But wherever there has been a marked divergence of ideals
or a different standard of right, there has been a tendency for each
side to feel that to submit its conscience or its convictions of right,
its sense of what is most sacred in life, to an outside judgment would
involve a kind of moral suicide. In such cases every nation repudiates
arbitration and prefers to be a martyr, in case of need, to its sense of
justice. It is at least an open question whether the disappearance of
this feeling would be a mark of progress or of degeneration. At any rate
it is practically certain that the period when it will have disappeared
cannot at present be foreseen.
The abolition of war, therefore, involves the abolition of independent
States and their amalgamation into one. There are many who have hoped
for this ideal, expressed by Tennyson when he dreamed of
"The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world."
That it is the ultimate destiny of mankind to be united under a single
Government seems probable enough, but it is rash to assume that that
result will be reached either by a process of peaceful negotiation, or
by the spread of the imperfect methods of modern democratic government.
The German Empire, with its population of sixty millions, educated by
the State, disciplined by the State, relying on the State, and commanded
by the State, is as potent in comparison with the less disciplined and
less organised communities which surround it as was, in the third
century before Christ, the Roman State in comparison with the disunited
multitude of Greek cities, the commercial oligarchy of Carthage, and the
half-civilised tribes of Gaul and Spain.
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