"(1) A diplomatic congress ought to meet every year.
"(2) No war can be declared sooner than two months after the
incident provoking it. (The difficulty will be to determine which
incident it is that provokes the war, because with every war there
are a very large number of such incidents, and it would be necessary
to decide from which incident the two months are to be counted.)
"(3) War cannot be declared before it is submitted to the vote of
the nations preparing for it.
"Military action cannot begin sooner than a month after the
declaration of war."
"War cannot be begun ... must ..." and so forth.
But who will see to it that war cannot be begun? Who will see to
it that men must do so and so? Who will compel the power to wait
until the proper time? All the other powers need just as much to
be moderated and placed within bounds and compelled. Who will do
the compelling? and how?--Public opinion.--But if there is a public
opinion which can compel a power to wait for a given time, the same
public opinion can compel the power not to begin the war at all.
But, they reply to all this, we can have such a balance of forces,
_ponderation des forces_, that the powers will support one another.
This has been tried and is being tried even now. Such were the Holy
Alliance, the League of Peace, and so forth.
"But if all should agree to it?" we are told. If all should agree to
it, there would be no war, and there would be no need for supreme
tribunals and courts of arbitration.
"Arbitration will take the place of war. The questions will be
decided by a court of arbitration. The _Alabama_ question was
decided by a court of arbitration, it was proposed to have the
question about the Caroline Islands submitted to the arbitration of
the Pope. Switzerland, and Belgium, and Denmark, and Holland,--all
have declared that they prefer the decisions of a court of
arbitration to war." Monaco, it seems, also declared itself in this
way. What is a pity is, that Germany, Russia, Austria, France have
not yet made such declarations.
It is wonderful how men can deceive themselves.
The governments will decide to submit their differences to a court
of arbitration and so will disband their armies. The differences
between Russia and Poland, between England and Ireland, between
Austria and Bohemia, between Turkey and the Slavs, between France
and Germany will be decided by voluntary consent.
This is the same as though it should be proposed that merchants and
bankers should not sell anything at a higher price than at what
they have bought the articles, should busy themselves with the
distribution of wealth without profit, and should abolish the money
which has thus become useless.
But commerce and the banking industry consist in nothing but selling
at a higher price than that at which the purchases are made, and
so the proposition that articles should not be sold except at a
purchase price, and that money should be abolished, is tantamount to
a proposition that they should abolish themselves. The same is true
of the governments. The proposition made to the governments that
no violence be used, and that the differences be decided on their
merits, is a proposition that the government as such should abolish
itself, and to this no government can consent.
Learned men gather in societies (there are many such societies,
more than a hundred of them), congresses are called (lately such
met at Paris and London, and one will soon meet at Rome), speeches
are made, people dine, make toasts, publish periodicals, which
are devoted to the cause, and in all of them it is proved that
the tension of the nations, who are compelled to support millions
of troops, has reached the utmost limit, and that this armament
contradicts all the aims, properties, and desires of all the
nations, but that, if a lot of paper is covered with writing, and a
lot of speeches are made, it is possible to make all people agree
and to cause them not to have any opposing interests, and then there
will be no war.
When I was a little fellow, I was assured that to catch a bird it
was just necessary to pour some salt on its tail. I went out with
the salt to the birds, and immediately convinced myself that, if I
could get near enough to pour the salt on a bird's tail, I could
catch it, and I understood that they were making fun of me.
It is the same that must be understood by those who read books and
pamphlets on courts of arbitration and disarmament.
If it is possible to pour salt on a bird's tail, this means that it
does not fly, and that there is no need of catching it. But if a
bird has wings and does not want to be caught, it does not allow any
one to pour salt on its tail, because it is the property of a bird
to fly. Even so the property of a government does not consist in
being subjected, but in subjecting, and a government is a government
only in so far as it is able, not to be subjected, but to subject,
and so it strives to do so, and can never voluntarily renounce its
power; but the power gives it the army, and so it will never give up
the army and its use for purposes of war.
