LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 The Arbiter in Council
 
 THE ARBITER 
 
 IN COUNCIL 
 
 "Qonlbon 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 I9O6 
 
 All rig /its reserved
 
 J X \<*5 3 
 
 GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION, i 
 
 THE FIRST DAT: MONDAY. 
 
 THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF WAR, 14 
 
 THE SECOND DAT: TUESDAY. 
 
 MODERN WARFARE, 94 
 
 THE THIRD DAT: WEDNESDAY. 
 
 I. PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL, - 181 
 
 II. A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY, 228 
 
 THE FOURTH DAY: THURSDAY. 
 
 PERPETUAL PEACE, OR THE FEDERATION OF THE 
 
 WORLD, - 255 
 
 THE FIFTH DAY: FRIDAY. 
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION, - 350
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 THE SIXTH DAY: SATURDAY. PAGE 
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR,- - 422 
 
 THE SEVENTH DAY: SUNDAY. 
 
 MARTIN TRUE LOVE'S ESSAY ON CHRISTIANITY 
 
 AND WAR, - 507
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE death of my old friend, the Arbiter, has left me 
 alone to arrange and edit a work, of which he is the 
 principal author, without his supervision. Happily 
 before the sudden illness which ended his long and 
 useful life we had spent many hours together read- 
 ing over and correcting the reports, and his own 
 contributions had all been carefully revised. He 
 particularly requested me not to let our friends, who 
 took part in the discussion, alter the sentiments they 
 had expressed. If that were allowed, he said, the 
 dialogue would lose its vivacity and character. " You," 
 he went on, " must correct the report as an editor, 
 in the interest of the reader. Cast out rubble ; shorten 
 where you can do so without altering the sense ; let 
 there be as little repetition as possible ; for remember 
 that the eye, tho' so much more rapid (and therefore 
 with less excuse) is a far more impatient organ than 
 the ear." The others all agreed ; the more willingly 
 as the course proposed relieved them both of labour 
 and responsibility. They only stipulated that their 
 identity should be concealed. The names therefore 
 are fictitious ; but I must beg the reader to believe 
 that by this device veracity has been protected from 
 the inroads of timidity and caution.
 
 2 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Certainly we all tried to speak without reserve, 
 guided by a precept that the Arbiter had either 
 recalled or invented for the occasion : " living is the 
 art of making compromises, talking is the art of 
 avoiding them." 
 
 I must not forget that the readers of this volume 
 are utterly unacquainted with the Arbiter and his 
 circle. Let me then first introduce the Arbiter. A 
 hale old man of seventy-five at the time of our 
 conference, Mr. Ashworthy came of a manufacturing 
 family in the north of England. He was a careful 
 steward of the great wealth he had inherited. Frugal 
 in all his habits ; economical, perhaps parsimonious, in 
 small things, he was magnificently generous when 
 great causes were at stake. His father had been a 
 philosophic Radical- an advocate of adult suffrage 
 and the ballot before the Whigs had begun to be 
 Reformers and, throwing himself heart and soul into 
 the Anti-Corn Law movement, had become intimate 
 with Cobden and Bright. Such were the traditions 
 in which my old friend was brought up. As a young 
 man he went with Cobden to the first Peace Con- 
 ference at Frankfurt. In 1854 he was mobbed with 
 his father for publicly protesting against the Crimean 
 War. In 1857 he stood for a Lancashire constituency 
 and was beaten because, following the leaders of the 
 Manchester School, he denounced Palmerston's Chinese 
 policy. In 1859 he was returned, and voted steadily 
 with Cobden and Bright for " Peace, Retrenchment, 
 and Reform." He remained in Parliament till 1885, 
 when, disappointed by the performances of Mr. 
 Gladstone's second administration, he determined to 
 devote the remainder of his life to study and philan-
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 thropy. Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy took him by 
 surprise, nor could he persuade himself to be a Home 
 Ruler so long as his political master and friend, John 
 Bright, remained alive. But the Armenian massacres 
 and the Boer War taught him to sympathise more 
 keenly with the small nations. It was in the summer 
 of 1899, just before the Boer War, that I came to 
 know him. My course at Oxford had been inter- 
 rupted by family misfortunes. I had left in the 
 middle of my third year without taking a degree, and 
 after a course of shorthand had joined the staff of 
 a great northern newspaper as reporter. In that 
 capacity I attended a lecture given by Mr. Ashworthy 
 on the Hague Conference. I knew that he had spent 
 some time at the Hague during the Conference, and 
 I expected a clear and popular description of the 
 proceedings and their results. But the lecture far 
 surpassed my expectations. It seized upon my imagi- 
 nation. It raised the whole subject to a higher 
 plane. Orators who excite enthusiasm too often send 
 the reasoning faculties to sleep. Perhaps Mr. Ash- 
 worthy was not an orator. At any rate the ground 
 was carefully mapped out, the language good, the 
 reasoning clear, and as he warmed to his argument 
 his fervour was infectious. My editor only allowed 
 two-thirds of a column for the address, but I tried 
 my best to reproduce its effect, and with such a 
 measure of success that Mr. Ashworthy wrote to the 
 editor thanking him, and saying that he would like 
 to make the acquaintance of the young man to whom 
 he was indebted for the report. This was the be- 
 ginning of a friendship to which I owe a regeneration 
 of ideas. Many happy Sundays I spent in his country
 
