“A people can only hope to take up a firm position in the political world when national character and military tradition act and react upon each.”  These are the words of Clausewitz, the great philosopher of war, and he is incontestably right.

These efforts for peace would, if they attained their goal, not merely lead to general degeneration, as happens everywhere in Nature where the struggle for existence is eliminated, but they have a direct damaging and unnerving effect.  The apostles of peace draw large sections of a nation into the spell of their Utopian efforts, and they thus introduce an element of weakness into the national life; they cripple the justifiable national pride in independence, and support a nerveless opportunist policy by surrounding it with the glamour of a higher humanity, and by offering it specious reasons for disguising its own weakness.  They thus play the game of their less scrupulous enemies, just as the Prussian policy, steeped in the ideas of universal peace, did in 1805 and 1806, and brought the State to the brink of destruction.

The functions of true humanity are twofold.  On the one hand there is the promotion of the intellectual, moral, and military forces, as well as of political power, as the surest guarantee for the uniform development of character; on the other hand there is the practical realization of ideals, according to the law of love, in the life of the individual and of the community.

It seems to me reasonable to compare the efforts directed towards the suppression of war with those of the Social Democratic Labour party, which goes hand in hand with them.  The aims of both parties are Utopian.  The organized Labour party strives after an ideal whose realization is only conceivable when the rate of wages and the hours of work are settled internationally for the whole industrial world, and when the cost of living is everywhere uniformly regulated.  Until this is the case the prices of the international market determine the standard of wages.  The nation which leaves this out of account, and tries to settle independently wages and working hours, runs the risk of losing its position in the international market in competition with nations who work longer hours and at lower rates.  Want of employment and extreme misery among the working classes would inevitably be the result.  On the other hand, the internationalization of industries would soon, by excluding and preventing any competition, produce a deterioration of products and a profound demoralization of the working population.

The case of the scheme for universal peace is similar.  Its execution, as we saw, would be only feasible in a world empire, and this is as impossible as the uniform regulation of the world’s industries.  A State which disregarded the differently conceived notions of neighbouring countries, and wished to make the idea of universal peace the guiding rule for its policy, would only inflict a fatal injury on itself, and become the prey of more resolute and warlike neighbours.