League of Peace,” and Germany, having ceased to be isolated, became calmer and renounced the initiative of a preemptive war of “revenge”; she even showed commendable moderation in that dangerous frontier incident known as the Schnæbelé affair. But is not the moderation of an adversary who is felt to be stronger than oneself almost as painful to bear as his insolence? Hence, a state of unease and nervous irritability that was reflected daily in the tone of the press. This bad temper, so contrary to the French character, was brought to an end by the Franco-Russian alliance, first sketched at Cronstadt, and cemented at Toulon and Paris. United with Russia, France feels strong enough to face Germany united with Austria and Italy. [289] She is no longer at anyone’s mercy. She has recovered her moral independence. She desires peace—without being forced to desire it.

That she sincerely desires it today cannot be doubted. I believe the same may be said of Germany, Austria, and even of Italy, despite the meddlesome and scheming spirit of certain Italian statesmen. At this moment, the dispositions of both the governments and the people of the continent are as peaceful as can be. But does this mean that European peace is assured, even for a short period?

After the February Revolution of 1848, every able-bodied Parisian was enrolled in the National Guard, which led the honest and excellent Garnier Pagès to say: — When everyone is armed, no one will fight. A few days later, the dissolution of the national workshops sparked the terrible June insurrection. Today, all of Europe is armed. Already six years ago, when I sent you my first letter, the standing military forces maintained by the continent amounted to 3,860,000 men, and in time of war could be brought up to 12,433,000. Maintaining these forces, not including the cost of fortifications and the regular renewal of materiel made necessary by the continuous improvement of offensive and defensive instruments, consumed annually a sum of 4.6 billion francs. Since ordinary state revenues were insufficient to meet these expenses, the debts of European nations, under the influence of this cause, rose from 75 billion francs in 1870 to 115 billion in 1887. Forces, expenses, and debts have increased further since then. In such a situation, can one not say that Europe is not merely a camp—it is a powder magazine, and the strike of a match could [290] set it off? I know well that the prospect of such a frightful disaster naturally inclines the guardians of the magazine to keep a close watch on their matches. But some accidents defy all the precautions of human wisdom. However sincere the desire for peace that presently animates France and Russia on the one hand, and the Triple Alliance on the other, an unforeseen incident might arise that reawakens warlike passions now dormant and provokes a war that the enormous standing armies and even greater power of improved instruments of destruction would make the most cruel and disastrous that humanity has ever suffered.

This is the catastrophe to be prevented. But what preventive measures might be employed? Should it be the method of arbitration, so ardently promoted by my valiant friends of the peace societies? Without denying this method’s effectiveness in some cases, it is permissible to doubt whether great powers, armed to the teeth and harboring—rightly or wrongly—old grievances, would in a moment of agitation consent to postpone those grievances and submit their dispute to an arbitrator. If judges had no police at their service, would they easily succeed in enforcing their rulings and maintaining internal peace? With all due respect to the friends of peace, a justice without police does not appear to me much more effective abroad.

But where can one find the police capable of safeguarding the peace of Europe?

Leaving aside England, there exists, outside the Double and Triple Alliances, a series of states—Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Turkey, etc.—which are interested—some of them to the highest degree—in the maintenance of peace, but which have [291] no voice in the matter and are, in their isolation, powerless to prevent the great powers from unleashing war. They may be compared to the small shareholders of financial or industrial companies who are denied any participation in affairs in which their capital is engaged, on the pretext that they do not hold the number of shares required by the statutes. Although the total number of their shares may equal or even exceed that of the large shareholders, they count for nothing and must passively accept the decisions of the “big wigs” and suffer the consequences, good or bad. This is the situation of the small shareholders of the European company. They have no influence over its direction, and it is not in their power to prevent a war, though they cannot escape the crisis and other damages that every war now inflicts on neutrals as well as belligerents.

Would it not be otherwise if, instead of remaining isolated, they were to form a Syndicate? Suppose that Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark—joined perhaps by other small continental shareholders—were to unite to form, under the leadership of England, a Peace Syndicate, in other words a League of Neutrals: such a league, comprised only of these five states, could in wartime field an army of more than a million men and would possess the most powerful navy in the world. If a quarrel were to arise between the Double and Triple Alliances, would it not have all the influence—and, if need be, all the power—necessary to prevent that quarrel from leading to war? Would it not be enough for the league to declare to whichever power took the initiative of breaking the peace its formal resolve to join forces with the opposing side? [292] Would not this resolve instantly calm even the most belligerent tempers, by rendering the struggle far too unequal for the aggressor?