 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 home. There in quiet talks and walks he would tell 
 me of his heroes, his ideals and his projects. On 
 one of these rambles, in the spring of 1904, while 
 we were deploring the want of some book that would 
 help people to reason about war and peace, an idea 
 suddenly struck him. " I'll call a conference," he 
 said, " and you shall report it. I will be the Czar. 
 You shall be the press, and the report shall be the 
 book that is wanted." 
 
 The project was rapidly perfected. The Arbiter, 
 as I shall always call him, had the gift of knowing 
 whom and what he wanted. " We must have men 
 trained in the art of making war by land and sea, 
 as well as men who have thought out the means of 
 preventing it. Let us hear what the church has to 
 say, and the chapel, the law, and (with a smile) 
 political economy." I laughed and said, " You must 
 have a professor for that ; I am only an amateur." 
 " No ! " he said ; a this is not an academic subject. 
 I once bought a text book on the law of diminishing 
 returns, making sure that I had at last found a book 
 on the economics of war. But I found nothing at 
 all about it only technical terms and mathematical 
 diagrams. But you escaped fairly young from Oxford, 
 and you are a practical fellow. You have to write 
 about taxes and budgets and loans. I'll bet three 
 turnips to a leg of mutton that you have had to 
 think more on the political economy of war than all 
 the professors put together." This bet always con- 
 cluded a discussion, and we went on to settle the 
 persons who should be invited. 
 
 The Arbiter had two favourite nephews whom I 
 had often met at Oak Lodge. Reginald Case, K.C.,
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 was a successful barrister, with a conscience. I mean 
 that his avarice for briefs was not insatiable. He 
 never allowed his professional work to make him a 
 drudge. " There is a drudgery," he said, " in law 
 lucrative that I can never wholly submit to." Of 
 modern lawyers Francis Horner was his favourite 
 model. Rather than ruin his health or enslave his 
 mind Case would refuse to undertake work for which 
 he felt himself to be unqualified. He used to say 
 that the happiness of every thriving advocate was 
 ruined by his clerk, and would compare a barrister 
 to the owner of a tied house, whose income depends 
 upon the quantity and not the quality of the beer 
 he sells. With his own clerk he had an arrangement 
 like that which Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell recom- 
 mend for the manager of a model inn, and would 
 threaten him with pains and penalties if he saw too 
 many briefs on his table. He would seldom appear 
 in court unless he thought that justice as well as 
 law was on his side. Consequently he was able to 
 be one of the very few men in large practice who 
 maintained the ancient reputation of the English bar 
 for learning. The Arbiter used to chaff him for his 
 dry, unmoral way of looking at problems ; but the 
 value of getting the opinion of a truly professional 
 mind on a problem that has so many legal aspects 
 is enormous, and the Arbiter secretly delighted in 
 these acute dissections of the subject in hand. It 
 was arranged that our colloquy should be held early 
 in October, towards the end of the Long Vacation, 
 so that Case might be present and read a paper on 
 International Arbitration. Case, I should add, was a 
 Cambridge man. He had rowed in the Trinity Hall
 
 6 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 boat, and a minor achievement in the eye of the 
 College had come out Third Classic in a particularly 
 strong year. Lastly, he was a free thinker, and not 
 at all inclined to let off religion easily at any time ; 
 least of all when his younger cousin Martin was 
 present. Case was an excellent scholar. His favourite 
 poets were Lucretius and Persius, and his favourite 
 lines 
 
 Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum, 
 
 and 
 
 Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta. 
 
 Martin Truelove, the other nephew, was of a quite 
 different type. A dreamy and rather emotional boy, 
 he had somehow got a Balliol scholarship, of which, 
 proving an inefficient machine for the production of 
 proper answers to examiners, he was soon deprived by 
 the Master. He is said to have been one of the 
 half-dozen Balliol scholars that have taken Holy 
 Orders in the last twenty years. He certainly has 
 the liturgical instinct, and his truly religious spirit 
 is quickened by doubts, suggested by philosophy 
 that sometimes bring him to the verge of despair. 
 It was a long time, I believe, before a certain clerical 
 casuist in Oxford was able to persuade him to put 
 a sufficiently wide interpretation upon the thirty-nine 
 Articles. If I add that Truelove has often expounded 
 unpopular causes, and has on more than one occasion 
 denounced the doctrine, " my country right or wrong," 
 the Arbiter's selection will have been sufficiently 
 justified. Truelove promised to be prepared for a 
 discussion upon the relations of Christianity to war 
 between nations ; and as Tolstoi's letter in the Times
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 appeared not long before the conference we looked 
 forward with special interest to this paper. 
 