The mistake is based on this, that learned jurists, deceiving
themselves and others, assert in their books that the government
is not what it is,--a collection of one set of men, doing violence
to another,--but, as science makes it out to be, a representation
of the aggregate of citizens. The learned have for so long a time
assured others of this fact that they have come themselves to
believe in it, and they often think seriously that justice can be
obligatory for the governments. But history shows that from Cæsar
to Napoleon, both the first and the third, and Bismarck, the
government has by its essence always been a justice-impairing force,
as, indeed, it cannot be otherwise. Justice cannot be obligatory
for a man or for men, who keep in hand deceived men, drilled for
violence,--the soldiers,--and by means of them rule others. And so
the governments cannot agree to the diminution of the number of
these drilled men, who obey them and who form all their strength and
significance.
Such is the relation of one set of learned men to the contradiction
which weighs heavily on our world, and such are the means for its
solution. Tell these men that the question is only in the personal
relation of every man to the moral, religious question, now standing
before all, of the legitimacy and illegitimacy of his participation
in the universal military service, and these savants will only shrug
their shoulders, and will not even deign to give you an answer,
or pay attention to you. The solution of the question for them
consists in reading addresses, writing books, choosing presidents,
vice-presidents, secretaries, and meeting and talking, now in this
city, and now in that. From these talks and writings there will, in
their opinion, come this result, that the governments will cease
drafting soldiers, on whom their whole power is based, but will
listen to their speeches and will dismiss their soldiers, will
remain defenceless, not only against their neighbours, but even
against their subjects,--like robbers who, having bound defenceless
men, for the purpose of robbing them, upon hearing speeches about
the pain caused to the bound men by the rope, should immediately set
them free.
But there are people who believe in it, who busy themselves with
peace congresses, deliver addresses, write little books; and the
governments, of course, express their sympathy with this, let it
appear that they are supporting this, just as they make it appear
that they are supporting a temperance society, whereas they for the
most part live by the drunkenness of the masses; just as they make
it appear that they are supporting education, whereas their strength
is based on ignorance; just as they make it appear that they are
supporting the liberty of the constitution, whereas their strength
is based only on the absence of a constitution; just as they make it
appear that they are concerned about the betterment of the labouring
classes, whereas it is on the oppression of the labourer that their
existence is; just as they make it appear that they are supporting
Christianity, whereas Christianity destroys every government.
To be able to do this, they have long ago worked out such provisions
for temperance, that drunkenness is not impaired; such provisions
for education, that ignorance is not only not interfered with,
but is even strengthened; such provisions for liberty and for the
constitution, that despotism is not impeded; such provisions for the
labourers, that they are not freed from slavery; such Christianity
as does not destroy, but maintains the governments.
Now they have also added their concern about peace. The governments,
simply the kings, who travel about with their ministers, of their
own accord deciding the questions as to whether they shall begin
the slaughter of millions this year or next, know full well that
their talks about peace will not keep them, whenever they feel like
it, from sending millions to slaughter. The kings even listen with
pleasure to these talks, encourage them, and take part in them.
All this is not only harmless, but even useful to the governments,
in that it takes people's minds away from the most essential
question, as to whether each individual man, who is called to become
a soldier, should perform the universal military service or not.
"Peace will soon be established, thanks to alliances and congresses
and in consequence of books and pamphlets, but in the meantime go,
put on uniforms, and be prepared to oppress and torture yourselves
for our advantage," say the governments. And the learned authors of
congresses and of writings fully agree to this.
This is one relation, the most advantageous one for the governments,
and so it is encouraged by all wise governments.
Another relation is the tragic relation of the men who assert that
the contradiction between the striving and love for peace and the
necessity of war is terrible, but that such is the fate of men.
These for the most part sensitive, gifted men see and comprehend the
whole terror and the whole madness and cruelty of war, but by some
strange turn of mind do not see and do not look for any issue from
this condition, and, as though irritating their wound, enjoy the
desperate plight of humanity.
Here is a remarkable specimen of such a relation to war, by a famous
French author (Maupassant). As he looks from his yacht at the
exercises and target-shooting of the French soldiers, the following
ideas come to him:
"War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though
they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a
distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing.
"When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we
proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the savages, the
real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they
vanquish, or those who struggle to kill, merely to kill?
"The little soldiers of the rank and file who are running down there
are destined for death, like flocks of sheep, whom a butcher drives
before him on the highway. They will fall in a plain, their heads
cut open by a sword-stroke, or their chests pierced by bullets; and
these are young men who might have worked, produced, been useful.