I do not ignore the obstacles that might hinder the constitution of such a Syndicate of Neutrals, but I do not believe them insurmountable. They are obstacles more moral than material. The states that would enter this syndicate would have no need to enroll a single extra soldier or to add a single shilling to their war budgets. It would suffice for them to associate in order to acquire the mediating power they cannot possess in isolation. The only obstacles to overcome lie within public opinion. In England, it is the policy of non-intervention in continental affairs; in Belgium and Switzerland, it is the policy of neutrality. But is not the policy of non-intervention, which may have been justified when events on the continent had only slight repercussions in England—when its commercial and financial relations with continental nations were measured only in millions—now outdated, since these relations are counted in billions? Would not a war among the great continental powers cause a commercial and financial crisis that even the Channel could not prevent from spreading? And is it not an error—long refuted by Board of Trade statistics—to believe that England profits from the disasters afflicting her continental clients? As for the neutrality of Belgium and Switzerland, is it not purely nominal? Does not the constant apprehension of a war whose outcome might be fatal to their independence or territorial integrity oblige these so-called neutral states to take the same defensive measures and bear the same costs as other states? If they belonged to a Syndicate of neutrality, would they not at least possess the power which [293] they lack today—to help prevent a war of which they might well become the victims?

Finally, and to conclude this overly long letter: would not the establishment of a League of Neutrals ultimately have the effect of freeing Europe from the burden of armaments that now crush its finances and which will eventually lead it toward bankruptcy? If it became certain that no state, however powerful, could disturb the peace without facing a force greater than its own, what would happen? In modern Europe, there would arise the same phenomenon that occurred at the end of the Middle Ages, within the states where the sovereign became strong enough to compel the lords to keep the peace: the most powerful and most ambitious disarmed, having learned to their cost that they could no longer disturb public order without attracting severe and inevitable punishment. Each being protected by a power greater than even the strongest, castle-owners filled in their moats, and cities transformed their fortified walls into promenades.

Would it not be the same on the day when the neutrals agree to unite in forming this pacifying power? And is it not at a moment when so many cheers ring out in honor of peace that public opinion would be most ready to welcome the formation of a Syndicate whose purpose is to guarantee it?

VI. — THE INSURANCE OF PEACE

(Times, 21 October 1896)

A newspaper aligned with the Triple Alliance, the Wiener Tagblatt, wrote, on the occasion of the enthusiastic reception given to the Tsar, that the French love for Russia was simply another form of hatred for Germany, and that it represented a threat to the peace of the world.

[294]

This interpretation and this conclusion are certainly mistaken, and the explanation of the popular enthusiasm is both simpler and more reassuring. Since the disastrous war of 1870, a weakened and isolated France first found herself at the mercy of Germany, and it was thanks to the intervention of England and Russia that she was able to escape the danger of a second invasion. Later, once she had rebuilt her military strength, she still remained in a manifest state of inferiority in the face of the Triple Alliance. By reestablishing the balance of power, the Russian alliance, definitively sealed by the Tsar’s visit, put an end to a situation cruelly wounding to national pride, and whose bitterness was felt acutely by all classes of the population. This is the very natural explanation of the joyful satisfaction felt by the crowd and of the grateful cheers that welcomed the ally of France.

But if these exuberant manifestations of public sentiment contained nothing threatening to peace, can it be affirmed that the alliance of the two great military powers of Eastern and Western Europe necessarily consolidates it? If the member powers of the Triple Alliance are no longer tempted to abuse their military superiority, is the reestablished balance truly of a kind to remove or even appreciably lessen the danger of a European conflict? In other words, has the risk of war hanging over Europe—risk which has prompted, if not justified, throughout the continent the extraordinary development of the insurance apparatus built to offset it—been diminished? Can we therefore hope that governments will decide to reduce their war budgets? On this point, there can be no illusions: it is clear that proposals for disarmament have no better chance of being heeded today [295] than they had yesterday. If military preparations are now pushed nearly everywhere to their maximum, it even seems likely that they will continue to grow.