 Not far from Oak Lodge lived the Rev. Augustine 
 Clarke, an Independent Minister, a man of extra- 
 ordinary mental vigour. Bred up as a Roman 
 Catholic Priest he won enormous popularity in Salford. 
 But he soon refused, like Turgot, " to wear a mask 
 all his life," buried himself in the country, and 
 after years of study, chiefly I fancy of the divines 
 and philosophers of the i6th and iyth centuries, 
 proclaimed himself an Independent. I have often 
 discussed the sects with him, and am pretty sure 
 that his choice was dictated by three master passions : 
 an ardent Republicanism ; a belief that the complete 
 local independence of each congregation is the only 
 hope of spiritual progress ; and an unbounded admira- 
 tion for the sect which was the first to proclaim the 
 doctrine of religious toleration. Milton and Grotius 
 were his heroes. He promised the Arbiter that he 
 would read a paper on International Federation. I 
 suggested that Captain Seymour, an old school friend 
 of mine, should be invited, so that we might not 
 be without the aid of a military expert. Seymour 
 is in the Intelligence Department of the War Office 
 and I knew he had assisted in the preparation of 
 the Military Manual. He is an excellent linguist, 
 has translated the manuals issued by the German, 
 French, Italian and Russian armies, and is often 
 consulted by his chiefs as to the military rules and 
 customs of other civilised nations. The Arbiter 
 eagerly assented to this proposal, and suggested that 
 I should invite Seymour to stay at Oak Lodge for 
 a fortnight so that he might have a good spell of
 
 8 
 
 shooting. Seymour joyfully accepted the invitation, 
 and promised to contribute a paper on Modern War- 
 fare. With regard to naval questions we were in 
 no difficulty. Admiral Tracy de Vere lived close at 
 hand. He and the Arbiter had married sisters. He 
 was a fine old fellow, who had served as Midshipman 
 in the Crimean War, and had only retired from the 
 active list in 1895. He was one of those retired 
 Admirals, who do not foment international discord by 
 fiery contributions to the daily papers. In sentiment 
 he was liberal and humane. Nourished and brought 
 up on the ancient belief in the superiority of the 
 British seaman, he had not forgotten the old tradition 
 that the British Navy should be half as large again 
 as the French. His contempt for naval panic- 
 mongers, the old women of the Admiralty and 
 Printing House Square, as he called them, was un- 
 mitigated ; and we anticipated with some amusement 
 the paper he promised, after much pressure, on Lord 
 Selborne's Three Power Standard. 
 
 The Arbiter's Stock Broker in the City, Mr. 
 Leopold Meyer, was in many ways a typical member 
 of the Stock Exchange, sharing in all its excitements, 
 and despondencies. If it was in a bullish mood the 
 Statist was not more confident than Meyer. If there 
 was a fit of depression he could be as lugubrious as 
 the Investor s Review. An inborn talent for finance, 
 improved by the excellent German education he had 
 enjoyed at Frankfurt, and perfected by an experience 
 of several years in Rothschild's houses, had given 
 him a scientific grasp of the principles and practice 
 of modern finance that raised him far above the ruck 
 of city magnates. A man of genuine enthusiasms,
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 he was devoted to the free country of his adoption. 
 He could see no flaw in her institutions, and this 
 perhaps was the reason why he welcomed any plan 
 for extending them to less fortunate communities. 
 He was curiously susceptible to invasion panics and 
 almost ridiculous in his denunciation of alien immi- 
 grants. In the early nineties he had joined the 
 Army League, the Navy League and the Imperial 
 Defence Association. He was also honorary colonel 
 to the Devil's Own, having presented 16 mule har- 
 nesses and 80 telescopes to the corps, shortly after 
 the outbreak of the Boer War. At that time I 
 fancy his relations with the Arbiter were a little 
 strained ; for some letters had passed in which the 
 Arbiter had made pungent remarks about the influence 
 of South African millionaires upon British diplomacy. 
 This hurt Mr. Meyer's patriotic feelings, and for 
 some months their correspondence was confined to 
 a few business notes. Insensibly, however, as the 
 war dragged on, Mr. Meyer's opinions underwent a 
 change. I do not think he ever admitted that he had 
 been in error. But at the time I am speaking of 
 he was again on the most friendly terms with the 
 Arbiter ; and willingly consented to represent the 
 City at our " House in the Wood." 
 