Their fathers are old and poor; their mothers, who have loved them
for twenty years and adored them as only mothers can, will learn in
six months or, perhaps, in a year that their son, their child, their
grandchild, who had been reared with so much love, was thrown into
a hole, like a dead dog, after he had been eviscerated by a ball,
trampled underfoot, crushed, mashed into pulp by the charges of
cavalry. Why did they kill her boy, her fine boy, her only hope, her
pride, her life? She does not know. Yes, why?
"War! To fight! To butcher! To massacre people! And to-day, at our
period of the world, with our civilization, with the expansion of
science and the degree of philosophy which we deem the human genius
to have attained, we have schools in which they teach how to kill;
to kill at a great distance, with perfection, a lot of people at the
same time,--to kill poor innocent fellows, who have the care of a
family and are under no judicial sentence.
"And what is most startling is the fact that the people do not rise
against the governments! What difference is there really between the
monarchies and the republics? It is most startling that society does
not rise in a body and revolt at the very mention of the word 'war.'
"Oh, we shall always live under the burden of the ancient and odious
customs, criminal prejudices, and savage ideas of our barbarous
ancestors, because we are beasts, and shall remain beasts, who are
dominated by instinct and do not change.
"Would not any other man than Victor Hugo have been disgraced, if he
sent forth this cry of deliverance and truth?
"'To-day force is called violence and is about to be judged; war is
summoned to court. Civilization, at the instigation of the human
race, institutes proceedings and prepares the great criminal brief
of the conquerors and captains. The nations are coming to understand
that the increase of an offence cannot be its diminution; that
if it is a crime to kill, killing much cannot be an extenuating
circumstance; that if stealing is a disgrace, forcible seizing
cannot be a glory. Oh, let us proclaim these absolute verities,--let
us disgrace war!'
"Vain fury and indignation of a poet! War is honoured more than ever.
"A versatile artist in these matters, a gifted butcher of men, Mr.
von Moltke, one day spoke the following words to some delegates of
peace:
"'War is sacred and divinely instituted; it is one of the sacred
laws of the world; it nurtures in men all the great and noble
sentiments,--honour, disinterestedness, virtue, courage,--and, to be
short, keeps men from falling into the most hideous materialism.'
"Thus, uniting into herds of four hundred thousand men, marching
day and night without any rest, not thinking of anything, nor
studying anything, nor learning anything, nor reading anything, not
being useful to a single person, rotting from dirt, sleeping in
the mire, living like the brutes in a constant stupor, pillaging
cities, burning villages, ruining peoples, then meeting another
conglomeration of human flesh, rushing against it, making lakes
of blood and fields of battered flesh, mingled with muddy and
blood-stained earth and mounds of corpses, being deprived of arms
or legs, or having the skull crushed without profit to any one, and
dying in the corner of a field, while your old parents, your wife,
and your children are starving,--that's what is called not to fall
into the most hideous materialism.
"The men of war are the scourges of the world. We struggle against
Nature, against ignorance, against obstacles of every sort, in order
to make our miserable life less hard. Men, benefactors, savants
use their existence in order to work, to find what may help, may
succour, may ease their brothers. They go with vim about their
useful business, accumulate discovery upon discovery, increasing
the human spirit, expanding science, giving every day a sum of new
knowledge to the intelligence of man, giving every day well-being,
ease, and force to their country.
"War arrives. In six months the generals destroy twenty years of
effort, of patience, and of genius.
"This is what is called not to fall into the most hideous
materialism.
"We have seen what war is. We have seen men turned into brutes,
maddened, killing for the sake of pleasure, of terror, of bravado,
of ostentation. Then, when law no longer exists, when law is dead,
when every notion of right has disappeared, we have seen men shoot
innocent people who are found on the road and who have roused
suspicion only because they showed fear. We have seen dogs chained
near the doors of their masters killed, just to try new revolvers on
them; we have seen cows lying in the field shot to pieces, for the
sake of pleasure, only to try a gun on them, to have something to
laugh at.
"This is what is called not to fall into the most hideous
materialism.
