Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay
problem here is not out of many nations to make one. This would
be perhaps the surest way to attain peace, but it is scarcely
practicable, and, in certain forms, it is undesirable. Kant is
inclined to approve of the separation of nations by language and
religion, by historical and social tradition and physical boundaries:
nature seems to condemn the idea of a universal monarchy.[75] The
only footing on which a thorough-going, indubitable system of
international law is in practice possible is that of the society
of nations: not the world-republic[76] the Greeks dreamt of, but a
federation of states. Such a union in the interests of perpetual
peace between nations would be the “highest political good.” The
relation of the federated states to one another and to the whole
would be fixed by cosmopolitan law: the link of self-interest which
would bind them would again be the spirit of commerce.
[74] See p. 128.
[75] This was the ideal of Dante. Cf. _De Monarchia_, Bk. I.
54:—“We shall not find at any time except under the divine
monarch Augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed, that the world
was everywhere quiet.”
Bluntschli (_Theory of the State_, I. Ch. ii., p. 26 _seq._)
gives an admirable account of the different attempts made to
realise a universal empire in the past—the Empire of Alexander
the Great, based upon a plan of uniting the races of east and
west; the Roman Empire which sought vainly to stamp its national
character upon mankind; the Frankish Monarchy; the Holy Roman
Empire which fell to pieces through the want of a central
power strong enough to overcome the tendency to separation and
nationalisation; and finally the attempt of Napoleon I., whose
mistake was the same as that which wrecked the Roman Empire—a
neglect of the strength of foreign national sentiment.
[76] Reason requires a State of nations. This is the ideal,
and Kant’s proposal of a federation of states is a practical
substitute from which we may work to higher things. Kant, like
Fichte, (_Werke_, VII. 467) strongly disapproves of a universal
monarchy such as that of which Dante dreamed—a modern Roman
Empire. The force of necessity, he says, will bring nations at
last to become members of a cosmopolitan state, “or if such a
state of universal peace proves (as has often been the case
with too great states) a greater danger to freedom from another
point of view, in that it introduces despotism of the most
terrible kind, then this same necessity must compel the nations
to enter a state which indeed has the form not of a cosmopolitan
commonwealth under one sovereign, but of a federation
regulated by legal principles determined by a common code of
international law.” (_Das mag in d. Theorie richtig sein_,
_Werke_, (Rosenkranz) VII., p. 225). Cf. also _Theory of Ethics_,
(Abbott), p. 341, _note_; _Perpetual Peace_, pp. 155, 156.
This scheme of a perpetual peace had not escaped ridicule in the
eighteenth century: the name of Kant protected it henceforth.
The facts of history, even more conclusively than the voices of
philosophers, soldiers and princes, show how great has been the
progress of this idea in recent years. But it has not gained its
present hold upon the popular mind without great and lasting
opposition. Indeed we have here what must still be regarded as a
controversial question. There have been, and are still, men who
regard perpetual peace as a state of things as undesirable as
it is unattainable. For such persons, war is a necessity of our
civilisation: it is impossible that it should ever cease to exist.
All that we can do, and there is no harm, nor any contradiction in
the attempt, is to make wars shorter, fewer and more humane: the
whole question, beyond this, is without practical significance.
Others, on the other hand,—and these perhaps more thoughtful—regard
war as hostile to culture, an evil of the worst kind, although a
necessary evil. In peace, for them, lies the true ideal of humanity,
although in any perfect form this cannot be realised in the near
future. The extreme forms of these views are to be sought in what has
been called in Germany “the philosophy of the barracks” which comes
forward with a glorification of war for its own sake, and in the
attitude of modern Peace Societies which denounce all war wholesale,
without respect of causes or conditions.
_Hegel, Schiller and Moltke._
Hegel, the greatest of the champions of war, would have nothing
to do with Kant’s federation of nations formed in the interests
of peace. The welfare of a state, he held, is its own highest
law; and he refused to admit that this welfare was to be sought
in an international peace. Hegel lived in an age when all power
and order seemed to lie with the sword. Something of the charm of
Napoleonism seems to hang over him. He does not go the length of
writers like Joseph de Maistre, who see in war the finger of God or
an arrangement for the survival of the fittest—a theory, as far as
regards individuals, quite in contradiction with the real facts,
which show that it is precisely the physically unfit whom war, as a
method of extermination, cannot reach. But, like Schiller and Moltke,
Hegel sees in war an educative instrument, developing virtues in a
nation which could not be fully developed otherwise, (much as pain
and suffering bring patience and resignation and other such qualities
into play in the individual), and drawing the nation together, making
each citizen conscious of his citizenship, as no other influence can.