 The ninth and last of my dramatis personae is 
 William Browne, the learned Cambridge historian, a 
 pupil of Lord Acton. He is said to be collecting 
 material for a new history of civilisation from the 
 1 4th century, and he regarded the ten days which 
 the Arbiter asked him to spend with us as an 
 unjustifiably long holiday. He consented, however, 
 on the understanding that he should be allowed
 
 io THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 a room to work in from 5 to 9 every morning, 
 where he would not be disturbed. He offered to 
 prepare a conspectus of all the real and alleged causes 
 of wars waged by civilised countries during the last 
 two centuries, and was evidently disappointed when 
 the Arbiter asked him to deal with the subject in 
 a short essay, merely touching upon the principal 
 wars and the principal reasons given for them. He 
 also promised to read us something about the History 
 of Duelling. 
 
 On Monday, the 3rd of October, 1904, we had all 
 duly assembled in response to our summons, in the 
 roomy library at Oak Lodge. The Arbiter, wishing 
 me to take part, had relieved me of the shorthand 
 work, securing an experienced man from the staff 
 of my paper ; and the verbatim report upon which I 
 have worked was supplied in this way. 
 
 Our host looked round the table with a benevo- 
 lent smile, waited like a good business man for the 
 clock to strike the hour, and then spoke a few 
 words of welcome, which put us all at once at our 
 ease. I do not think that I will place them on 
 record ; they were too flattering to the abilities of 
 his friends to be repeated. The Arbiter, like most 
 modest men, was always generous in his estimates 
 of others, and more than generous prodigal when 
 they happened to be his friends. In this case worldly 
 wisdom, of which he had no small share, contributed 
 to the compliments he dealt round. He knew 
 that each would be the more eager to put his best 
 into the common stock after hearing himself described
 
 INTRODUCTION n 
 
 as a master of strategy, a renowned theologian, a 
 truly learned lawyer, a worthy disciple of Lord Acton, 
 the modern Ricardo, etc. How difficult it is to over- 
 feed with praise. Vere immensa est laudum cupido. 
 
 But though I pass over the compliments, I must 
 not omit some important sentences, which the Arbiter 
 introduced with an ancient but apposite story. " A 
 Greek sophist," he said, " was once giving a course 
 of lectures upon the art of war, and on one occasion 
 the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, happened to be 
 in the audience. When the lecture ,was over and 
 the applause had subsided, one of the class, full 
 of enthusiasm, eagerly asked the great general for 
 his opinion, feeling sure it would agree with his 
 own. Hannibal answered that he had met in his 
 life many foolish old men but never one so foolish 
 as this sophist. It is a story we ought not to forget 
 when we speak of war, or law, or diplomacy, or any 
 art which we have not practised ourselves ; and I 
 thought in a conference like this, which will con- 
 stantly revolve round naval and military matters, 
 as well as law and theology, it would be well to 
 invite a Hannibal to be present in the flesh not 
 merely to listen and criticise, but to contribute to 
 our discourses. For the story of Hannibal and the 
 sophist has a general application. The unprofessional 
 man must always speak with caution about any 
 particular craft, or art. He may have studied its 
 principles, but if he has not been an apprentice he 
 is speaking at a certain disadvantage. Nevertheless 
 it is equally important to bear in mind the opposite 
 truth. Though few men have practised more than 
 one profession yet all are citizens, and as such, they
 
 12 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 may not be incapable of passing judgment upon 
 political questions and politics is the supreme science 
 and art, embracing all pursuits and callings and 
 professions. Let us remember, too, that the pro- 
 fessional man suffers from a disadvantage of his 
 own ; he is apt to neglect the things outside his 
 calling. He is always looking with a microscope 
 at what is after all only a speck among human 
 interests ; it is hard for him to regard it from the 
 impartial standpoint of the outsider. He gets an 
 exaggerated view of its importance. As citizens, 
 therefore, and critics, we are under the same neces- 
 sity or duty which Dr. Arnold imposed upon the 
 historian, that of over-stepping professional barriers. 
 We are bound to examine and judge of wars, of 
 legislation, of religious disputes, and commercial con- 
 troversies, though we cannot all be soldiers, seamen, 
 lawyers, clergymen, merchants. A distinction has 
 to be drawn, and the distinction as Arnold put 
 it seems to be in the difference between the faculty 
 of doing the thing and that of perceiving whether 
 it is well done. The man who lives in a house can 
 judge better than the builder whether it is good or 
 bad. He learns by experience what chimneys smoke, 
 where there is a bad draught or an inconvenient 
 arrangement. Yet he may be, probably is, quite 
 incapable of curing the chimney, or getting rid of 
 the draught, or planning out a better arrangement 
 of rooms. 
 
