Some Historical Refiections on 
 War, Past and Present 
 
 Being portions of two Annual Presidential Addresses 
 delivered to the British Academy 
 June 1915 and July 1916 
 
 By 
 
 Viscount Bryce 
 
 President of the Academy 
 
 London 
 
 Published for the British Academv 
 By Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press 
 Amen Corner, E.G. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The following pages contain the two annual presidential 
 addresses delivered in 1915 and 1916 to the British 
 Academy, with the omission of those parts which related 
 to the work done by the Academy itself during the two 
 years preceding, viz. the undertakings it directs, the papers 
 read before it, and the lectures delivered on the founda- 
 tions it administers, together with the obituary notices of 
 Fellows deceased. These general portions of the two 
 addresses are published by the desire of the Council of the 
 British Academy, which has considered that the historical 
 observations and reflections presented in them may have 
 an interest for readers beyond the circle of its own body. 
 
 References to current politics, national or international, 
 are necessarily absent, because those topics lie outside the 
 scope of the Academy's functions, and are never discussed 
 at its meetings. 
 
 November 1, 1916. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/somehistoricalreOObryc 
 
I 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED JUNE 30, 1915 
 
 In the scantiness of a record of work done in the fields which the 
 Academy cultivates, it might be expected that I should offer to 
 you some remarks on the war itself, the causes that produced it, 
 the antagonisms, deeper than most people supposed, w^hich it has 
 revealed, and the changes it is likely to involve. But many of you 
 will have felt, and all will admit, the dangers that surround any one 
 who, influenced by strong emotions and possessing imperfect know- 
 ledge, should now commit to print his judgement of the events of 
 the last eleven months. Every one among us must sometimes have 
 had cause to regret, when reading them years afterwards, words which 
 he wrote in the heat of the moment. Time modifies our judgements 
 as it cools our passions. Neither the friendships nor the enmities of 
 nations are exempt from change. You remember how Ajax, in the 
 drama of Sophocles, says that he has learnt 
 
 o t' i)(^9p6<s rjfjuv es to(t6vS' l\6afyTio<i 
 (1)9 Acat (juXrjcruiV avOi?. 
 
 It is better that nothing should be said to-day in an address to the 
 Academy which any one of its members, to whatever country he 
 may belong, would feel pain in reading ten or twenty years hence. 
 Newspapers and pamphlets will convey to posterity sufficiently, and 
 even more than sufficiently, the notions and fancies and passions of 
 the moment. 
 
 What we may do, not without profit, is to note and to set down 
 in a spirit of detachment the impressions made upon us by the events 
 which our eyes see and watch as they pass into history. Many 
 a pen will for centuries to come be occupied by the events of this 
 year, and endless controversies will arise over them. It is well that 
 whoever has gained from his studies something of an historical sense 
 should in an historical spirit place on record from month to month 
 the impressions he receives. The record will be almost as useful if the 
 impressions should turn out to be erroneous as if they should be 
 confirmed by subsequent events, because what the historian of the 
 future will desire to know is not only what happened but what people 
 
6 
 
 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 believed and thought at the time it was happening. That which is 
 omitted has also its value. Fifty years hence men will be struck by 
 the significance of things whose significance was not perceived by con- 
 temporary observers, and will seek to know why those observers failed 
 to see or comprehend facts which will then stand out in bold relief. 
 
 So let me now try to enumerate briefly what are the facts of the 
 present situation by which we are chiefly impressed — facts that make 
 it novel as well as terrible. 
 
 The first fact is the immense width and range of the war. Thucy- 
 dides observed that men always thought the war they were then 
 engaged in the greatest that had ever befallen. But here we have 
 facts which show how much the present conflict does transcend any 
 seen in previous ages. This might have been foretold twenty years 
 ago, assuming that Russia, Germany, and Britain were involved, 
 seeing how vast are the possessions and claims and ambitions of all 
 three States. Yet the reality goes far beyond every forecast. All 
 the six great European Powers and four lesser Powers are involved.^ 
 So is the whole extra-European Old World, except China and Persia 
 and the possessions of Holland and Portugal. In the New World it 
 is only the Dominions and Colonies of Britain that are affected — 
 a noteworthy illustration of the severance of the Western hemisphere 
 from the broils of the Eastern. 
 
 Secondly, there is the prodigious influence of the war upon neutral 
 nations. This also might have been foreseen as a result of the deve- 
 lopment of world commerce and the interlockings of world finance. 
 But here too the actual results are transcending expectation. 
 
 Thirdly, the changes in the methods and character of war have 
 been far more extensive than in any previous period. It took much 
 more than two centuries from the invention of gunpowder for mus- 
 ketry and artillery to supersede completely archery and defensive 
 armour. The long pike, after having been used for some twenty- 
 five centuries at least, was still in use as late as the Irish Rebellion 
 of 1798, and to a slight extent in the abortive rising of 1848. 
 War, however, is now a totally different thing from what it was 
 in the campaign of 1870-71, or even in the war between Russia 
 and Japan of 1904. Chemistry has changed everything by increas- 
 ing the range and the power of missiles, while electricity, without 
 the wire, supplies new means of communication not only along 
 battle lines but across hostile territory. Warfare in the air and 
 warfare under the sea were heretofore undreamt of. 
 
 ^ Since this was written three other European Powers have entered the war. 
 The Portuguese colonies have also become involved. 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 7 
 
 Fourthly. The cost of war is greater in proportion to the size of 
 armies, immensely larger as these armies are, than it ever was before. 
 The ten belligerent European Powers are estimated to be spending 
 now more than ten millions sterling a day. At this rate their total 
 expenditure for twelve months could not be less than 4,000 millions, 
 and may be much more. But some competent economists put it at 
 5,000 millions, figures which are hardly more realizable by us than 
 are those which express the distances of the fixed stars. 
 
 Fifthly. In each nation the whole body of the people is more fully 
 and more hotly interested in, and united by, this war than by any 
 it ever waged before. During the eighteenth century it was in most 
 countries only the monarch and the ruling class that knew or cared 
 what was happening. The great European conflict that began in 1793 
 brought a change. But this war is far more intensely national, in 
 the sense that it has roused the feelings of the whole of each people 
 from top to bottom, than any preceding conflict, and it is everywhere 
 waged with a sterner purpose. In this respect we are reminded of 
 the citizen wars of the small city-states of ancient Greece and Italy, 
 and of the ItaHan Middle Ages. 
 
 Sixthly. Some grave moral issues have been raised more sharply 
 than before. Is a state above morality ? Does the plea of military 
 necessity (of which the State itself is apparently to be the judge) 
 entitle it to disregard the rights of other states ? (Cf. Thucydides 
 V. 84-113, the case of Melos.) 
 
