Quæ harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, ea est in civitate
concordia.--CICERO, _De Republica_, Lib. II. Cap. 42.
Una dies Fabios ad bellum miserat omnes,
Ad bellum missos perdidit una dies.
OVID, _Fasti_, Lib. II. 235, 236.
Cum hac persuasione vivendum est: Non sum uni angulo natus; patria mea
totus hic mundus est.--SENECA, _Epistola_ XXVIII.
Illi enim exorsi sunt non ab observandis telis aut armis aut tubis;
id enim invisum illis est propter Deum quem in conscientia sua
gestant.--MARCUS AURELIUS, _Epistola ad Senatum_: S. Justini _Apologia
I. pro Christianis_, Cap. 71.
War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity: it
destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any
scourge, in fact, is preferable to it. Famine and pestilence become as
nothing in comparison with it.... Cannons and fire-arms are cruel and
damnable machines. I believe them to have been the direct suggestion of
the Devil.... If Adam had seen in a vision the horrible instruments his
children were to invent, he would have died of grief.--MARTIN LUTHER,
_Table-Talk_, tr. Hazlitt, pp. 331-332.
Mulei Abdelummi, assaulted by his brother and wounded in the church,
1577, would not stirre till _sala_, or prayer, was done.--PURCHAS,
_Pilgrims_, Part II. Book IX. Chap. 12, § 6, p. 1564.
A duel may still be granted in some cases by the law of England, and
only there. That the Church allowed it anciently appears by this: In
their public liturgies there were prayers appointed for the duellists
to say; the judge used to bid them go to such a church and pray, etc.
But whether is this lawful? If you grant any war lawful, I make no
doubt but to convince it.--SELDEN, _Table-Talk_: _Duel_.
I look upon the way of Treaties as a retiring from fighting like
beasts to arguing like men, whose strength should be more in their
understandings than in their limbs.--_Eikon Basilike_, XVIII.
Se peut-il rien de plus plaisant qu'un homme ait droit de me tuer parce
qu'il demeure au delà de l'eau, et que son prince a querelle avec le
mien, quoique je n'en aie aucune avec lui?--PASCAL, _Pensées_, Part. I.
Art. VI. 9.
Pourquoi me tuez-vous? Eh quoi! ne demeurez-vous pas de l'autre
côte de l'eau? Mon ami, si vous demeuriez de ce côté, je serais
un assassin; cela serait injuste de vous tuer de la sorte: mais
puisque vous demeurez de l'autre côté, je suis un brave, et cela est
juste.--_Ibid._, Part. I. Art. IX. 3.
De tout temps les hommes, pour quelque morceau de terre de plus ou de
moins, _sont convenus_ entre eux de se dépouiller, se brûler, se tuer,
s'égorger les uns les autres; et pour le faire plus ingénieusement et
avec plus de sûreté, ils ont inventé de belles règles qu'on appelle
l'art militaire: ils ont attaché à la pratique de ces règles _la
gloire_, ou la plus solide réputation; et ils ont depuis enchéri de
siècle en siècle sur la manière de se détruire réciproquement.--LA
BRUYÈRE, _Du Souverain ou de la République_.
La calamita esser innamorata del ferro.--VICO, _Scienza Nuova_, Lib.
I., _Degli Elementi_, XXXII.
Unlistening, barbarous Force, to whom the sword
Is reason, honor, law.
THOMSON, _Liberty_, Part IV. 45, 46.
Enfin, tandis que les deux rois faisaient chanter des _Te Deum_, chacun
dans son camp, il prit le parti d'aller raisonner ailleurs des effets
et des causes. Il passa par-dessus des tas de morts et de mourants,
et gagna d'abord un village voisin; il était en cendres: c'était un
village Abare, que les Bulgares avaient brûlé, _selon les lois du droit
public_.--VOLTAIRE, _Candide ou l'Optimiste_, Chap. III.
The rage and violence of public war, what is it but a suspension of
justice among the warring parties?--HUME, _Essays: Inquiry concerning
the Principles of Morals_, Section III., _Of Justice_, Part I.
A single robber or a few associates are branded with their genuine
name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the character of
lawful and honorable war.--GIBBON, _Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_, Chap. 50.
The glory of a warrior prince can only be written in letters of blood,
and he can only be immortalized by the remembrance of the devastation
of provinces and the desolation of nations. A warrior king depends
for his reputation on the vulgar crowd, and must address himself to
prejudice and ignorance to obtain the applause of a day, which the pen
of the philosopher, the page of the historian, often annul, even before
death comes to enshroud the mortal faculties in the nothingness from
which they came. Consult, Sire, the laws of the King of Kings, and
acknowledge that the God of the Universe is a God of Peace.--RIGHT HON.
HUGH ELLIOT, _British Minister in Sweden, to Gustavus III., November
10, 1788: Memoir_, by the Countess of Minto, p. 324.
C'est un usage reçu en Europe, qu'un gentilhomme vende, à une querelle
étrangère, le sang qui appartient à sa patrie; qu'il s'engage à
assassiner, en bataille rangée, qui il plaira au prince qui le soudoie;
et ce métier est regardé comme honorable.--CONDORCET, _Note 109 aux
Pensées de Pascal_.
C'était un affreux spectacle que cette déroute. Les blessés, qui ne
pouvaient se traîner, se couchaient sur le chemin; on les foulait
aux pieds; les femmes poussaient des cris, les enfans pleuraient,
les officiers frappaient les fuyards. Au milieu de tout ce désordre,
ma mère avait passé sans que je la reconnusse. Un enfant avait
voulu l'arrêter et la tuer, parce qu'elle fuyait.--MADAME DE LA
ROCHEJAQUELEIN, _Mémoires_, Chap. XVII. p 301.