 Applying this principle, say, to the art of war, the 
 unprofessional man cannot be an authority on tactics, 
 or the actual handling of weapons and troops. When 
 it* comes to strategy, and the planning out of
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 campaigns, his criticism may be worth something ; and 
 when it comes to the general conduct of war, and, 
 above all, to the great question when war should be 
 undertaken or avoided, i.e. in proportion as the powers 
 of the mind come into play and the whole sphere of 
 politics, morals, and economic expediency are in view, it 
 is not merely right but essential that an unprofessional 
 person should speak out and express his judgment. 
 Besides, it is surely for the taxpayer to judge whether 
 a war is worth its price, and what sum should be paid 
 for national insurance. In this discourse then we 
 are all equals, though some of us have special quali- 
 fications in judging of details and plans and projects. 
 There comes in the distinction between theory and 
 practice, between policy and execution." 
 
 Having thus tickled our vanity and put us on our 
 mettle, the Arbiter read the address with which it 
 had been arranged he should open the conference. 
 He called it The Causes and Consequences of War.
 
 THE FIRST DAT. MONDAY. 
 
 THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. 
 
 I. 
 
 Arbiter. My intention in arranging this conference 
 was to induce fresh minds to attack a problem that 
 has always engaged me ; as I grow older I only feel 
 more eager for success and more confident that 
 success is attainable. Its solution, I am sure, is already 
 within the range of practical politics, and can, I am 
 equally sure, be hastened by private and public dis- 
 cussion. There has been wonderful progress in the 
 last three generations, greater perhaps than in all the 
 first eighteen centuries of the Christian era. My 
 grandfather took part in the foundation of the first 
 Peace Society in London in 1816. My father had 
 the happiness of hearing just before his death of the 
 settlement of the Alabama claims by Arbitration. And 
 I have witnessed the establishment by a solemn inter- 
 national convention of the Hague Tribunal. Some 
 of you younger men will see international laws passed 
 and administered by an international assembly. That 
 will mean a solution of the problem ; for by solution 
 I mean an international agreement which will reduce 
 the armed forces of civilised countries and their
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 15 
 
 armaments to the lowest point compatible, first, with 
 the maintenance of internal peace, and, second, with 
 the contribution of a small contingent to the inter- 
 national army which it will probably be for a long 
 time necessary to maintain. Such a solution as I 
 have said seems to me to be neither impracticable 
 nor very distant. Nor does it require a very startling 
 revolution of opinion. The most difficult steps on 
 the path from a state of war to a state of peace 
 have already been taken. 
 
 Philosophers and poets have amused themselves by 
 speculating upon what is the natural condition of man- 
 kind, that is to say, what was the condition of mankind 
 in a state of nature before the introduction of arts. 
 They arrive, as one might expect, at the most 
 opposite conclusions. The fiction of the golden age 
 (usually favoured by romantic and poetical socialists 
 like Rousseau and William Morris) represents the 
 condition of our first ancestors as one of ideal peace 
 and happiness. The other fiction, which describes the 
 state of nature as a state of war, is more probable 
 as well as more hopeful and has been favoured by 
 philosophers. Who does not know, cried Cicero in 
 one of his orations, that at one time men wandered 
 about possessing only such property as they could 
 seize from one another and retain by main force ? 
 Hobbes was the first to build a system upon this 
 assumption. His theory is that men naturally fought 
 with one another, but that eventually, seeing the 
 misery and folly of this proceeding, they formed 
 societies by compact for the protection of the indi- 
 vidual. There Hobbes stopped ; he took things as he 
 found them, and does not seem to have thought
 
 1 6 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 (greatly as he abhorred war) that wars between nations 
 might be terminated by a compact similar to that 
 imaginary one out of which he constructed his Levi- 
 athan. For if private fighting is preventible, why 
 not public ? If national opinion can put down the 
 duellum^ why cannot international opinion put down 
 the helium ? Is it to be said that while justice is 
 always to be the measure of right between indi- 
 viduals, power is to remain the only measure of 
 right between the nations which those individuals 
 compose ? In the long long struggle of races and 
 tongues and religions that followed the breaking up 
 of the Roman Empire the law of the stronger was 
 the only law universally regarded. Everybody who 
 could afford it had a suit of mail and a horse, and 
 the knight who was most regarded was he who had 
 killed most men and had secured most plunder. 
 The story of the Cid, the national hero of Spain, is 
 simply a catalogue of successful hand-to-hand conflicts 
 and predatory expeditions. His exploits were often 
 undertaken merely to win glory by slaying some re- 
 doubtable warrior, or to secure plunder by surprising 
 some rich town ; at other times he was prompted by 
 religion, or revenge, or a royal command. 
 