 Seventhly. The predictions that the vast interests involved, the 
 increasing strength of defence as opposed to attack, and the growth 
 of a general pacific sentiment, would avert strife have all proved 
 fallacious. The wisdom of the wise, where is it now ? Some twelve 
 years ago Jean de Bloch, in a book that made a great impression 
 at the time, argued that the growing difficulties of conducting 
 military operations on a very large scale might prove an effective 
 deterrent. Many supposed that the great financiers would be able 
 to avert hostilities. More recently an accomplished and persuasive 
 English writer has shown how much more a nation has to lose by 
 war than it can possibly gain even if victory crown its arms. Others 
 have thought that a sense of solidarity among the workers in each 
 industrial country would be strong enough to restrain their govern- 
 ments from any but a purely defensive war. Others, again, have 
 declared that democracies are essentially peaceful, because the mass 
 of the people pay in their blood, other classes merely in their wealth. 
 I do not say that these arguments are unsound, but the forces they 
 rely upon have not proved strong enough for the occasion. For 
 
8 
 
 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 practical purposes the wisdom of the wise has been brought to naught, 
 because the rulers of the nations have been guided by other motives 
 than those of pure reason. 
 
 These observations relate to the palpable facts we have wit- 
 nessed. Let us turn now to some of the reflections which the facts 
 suggest. It is not easy to express these with that cold detach- 
 ment at which the historian is bound to aim ; but the effort must 
 be made. 
 
 On that reflection which rose first to our minds when the war began, 
 and which continues to be the sombre background to every aspect 
 it presents — upon this I will not pause. After more than forty 
 centuries of civilization and nineteen centuries of Christianity, 
 mankind — in this case more than half mankind — ^is settling its 
 disputes in the same way as mankind did in the Stone Age. The 
 weapons are more various and more destructive. They are the 
 latest product of highly developed science. But the spirit and the 
 result are the same. 
 
 There has never been a time in which communications were so 
 easy, and the means for discovering and circulating information so 
 abundant. Yet how little is now certainly known as to the real 
 causes which have brought about the war. The beliefs current 
 among different peoples are altogether different, not to say contra- 
 dictory. Some are almost demonstrably false. Even in some neutral 
 nations such as Holland, Switzerland, and Spain, opinion is sharply 
 divided not merely about the rights but also about the facts. The 
 whole German people seem to hold just as implicitly that this is for 
 them a defensive w^ar as the French hold the opposite ; and how^ever 
 clear the main points may appear to us in Britain, there are others 
 which may remain obscure for many years to come. 
 
 How few are the persons in every State in whose hands lie the 
 issues of war and peace ! In some of the now belligerent countries 
 the final and vital decisions were taken by four or five persons 
 only, in others by six or seven only. Even in Britain decision 
 rested practically with less than twenty-five, for though some few 
 persons outside the Cabinet took a part, not all within the Cabinet 
 are to be reckoned as effective factors. It is of course true that 
 popular sentiment has to be considered, even in States more or less 
 despotically governed. Against a strong and definite sentiment 
 of the masses the ruling few would not venture to act. But the 
 masses are virtually led by a few, and their opinion is formed, 
 particularly at a crisis, by the authority and the appeals of those 
 few whom they have been accustomed to trust or to obey. And 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 9 
 
 after all, the vital decision at the vital moment remains with the 
 few. If they had decided otherwise than they did, the thing would 
 not have happened. Something like it might have happened later, 
 but the war would not have come then and so. 
 
 How swiftly do vast events move, how quickly are vast decisions 
 taken ! In the twelve fatal days from July 23 to August 4 there was 
 no time for reflection. Telegrams between seven capitals flew hither 
 and thither like swift arrows crossing one another, and it would 
 have needed a mind of more than human amplitude and energy to 
 grasp and correlate all the issues involved and to foresee the results 
 that would follow the various lines of action possible in a game so 
 complicated. Even the intellect of a Caesar or a Bonaparte would 
 have been unequal to the task. Here the telegraph has worked 
 for evil. Had the communications passed by written dispatches, 
 as they would have done eighty years ago, it is probable that war 
 might have been avoided. 
 
 Sometimes one feels as if modern States were growing too huge 
 for the men to whom their fortunes are committed. Mankind 
 increases in volume, and in accumulated knowledge, and in a compre- 
 hension of the forces of nature ; but the intellects of individual men 
 do not grow. The power of grasping and judging in their entirety 
 the far greater mass of facts to be dealt with, the far more abundant 
 resources at command, the far vaster issues involving the weal or woe 
 of masses of men — ^this power does not expand. The disproportion 
 between the individual ruling men with their personal prejudices and 
 proclivities, their selfish interests and their vanities, and the im- 
 measurable consequences which follow their individual volitions, 
 becomes more striking and more tragic. There were some advantages 
 in the small city-states of antiquity. A single city might decline or 
 perish, but the nation remained ; and another city blossomed forth 
 to replace that which had withered away. But now enormous 
 nations are concentrated under one government and its disasters 
 affect the whole. A great .modern State is like a gigantic vessel built 
 without any watertight compartments, which, if it be unskilfully 
 steered, may perish when it strikes a single rock. 
 
 How ignorant modern peoples, with all the abundant means of 
 information at their disposal, may nevertheless remain of one 
 another's character and purposes ! Each of the nations now at war 
 has evidently had a false notion of its adversaries and has been 
 thereby misled. It has not known their inner thoughts, it has misread 
 their pohcy. It was said in the days of the American Civil War that 
 the misconception by the Southern States of the Northern States, 
 
10 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 and their belief that the North cared for nothing but the dollar, 
 was the real cause why their differences were not peaceably settled, 
 and yet they were both members of the same Republic and spoke the 
 same language. European nations cannot be expected to have quite 
 so intimate a knowledge each of the other, yet both their commercial 
 intercourse and the activity of the press and the immensely increased 
 volume of private travel might have been expected to enable them 
 better to gauge and judge one another's minds. 
 
 Historians as far back as Thucydides have made upon the beha- 
 viour of nations in war time many general observations, which have 
 been brought out in stronger light by what passes from day to day 
 before us. A few of these I will mention to suggest how we may 
 turn to account the illustrations which Europe now furnishes. 
 
 When danger threatens a nation its habits change. Defence 
 becomes the supreme need. In place of the ordinary machinery 
 of government there starts up a dictatorship like that of early 
 Rome, when twenty-four lictors surrounded the magistrate and 
 the tribunician veto, with the right of appeal, sank away. The 
 plea of public interest overrides everything. The suspension of con- 
 stitutional guarantees is acquiesced in, and acts of arbitrary power, 
 even if violent, are welcomed because taken as signs of strength 
 in the ruler. Even the withholding of information is submitted 
 to. The voice of criticism is silenced. Cedit toga armis. The soldier 
 comes to the front, speaks with an authority greater than that 
 of the civilian statesman, is permitted to do whatever he declares 
 to be necessary for the nation's safety. So long as that is secured, 
 everything else is pardoned, and success gives enormous prestige. 
 
 Whoever watches these things must see how dangerous to freedom 
 is war, except in those communities where long tradition has rooted 
 constitutional habit very deep. In old Greece seditions opened 
 the way to the Tyrant. Napoleon supposed that the Duke of 
 Wellington would, after Waterloo, have made himself master of 
 England. So might a victor of another quality have done who had 
 achieved such a triumph as Wellington's, had not an ancient monarchy 
 and Parliament stood in his way. War is the bane of democracies. 
 If it be civil war, he who restores peace is acclaimed like Augustus. 
 Even a Louis Napoleon may be welcome when he promises security 
 for property. If it be foreign war, the man of the sword on horseback 
 towers over the man on foot who can only talk and administer. 
 