Let the soldier be abroad, if he will; he can do nothing in this age.
There is another personage, a personage less imposing in the eyes of
some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust
to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military
array.--BROUGHAM, _Speech in the House of Commons, January 29, 1828_.
Was it possible for me to avoid the reflections which crowded into
my mind, ... when I reflected that this peaceful and guiltless and
useful triumph over the elements and over Nature herself had cost
a million only of money, whilst fifteen hundred millions had been
squandered on cruelty and crime, in naturalizing barbarism over the
world, shrouding the nations in darkness, making bloodshed tinge the
earth of every country under the sun,--in one horrid and comprehensive
word, squandered on WAR, the greatest curse of the human race, and
the greatest crime, because it involves every other crime within
its execrable name?... I look backwards with shame, with regret
unspeakable, with indignation to which I should in vain attempt to give
utterance, ... when I think, that, if one hundred, and but one hundred,
of those fifteen hundred minions, had been employed in promoting the
arts of peace and the progress of civilization and of wealth and
prosperity amongst us, instead of that other employment which is too
hateful to think of, and almost nowadays too disgusting to speak of
(and I hope to live to see the day when such things will be incredible,
when, looking back, we shall find it impossible to believe they ever
happened), instead of being burdened with eight hundred millions of
debt, borrowed after spending seven hundred millions, borrowed when we
had no more to spend, we should have seen the whole country covered
with such works as now unite Manchester and Liverpool, and should have
enjoyed peace uninterrupted during the last forty years, with all the
blessings which an industrious and a virtuous people deserve, and which
peace profusely sheds upon their lot.--IBID., _Speech at Liverpool,
July 20, 1835_.
Who can read these, and such passages as these [from Plato], without
wishing that some who call themselves Christians, some Christian
Principalities and Powers, had taken a lesson from the Heathen
sage, and, if their nature forbade them to abstain from massacres
and injustice, at least had not committed the scandalous impiety,
as he calls it, of singing in places of Christian worship, and for
the accomplishment of their enormous crimes, _Te Deums_, which in
Plato's Republic would have been punished as blasphemy? Who, indeed,
can refrain from lamenting another pernicious kind of sacrilege, an
anthropomorphism, yet more frequent,--that of making Christian temples
resound with prayers for victory over our enemies, and thanksgiving for
their defeat? Assuredly such a ritual as this is not taken from the New
Testament.--IBID., _Discourse of Natural Theology_, Note VIII.
War is on its last legs; and a universal peace is as sure as is the
prevalence of civilization over barbarism, of liberal governments over
feudal forms. The question for us is only, _How soon?_--EMERSON, _War:
Æsthetic Papers_, ed. E.P. Peabody, p. 42.
A day will come when the only battle-field will be the market open
to commerce and the mind opening to new ideas. A day will come when
bullets and bomb-shells will be replaced by votes, by the universal
suffrage of nations, by the venerable arbitration of a great Sovereign
Senate, which will be to Europe what the Parliament is to England,
what the Diet is to Germany, what the Legislative Assembly is to
France. A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public
museums, just as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be
astonished how such a thing could have been. A day will come when those
two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States
of Europe, shall be seen placed in presence of each other, extending
the hand of fellowship across the ocean.--VICTOR HUGO, _Inaugural
Address at the Peace Congress of Paris, August 22, 1849_.
Clearly, beyond question, whatsoever be our theories about human
nature and its capabilities and outcomes, the less war and cutting of
throats we have among us, it will be better for us all. One rejoices
much to see that immeasurable tendencies of this time are already
pointing towards the results you aim at,--that, to all appearance, as
men no longer wear swords in the streets, so neither by-and-by will
nations.--CARLYLE, _Letter to the Peace Congress at London, July, 1851_.
The longer I live, the more I am convinced of the necessity of a
powerful association to plead the cause of Universal Peace and
International Arbitration; and I feel confident that the time is not
far distant when war will be as impossible among civilized nations as
duelling is among civilized men.--SIR DAVID BREWSTER, _Letter to the
Peace Conference at Edinburgh, October, 1853_.
Aujourd'hui encore on bénit les drapeaux qui conduisent les hommes à
de mutuels égorgements. En donnant à un Dieu de paix le nom de _Dieu
des Armées_, on fait de l'Être infini en bonté le complice de ceux
qui s'abreuvent des larmes de leurs semblables. Aujourd'hui encore on
chante d'impies _Te Deum_ pour le remercier de ces victoires obtenues
au prix d'épouvantables massacres, victoires qu'il faudrait ou expier
comme des crimes lorsqu'elles out été remportées dans des guerres
offensives ou déplorer comme la plus triste des nécessités quand elles
ont été obtenues dans des guerres défensives.--LARROQUE, _De la Guerre
et des Armées Permanentes_, Part. III. § 4.
La monarchie, sous les formes mêmes les plus tempérées, tiendra
toujours à avoir à sa dévotion des armées permanentes. Or avec les
armées en permanence l'abolition de la guerre est impossible. Par
conséquent la grande fédération des peuples, au moins de tous les
peuples Européens, dans le but d'arriver à l'abolition de la guerre
par l'institution d'un droit international et d'un tribunal supérieur
chargé de le faire observer, ne sera réalisable que le jour où ces
peuples seront organisés sous la forme républicaine. Quand luira ce
jour?--IBID., Avant-propos, p. 6.
Sir J. Lubbock quotes the case of a tribe in Baffin's Bay who "could
not be made to understand what was meant by war, nor had they any
warlike weapons." No wonder, poor people! They had been driven into
regions where no stronger race could desire to follow them.--DUKE OF
ARGYLL, _Primeval Man_, p. 177.