"To enter a country, to kill a man who is defending his home, simply
because he wears a blouse and has no cap on his head, to burn the
habitations of wretched people who have no bread, to smash the
furniture, to steal some of it, to drink the wine which is found
in the cellars, to rape the women who are found in the streets, to
burn millions of dollars' worth of powder, and to leave behind them
misery and the cholera,--this is what is called not to fall into the
most hideous materialism.
"What have the men of war done to give evidence of even a little
intelligence? Nothing. What have they invented? Cannon and guns.
That is all.
"What has Greece left to us? Books, marbles. Is she great because
she has conquered, or because she has produced?
"Is it the invasion of the Persians that kept her from falling into
the most hideous materialism?
"Is it the invasions of the barbarians that saved Rome and
regenerated her?
"Was it Napoleon I. who continued the great intellectual movement
which was begun by the philosophers at the end of the last century?
"Oh, well, if the governments arrogate to themselves the right to
kill the nations, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the
nations now and then take upon themselves the right to do away with
the governments.
"They defend themselves. They are right. Nobody has the absolute
right to govern others. This can be done only for the good of the
governed. Whoever rules is as much obliged to avoid war as a captain
of a boat is obliged to avoid a shipwreck.
"When a captain has lost his boat, he is judged and condemned, if he
is found guilty of negligence or even of incapacity.
"Why should not the governments be judged after the declaration of
a war? If the nations understood this, if they themselves sat in
judgment over the death-dealing powers, if they refused to allow
themselves to be killed without reason, if they made use of their
weapons against those who gave them to them for the purpose of
massacring, war would be dead at once! But this day will not come!"
(_Sur l'Eau_, pp. 71-80.)
The author sees all the horror of war; he sees that its cause is
in this, that the governments, deceiving people, compel them to
go out to kill and die without any need; he sees also that the
men composing the armies might turn their weapons against the
governments and demand accounts from them. But the author thinks
that this will never happen, and that, therefore, there is no
way out of this situation. He thinks that the business of war is
terrible, but that it is inevitable and that the demands of the
governments that the soldiers shall go and fight are as inevitable
as death, and that, since the governments will always demand it,
there will always exist wars.
Thus writes a talented, sincere author, who is endowed with that
penetration into the essence of the matter which forms the essence
of the poetical genius. He presents to us all the cruelty of the
contradiction between men's conscience and their activity, and,
without solving it, seems to recognize that this contradiction must
exist and that in it consists the tragedy of life.
Another, not less gifted author (E. Rod), describes the cruelty and
madness of the present situation in still more glaring colours, and
similarly, recognizing the tragical element in it, does not offer or
foresee any way out of it.
"What good is there in doing anything? What good is there in
undertaking anything?" he says. "How can we love men in these
troubled times, when the morrow is but a menace? Everything we have
begun, our maturing ideas, our incepted works, the little good which
we shall have been able to do,--will it not all be carried away by
the coming hurricane? Everywhere the earth is trembling under our
feet, and the clouds that are gathering upon our horizon will not
pass by us.
"Oh, if it were only the Revolution, with which we are frightened,
that we had to fear! As I am incapable of imagining a more
detestable society than is ours, I have more mistrust than fear
for the one which will succeed it. If I were to suffer from the
transformation, I should console myself with the thought that
the executioners of to-day are the victims of yesterday, and the
expectation of what is better would make me put up with what is
worse. But it is not this distant peril that frightens me,--I see
another, nearer, above all, a more cruel peril, more cruel, because
it has no excuse, because it is absurd, because no good can result
from it. Every day men weigh the chances of war for the morrow, and
every day they are more merciless.