 So those psychological phenomena which former observers have 
 noticed when a country is swept by war or revolution, have be- 
 come vividly real to Europe now. The same passion seizes on 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 11 
 
 every one simultaneously and grows hotter in each by the sense 
 that others share it. It is said that when sheep, feeding unherded 
 on a mountain, see the approach of a danger they all huddle 
 together, the rams on the outside facing the foe. The flock be- 
 comes one, with one mind, one fear, one rage of fear. So in times 
 of danger a human community feels and acts like one man. The 
 nation realizes itself so vividly that it becomes a law to itself and 
 recks little of the opinion of others. The man is lost in the crowd, 
 and the crowd feels rather than thinks. Passion intensified super- 
 sedes the ordinary exercise not only of indi\ddual will but even of 
 individual reason. Fear and anger breed suspicion and creduHty. 
 Every one is ready to believe the worst of whoever is suspected. 
 What is called the power of suggestion rises to such a height 
 that to denounce a man is virtually to condemn him. Lavoisier is 
 sentenced to be guillotined; he pleads that he is a harmless 
 chemist, but is told that the Republic does not need chemists. 
 After the death of JuHus Caesar, Cinna, the poet, is seized, and 
 when he protests that he is not Cinna the conspirator is neverthe- 
 less killed for his name, the bystander (in Shakespeare) adding, 
 ' Kill him for his bad verses '. A foreign name is taken to be evi- 
 dence that its bearer is a spy. Grotesquely absurd charges find 
 credence. There is no tolerance for difference of opinion, and to 
 advance arguments against the reigning sentiment is treason. 
 Any tribute to the character or even to the intellectual gifts of an 
 enemy is resented. Sentiments of humanity towards him are dis- 
 approved, unless the preeaution is taken of expressing these in 
 the exact words of Holy Scripture. The rising flame of hatred 
 involves not merely the government and armies of the enemy but 
 even the innocent citizens of the hostile country. These well-known 
 phenomena are all more or less visible in Europe to-day, though in 
 our own country the coolness of our temperament and the fact that 
 no invader has trodden our soil have been presenting them in 
 a comparatively mild type. 
 
 The intensification of emotions includes those of a religious kind, 
 and these not always in their purest form. In most countries, it is 
 only the most enlightened minds that can refrain from claiming the 
 Deity as their peculiar protector and taking every victory as a mark 
 of His special favour. Modern man seems at such moments to have 
 reverted to those primitive ages when each tribe fought for its own 
 god and expected its own god to fight for it, as Moab called on Chemosh 
 and Tyre on Melkarth. True it is that a nation now usually argues that 
 Divine protection will be extended to it because its cause is just* 
 
12 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 But as this is announced by every nation alike, the result is much 
 the same now as it was in the days of Chemosh and Melkarth. Oddly 
 enough, the people in whom fanaticism used to be strongest are now 
 responding more feebly than ever before to the appeal of the Jihad, 
 Is it because the Turkish Mussulmans have infidel Powers for allies 
 as well as for enemies that this war seems to them less holy than 
 those of the centuries in which their conquests were won ? 
 
 Upon other symptoms indicating a return to the conditions of 
 warfare in earlier ages I forbear (for a reason already given) to com- 
 ment. It is more pleasant to note that some of the virtues which 
 war evokes have never been seen to more advantage. Man has not 
 under civilization degenerated in body or in will-power. The valour 
 and self-sacrifice shown by the soldiers of all the nations have been 
 as conspicuous as ever before. The line of heroes that extends from 
 Thermopylae to Lucknow might welcome as brothers the warriors of 
 to-day, while among those at home who have been suffering the loss 
 of sons and brothers dearer to them than life itself, there has been 
 a dignity of patience and silent resignation worthy of Roman Stoics 
 or Christian saints. 
 
 In these and other similar ways we see many a feature of human 
 character, many a phase of political or religious life recorded by 
 historians, verified by present experience. We can better understand 
 what nations become at moments of extreme peril and supreme 
 effort ; and those of us who occupy ourselves with history find it 
 profitable to note the Present for the illumination of the Past. 
 
 But the Future makes a wider appeal. Every one feels that after 
 the war we shall see a different world, but no one can foretell what sort 
 of a world it will be. We all have our fancies, but we know them to be 
 no more than fancies, for the possibilities are incalculable. Neverthe- 
 less it is worth while for each of us to set down what are the questions 
 as to the future which most occupy the public mind and his own mind. 
 
 Will the effect of this war be to inflame or to damp down the 
 military spirit ? Some there are who believe that the example of 
 those States which had made vast preparations for war will be hence- 
 forth followed by all States, so far as their resources permit, and 
 that everywhere armies will be larger, navies larger, artillery accumu- 
 lated on a larger scale, so that whatever peace may come will be 
 only a respite and breathing-time, to be followed by further con- 
 flicts till the predominance of one State or one race is established. 
 Other observers of a more sanguine temper conceive that the out- 
 raged sentiment of mankind will compel the rulers of nations to 
 find some means of averting war in the future more effective 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 13 
 
 than diplomacy has proved. Each view is held by men of wide know- 
 ledge and solid judgement : and for each strong arguments can be 
 adduced. 
 
 The effects which the war will have on the government and politics 
 of the contending countries are equally obscure, though every one 
 admits they are sure to be far-reaching. Those who talk of politics 
 as a science may well pause when they reflect how little the experience 
 of the past enables us to forecast the future of government, let us 
 say in Germany or in Russia, on the hypothesis either of victory 
 or of defeat for one or other Power. 
 
 Economics approaches more nearly to the character of a science 
 than does any other department of inquiry in the human as opposed 
 to the physical subjects. Yet the economic problems before us are 
 scarcely less dark than the political. How long will it take the great 
 countries to repair the losses they are now suffering ? The de- 
 struction of capital has been greater during these last eleven months 
 than ever before in so short a period, and it goes on with increasing 
 rapidity. It took nearly two centuries for Germany to recover 
 from the devastations of the Thirty Years' War, and nearly forty 
 years from the end of the Civil War had elapsed before the wealth 
 of the Southern States of America had come back to the figures of 
 1860. One may expect recovery to be much swifter in our days, 
 but the extinction of miUions of productive brains and hands cannot 
 fail to retard the process, and each of the trading countries will 
 suffer by the impoverishment of the others. 
 
