Perhaps the commonest plea urged in objection to the case presented in the first part of this book is that the real motives of nations in going to war are not economic at all; that their conflicts arise from moral causes, using that word in its largest sense; that they are the outcome of conflicting views of rights; or that they arise from, not merely non-economic, but also non-rational causes⁠—from vanity, rivalry, pride of place, the desire to be first, to occupy a great situation in the world, to have power or prestige; from quick resentment of insult or injury; from temper; the unreasoned desire, which comes of quarrel or disagreement, to dominate a rival at all costs; from the “inherent hostility” that exists between rival nations; from the contagion of sheer passion, the blind strife of mutually hating men; and generally because men and nations always have fought and always will, and because, like the animals in Watt’s doggerel, “it is their nature to.”

An expression of the first point of view is embodied in the criticism of an earlier edition of this book, in which the critic says:

The cause of war is spiritual, not material.⁠ ⁠… The great wars arose from conflicts as to rights, and the dangerous causes of war are the existence of antagonistic ideas of rights or righteousness.⁠ ⁠… It is for moral ideas that men are most ready to make sacrifices.37

A similar criticism is made by Admiral Mahan.38

In the same way the London Spectator while admitting the truth of the principles outlined in the first part of this book, deems that such facts do not seriously affect the basic cause of war:

Just as individuals quarrel among themselves, and fight as bitterly as the police and the law courts will allow them, not because they think it will make them rich, but because their blood is up, and they want to stand up for what they believe to be their rights, or to revenge themselves for wrongs done to them, as they think, by their fellows, so nations will fight, even though it is demonstrable that they will get no material gain thereby.⁠ ⁠… They want sometimes freedom, sometimes power. Sometimes a passion for expansion or dominion comes over them. Sometimes they seem impelled to fight for fighting’s sake, or, as their leaders and rhetoricians vaguely say, to fulfil their destinies.⁠ ⁠… Men fight sometimes for the love of fighting, sometimes for great and noble causes, and sometimes for bad causes, but practically never with an account-book and a balance-sheet in their hands.

I desire to give every possible weight to this plea, and not to shirk a detail of it, and I think that the pages that follow cover every one of the points here raised. But there is a whole school of philosophy which goes much farther than the Spectator. The view just cited rather implies that though it is a fact that men settle their differences by force and passion, instead of by reason, it is a regrettable fact. But the school to which I refer urges that men should be encouraged to fight, and that war is the preferable solution. War, declare these philosophers, is a valuable discipline for the nations, and it is not desirable to see human conflict shifted from the plane of physical force. They urge that humanity will be permanently the poorer when, as one of them has put it, the great struggles of mankind become merely the struggles of “talk and moneybags.”

Parenthetically, it should be pointed out that the matter has a good deal more than academic interest. This philosophy constitutes a constant element of resistance to that reform of political thought and tradition in Europe which must be the necessary precedent of a sounder condition. Not merely, of course, do international situations become infinitely more dangerous when you get, on both sides of the frontier, a general “belief in war for war’s sake,” but a tendency is directly created to discredit the use of patience, a quality as much needed in the relationship of nations as in that of individuals; and further there is a tendency to justify political action making for war as against action that might avoid it. All these pleas, biological and otherwise, are powerful factors in creating an atmosphere and temperament in Europe favorable to war and unfavorable to international agreement. For, be it noted, this philosophy is not special to any one country: one finds it plentifully expressed in England and America, as well as in France and Germany. It is a European doctrine, part of that “mind of Europe,” of which someone has spoken, that, among other factors, determines the character of European civilization generally.

This particular point of view has received a notable restatement quite recently39 from General Bernhardi, a distinguished cavalry General, and probably the most influential German writer on current strategical and tactical problems, in his book, Deutschland und der nächste Krieg.40 He therein gives very candid expression to the opinion that Germany must, regardless of the rights and interests of other peoples, fight her way to predominance. One of the chapters is headed, “The Duty to Make War.” He describes the peace movement in Germany as “poisonous,” and proclaims the doctrine that the duties and tasks of the German people cannot be fulfilled save by the sword. “The duty of self-assertion is by no means exhausted in the mere repelling of hostile attacks. It includes the need of securing to the whole people, which the State embraces, the possibility of existence and development.” It is desirable, declares the author, that conquest shall be effected by war, and not by peaceful means; Silesia would not have had the same value for Prussia if Frederick the Great had obtained it from an Arbitration Court. The attempt to abolish war is not only “immoral and unworthy of humanity,” it is an attempt to deprive man of his highest possession⁠—the right to stake physical life for ideal ends. The German people “must learn to see that the maintenance of peace cannot be, and must never be, the goal of policy.”