For despite everything, peace in Europe remains precarious. No doubt, the sovereigns and statesmen of both the Double and the Triple Alliance are not unaware of the immense responsibility they would assume in starting a war that would pit millions of men against one another and cause disastrous disruptions to the entire community of civilized people, whose interests are now more than ever bound together by the multiple ties of trade and capital lending. But who can vouch for human wisdom? Despite the spread of constitutional institutions and the growing influence of public opinion, even in the least free countries, the exorbitant power to unleash the scourge of war continues to reside in the hands of a very few individuals. Those who wield this power may belong to the most reasonable elite of the nations, but they have their passions like all men; the most powerful among them are generals as well as heads of state; they wear uniforms in preference to civilian dress and live in an environment where military spirit and interests still retain a strong influence.

A balance of power is a guarantee of peace—so be it!—but this balance existed or seemed to exist in 1870 between France and Germany. And yet it was enough for the pressure of a belligerent camarilla to weigh on the faltering will of a weakened sovereign for war to be imposed upon two nations who desired nothing but to live in peace. Is the danger any less today? And if that danger remains, despite the most sincere declarations and demonstrations of pacific intent, should not the friends of peace [296] seek the best means of averting it?

In a letter that The Times published nearly ten years ago (issue of 28 July 1887), I drew public attention to the state of political powerlessness in which the secondary continental states—such as Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, etc.—found themselves, and to their inability to intervene to prevent war from breaking out between the great powers, although they are exposed to suffer their share of the economic and financial disasters it would cause, and although even neutral states cannot, without jeopardizing their own security, escape the burden of armed peace. I also noted that England, despite her colossal resources and the moral ascendancy she exercises, might not on her own possess the power to prevent a European cataclysm, and that she would likely be disinclined to sanction an intervention with force that would win her more resentment from one side than gratitude from the other.

But would the situation not be quite different if the continental states that remain outside the Double or Triple Alliance were to join with England to form a third grouping of forces?

These states—political non-entities in isolation—nonetheless possess, collectively, a military force at least equal to that of either of the two current continental power blocs. According to official statistics, the five states mentioned above could, in time of war, field a force of 1,095,000 men; they would have a formidable navy at their service, and their financial strength would not be inferior to their military power. In the event of a conflict like the one that threatened the peace of Europe in 1875, would not their moral intervention, [297] backed by this respectable material force, make war impossible? Would it not be enough for them to signal their firm will to throw their sword, if need be, onto one side of the scale? Would not any temptation toward aggression be instantly discouraged if the aggressor found himself facing a coalition of forces twice as strong as his own?

I am aware that a number of objections have been raised against the formation of this third alliance. It has been said that the neutral states, Belgium and Switzerland, would lose the benefit of their neutrality by entering into an association that could, in certain cases, involve them in a European war. But in the current situation, does not the guarantee of their neutrality already compel them to maintain armaments as considerable as those of other states? Is this benefit not more nominal than real? It has also been said that geographically separated states could not effectively combine their forces in the event of war; but would not the very creation of a third power with the aim of maintaining peace reduce the risk of a conflagration to a minimum, even if it did not eliminate it entirely? And does the great distance between France and Russia lessen the effectiveness of their alliance?

Finally, do we not see arising every day questions that concern the whole of the European community—questions of colonial expansion, questions relating to the inevitable and progressive dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, aggravated by abominable massacres that the great powers, divided among themselves, have been powerless to prevent? Are these not issues which all of Europe ought to be called upon to examine and resolve? Do not the “small shareholders” of the European company have the same right as the large ones to take part in their [298] discussion and resolution? And would not this right—presently a dead letter—be made viable by the association of their forces? Would not their inclusion among the governing powers increase the authority of Europe’s collective voice and the strength of its injunctions? I could add that by lowering the risk of war, the grouping of the states most interested in peace would make it possible to lighten the burden of the vast apparatus which has the purpose—if not the effect—of shielding Europe from that risk, but I will not test the patience of your readers further. I will simply submit for their consideration this brief exposition of the reasons that may be invoked in favor of a supplement to the current system for insuring peace.