 This suggests the gravest of all the questions that confront us. 
 How will population be affected in quantity and in quality ? The 
 birth-rate had before 1914 been falhng in Germany and Britain : 
 it had already so fallen in France as only to equal the death-rate. 
 Will the withdrawal of those slain or disabled in war quicken it ? 
 and how long will it take to restore the productive industrial capacity 
 of each country ? More than half the students and younger teachers 
 in some of our Universities have gone to fight abroad : and many 
 of these will never return. Who can estimate what is being lost to 
 literature and learning and science, from the deaths of those whose 
 strong and cultivated intelligence might have made great discoveries or 
 added to the store of the world's thought ? Those who are now perish- 
 ing belong to the most healthy and vigorous part of the population, 
 from whom the strongest progeny might have been expected. Will 
 the physical and mental energy of the generation that will come to 
 manhood thirty or forty years hence show a decline ? The data for 
 a forecast are scanty, for in no previous war has the loss of life been 
 
14 
 
 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 so great over Europe as a whole, even in proportion to a population 
 very much larger than it was a century ago. It is said, I know not 
 with how much truth, that the stature and physical strength of the 
 population of France took long to recover from the losses of the wars 
 that lasted from 1793 till 1814. Niebuhr thought that the population 
 of the Roman Empire never recovered from the great plague of the 
 second century a.d., but where it is disease that reduces a people, 
 it is the weaker who die, while in war it is the stronger. Our friends 
 of the Eugenics Society are uneasy at the prospect for the belli- 
 gerent nations. Some of them are trying to console themselves by 
 dwelling on the excellent moral effects that may spring out of the 
 stimulation which war gives to the human spirit. What the race loses 
 in body it may — so they hope — regain in soul. This is a highly 
 speculative anticipation, on which history casts no certain light. As 
 to the exaltation of character which war service produces in those who 
 fight from noble motives, inspired by faith in the justice of their 
 cause, there can be no doubt. We see it to-day as it has often been 
 seen before. But how far does this affect the non-combatant 
 part of each people ? and how long does the exaltation last ? The 
 instance nearest to our own time, and an instance which is in so far 
 typical that the bulk of the combatants on both sides were animated 
 by a true patriotic spirit, is the instance of the American War of 
 Secession. It was felt at the time to be almost a moral rebirth of the 
 nation. I must not venture here and now to inquire how far the 
 hopes then expressed were verified by the result : for such an inquiry 
 would detain you too long. 
 
 These are some of the questions which it may be interesting to set 
 down as rising in our minds now, in order that the next generation 
 may the better realize what were the thoughts and anxieties of 
 those who sought, sine ira, metu, studio, to comprehend the larger 
 issues of this fateful time. It is too soon to hope to solve the pro- 
 blems that are crowding upon us. But we can at least try to see 
 clearly what the problems are, and to distinguish between the 
 permanent and the temporary, the moral and the material causes 
 that have plunged mankind in this abyss of calamity : and we can 
 ask one another what are the forces that may help to deliver it there- 
 from. This is a time for raising questions, not for attempting to 
 answer them. Before some of them can be answered, most of us 
 who are met here to-day will have followed across the deep River of 
 Forgetfulness those who are now giving their lives that Britain 
 may live. 
 
II 
 
 ADDEESS DELIVERED JULY 14, 1916 
 
 . A YEAR ago, in the annual Presidential address, I mentioned and 
 commended to your reflection a number of phenomena which the war 
 had displayed and which deserved to be noted by historians, because 
 they cast light on divers features of previous wars. To-day I will refer 
 to some other such facts ; and in mentioning these, will endeavour to 
 observe that well settled rule which in this Academy forbids references 
 to questions of current politics. It is a wholesome rule, for one who 
 should depart from it might easily be betrayed, under the influence of 
 a natural passion, into words that would afterwards be regretted. 
 
 One of these phenomena is the shock given to the rules of inter- 
 national law. Some of the principles that had been thought best 
 established have been virtually destroyed. To use an Aeschylean 
 phrase, they have been pierced with as many wounds as a net. It has 
 become clear that there are Governments which when they see advan- 
 tage to be gained by taking a certain course, will not be deterred 
 from it by rules of morality or law. Nations, and especially the 
 Powers that are neutral, are asking whether there is any use in 
 passing such rules unless some method can be devised for enforcing 
 them. Is it worth while, when the war has ended, to attempt a 
 reconstruction of the fabric of international law unless it can be 
 rebuilt upon far firmer foundations? In war time, it is only the 
 action of neutrals that can effectively punish a belligerent trans- 
 gressor. Is there any reason to look for such action ? One series of 
 breaches in that law is especially deplorable. The respect for the 
 rights of non-combatant civilians which had been consecrated by 
 many years of practice, and which represented the greatest mitigation 
 of the savagery inherent in war that the progress of civilization had 
 effected, has now disappeared. We seem to have gone back to the 
 brutality of the earlier Middle Ages. May this be partly due to the 
 system of what is called ' The Nation in Arms ' ? If all the men of 
 a country are set to fight, do they form the habit of thinking not 
 only of all the men but also of the women and children in enemy 
 countries as enemies to whom no mercy is to be shown ? With the 
 increase of such cruelties hatred also has grown. It is fiercer between 
 the warring peoples than ever before. In both these respects our 
 
16 
 
 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 own soldiers have (as we believe) been so far blameless. But one 
 must desire that the strain should not last too long. 
 
 The power of a Government to keep its subjects in ignorance of the 
 facts of a war, political as well as military, has never seemed so 
 complete. This is all the more wonderful in days when the means of 
 learning facts through the press are so much more abundant than 
 ever before. It is a regrettable fact, because it prevents the public 
 opinion of a people from acting as it ought upon its Government. 
 A remarkable instance of this ignorance came lately to my knowledge. 
 No single incident of the last two years has made so great an impres- 
 sion as the destruction by a torpedo of the passenger ship Lusitania, 
 Now a medal was struck in Germany and has been widely distributed 
 there — whether or no by the German Government I have been unable 
 to ascertain — which represents the Lusitania sinking in the ocean. 
 Her fore part is piled high with cannofis and aeroplanes and other 
 war material. Here we see a warning given to the historian who 
 has been apt to rely upon the evidence of works of art contempo- 
 raneous with the events they depict. Suppose that five centuries 
 hence few other records of the events of May, 1915, have survived, 
 and that this medal is then dug up from some ruin. It would be 
 appealed to as affording the best kind of proof that the Lusitania, 
 which carried no cannons and no aeroplanes, was a vessel not only 
 laden but conspicuously overladen with munitions of war. 
 
 There has never before been a conflict in which such efforts were 
 made by belligerents to win the favour of neutrals. Able agents have 
 been employed and immense sums expended in attempts to form 
 public opinion through the press. Such efforts have of course been 
 primarily directed towards inducing neutrals to take some measure 
 either positively friendly to the belligerent Power conducting the pro- 
 paganda or to dissuade it from some measure helpful to that Power's 
 enemies. In this, however, there is implied a tribute to the importance 
 of the opinion of the world at large, and a recognition of the fact that 
 there is such a thing as a moral standard which a nation, even if it 
 deems itself absolved by the law of necessity from obedience to such 
 a standard, knows to constitute the basis whereon the judgement of 
 neutrals will be founded. 
 