Similar efforts are being made in England by English writers to secure the acceptance of this doctrine of force. Many passages almost duplicating those of Bernhardi, or at least extolling the general doctrine of force, may be found in the writings of such Anglo-Saxon authors as Admiral Mahan and Professor Spenser Wilkinson.41

A scientific color is often given to the philosophy of force, as expressed by the authors just referred to, by an appeal to evolutionary and biological laws.

It is urged that the condition of man’s advance in the past has been the survival of the fit by struggle and warfare, and that in that struggle it is precisely those endowed with combativeness and readiness to fight who have survived. Thus the tendency to combat is not a mere human perversity, but is part of the self-protective instinct rooted in a profound biological law⁠—the struggle of nations for survival.

This point of view is expressed by S. R. Steinmetz in his Philosophie des Krieges. War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential function of the State, and the only function in which peoples can employ all their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save as the resultant of a totality of virtues; no defeat for which some vice or weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health and vigor⁠—there is no moral or intellectual point of superiority that does not tell when “God holds His assizes, and hurls the peoples one upon another” (Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht); and Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the long-run chance and luck play any part in apportioning the issues.

It is urged that international hostility is merely the psychological stimulus to that combativeness which is a necessary element of existence, and that though, like other elemental instincts⁠—our animal appetites, for instance⁠—it may in some of its manifestations be ugly enough, it makes for survival, and is to that extent a part of the great plan. Too great a readiness to accept the “friendly assurances” of another nation and an undue absence of distrust would, in accordance with a sort of Gresham’s Law in international relationships, make steadily for the disappearance of the humane and friendly communities in favor of the truculent and brutal. If friendliness and good-feeling towards other nations led us to relax our self-defensive efforts, the quarrelsome communities would see, in this slackening, an opportunity to commit aggression, and there would be a tendency, therefore, for the least civilized to wipe out the most. Animosity and hostility between nations is a corrective of this sentimental slackness, and to that extent it plays a useful role, however ugly it may appear⁠—“not pretty, but useful, like the dustman.” Though the material and economic motives which prompt conflict may no longer obtain, other than economic motives will be found for collision, so profound is the psychological stimulus thereto.

Some such view as this has found lurid expression in the recent work of an American soldier, Homer Lea.42 The author urges not only that war is inevitable, but that any systematic attempt to prevent it is merely an unwise meddling with the universal law.

National entities, in their birth, activities, and death, are controlled by the same laws that govern all life⁠—plant, animal, or national⁠—the law of struggle, the law of survival. These laws, so universal as regards life and time, so unalterable in causation and consummation, are only variable in the duration of national existence as the knowledge of and obedience to them is proportionately true or false. Plans to thwart them, to shortcut them, to circumvent, to cozen, to deny, to scorn and violate them, is folly such as man’s conceit alone makes possible. Never has this been tried⁠—and man is ever at it⁠—but what the end has been gangrenous and fatal.

In theory international arbitration denies the inexorability of natural laws, and would substitute for them the veriest Cagliostroic formulas, or would, with the vanity of Canute, sit down on the ocean-side of life and command the ebb and flow of its tides to cease.

The idea of international arbitration as a substitute for natural laws that govern the existence of political entities arises not only from a denial of their fiats and an ignorance of their application, but from a total misconception of war, its causes, and its meaning.

Homer Lea’s thesis is emphasized in the introduction to his work, written by another American soldier, General John P. Storey:

A few idealists may have visions that with advancing civilization war and its dread horrors will cease. Civilization has not changed human nature. The nature of man makes war inevitable. Armed strife will not disappear from the earth until human nature changes.

Weltstadt und Friedensproblem, the book of Professor Baron Karl von Stengel, a jurist who was one of Germany’s delegates at the First Hague Peace Conference, contains a chapter entitled “The Significance of War for Development of Humanity,” in which the author says:

War has more often facilitated than hindered progress. Athens and Rome, not only in spite of, but just because of their many wars, rose to the zenith of civilization. Great States like Germany and Italy are welded into nationalities only through blood and iron.

Storm purifies the air and destroys the frail trees, leaving the sturdy oaks standing. War is the test of a nation’s political, physical, and intellectual worth. The State in which there is much that is rotten may vegetate for a while in peace, but in war its weakness is revealed.

Germany’s preparations for war have not resulted in economic disaster, but in unexampled economic expansion, unquestionably because of our demonstrated superiority over France. It is better to spend money on armaments and battleships than luxury, motormania, and other sensual living.

