Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay
It was only of this political peace between civilised nations that
Kant thought.[103] In this form it is bound to come. The federation
of Europe will follow the federation of Germany and of Italy, not
only because it offers a solution of many problems which have long
taxed Europe, but because great men and careful thinkers believe in
it.[104] It may not come quickly, but such men can afford to wait.
“If I were legislator,” cried Jean Jacques Rousseau, “I should not
say what ought to be done, but I would do it.” This is the attitude
of the unthinking, unpractical enthusiast. The wish is not enough:
the will is not enough. The mills of God must take their own time: no
hope or faith of ours, no struggle or labour even can hurry them.
[103] The other he knew was impossible. Peace within the state
meant decay and death. In the antagonism of nations, he saw
nature’s means of educating the race: it was a law of existence,
a law of progress, and, as such, eternal.
[104] For a vivid picture of the material advantages offered by
such a union and of the dismal future that may lie before an
unfederated Europe, we cannot do better than read Mr. Andrew
Carnegie’s recent Rectorial Address to the students of St.
Andrews University (Oct 1902). Unfortunately, Mr. Carnegie’s
enthusiasm stops here: he does not tell us by what means the
difficulties at present in the way of a federation, industrial or
political, are to be overcome.
It is a misfortune that the Peace Society has identified itself
with so narrow and uncritical an attitude towards war, and that the
copious eloquence of its members is not based upon a consideration
of the practical difficulties of the case. This well-meaning, hard
working and enthusiastic body would like to do what is impossible
by an impossible method. The end which it sets for itself is an
unattainable one. But this need not be so. To make unjustifiable
aggression difficult, to banish unworthy pretexts for making war
might be a high enough ideal for any enthusiasm and offer scope wide
enough for the labours of any society. But the Peace Society has not
contented itself with this great work. Through its over-estimation
of the value of peace,[105] its cause has been injured and much of
its influence has been weakened or lost. Our age is one which sets
a high value upon human life; and to this change of thinking may be
traced our modern reform in the methods of war and all that has been
done for the alleviation of suffering by the great Conventions of
recent years. For the eyes of most people war is merely a hideous
spectacle of bloodshed and deliberate destruction of life: this is
its obvious side. But it is possible to exaggerate this confessedly
great evil. Peace has its sacrifices as well as war: the progress of
humanity requires that the individual should often be put aside for
the sake of lasting advantage to the whole. An opposite view can only
be reckoned individualistic, perhaps materialistic. “The reverence
for human life,” says Martineau, (_Studies of Christianity_, pp. 352,
354) “is carried to an immoral idolatry, when it is held more sacred
than justice and right, and when the spectacle of blood becomes
more horrible than the sight of desolating tyrannies and triumphant
hypocrisies.... We have, therefore, no more doubt that a war may be
right, than that a policeman may be a security for justice, and we
object to a fortress as little as to a handcuff.”
[105] Professor D. G. Ritchie remarks that it is less an
over-estimation of the value of peace than a too easy-going
acceptance of abstract and unanalysed phrases about the rights of
nations that injures the work of the Peace Society. Cf. his note
on the principles of the Peace Congresses (_op. cit._, p. 172).
The Peace Society are not of this opinion: they greatly doubt that a
war may be right, and they rarely fail to take their doubts to the
tribunal of Scripture. Their efforts are well meant, this piety may
be genuine enough; but a text is rarely a proof of anything, and in
any case serves one man in as good stead as another. We remember that
“the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” This unscientific
method of proof or persuasion has ever been widely popular. It is
a serious examination of the question that we want, a more careful
study of its actual history and of the possibilities of human nature;
less vague, exaggerated language about what ought to be done, and a
realisation of what has been actually achieved; above all, a clear
perception of what may fairly be asked from the future.
It used to be said—is perhaps asserted still by the war-lovers—that
there was no path to civilisation which had not been beaten by the
force of arms, no height to which the sword had not led the way. The
inspiration of war was upon the great arts of civilisation: its hand
was upon the greatest of the sciences. These obligations extended
even to commerce. War not only created new branches of industry, it
opened new markets and enlarged the old. These are great claims,
according to which war might be called the moving principle of
history. If we keep our eyes fixed upon the history of the past, they
seem not only plausible: they are in a great sense true. Progress
did tread at the heels of the great Alexander’s army: the advance of
European culture stands in the closest connection with the Crusades.
But was this happy compensation for a miserable state of affairs not
due to the peculiarly unsocial conditions of early times and the
absence of every facility for the interchange of ideas or material
advantages? It is inconceivable that now-a-days[106] any aid to the
development of thought in Europe should come from war. The old
adage, in more than a literal sense, has but too often been proved
true:—“Inter arma, Musae silent.” Peace is for us the real promoter
of culture.