 The ethical problems which this war has raised are not new, but in 
 their essence, and sometimes even in their form, at least as old as the 
 fifth century b.c, when we find them discussed in ancient Athens. 
 But they have been presented on a larger scale, and in a sharper way, 
 than perhaps ever before, and the differences between the standard 
 recognized as applicable to the individual and that fit to be prescribed 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 17 
 
 for the State have been, in one country, worked out more thoroughly 
 as parts of a general system of doctrine. It is now asked, Have States, 
 in their international relations, any morality at all ? or are they 
 towards one another merely like so many wild beasts, owning no obli- 
 gations of honour or good faith ? Is self-preservation the highest 
 law of a State's being, entitling it to destroy its neighbour whenever 
 it conceives this to be the easiest way to save itself? If the State 
 has any conscience, any morality, w hat is that morality ? How far 
 does it differ from the moral principles which are either embodied in 
 the law, or recognized by the opinion, of each community as applicable 
 to individual citizens within a State ? If State morality is lower than 
 the morality of the individual, ought it to be raised ; and if so, how 
 can it be raised ? 
 
 If there has been a retrogression, can this be connected with the 
 substitution of the State as an impersonal entity for the monarch as 
 a person ? In the sixteenth century the monarch, if he was not per- 
 sonally a base creature, had a certain sense of honour, and was 
 amenable not only to the censures of the Church but to the dictates 
 of chivalry, which (though chivalry never was quite what romancers 
 have painted it) had still a certain influence. When the Emperor 
 Charles the Fifth put himself in the power of Francis the First of 
 France, who had been his enemy (and indeed his prisoner) before, 
 and was to be his enemy again, he reckoned, and not in vain, upon 
 that sense of chivalry. Francis himself was not the best kind of 
 knight, but he had been the sovereign and the friend of Bayard, 
 the pattern of all knightly virtue. Is any trace of that spirit of 
 chivalry left in our time ? Or do those who now administer a State 
 feel themselves to be like the soulless directors of an incorporated 
 company as compared with the individual landlord or employer of 
 former days, who recognized a sort of quasi-feudal responsibility for 
 those who tilled his lands or worked at his bidding ? 
 
 All these are serious questions, and serious not for States only, seeing 
 that the individual may come to think that the morality which is 
 good enough for the State is good enough for himself. 
 
 From noting these phenomena I pass on to a still wider question. 
 
 The awful scale of the present war, both in its local extension over 
 the globe and in the volume of ruin and suffering which it is causing, 
 inevitably suggests the question : Is this * latest birth of Time ' to be 
 taken as the last result of civilization ? Must we contemplate cata- 
 strophes such as that we now see as being likely from time to time to 
 recur? Is a future of incessant hatred between peoples, or groups 
 of peoples, disposing them to inflict economic injury on one another in 
 
18 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 time of peace, and breaking out from time to time in efforts to destroy 
 one another in time of war, the future to which mankind, far more 
 numerous than ever before, and better provided than ever before with 
 every material comfort and luxury, must henceforth look forward ? 
 
 This is a question which has been constantly present to our minds 
 for the last two years. It includes three questions : 
 
 1. What have been the chief causes of war in the past ? Are they 
 diminishing or increasing ? Will they further diminish or increase ? 
 
 2. Are there any and what forces discernible that may tend to 
 counterwork the causes which lead to war ; and if so, are these forces 
 that work for peace likely to grow ? 
 
 3. Can any international machinery be contrived calculated to 
 reduce the strength of the forces that make for war and to strengthen 
 those that make for peace ? 
 
 As you have all been reflecting on these questions, it is not likely 
 that I shall be able to suggest any new facts or thoughts which may 
 not have already crossed your minds. All I can do is to try to con- 
 struct a sort of framework into which your ideas may be fitted, or, 
 in other words, to bring up for consideration certain specific points, 
 so that definite issues may stand out, and thinking be so far clarified. 
 
 In following the stream of history downwards from its dim and 
 distant sources one finds it to be a record of practically incessant 
 fighting. Some races are fiercer than others. But War is the rule. 
 Peace the rare exception. Plato said that war was the natural 
 relation between States. So it had been before him, so it has been 
 since. Tribes fought, cities fought, despotic monarchies fought, tiny 
 republics fought, as vast empires are fighting to-day. This was so 
 from the very beginning of our records. The monuments of Egypt 
 and Assyria are devoted to war and to worship — generally to both, 
 for the warrior king is represented as aided by the national gods 
 who give him victory and receive their share of the spoils. So it 
 was down through the ancient world and through the Middle Ages. 
 
 Intervals of peace have been longer within the last two centuries, 
 especially in Europe ; but the wars that preceded and followed such 
 intervals have been on a more terrible scale than those of earlier times. 
 The wars of the French Revolution and those of Napoleon covered 
 twenty- three years, with two very short respites. Since 1852 Europe 
 has seen eight wars ; and if there be added to these other wars in 
 Asia, Africa, and America, not to speak of civil conflicts (one of which, 
 in the United States, lasted four years), very few years can be found 
 in which the clash of arms was not somewhere heard. Thus there is 
 abundant material for enumerating the causes of war. 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 19 
 
 These causes may be classed as arising either out of material 
 interests or out of sentiment. In most cases both causes have been 
 operative, though often in unequal measure. 
 
 The causes of the former class include : 
 
 The desire for plunder, including the capture of women. 
 
 The desire for land or new settlements, as when the Teutonic tribes 
 entered the Roman Empire in the fifth century, and the Slavonic 
 tribes in the sixth and seventh. 
 
 Disputed successions, in which two or more claimants to a throne 
 have dragged their subjects or followers into the strife. 
 
 Interests in the sphere of commerce and industry, as when one State 
 desires to debar another from the trade of a region (as Spain tried to 
 debar the English from South America), or to reduce another State 
 to commercial vassalage, as Austria did in the case of Serbia. By 
 a curious irony, wars of commerce were often waged in an ignorance 
 of economic principles which made even success worthless. 
 
 To the other class, where the motive is one of passion or sentiment, 
 may be assigned the following causes of war : 
 
 Revenge for some injury to a people or insult to a sovereign, or 
 perhaps only for some defeat suffered in a previous conflict. 
 
 The desire of a monarch to win glory. 
 
 Religious animosity. 
 
 National animosity, due to previous quarrels, and perhaps in- 
 creased by racial dislike. 
 
 Sympathy (usually grounded on religious or racial affinities) with 
 a section of the subjects of another State who are believed to be 
 oppressed by it. 
 
 National pride or vanity. 
 
 Fear of an attack by another State. This includes what are called 
 Preventive Wars, where a Power which thinks (or professes to think) 
 itself endangered by the designs of another Power seeks to anticipate 
 those designs by striking first. 
 
 Few wars can be refeiTed entirely to one cause, and the presence 
 of any one ground for collision naturally tends to intensify the in- 
 fluence of such other grounds as may exist. 
 