War, he holds, leaves a nation always stronger than it was before;
it buries causes of inner dissension, and consolidates the internal
power of the state.[77] No other trial can, in the same way, show
what is the real strength and weakness of a nation, what it _is_, not
merely materially, but physically, intellectually and morally.
[77] See the _Philosophie d. Rechts_, (_Werke_, Vol. VIII.) Part
iii. § 324 and appendix.
With this last statement most people will be inclined to agree. There
is only a part of the truth in Napoleon’s dictum that “God is on
the side of the biggest battalions”; or in the old saying that war
requires three necessaries—in the first place, money; in the second
place, money; and in the third, money. Money is a great deal: it is a
necessity; but what we call national back-bone and character is more.
So far we are with Hegel. But he goes further. In peace, says he,
mankind would grow effeminate and degenerate in luxury. This opinion
was expressed in forcible language in his own time by Schiller,[78]
and in more recent years by Count Moltke. “Perpetual peace,” says
a letter of the great general,[79] “is a dream and not a beautiful
dream either: war is part of the divine order of the world. During
war are developed the noblest virtues which belong to man—courage
and self-denial, fidelity to duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice:
the soldier is called upon to risk his life. Without war the world
would sink in materialism.”[80] “Want and misery, disease, suffering
and war,” he says elsewhere, “are all given elements in the Divine
order of the universe.” Moltke’s eulogy of war, however, is somewhat
modified by his additional statement that “the greatest kindness in
war lies in its being quickly ended.” (Letter to Bluntschli, 11th
Dec., 1880.)[81] The great forces which we recognise as factors
in the moral regeneration of mankind are always slow of action as
they are sure. War, if too quickly over, could not have the great
moral influence which has been attributed to it. The explanation
may be that it is not all that it naturally appears to a great and
successful general. Hegel, Moltke, Trendelenburg, Treitschke[82]
and the others—not Schiller[83] who was able to sing the blessings
of peace as eloquently as of war—were apt to forget that war is as
efficient a school for forming vices as virtues; and that, moreover,
those virtues which military life is said to cultivate—courage,
self-sacrifice and the rest—can be at least as perfectly developed in
other trials. There are in human life dangers every day bravely met
and overcome which are not less terrible than those which face the
soldier, in whom patriotism may be less a sentiment than a duty, and
whose cowardice must be dearly paid.
[78] Cf. _Die Braut von Messina_:—
“Denn der Mensch verkümmert im Frieden,
Müssige Ruh’ ist das Grab des Muths.
Das Gesetz ist der Freund des Schwachen,
Alles will es nur eben machen,
Möchte gerne die Welt verflachen;
Aber der Krieg lässt die Kraft erscheinen,
Alles erhebt er zum Ungemeinen,
Selber dem Feigen erzeugt er den Muth.”
This passage perhaps scarcely gives a fair representation of
Schiller’s views on the question, which, if we judge from
_Wilhelm Tell_, must have been very moderate. War, he says, in
this oft-quoted passage, is sometimes a necessity. There is
a limit to the power of tyranny and, when the burden becomes
unbearable, an appeal to Heaven and the sword.
_Wilhelm Tell_: Act. II. Sc. 2.
“Nein, eine Grenze hat Tyrannenmacht.
Wenn der Gedrückte nirgends Recht kann finden,
Wenn unerträglich wird die Last greift er
Hinauf getrosten Muthes in den Himmel
Und holt herunter seine ew’gen Rechte,
Die droben hangen unveräusserlich
Und unzerbrechlich, wie die Sterne selbst—
Der alte Urstand der Natur kehrt wieder,
Wo Mensch dem Menschen gegenüber steht—
Zum letzten Mittel, wenn kein andres mehr
Verfangen will, ist ihm das Schwert gegeben.”
[79] Letter to Bluntschli, dated Berlin, 11th Dec., 1880
(published in Bluntschli’s _Gesammelte Kleine Schriften_, Vol.
II., p. 271).
[80] Cf. Tennyson’s _Maud_: Part I., vi. and xiii.
“Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse,
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?
For I trust if an enemy’s fleet came yonder round by the hill,
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam,
That the smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yardwand, home.”
See too Part III., ii. and iv.
“And it was but a dream, yet it lighten’d my despair
When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right,
That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease,
The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height,
Nor Britain’s one sole God be the millionaire:
No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note,
And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase,
Nor the cannon-bullet rest on a slothful shore,
And the cobweb woven across the cannon’s throat
Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more.
Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;
And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll’d!
Tho’ many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush’d in the clash of jarring claims,
For God’s just wrath shall be wreak’d on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire.”
[81] Moltke strangely enough was, at an earlier period, of the
opinion that war, even when it is successful, is a national