G. DE MOLINARI

Reproduced in Switzerland by the Journal de Genève, and in Belgium by La Meuse, this letter drew various objections in the Journal de Genève, the Indépendance belge, the Patriote de Normandie, the Siècle, etc. To the proposal of a “League of Neutrals” that would, if necessary, resort to material force, our colleague and friend, M. Frédéric Passy, opposed the purely moral means promoted by the societies of the friends of peace. We reproduce his eloquent letter to Le Siècle, and leave it to our readers to choose between these two systems of insuring peace.

THE LEAGUE OF THE NEUTRALS

I have just read in Le Siècle the reflections that Mr. Garreau’s letter inspired regarding Mr. de Molinari’s letter to The Times in favor of the League of the Neutrals. However plausible the generous idea of Mr. de Molinari may seem to many, and however persistent he has been, for many years now, in putting forward this idea, [299] I confess I greatly fear that the objections raised by our distinguished colleague are serious ones. And yet, how can one fail to be struck by the power that would be represented, in reality, by these small nations—powerless in isolation—if they knew how to unite? How can one not conclude that they all have, in the highest degree, an interest in preserving peace, and that they must surely possess some means of helping to ensure its maintenance?

Do they not, in fact, have such a means—without being obliged to resort to military action or to form a military alliance?

The Interparliamentary Conference, regarding which—after the very cursory reports given by the press—much more could be said, seems to think so; and it has already taken a step in that direction.

It is known that in Brussels, in 1895, the conference drew up a proposal for an International Court of Arbitration, which its bureau was tasked with submitting to the governments. It is also known that, in execution of this resolution, the president of the Brussels meeting, Mr. Chevalier Descamps, drafted—under the title Memorandum to the Powers—a document of the highest value, which was indeed, as intended, communicated to the powers. In Budapest, a report was presented to the representatives of fourteen parliaments who were assembled there concerning this communication and the reception it received. This is not the place to enter into details on that point, which would take us too far afield. But one thing can and should be said. That is, the conference, returning to the matter with insistence, invited the honorable Belgian senator and the permanent committee that represents it between sessions to actively continue the efforts already begun, and in particular, to work toward obtaining from the smaller powers—or from the two or three most favorably disposed among them—the formation, through the [300] nomination of delegates, of an initial nucleus of a Court of Arbitration, which could later be expanded through additional accessions.

Would that not be, perhaps, the beginning of the true League of Neutrals? A league purely moral in nature, and yet effective enough to become—perhaps swiftly—irresistible. More than once already (I speak from personal experience) in those annual gatherings of members of parliaments, which we call interparliamentary conferences, the combined votes of the representatives of the smaller powers have formed the majority against the votes of representatives of one or another great power. And those representatives—this must be acknowledged to their honor—once the vote was cast, have always accepted it without second thoughts.

The day on which, an international court being constituted by a certain number of powers and for their own use, appeal to this court would be obligatory for them and optional for others—the day on which, thanks to their initiative and their mutual agreement, there existed in Europe an international legal authority of recognized impartiality, ready to receive and examine the grievances that might arise among the various civilized nations—on that day it would become very difficult, even for the most recalcitrant (if any remained), to refuse to bring their disputes before this jurisdiction, rather than submit them to the cruel and ruinous chance of the battlefield.

A League of Neutrals, then—certainly; but one founded on law, not force. It is not from war that one must ask for the means to prevent war. It is by the arms of peace that peace must be guaranteed.

FRÉDÉRIC PASSY

Let us conclude these citations with an excerpt from the speech given by Lord Salisbury at the last Lord Mayor’s banquet (10 [301] November 1897), which seems to show that the idea of an association of powers to collectively guarantee peace has ceased to be considered a utopia even by statesmen themselves:

“I express,” he said, “the hope that the understanding between the powers will continue and that the difficulties they have to resolve will be adequately addressed. Remember that this Federation of Europe is an embryo, and the only thing that has saved civilization from the disastrous results of a war full of destruction.

“The only hope of preventing this rivalry in armaments among the European nations from leading to mutual destruction—which would be fatal to civilization—is that the powers will gradually be led to act together in a spirit of friendship in all the questions that may arise, until finally they may be united in a single international bundle, which will definitively give the world a long era of prosperous trade and enduring peace.”

END