"Thought staggers before the catastrophe which appears at the end of
the century as the limit of the progress of our era,--but we must
get used to it: for twenty years all the forces of science have
been exhausting themselves to invent engines of destruction, and
soon a few cannon-shots will suffice to annihilate a whole army;
they no longer arm, as formerly, a few thousands of poor devils,
whose blood was paid for, but whole nations, who go out to cut each
others' throats; they steal their time, in order later more surely
to steal their lives; to prepare them for the massacre, their hatred
is fanned, by pretending that they are hated. And good people are
tricked, and we shall see furious masses of peaceful citizens,
into whose hands the guns will be placed by a stupid order, rush
against one another with the ferocity of wild animals, God knows
for the sake of what ridiculous incident of the border or of what
mercantile colonial interests! They will march, like sheep, to the
slaughter,--but knowing whither they are going, knowing that they
are leaving their wives, knowing that their children will be hungry,
and they will go with anxious fear, but none the less intoxicated
by the sonorous, deceptive words that will be trumpeted into their
ears. They will go without revolt, passive and resigned, though they
are the mass and the force, and could be the power, if they wished
and if they knew how to establish common sense and brotherhood in
the place of the savage trickeries of diplomacy. They will go, so
deceived, so duped, that they will believe the carnage to be a duty,
and will ask God to bless their sanguinary appetites. They will go,
trampling on the crops which they have sown, burning the cities
which they have built, with enthusiastic songs, joyous cries, and
festive music. And their sons will erect statues to those who shall
have massacred them better than any one else!
"The fate of a whole generation depends on the hour at which some
sombre politician will give the signal, which will be followed. We
know that the best among us will be mowed down and that our work
will be destroyed in the germ. We know this, and we tremble from
anger, and we are unable to do anything. We are caught in the net
of offices and red tape, which it would take too violent an effort
to break. We belong to the laws which we have called into life
to protect us, but which oppress us. We are only things of this
Antinomian abstraction, the state, which makes every individual a
slave in the name of the will of all, who, taken separately, would
want the very opposite of what they are compelled to do.
"If it were only one generation that is to be sacrificed! But there
are other interests as well.
"All these salaried shouters, these ambitious exploiters of the evil
passions of the masses and the poor in spirit, who are deceived by
the sonority of words, have to such an extent envenomed the national
hatreds that the war of to-morrow will stake the existence of a
race: one of the elements which have constituted the modern world is
menaced,--he who will be vanquished must disappear morally,--and,
whatever it be, we shall see a force annihilated, as if there were
one too many for the good! We shall see a new Europe formed, on
bases that are so unjust, so brutal, so bloody, so soiled with a
monstrous blotch, that it cannot help but be worse than that of
to-day,--more iniquitous, more barbarous, more violent.
"One feels oneself oppressed by a terrible discouragement. We are
tossing about in a blind alley, with guns trained on us from all
the roofs. Our work is that of sailors going through their last
exercise before the ship goes down. Our pleasures are those of the
condemned criminal, who fifteen minutes before his execution is
offered a choice morsel. Anguish paralyzes our thought, and the
best effort of which it is capable is to calculate--by spelling out
the vague discourses of ministers, by twisting the sense of the
words uttered by sovereigns, by contorting the words ascribed to
diplomats and reported by the newspapers at the uncertain risk of
their information--whether it is to-morrow or the day after, this
year or next year, that we shall be crushed. We should, indeed, seek
in vain in history for a more uncertain epoch, one which is so full
of anxieties" (E. Rod, _Le Sens de la Vie_, pp. 208-213).
It is pointed out that the power is in the hands of those who are
ruining themselves, in the hands of the separate individuals forming
the mass; it is pointed out that the source of evil is in the state.
It would seem clear that the contradiction of the consciousness and
of life has reached the limit beyond which it is impossible to go
and after which its solution must ensue.
But the author does not think so. He sees in this the tragedy of
human life, and, having pointed out all the terror of the situation,
concludes that human life must take place in this terror.
Such is the second relation to war of those men who see something
fatal and tragical in it.
The third relation is that of men who have lost their conscience,
and so their common sense and human feeling.
To this class belong Moltke, whose opinion is quoted by Maupassant,
and the majority of military men, who are educated in this cruel
superstition, who live by it, and so are often naïvely convinced
that war is not only an inevitable, but even a useful matter. Thus,
judge also non-military, so-called learned, cultured, refined people.
Here is what the famous Academician, Dousset, writes in the number
of the _Revue des Revues_ in which the letters about war are
collected, in reply to the editor's inquiry as to his views on war:
"DEAR SIR:--When you ask the most peaceable of Academicians
whether he is an advocate of war, his answer is ready in
advance: unfortunately, dear sir, you yourself regard as a dream
the peaceful thoughts which at the present time inspire our
magnanimous countrymen.
