Germany and the Next War | Page 6

of times, war has again and again marched
from country to country with the clash of arms, and has proved its
destructive as well as creative and purifying power. It has not
succeeded in teaching mankind what its real nature is. Long periods of
war, far from convincing men of the necessity of war, have, on the
contrary, always revived the wish to exclude war, where possible, from
the political intercourse of nations.
This wish and this hope are widely disseminated even to-day. The

maintenance of peace is lauded as the only goal at which statesmanship
should aim. This unqualified desire for peace has obtained in our days a
quite peculiar power over men's spirits. This aspiration finds its public
expression in peace leagues and peace congresses; the Press of every
country and of every party opens its columns to it. The current in this
direction is, indeed, so strong that the majority of Governments
profess--outwardly, at any rate--that the necessity of maintaining peace
is the real aim of their policy; while when a war breaks out the
aggressor is universally stigmatized, and all Governments exert
themselves, partly in reality, partly in pretence, to extinguish the
conflagration.
Pacific ideals, to be sure, are seldom the real motive of their action.
They usually employ the need of peace as a cloak under which to
promote their own political aims. This was the real position of affairs at
the Hague Congresses, and this is also the meaning of the action of the
United States of America, who in recent times have earnestly tried to
conclude treaties for the establishment of Arbitration Courts, first and
foremost with England, but also with Japan, France, and Germany. No
practical results, it must be said, have so far been achieved.
We can hardly assume that a real love of peace prompts these efforts.
This is shown by the fact that precisely those Powers which, as the
weaker, are exposed to aggression, and therefore were in the greatest
need of international protection, have been completely passed over in
the American proposals for Arbitration Courts. It must consequently be
assumed that very matter-of-fact political motives led the Americans,
with their commercial instincts, to take such steps, and induced
"perfidious Albion" to accede to the proposals. We may suppose that
England intended to protect her rear in event of a war with Germany,
but that America wished to have a free hand in order to follow her
policy of sovereignty in Central America without hindrance, and to
carry out her plans regarding the Panama Canal in the exclusive
interests of America. Both countries certainly entertained the hope of
gaining advantage over the other signatory of the treaty, and of winning
the lion's share for themselves. Theorists and fanatics imagine that they
see in the efforts of President Taft a great step forward on the path to
perpetual peace, and enthusiastically agree with him. Even the Minister
for Foreign Affairs in England, with well-affected idealism, termed the

procedure of the United States an era in the history of mankind.
This desire for peace has rendered most civilized nations anemic, and
marks a decay of spirit and political courage such as has often been
shown by a race of Epigoni. "It has always been," H. von Treitschke
tells us, "the weary, spiritless, and exhausted ages which have played
with the dream of perpetual peace."
Everyone will, within certain limits, admit that the endeavours to
diminish the dangers of war and to mitigate the sufferings which war
entails are justifiable. It is an incontestable fact that war temporarily
disturbs industrial life, interrupts quiet economic development, brings
widespread misery with it, and emphasizes the primitive brutality of
man. It is therefore a most desirable consummation if wars for trivial
reasons should be rendered impossible, and if efforts are made to
restrict the evils which follow necessarily in the train of war, so far as is
compatible with the essential nature of war. All that the Hague Peace
Congress has accomplished in this limited sphere deserves, like every
permissible humanization of war, universal acknowledgment. But it is
quite another matter if the object is to abolish war entirely, and to deny
its necessary place in historical development.
This aspiration is directly antagonistic to the great universal laws which
rule all life. War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a
regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed
with, since without it an unhealthy development will follow, which
excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real
civilization. "War is the father of all things." [A] The sages of antiquity
long before Darwin recognized this.
[Footnote A: (Heraclitus of Ephesus).]
The struggle for existence is, in the life of Nature, the basis of all
healthy development. All existing things show themselves