We know that Moltke expressed a similar view in his famous letter to Bluntschli. “A perpetual peace,” declared the Field-Marshal, “is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream. War is one of the elements of order in the world, established by God. The noblest virtues of men are developed therein. Without war the world would degenerate and disappear in a morass of materialism.”43

At the very time that Moltke was voicing this sentiment, a precisely similar one was being voiced by no less a person than Ernest Renan. In his La Réforme Intellectuelle et Morale (Paris: Lévy, 1871, p. 111) he writes:

If the foolishness, negligence, idleness, and shortsightedness of States did not involve their occasional collision, it is difficult to imagine the degree of degeneracy to which the human race would descend. War is one of the conditions of progress, the sting which prevents a country from going to sleep, and compels satisfied mediocrity itself to awaken from its apathy. Man is only sustained by effort and struggle. The day that humanity achieves a great pacific Roman Empire, having no external enemies, that day its morality and its intelligence will be placed in the very greatest peril.

In our own times a philosophy not very dissimilar has been voiced in the public declarations of ex-President Roosevelt. I choose a few phrases from his speeches and writings, at random:

We despise a nation, just as we despise a man, who submits to insult. What is true of a man ought to be true of a nation.44

We must play a great part in the world, and especially⁠ ⁠… perform those deeds of blood, of valor, which above everything else bring national renown.

We do not admire a man of timid peace.

By war alone can we acquire those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.

In this world the nation that is trained to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound to go down in the end before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities.45

Professor William James covers the whole ground of these claims in the following passage:

The war party is assuredly right in affirming that the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more universal and enduring competitive passion.⁠ ⁠… Pacifism makes no converts from the military party. The military party denies neither the bestiality, nor the horror, nor the expense; it only says that these things tell but half the story. It only says that war is worth these things; that, taking human nature as a whole, war is its best protection against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that mankind cannot afford to adopt a peace economy.⁠ ⁠… Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life without hardihood would be contemptible.⁠ ⁠… This natural feeling forms, I think, the innermost soul of army writings. Without any exception known to me, militarist authors take a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard war as a biological or sociological necessity.⁠ ⁠… Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow and thousands of years of peace won’t breed it out of us.46

Even famous English clergymen have voiced the same view. Charles Kingsley, in his defence of the Crimean War as a “just war against tyrants and oppressors,” wrote: “For the Lord Jesus Christ is not only the Prince of Peace, He is the Prince of War, too. He is the Lord of Hosts, the God of armies, and whoever fights in a just war against tyrants and oppressors is fighting on Christ’s side, and Christ is fighting on his side. Christ is his captain and his leader, and he can be in no better service. Be sure of it, for the Bible tells you so.”47

Canon Newbolt, Dean Farrar, and the Archbishop of Armagh, have all written not dissimilarly.

The whole case may be summarized thus:

1. Nations fight for opposing conceptions of right: it is the moral conflict of men.

2. They fight from non-rational causes of a lower kind: from vanity, rivalry, pride of place, the desire to occupy a great situation in the world, or from sheer hostility to dissimilar people⁠—the blind strife of mutually hating men.

3. These causes justify war, or render it inevitable. The first is admirable in itself, the second is inevitable, in that the peoples readiest to fight, and showing most energy in fighting, replace the more peacefully inclined, and the warlike type tends thus permanently to survive; “the warlike nations inherit the earth.”

Or it may be put deductively, thus: Since struggle is the law of life, and a condition of survival as much with nations as with other organisms, pugnacity, which is merely intense energy in struggle, a readiness to accept struggle in its acutest form, must necessarily be a quality marking those individuals successful in the vital contests. It is this deep-seated, biological law which renders impossible the acceptance by mankind of the literal injunction to turn the other cheek to the smiter, or for human nature ever to conform to the ideal implied in that injunction; since, were it accepted, the best men and nations⁠—in the sense of the kindliest and most humane⁠—would be placed at the mercy of the most brutal, who, eliminating the least brutal, would stamp the survivors with their own brutality and reestablish the militarist virtues. For this reason a readiness to fight, which means the qualities of rivalry and pride and combativeness, hardihood, tenacity, and heroism⁠—what we know as the manly qualities⁠—must in any case survive as the race survives, and, since this stands in the way of the predominance of the purely brutal, it is a necessary part of the highest morality.

Despite the apparent force of these propositions, they are founded upon a gross misreading of certain facts, and especially upon a gross misapplication of a certain biological analogy.