"Ever since I have been living in the world, I have heard many
private people express their indignation against this terrifying
habit of international slaughter. All men recognize and deplore
this evil; but how is it to be mended? People have very often
tried to abolish duels,--this seemed so easy! But no! All the
efforts made for the attainment of this end have done no good
and never will do any good.
"No matter how much may be said against war and against duelling
at all the congresses of the world, above all arbitrations,
above all treaties, above all legislations, will eternally stand
man's honour, which has ever demanded duelling, and the national
advantages, which will eternally demand war.
"I none the less with all my heart hope that the Congress
of Universal Peace will succeed in its very grave and very
honourable problem.
"Receive the assurance, etc.
"K. DOUSSET."
The meaning is this, that men's honour demands that people should
fight, and the advantages of the nations demand that they should
ruin and destroy one another, and that the attempts at stopping war
are only worthy of smiles.
Similar is the opinion of another famous man, Jules Claretie:
"Dear Sir," he writes: "For an intelligent man there can exist
but one opinion in respect to the question of peace and war.
"Humanity was created that it should live, being free to
perfect and better (its fate) its condition by means of peaceful
labour. The universal agreement, for which the Universal
Congress of Peace is asking and which it preaches, may present
but a beautiful dream, but it is in any case the most beautiful
dream of all. Man has always before him the promised land of
the future,--the harvest will mature, without fear of harm from
grenades and cannon-wheels.
"But.... Yes, but! Since the world is not ruled by philosophers
and benefactors, it is fortunate that our soldiers protect our
borders and our hearths, and that their arms, correctly aimed,
appear to us, perhaps, as the very best guarantee of this peace,
which is so fervently loved by all of us.
"Peace is given only to the strong and the determined.
"Receive the assurance, etc.
"J. CLARETIE."
The meaning of this is, that it does no harm to talk of what no one
intends to do, and what ought not to be done at all. But when it
comes to business, we must fight.
Here is another recent expression of opinion concerning war, by the
most popular novelist of Europe, E. Zola:
"I consider war a fatal necessity, which appears inevitable to us
in view of its close connection with human nature and the whole
world-structure. I wish war could be removed for the longest
possible time; none the less the moment will arrive when we shall
be compelled to fight. I, at the present moment, am placing myself
on the universal point of view, and in no way have any reference
to our difference with Germany, which presents itself only as an
insignificant incident in the history of humanity. I say that war
is indispensable and useful, because it appears to humanity as one
of the conditions of its existence. We everywhere meet with war,
not only among various tribes and nations, but also in domestic
and private life. It appears as one of the chief elements of
progress, and every step forward, which humanity has taken, has been
accompanied by bloodshed.
"People used to speak, and even now speak, of disarmament, but
disarmament is something impossible, and even if it were possible,
we should be obliged to reject it. Only an armed nation appears
powerful and great. I am convinced that a universal disarmament
would bring with it something like a moral fall, which would find
its expression in universal impotence, and would be in the way of
a progressive advancement of humanity. A martial nation has always
enjoyed virile strength. Military art has brought with it the
development of all the other arts. History testifies to that. Thus,
in Athens and in Rome, commerce, industry, and literature never
reached such development as at the time when these cities ruled
over the then known world by force of arms. To take an example from
times nearer to us, let us recall the age of Louis XIV. The wars
of the great king not only did not retard the progress of the arts
and sciences, but, on the contrary, seemed to aid and foster their
development."
War is a useful thing!
But best of all in this sense is the opinion of the most talented
writer of this camp, the opinion of the Academician Vogüé. Here is
what he writes in an article about the exhibition, in visiting the
military department:
"In the Esplanade des Invalides, amidst exotic and colonial
buildings, one structure of a more severe style rises in the
picturesque bazaar; all these representatives of the terrestrial
globe adjoin the Palace of War. A superb subject of antitheses for
humanitarian rhetorics! Indeed, it does not let pass an occasion
for deploring such juxtaposition and for asserting that this will
kill that (_ceci tuera cela_),[12] that the union of the nations
through science and labour will conquer the martial instincts. We
shall not keep it from fondling the hope of the chimera of a golden
age, which, if it should be realized, would soon become an age of
mire. All history teaches us that blood is needed to speed and
confirm the union of the nations. The natural sciences have in our
time confirmed the mysterious law which was revealed to Joseph de
Maistre by the inspiration of his genius and the consideration of
primitive dogmas; he saw how the world redeems its hereditary falls
by a sacrifice; the sciences show us how the world is perfected by
struggle and by compulsory selection; this is the assertion from two
sides of the same decree, written out in different expressions. The
assertion is naturally not a pleasant one; but the laws of the world
are not established for our pleasure,--they are established for our
perfection. Let us, then, enter into this unavoidable, indispensable
Palace of War; and we shall have occasion to observe in what manner
the most stubborn of our instincts, without losing anything of its
force, is transformed, in submitting to the different demands of
historic moments."