 Of these causes there is only one which has been almost eliminated. 
 This is religious (or ecclesiastical) hatred. The desire to propagate 
 a faith by the sword is no longer strong even in Islam, though 
 attempts have been very recently made by the European allies of the 
 Young Turks to utilize the preaching of a Jihad against the infidel. 
 Among the so-called Christian States, religious antagonism survives 
 only as a secondary source of enmity, disposing to civil strife or 
 
20 
 
 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 international hostility communities which have been permeated by 
 the traditions of ancient persecution. The sentiment of ecclesiastical 
 unity has, moreover, sometimes contributed to strengthen the sense 
 of a national unity, leading a people to believe in what it calls its 
 mission. 
 
 The old desire for territory or booty has now passed from cattle- 
 lifting on land and Vikingry at sea into the form of a desire for 
 more and better colonies, and for a fuller control of the means of 
 production and of the industrial high roads of commerce. The 
 chieftain's thirst for fame appears in the desire to maintain the 
 grandeur of a dynasty. But the ancient motives, — selfishness, rapacity, 
 and vanity — are as strong as ever. In one sense they are even more 
 formidable, because they are often shared by the masses of a nation, 
 and inflamed by an agency more pervasive than any that existed 
 before the telegraph had been added to the printing press. 
 
 Is there any one of these causes the disappearance whereof can be 
 expected ? 
 
 Religious passion has cooled, and ecclesiastical antagonisms may 
 vanish, for the hold of dogmas and church organizations on men's 
 minds has grown weaker. Yet the sort of fervour which expressed 
 itself through those antagonisms, the desire in bodies of men to make 
 other men think as they do, and so to resort to persecution if per- 
 suasion fails, may pass into new forms, and in them be again terrible. 
 Of the other causes there is none which we have not seen active in 
 our own time, some perhaps more active than ever before. Nearly 
 all have, as affecting one or other of the now belligerent Powers, borne 
 a part in bringing about the present conflict. It is the gloomiest 
 feature in the situation that to-day the interests and passions of 
 peoples, and not merely those of monarchs or oligarchies, are engaged, 
 for the enmities thus created are more lasting and pernicious. In the 
 old days when philosophers used to ridicule the whims of a king who 
 went to war to revenge a sneer or to provide an appanage for a younger 
 son, the king might be appeased, and the war was sometimes closed 
 by a royal wedding, but now the bitterness which conflict engenders 
 remains to keep jealousy and suspicion alive for many a year. As 
 Mephistopheles says in Goethe's Faust, ' the little god of the world 
 bears always the same stamp'. Other things change. Knowledge 
 increases and wealth increases, but human nature has remained, in 
 essentials, much what it was thirty centuries ago. 
 
 It may be argued that we must not lay too much stress on the 
 circumstances attending the outbreak of the present war, for the 
 position was abnormal and unprecedented, and the conduct of some at 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 21 
 
 least of the belligerents is not to be construed as indicating a bellicose 
 spirit. This argument has force, for it is not merely the action 
 of each nation that has to be regarded, but also the temper and 
 motives which determined that action. But after making all allow- 
 ances the conclusion must be that the forces whence conflicts spring 
 have never shown themselves stronger than in our own time. There 
 is no sign of a diminution either in the spirit of rapacity or 
 in the spirit of arrogance which moves those in whose hands lie the 
 issues of war and peace, be they sovereigns or subjects. The senti- 
 ment of nationality, which in the days of Mazzini was deemed an 
 almost unmixed good, has shown (and notably in South-Eastern 
 Europe) that it can be darkened by national selfishness, jealousy, and 
 pride. 
 
 So far then this brief review of the causes of war in the past gives 
 little ground for hope. 
 
 We may now pass to the second question. Assuming, as the facts 
 seem to indicate, that the causes which have induced war through 
 the whole of history are still present and potent, can we discover any 
 forces already counterworking them, and likely to strengthen in the 
 future the motives that make for peace ? 
 
 Four such forces have at various times inspired hope. 
 
 One is Religion. Of the three great World Religions, one, Islam, 
 is essentially warlike, for it is the duty of every Musulman ruler to 
 propagate the Faith by the sword. The other two are nominally 
 pacific. Into the history of Buddhism I will not enter, except to 
 remark that its practice has in all matters of State fallen so far short 
 of its theory that theory has virtually counted for nothing. As to 
 Christianity, it is enough to look back over the centuries since the 
 Emperor Constantine. Res ipsa loquitur. What would be the thoughts 
 of one of the Apostles, or of a martyr saint of the second century, 
 who revisiting this planet to-day, should be told that the gospel 
 he preached had overspread the world and was taken as their rule of 
 life by nearly all of the nations on whose strife he looked down ? 
 
 Are Christian principles more likely to influence the conduct 
 of nations in the future than they have influenced it in the past t 
 That question is as dark to-day as ever it was before. The lesson of 
 ecclesiastical even more than of secular history is that the movements 
 of thought and emotion and the changes they undergo are altogether 
 unpredictable. Where there is an unlimited field of possibilities 
 there is of course room for hope. Christianity is no doubt, at least 
 in some countries, more of an influence making for peace than it was 
 two centuries ago. 
 
22 
 
 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 Another such force is democratic government. We are often told 
 that so soon as the masses of the people — that is, the numerical 
 majority of the voters — obtain in each nation the full control of its 
 policy towards other nations, the old dynastic traditions that have so 
 often prompted aggression will be eliminated, and the power of the 
 military castes be destroyed. The suggestion is plausible, for the 
 working people have in every country more to lose by war than any. 
 other class. They are the first to suffer in loss of employment as 
 well as by slaughter in battle. That sense of class solidarity which 
 has gone further among the wage-earners than in any other section 
 of a nation — even if not nearly so far as had been expected — may 
 dispose them to refrain from indulging in permanent hatred towards 
 another people. Against this view it is urged — apart from the 
 difficulty which no democracy has overcome, of finding a method by 
 which the control of foreign relations may be exercised by the masses 
 — that the multitude is just as liable to be swept away by passion, 
 just as liable to be puffed up by national or racial pride, just as 
 likely to covet the land or the commerce of other nations, as is any 
 other class in the community. These things were seen in the popular 
 governments of antiquity, and seen also in the (far less popular) 
 republics of mediaeval Italy. The experience of modern democracy 
 has been too short to warrant positive conclusions. The two 
 countries most pacific in spirit are free democratic republics, but 
 Switzerland has geographical as well as moral or philosophical 
 reasons for keeping out of war, and the United States have been, 
 since 1783, engaged in three wars, none of which can be called 
 necessary, and one of which (that with Mexico in 1845) is now 
 admitted, by Americans themselves, to have been scarcely justifiable. 
 The sources of war are to be found not in constitutional arrange- 
 ments but in human nature. They are ethical rather than political. 
 
 A third line of argument has been used to show that the extension 
 of commerce, unfettered by any tariffs giving an advantage to the 
 domestic producer, must give each country a larger interest in keeping 
 the peace, because trade is profitable both to the seller and to the 
 purchaser. The more trade the more profit, and therefore the stronger 
 is the motive for continuing the exchange, and the wider are the 
 opportunities for friendly intercourse and reciprocal knowledge. 
 