 Our own Wyckliffe, the first and perhaps the noblest 
 of the English Reformers, protested against the knightly 
 conception of virtue. " Lord, what honour falls to a 
 knight that he kills many men ? The hangman killeth 
 many more and with a better title. Better were it 
 for men to be butchers of beasts than butchers of 
 their brethren." 1 When the civil distractions of Russia 
 
 1 Wyckliffe's views of war are expounded in his treatise on the 
 seven deadly sins and in his Trialoguti.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 17 
 
 are healed and tyranny expelled, and when a decent 
 government has been established in Macedonia, Europe 
 will be free from the scourge of private war. Bad 
 quarrelsome men are not allowed to bully, rob and 
 murder travellers on the high road under pretext of 
 chivalry or point of honour, but bad meh in authority 
 may quarrel, and their quarrels may drive thousands 
 upon thousands of innocent men to violent death. 
 Strong wills clash ; passions rise ; honour is said to 
 be wounded, or vital interests are said to be involved ; 
 armies are moved to the frontier ; there is a surprise 
 attack or an ultimatum, and then two or more driven 
 nations meet in the arena and fight like bulls maddened 
 by their keepers until one is so badly gored that it has 
 to retire wounded and bleeding to recover its wasted 
 strength. 
 
 No one I think has ever written more sensibly about 
 the mischiefs of war and the causes that promote its 
 continuance or retard its decay than Josiah Tucker, 
 Dean of Gloucester, 1 who handled the moral and 
 commercial issues raised in the imperialist policy of 
 Pitt the elder with rare courage, knowledge and insight. 
 In ancient times, he says, men went to war without 
 much ceremony or pretence. It was thought a suffi- 
 cient ground for attack that one man, or one clan, 
 wanted what another possessed. Such were the habits 
 and customs of the Thracian tribes in the account 
 Herodotus gives of them ; such were the early 
 Greeks in the famous description at the beginning 
 of Thucydides. Nothing was esteemed dishonour- 
 able except the arts of peace and industry. But 
 
 1 An excellent man despite his bishop's jest : " Tucker makes a 
 religion of his trade, and a trade of his religion."
 
 1 8 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 when civilised nations prepare for war they generally 
 do so with much ceremony and many pretences. This 
 is the tribute a warlike government pays to the feel- 
 ings of the citizens it represents, of the merchants it 
 is going to ruin, and of the taxpayers it is going 
 to fleece. Complaints are made of injuries received, of 
 rights violated, of some encroachment or detention 
 or usurpation. A modern government hardly ever 
 acknowledges itself to be the aggressor. On the 
 contrary it solemnly calls heaven to witness that it 
 is engaging in a just and necessary war. Prayers are 
 offered in the State Churches, invoking the State 
 God to assist a righteous cause, and to punish the 
 wicked enemy. The Avenger of the Oppressed and 
 Searcher of all Hearts is called upon to assist in defeat- 
 ing the enemy and punishing the wrongdoer. Thus 
 both parties endeavour to conciliate opinion ; and 
 though neither combatant will own his true motives, 
 it is apparent to all the world that on one side, if 
 not on both, thirst of glory, lust of dominion, the 
 cabals of statesmen, the appetite of individuals for 
 power or plunder, for wealth without industry, for 
 greatness without merit, are the mainsprings of action. 
 Of course you might raise the preliminary question 
 whether war is an evil at all. Here and there a bellicose 
 person, who has missed his profession, proclaims the 
 gospel of war. But mankind generally are convinced 
 of the abstract proposition that war is an evil, and 
 that is my assumption. But I do not say or think 
 that it is an unmixed evil ; I freely admit that some 
 good (along with a vast preponderance of harm) has 
 come from some wars. It would, perhaps, be hard 
 to find an unmixed evil in the world. Providence,
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 19 
 
 said a great divine, brings good from everything, 
 even from the worst sufferings and most atrocious 
 crimes. " But sufferings and crimes," he was careful 
 to add, " are not therefore to be set down among 
 our blessings." Murder may shorten a tyrant's career 
 of guilt ; robbery may circulate the useless hoards of 
 a miser ; despotism may be the means of suppressing 
 anarchy and establishing social order, just as anarchy 
 and revolutionary violence may be the means of 
 driving despotism into constitutional courses. But 
 we do not, therefore, bless the tyrant and the anarchist 
 or canonise robbery and murder. There are some 
 manufactures whose by-products are very profitable. 
 It would be absurd to call the by-products of war 
 * profitable.' Its apologists claim that it may call 
 forth an indignant patriotism, a fervent public spirit, 
 generous daring, heroic self-sacrifice. So may a fire, 
 a pestilence, a railway accident, an explosion in a 
 mine, a shipwreck. But do we pray for these catas- 
 trophes or welcome them when they come, because 
 they call forth great virtues, and testify, as it were, 
 to the inborn greatness of human nature ? On the 
 contrary, every man with a grain of public spirit, 
 every government with a spark of humanity, endea- 
 vours to prevent and mitigate such catastrophes as 
 these. 
 