[106] The day is past, when a nation could enjoy the exclusive
advantages of its own inventions. Vattel naively recommends that
we should keep the knowledge of certain kinds of trade, the
building of war-ships and the like, to ourselves. Prudence, he
says, prevents us from making an enemy stronger and the care of
our own safety forbids it. (_Law of Nations_, II. Ch. I. § 16.)
We have to endeavour to take an intermediate course between
uncritical praise and wholesale condemnation, between extravagant
expectation and unjustifiable pessimism. War used to be the rule: it
is now an overwhelming and terrible exception—an interruption to the
peaceful prosperous course of things, inflicting unlimited suffering
and temporary or lasting loss. Its evils are on the surface, apparent
to the most unthinking observer. The day may yet dawn, when Europeans
will have learned to regard the force of arms as an instrument for
the civilisation of savage or half-savage races, and war within
their continent as civil war, necessary and justifiable sometimes
perhaps, but still a blot upon their civilisation and brotherhood as
men. Such a suggestion rings strangely. But the great changes, which
the roll of centuries has marked, once came upon the world not less
unexpectedly. How far off must the idea of a civil peace have seemed
to small towns and states of Europe in the fifteenth century! How
strange, only a century ago, would the idea of applying steam power
or electrical force have seemed to ourselves! Let us not despair. War
has played a great part in the history of the world: it has been ever
the great architect of nations, the true mother of cities. It has
justified itself to-day in the union of kindred peoples, the making
of great empires. It may be that one decisive war may yet be required
to unite Europe. May Europe survive that struggle and go forward
fearlessly to her great future! A peaceful future that may not be. It
must never be forgotten that war is sometimes a moral duty, that it
is ever the natural sequence of human passion and human prejudice. An
unbroken peace we cannot and do not expect; but it is this that we
must work for. As Kant says, we must keep it before us as an ideal.
TRANSLATION[107]
“PERPETUAL PEACE”[108]
[107] The text used in this translation is that edited by
Kehrbach. [Tr.]
[108] I have seen something of M. de St. Pierre’s plan for
maintaining perpetual peace in Europe. It reminds me of an
inscription outside of a churchyard, which ran “_Pax Perpetua._
For the dead, it is true, fight no more. But the living are of
another mind, and the mightiest among them have little respect
for tribunals.” (Leibniz: _Letter to Grimarest_, quoted above, p.
37, note 44.) [Tr.]
We need not try to decide whether this satirical inscription, (once
found on a Dutch innkeeper’s sign-board above the picture of a
churchyard) is aimed at mankind in general, or at the rulers of
states in particular, unwearying in their love of war, or perhaps
only at the philosophers who cherish the sweet dream of perpetual
peace. The author of the present sketch would make one stipulation,
however. The practical politician stands upon a definite footing with
the theorist: with great self-complacency he looks down upon him as
a mere pedant whose empty ideas can threaten no danger to the state
(starting as it does from principles derived from experience), and
who may always be permitted to knock down his eleven skittles at
once without a worldly-wise statesman needing to disturb himself.
Hence, in the event of a quarrel arising between the two, the
practical statesman must always act consistently, and not scent
danger to the state behind opinions ventured by the theoretical
politician at random and publicly expressed. With which saving clause
(_clausula salvatoria_) the author will herewith consider himself
duly and expressly protected against all malicious misinterpretation.
_FIRST SECTION_
CONTAINING THE PRELIMINARY ARTICLES OF PERPETUAL PEACE BETWEEN STATES
1.—“No treaty of peace shall be regarded as valid, if made with the
secret reservation of material for a future war.”
For then it would be a mere truce, a mere suspension of hostilities,
not peace. A peace signifies the end of all hostilities and to attach
to it the epithet “eternal” is not only a verbal pleonasm, but
matter of suspicion. The causes of a future war existing, although
perhaps not yet known to the high contracting parties themselves, are
entirely annihilated by the conclusion of peace, however acutely
they may be ferreted out of documents in the public archives. There
may be a mental reservation of old claims to be thought out at a
future time, which are, none of them, mentioned at this stage,
because both parties are too much exhausted to continue the war,
while the evil intention remains of using the first favourable
opportunity for further hostilities. Diplomacy of this kind only
Jesuitical casuistry can justify: it is beneath the dignity of a
ruler, just as acquiescence in such processes of reasoning is beneath
the dignity of his minister, if one judges the facts as they really
are.[109]
[109] On the honourable interpretation of treaties, see Vattel
(_op. cit._, II. Ch. XVII., esp. §§ 263-296, 291). See also what
he says of the validity of treaties and the necessity for holding
them sacred (II. Ch. XII. §§ 157, 158: II. Ch. XV). [Tr.]
If, however, according to present enlightened ideas of political
wisdom, the true glory of a state lies in the uninterrupted
development of its power by every possible means, this judgment must
certainly strike one as scholastic and pedantic.
2.—“No state having an independent existence—whether it be great or
small—shall be acquired by another through inheritance, exchange,
purchase or donation.”[110]
[110] “Even the smoothest way,” says Hume, (_Of the Original