 This theory also has much to recommend it. Those who realize 
 that they will lose by war ought to desire peace. But the doctrine 
 which favours a free interchange of products has not in fact spread 
 or thriven of late years. It appears to be less popular now, even in its 
 ancient British home, than it was fifty years ago, which may indeed 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 be said of the theory of /am^^ /air^ generally. Most peoples, even 
 the formerly self-helpful peoples, seem disposed to look more and 
 more to governments to take charge of their affairs and to make the 
 prosperity of individuals. 
 
 Fourthly, those who see that in some countries the increase in the 
 functions of government and the tendency to sacrifice the individual 
 to the State have been accompanied by the development of a martial 
 and aggressive spirit conceive that the two things are naturally 
 connected. When the State labours to increase the wealth of indi- 
 vidual producers by the imposition of tariffs, and by helping its 
 financiers to lay their grasp upon foreign countries, it is expected 
 to go further and acquire new territories, especially if they be rich 
 in minerals, and to open up or even create new markets outside 
 Europe. It is only by military strength that such plans can be carried 
 out. Hence — so the argument runs — militarism becoiiies popular 
 with the great employers of labour, perhaps even with the employees. 
 Military glory and the prosperity of the State are identified. Huge 
 armaments are advocated for business reasons ; and a people proud 
 of its military resources is naturally tempted to use them. If, there- 
 fore, this doctrine of State omnipotence could be discredited, if the 
 masses of a nation could be induced to revolt against the dominance 
 of State officials and the extension of State activity, the antagonism 
 of nations would be softened, and a fertile cause of war be reduced. 
 
 This reasoning finds support in recent experience, but there are at 
 present few signs of any general revolt against the doctrines which 
 the argument seeks to discredit. On the contrary, the range of State 
 action tends, in almost every country, to be increased, various classes 
 desiring it for their own special reasons, and a well-marked current 
 of thought running in that direction. This does not prove that 
 mankind will ultimately be the gainer by a tendency for the moment 
 dominant, for history furnishes instances in which such currents, 
 strong for a while, and sweeping everything before them, have in 
 the long run turned out to have brought more evil than good. 
 
 Lastly, there are those who believe that we may look for the 
 growth over the civilized world of a sentiment of friendliness and 
 goodwill for men as men, irrespective of national distinctions, and 
 that this sentiment will ultimately draw the peoples of the earth 
 together and make them realize the conception of a great Common- 
 wealth embracing all mankind, to which all will owe an allegiance 
 higher than that which they bear to their own State and country. 
 To create such a sentiment was of course part of the message of 
 Christianity : and the sentiment has always found its chief support in 
 
24 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 religious belief. But as it may exist, and has in some minds existed, 
 apart from Christianity, it deserves to be separately mentioned. Is 
 the sentiment likely to grow till it becomes strong enough to 
 influence national policy ? Has it in fact been growing ? 
 
 To those of us who can look back for sixty years, it seems to be 
 weaker now in most, perhaps in all, countries than it was then, as 
 it was stronger then than it had been in the days when the horrible 
 African Slave Trade was deemed an asset in commercial prosperity. 
 But a lifetime is far too short a period from which to draw con- 
 clusions on such a matter. Within our own time we have seen among 
 ourselves a great advance in the sense of responsibility of those to 
 whom Fortune has been kind for those whom she has neglected. 
 We see a more active sympathy and, despite class antagonisms, a 
 stronger sense of brotherhood between the members of the same 
 people. May not such a feeling spread into the wider field of inter- 
 national relations ? We perceive that in the English-speaking coun- 
 tries, of which alone we can judge, there exists already a warmer 
 and more general pity than was ever seen before for suffering of every 
 kind in every country ; and wherever over the world a cry is raised 
 for help to the victims of some disaster by earthquake, flood, or 
 storm, the response is prompt and generous. That the hatreds and 
 liorrors conspicuous to-day grieve us all the more because they seem to 
 be a reversion to a dark and cruel past, is of itself a testimony to the 
 progress which mankind had made, and raises in some minds the hope 
 that what we see may be transient and the next change be for the better. 
 
 After thus enumerating these natural causes, if one may so call 
 them, which have made or are making for war or for peace, it 
 remains only to ask what prospect there is that the nations may by 
 a conscious and united effort succeed in establishing some machinery 
 whereby the likelihood of future wars may be at least diminished. 
 No one can examine the wars that have sprung from the causes 
 I have enumerated without perceiving that in the great majority 
 of instances peace might have been kept, without dishonour to either 
 party, and with material advantage to both, had there been more 
 foresight of the consequences of war, and a real desire to avoid it. 
 Many wars have been unjust, most have been unnecessary. Can 
 any means be devised whereby the action of nations other than those 
 two (or more) between whom the quarrel arises can be invoked to 
 prevent the disputants from settling it by arms ? 
 
 This is a very old problem. It was debated in the fourteenth 
 century, when two great Italians, Dante Alighieri and his younger 
 contemporary Marsilius of Padua, both saw in the authority of the 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 25 
 
 Roman Emperor the guarantee and indeed the only guarantee for 
 the peace of a distracted world, as others had before their time 
 found it in the spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman Bishop. Five 
 centuries later the problem was again discussed by Immanuel Kant, 
 and, a generation later, a feeble attempt at a solution was made by 
 the Holy Alliance, on principles which foredoomed it to failure. 
 
 Both here and in the United States sanguine minds are now 
 busy with plans which propose some kind of federation or league or 
 alliance of nations charged with the duty of compelling disputant 
 Powers to refer their disputes to arbitration or conciliation, and to 
 abstain from violent measures, at least until these peaceful methods have 
 had their chance. Such ideas can hardly be dismissed as visionary, 
 since they have been blessed both in this country and in the United 
 States by the highest authorities in public life. I do not propose here 
 to discuss them, but may properly supplement what has been said 
 regarding the causes of war by indicating what are the difficulties 
 which all such schemes for the prevention of war have to surmount. 
 
 I will mention a few of these. 
 
 That statesmen of the old school will dislike new methods which 
 may withdraw from them some of the control they have hitherto 
 enjoyed must be expected. But far more serious is the deep-rooted 
 unwillingness of every nation, and especially of a strong and proud 
 nation, to submit any part of what it calls its rights to the decision 
 of an external tribunal. This has been happily overcome in some 
 recent instances, but in none of those instances were the interests 
 involved of great moment: and even in the countries where arbitration 
 ^ has won most favour there is a feeling, hard to overcome, that the 
 cession of territory is a question on which the country itself must 
 always have the last word. In every nation the fact that statesmen 
 and journalists seek to please their public by constantly asserting 
 the righteousness of its own cause makes it hard to arrange reasonable 
 compromises. An American statesman, than whom there is none wiser 
 anywhere, recently observed that one of the greatest difficulties the 
 negotiator of a treaty has to encounter is the displeasure of his fellow 
 countrymen at any concession, even when he feels his own cause 
 to be none too strong, and believes his country would gain by the 
 removal of friction. Nations seem to be as sensitive on what is 
 called the * point of honour ' as were members of the noblesse in 
 France and England three centuries ago. They hold out against 
 arrangements which individual men would accept. He who suggests 
 the dropping of a doubtful claim is accused of timidity or want 
 of patriotism. 
 