[12] Words from Victor Hugo's novel, _Notre Dame_, in regard to
printing, which will kill architecture.--_Author's Note._
This idea, that the proof of the necessity of war is to be found in
two expressions of Maistre and Darwin, two great thinkers according
to his opinion, pleases Vogüé so much that he repeats it.
"Dear Sir," he writes to the editor of the _Revue des Revues:_
"You ask for my opinion in regard to the success of the
Universal Congress of Peace. I believe, with Darwin, that a
violent struggle is a law of Nature, by which all beings are
ruled.
"Like Joseph de Maistre, I believe that it is a divine law,--two
different appellations for one and the same thing. If, past all
expectation, some particle of humanity, say the whole civilized
West, succeeded in arresting the action of this law, other,
more primitive nations would apply it against us. In these
nations the voice of Nature would vanquish the voice of human
reason, and they would act with success, because the assurance
of peace--I do not say 'peace' itself, but the 'full assurance
of peace'--would evoke in men corruption and fall, which act
more destructively than the most terrible war. I find that for
that criminal law, war, it is necessary to do the same as for
all the other criminal laws,--to mitigate them, to try to make
them unnecessary, and to apply them as rarely as possible. But
the whole of history teaches us that it is impossible to abolish
these laws, so long as there are left in the world two men,
money, and a woman between them.
"I should be very happy, if the Congress could prove the
contrary to me. But I doubt whether it will be able to overthrow
history, the law of Nature, and the law of God.
"Accept the assurance, etc.
"E. M. VOGÜÉ."
The idea is this, that history, man's nature, and God show us that,
so long as there shall be two men and between them bread, money, and
a woman, there will be war; that is, that no progress will bring men
to get away from the one conception of life, where it is impossible
without quarrelling to divide the bread, the money (the money is
very good here), and the woman.
How strange the people are that assemble in congresses, to talk
about how to catch birds by throwing salt on their tails, though
they cannot help but know that it is impossible to do so; queer
are those who, like Maupassant, Rod, and many others, see clearly
the whole horror of war, the whole contradiction which arises from
this, that men do not do what they ought to do, what is advantageous
and necessary for them to do, deplore the tragedy of life, and do
not see that all this tragedy will stop as soon as men will cease
to discuss what they ought not to discuss, and will begin not to
do what is painful for them to do, what displeases and disgusts
them. These people are queer, but those who, like Vogüé and
others, professing the law of evolution, recognize war not only as
unavoidable, but even as useful, and so as desirable, are strange
and terrible with their moral perversion. The others at least
say that they hate the evil and love the good, but these simply
recognize that there is no good and no evil.
All the talk about establishing peace, in the place of eternal war,
is a harmful sentimental rodomontade of babblers. There is a law of
evolution, from which it follows that I must live and act badly.
What is to be done? I am an educated man, and I know the law of
evolution, and so I will act badly.
"_Entrons au palais de la guerre._" There is a law of evolution, and
so there is nothing bad, nor good, and we must live for nothing but
our personal life, leaving everything else to the law of evolution.
This is the last expression of refined culture, and at the same time
of that obscuration of consciousness with which all the cultured
classes of our time are occupied.
The desire of the cultured classes in one way or another to maintain
their favourite ideas and their life, which is based upon them, has
reached its utmost limits. They lie, deceive themselves and others
in the most refined way, if only they can in some way obscure and
drown their consciences.
Instead of changing the life in accord with the consciousness,
they try in every manner possible to obscure and drown their
consciousness. But the light shines even in the dark, and so it is
beginning to shine in our time.