 There is another and more intimate view of war, 
 which should lead us to regard it as a far greater 
 evil than any natural calamity or any series of natural 
 calamities, that might do the same amount of damage 
 to life and property. To go to war is to enthrone force 
 and defy justice. What distinguishes war is not death, 
 or disease, or destruction, or the other visible woes that
 
 20 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 are drawn in its train. What distinguishes war and 
 makes it the worst of all evils is not that man is thereby 
 slain or despoiled, but that he is slain and despoiled by 
 the cruelty, treachery, and injustice of his fellows. 
 The distinguishing evil of war is moral evil. I will 
 not characterise it myself; you might think my lan- 
 guage too strong ; I will borrow some sentences from 
 one whose error, if he erred at all, was rather on 
 the side of caution in criticising the established 
 barbarities of his day such as slavery or war I 
 mean Dr. Channing. " War," he declared, " is the 
 concentration of all human crimes. Under its standard 
 gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapa- 
 city, and lust. If it only slew men it would do little. 
 It turns man into a beast of prey. Here is the evil 
 of war that man, made to be the brother, becomes the 
 deadly foe of his kind ; that man, whose duty it is 
 to mitigate suffering, makes the infliction of suffering 
 his study and end ; that man whose office it is to 
 avert and heal the wounds which come from nature's 
 powers, makes researches into nature's laws, and arms 
 himself with her most awful forces, that he may become 
 the destroyer of his race." In his eloquent description 
 the battlefield is " a theatre got up at an immense cost 
 for the exhibition of crime on a grand scale." But even 
 more odious and detestable than the hot passions of the 
 battlefield is the cold indifference to human miseries 
 and human wrongs that marks the plans of the states- 
 man, the strategy of the generals, and the comments of 
 the world. The slaughter is atrocious, the spirit of 
 murder that prompts it is worse ; but worst of all, 
 perhaps, is the callousness of the organisers, the 
 conductors, and the spectators.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 21 
 
 Clarke. Whom do you mean by the organisers ot 
 war ? 
 
 Arbiter. In countries where public policy depends 
 upon manifestations of public opinion I mean those 
 who by their speeches or writings inflame public 
 opinion, and bring to the surface the worst passions 
 of the populace, so that unscrupulous statesmen who 
 desire war may pretend, with some show of reason, 
 that in going to war they are complying with the 
 wishes of the nation. No one who has seen the 
 outbreak of a war and the preliminaries of it will 
 doubt that, altogether apart from its necessity, wisdom, 
 or justice, there is plenty of pot-house enthusiasm 
 than can easily be worked up into the semblance of 
 a national agitation. 
 
 Admiral. It is called patriotism, but it does not 
 go to the front. 
 
 Case. It is the patriotism of the music-hall and the 
 gin palace. 
 
 Arbiter. But you must not interpret all this as 
 pessimism. Generally speaking, the more educated 
 and civilised a people is the more necessary and 
 difficult will it be to obtain their consent to a war. 
 Again, a responsible government is less prone than 
 an irresponsible one to go to war on small occa- 
 sions. Perhaps glory is the most attractive bait that 
 can be held out to a nation. " Let a prince but 
 feed his subjects," wrote Tucker, " with the empty 
 diet of military fame, it matters not what he does 
 besides." That is no longer true. Nevertheless, even 
 in our time life and liberty, with everything that makes 
 existence happy or tolerable, seem sometimes, in 
 moments of intoxication, to have been willingly offered
 
 22 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 up to this idol. Disillusionment and reaction follow 
 more quickly than they did in the old days, when, 
 indeed, the people were powerless ; for with few ex- 
 ceptions the greatest conquerors abroad proved the 
 greatest tyrants at home. Victory must be continuous 
 or a people soon get tired of war. Victory, like 
 Charity, covers a multitude of sins, and it is still 
 true that otherwise reasonable beings are often content 
 to be slaves provided they, or rather their generals 
 and rulers, may enslave others. 
 
 It has sometimes been argued by theologians and 
 philosophers that war being a universal practice must 
 have been ordained for the good of mankind by 
 Providence. The earth, they said, would be over- 
 stocked were it not for this salutary visitation. Men, 
 it seems, were created on purpose to engage in war 
 and to destroy one another. 
 
 Truelove. You remind me of an epitaph I once 
 saw on the grave of an infant two months old in a 
 churchyard near Oxford : 
 
 " Thrice blessed child, 
 For surely she 
 
 Was born on purpose for to be 
 Translated to eternity." 
 
