sapping the roots of their own strength. The United States of America, e.g., in June, 1911, championed the ideas of universal peace in order to be able to devote their undisturbed attention to money-making and the enjoyment of wealth, and to save the three hundred million dollars which they spend on their army and navy; they thus incur a great danger, not so much from the possibility of a war with England or Japan, but precisely because they try to exclude all chance of contest with opponents of their own strength, and thus avoid the stress of great political emotions, without which the moral development of the national character is impossible. If they advance farther on this road, they will one day pay dearly for such a policy.

Again, from the Christian standpoint we arrive at the same conclusion. Christian morality is based, indeed, on the law of love. "Love God above all things, and thy neighbour as thyself." This law can claim no significance for the relations of one country to another, since its application to politics would lead to a conflict of duties. The love which a man showed to another country as such would imply a want of love for his own countrymen. Such a system of politics must inevitably lead men astray. Christian morality is personal and social, and in its nature cannot be political. Its object is to promote morality of the individual, in order to strengthen him to work unselfishly in the interests of the community. It tells us to love our individual enemies, but does not remove the conception of enmity. Christ Himself said: "I am not come to send peace on earth, but a sword." His teaching can never be adduced as an argument against the universal law of struggle. There never was a religion which was more combative than Christianity. Combat, moral combat, is its very essence. If we transfer the ideas of Christianity to the sphere of politics, we can claim to raise the power of the State—power in the widest sense, not merely from the material aspect—to the highest degree, with the object of the moral advancement of humanity, and under certain conditions the sacrifice may be made which a war demands. Thus, according to Christianity, we cannot disapprove of war in itself, but must admit that it is justified morally and historically.

Again, we should not be entitled to assume that from the opposite, the purely materialistic, standpoint war is entirely precluded. The individual who holds such views will certainly regard it with disfavour, since it may cost him life and prosperity. The State, however, as such can also come from the materialistic standpoint to a decision to wage war, if it believes that by a certain sacrifice of human lives and happiness the conditions of life of the community may be improved.

The loss is restricted to comparatively few, and, since the fundamental notion of all materialistic philosophy inevitably leads to selfishness, the majority of the citizens have no reason for not sacrificing the minority in their own interests. Thus, those who from the materialistic standpoint deny the necessity of war will admit its expediency from motives of self-interest.

Reflection thus shows not only that war is an unqualified necessity, but that it is justifiable from every point of view. The practical methods which the adherents of the peace idea have proposed for the prevention of war are shown to be absolutely ineffective.

It is sometimes assumed that every war represents an infringement of rights, and that not only the highest expression of civilization, but also the true welfare of every nation, is involved in the fullest assertion of these rights, and proposals are made from time to time on this basis to settle the disputes which arise between the various countries by Arbitration Courts, and so to render war impossible. The politician who, without side-interests in these proposals, honestly believes in their practicability must be amazingly short-sighted.

Two questions in this connection are at once suggested: On what right is the finding of this Arbitration Court based? and what sanctions insure that the parties will accept this finding?

To the first question the answer is that such a right does not, and cannot, exist. The conception of right is twofold. It signifies, firstly, the consciousness of right, the living feeling of what is right and good; secondly, the right laid down by society and the State, either written or sanctioned by tradition. In its first meaning it is an indefinite, purely personal conception; in its second meaning it is variable and capable of development. The right determined by law is only an attempt to secure a right in itself. In this sense right is the system of social aims secured by compulsion. It is therefore impossible that a written law should meet all the special points of a particular case. The application of the legal right must always be qualified in order to correspond more or less to the idea of justice. A certain freedom in deciding on the particular case must be conceded to the administration of justice. The established law, within a given and restricted circle of ideas, is only occasionally absolutely just.

The conception of this right is still more obscured by the complex nature of the consciousness of right and wrong. A quite different consciousness of right and wrong develops in individuals, whether persons or peoples, and this consciousness finds its expression in most varied forms, and lives in the heart of the people by the side of, and frequently in opposition to, the established law. In Christian countries murder is a grave crime; amongst a people where blood-vengeance is a sacred duty it can be regarded as a moral act, and its neglect as a crime. It is impossible to reconcile such different conceptions of right.

There is yet another cause of uncertainty. The moral consciousness of the same people alters with the changing ideas of different epochs and schools of philosophy. The established law can seldom keep pace with this inner development, this growth of moral consciousness; it lags behind. A condition of things arises where the living moral consciousness of the people conflicts with the established law, where legal forms are superannuated, but still exist, and Mephistopheles' scoffing words are true:

  "Laws are transmitted, as one sees,
  Just like inherited disease.
  They're handed down from race to race,
  And noiseless glide from place to place.
  Reason they turn to nonsense; worse,
  They make beneficence a curse!
  Ah me! That you're a grandson you
  As long as you're alive shall rue."
                             Faust (translation by Sir T. Martin).

Thus, no absolute rights can be laid down even for men who share the same ideas in their private and social intercourse. The conception of the constitutional State in the strictest sense is an impossibility, and would lead to an intolerable state of things. The hard and fast principle must be modified by the progressive development of the fixed law, as well as by the ever-necessary application of mercy and of self-help allowed by the community. If sometimes between individuals the duel alone meets the sense of justice, how much more impossible must a universal international law be in the wide-reaching and complicated relations between nations and States! Each nation evolves its own conception of right, each has its particular ideals and aims, which spring with a certain inevitableness from its character and historical life. These various views bear in themselves their living justification, and may well be diametrically opposed to those of other nations, and none can say that one nation has a better right than the other. There never have been, and never will be, universal rights of men. Here and there particular relations can be brought under definite international