26 
 
 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 When a nation is invited to reduce its defensive armaments in 
 the faith that the other States which are uniting themselves in a Peace 
 League will join their forces with its own to repel any aggression, 
 doubts will arise whether the parties to any alliance for the preserva- 
 tion of peace can be trusted to fulfil their respective obligations 
 except when it is their obvious interest to do so. Where several 
 allied States are alike threatened by a powerful enemy, a regard 
 for their safety will doubtless require them to hold together. But 
 cases may easily be imagined in which some members of the 
 League, having at a given moment nothing direct to gain by 
 supporting a threatened ally, may, either through unwillingness to 
 fight or through the offer of some advantage for themselves, be 
 induced to find a pretext for standing aside. As soon as one member 
 thus falters, some other member is likely to follow the example, 
 alleging that if one or more fail to stand by the obligation, the rest 
 cannot be expected to fulfil it. The ultimate benefit to all of 
 mutual protection, and of the repression of any disturbance of the 
 general peace, may be admitted. But in politics the avoidance of 
 a near evil is usually preferred to the attainment of a more remote 
 good, for all can recognize the former, and only those of large minds 
 and long views can appreciate the latter. 
 
 Another difficulty has received little notice, because those who start 
 these schemes, rejoicing in the excellence of their aim, sometimes 
 forget to examine the means. It is the difficulty of securing persons 
 competent to discharge the functions of Arbitration and Conciliation. 
 Jurists versed in international law can be found fit to determine ques- 
 tions of a purely legal nature, such, for instance, as the interpretation 
 of a treaty. Though there are not many such men in Europe, there 
 may be enough for present needs. But the causes which most fre- 
 quently lead to hostilities are not of a legal character. In ex- 
 tremely few cases out of all those in which disputes have led to war in 
 Europe since 1815 could the judicial methods of an arbitral court have 
 been profitably used.^ War usually springs from questions of wider 
 range, questions to which no precedents are precisely applicable, 
 questions which involve the passions of rulers or of peoples. To 
 these questions it is Conciliation^ not Arbitration, that must be 
 applied ; and the conciliators who are to deal with them must be 
 men possessing an intimate knowledge of European politics and 
 a long experience in international statesmanship. They must enjoy 
 
 ^ The controversy as to the succession to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein 
 which arose on the death of Frederick VII of Denmark is such an instance. In 
 that case the parties did not wish to arbitrate. 
 
ON WAR, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 a reputation extending beyond their own country, and such as will add 
 weight to their opinions. They must moreover possess sufficient 
 independence and courage to follow their own views of what is right 
 and wise at the risk of displeasing their countrymen. Few are the 
 persons in whom these qualifications will be likely to meet. 
 
 It is better to state and face these obstacles than to ignore 
 them with the complacent optimism which mistakes its own wishes 
 for facts, or assumes that ethical precepts will prevail against 
 the bad habits of many generations. But the obstacles are not 
 insuperable. If the free peoples of the world really desired 
 permanent peace, desired it earnestly enough to make it a primary 
 object and to forego some of their own independence of action to 
 attain it, the thing might be tried with a fair prospect of success. 
 What is needed is the creation, not only of a feeling of allegiance to 
 humanity and of an interest in the welfare of other nations as well 
 as one's own — what in fact may be called an International Mind, — 
 but also of an International Public Opinion, a common opinion of 
 many peoples which shall apply moral standards to the conduct 
 of other nations with a judgement biased less than now by the 
 consideration of the particular national interests which each nation 
 conceives itself to have. 
 
 Could such a moral iudicium orbis terrarum be established, it 
 might do more than any arbitral tribunal, or Council of Concilia- 
 tion, or combination of Powers, to raise the level of conduct in 
 international relations, and restrain the selfish passions even of 
 monarchs or demagogues. Though the nations are still some con- 
 siderable way from the general diffusion of such a feeling and opinion, 
 we need not assume that the waves of passion will continue to run so 
 high as they do now, and we may even venture to hope that the senti- 
 ment of a common devotion to the common welfare of all mankind 
 will, within the next few generations, gradually assert its strength. 
 
 This leads me to one more topic proper to be here referred to. 
 
 In comparison with all the other sadnesses of this time, with the 
 sorrow and mourning that have entered every home, with the loss of 
 those bright young spirits who would have been the leaders of the 
 next generation, some among them minds that would have rendered 
 incomparable services to learning and science and art — in comparison 
 with these things the evil I am about to mention may seem small. 
 Yet it is one that must be mentioned, for it directly affects the 
 objects for which this Academy exists, and we, together with our 
 friends and colleagues of the Royal Society, are those who best 
 know how grave it is. I speak of the severance of friendly relations 
 
28 SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 
 
 between the great peoples of Europe, the interruption of all personal 
 intercourse and of that co-operation in the extension of knowledge 
 and the discovery of new truth from which every people has gained so 
 much. The study of philosophy and history has done little for those 
 of us who pursue it if it has not extended their vision beyond their 
 own country and their own time, reminding them that human pro- 
 gress has been achieved by the united efforts of many races and 
 many types of intellect and character, each profiting by the efforts 
 of the others, and teaching them that for further advance this co- 
 operation is essential. To restore it is at this moment impossible. 
 But let us at least do nothing to retard its return in happier 
 days. Those days some of us cannot hope ever to see. For the 
 elder men among us there has come a perpetual end» of that 
 delightful and mutually helpful companionship which united us 
 with the learned men of two other great nations, a sense of partner- 
 ship between those who pursued truth which overrode all national 
 jealousies, and was fruitful for the progress of letters and science. 
 This partnership is gone ; and the world will for years to come suffer 
 from its departure. Yet the severance cannot last for ever. When 
 a storm has levelled the forest or a waterspout has scarred the 
 slopes of a valley, the eternal forces of Nature, slow and often 
 imperceptible in their working, but restlessly active, begin to repair 
 the ruin the storm has wrought. Young trees spring up to renew 
 the forest, and verdure clothes once more the devastated hillsides. 
 
 Two years ago the Spirit of Sin and Strife was let loose upon the 
 earth like a destroying whirlwind. That spirit is personified in the 
 Iliad as Ate, the Spirit of Evil that takes possession of the soul. She 
 is the power that strides swiftly over the earth, kindling hatred and 
 prompting men to wrong. But the poet tells us that after Ate come 
 the Litae, gentle daughters of the Almighty, who, by their entreaties, 
 soften men's hearts to pity. Halting are their steps and their visage 
 wrinkled, and their look askance, but they bring repentance and 
 they assuage the passions which the Spirit of Wrong has kindled. 
 Ate has been afoot in the world ; and we see everywhere her deathful 
 work. But after a time the Litae, following slowly in her track, will 
 begin to heal the wounds she has cut deep into men's souls. Nations 
 cannot be enemies for ever. The time must come when a know- 
 ledge of the true sources of these calamities will, even there where 
 hatred is now strongest, enlighten men's minds and touch their 
 hearts. May that time come soon ! 
 
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