 Arbiter. From the same desire to justify nature 
 and Providence comes the vulgar notion that one 
 country thrives by the ruin of another, and that 
 peoples grow rich by impoverishing their neighbours. 
 If that were true, private and civil wars should be 
 no less advantageous than public wars between states. 
 But no one now regards duels and civil wars as 
 things inevitable, natural, or desirable. The inhabitants
 
 of one county do not conceive that they are or 
 ought to be the foes of the inhabitants of a 
 neighbouring county. Towns under the same govern- 
 ment do not think of growing rich by reducing one 
 another to ashes. On the contrary, it is felt that 
 every county, or town, stands to gain by the prosperity 
 of its neighbours. Is it not, then, the height of folly 
 to suppose that two large and independent districts 
 will prosper by a course which we all see would be 
 ruinous to two smaller subordinate districts. If a 
 war between New York and Pennsylvania would ad- 
 mittedly be disastrous to both, to the victor as well 
 as to the vanquished, what sense can there be in a 
 war between the United States and Great Britain. 
 And if God in His mercy has allowed small areas 
 to be quit of this curse, how can those who believe 
 in Him dare to count war between nations as a 
 permanent part of His dispensation ? Clearly war is 
 not right because it exists. As well argue that theft 
 and murder should be encouraged because they have 
 not yet been extirpated. War is a wrong that oue^ht 
 to be suppressed ; not a good thing that ought to be 
 perpetuated. And, finally, a Christian cannot approve 
 of war ; for if war is right and necessary the Sermon 
 on the Mount is a tissue of absurdities. 
 
 Apart from the desire for glory and military fame, 
 and apart from the religious or fatalistic argument, 
 which has sometimes borrowed scientific support by 
 twisting the Survival of the Fittest as if bullets 
 selected the unfit ! there is an opinion very widely 
 held, even to this day by intelligent people, that a 
 successful war, especially if it ends in the conquest 
 of territory, will lead to an increase of revenue and
 
 24 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 be " good for trade." Money will be circulated and 
 markets will be opened up. 
 
 Let us test this by the analogy of the individual. 
 Suppose a sleeping partner in a firm of manufacturers 
 draws out the money he has invested in the business 
 (which has been playing its part as productive capital) 
 and lays it all out in a series of champagne suppers, 
 followed by firework entertainments ; suppose, further, 
 that some of the workmen he has engaged are killed 
 or injured by explosions. Money certainly has been 
 circulated, some wine merchants and caterers and 
 manufacturers of explosives have made handsome 
 profits ; but will any sane person contend that the 
 net result of this wasted capital and life is an addition 
 to the wealth and trade of the community ? Really 
 the proposition that war is good for trade is neither 
 more nor less defensible than the proposition that 
 an earthquake is good for trade because it provides 
 a lot of work for glaziers and builders. So far as 
 population is concerned, the strength of an empire 
 depends more upon the loyalty than upon the number 
 of its subjects. So far as territory is concerned, the 
 wealth of an empire depends upon its fertility and 
 mineral resources, not upon its acreage. May not a 
 man own twenty square miles of Uganda and yet 
 be in want of a supper ? Looked at merely from 
 the point of revenue, it would be hard to mention 
 any modern conquest of an alien race where the gain 
 compensated the cost. Is there on record any im- 
 portant acquisition of territory by war from which 
 the conquering nation derived a surplus revenue ? 
 Has not every such conquest been accompanied and 
 followed by additions to debt and taxes ? Even when
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 25 
 
 the revenue of a territory was flourishing before its 
 conquest, the surplus is found to have been swallowed 
 up after the conquest in garrisons, police, costly- 
 administration, and the other expenses that always 
 attend the government of a new province. It was 
 thought that the acquisition of the richest gold mines 
 in the world would easily repay the cost of our 
 last great war. The war cost us 250 millions. 
 About 1 60 millions have been added to the national 
 debt, and an annual charge of over 30 millions to 
 the upkeep of our military and naval establishments. 
 So far there has been no financial compensation to 
 set off against these tremendous losses, nor is there 
 the slightest prospect of any substantial gain in the 
 future either to the trade or revenue of Great Britain. 
 
 Under ancient conditions indeed, when the laws ot 
 war permitted plunder, an army, or even a tribe of 
 warriors, might enrich itself for a time by spoiling 
 rich towns and countries of their gold and treasures. 
 The Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru enriched 
 the adventurers and filled the coffers of the King of 
 Spain. But the heaps of treasure melted like snow; 
 industry languished, and a country of heroes became 
 a country of beggars. The national and commercial 
 vigour of Spain has only begun to revive since it 
 was stripped of its last eldorados in Cuba and the 
 Philippines. The Roman Republic was impoverished 
 as well as demoralised by its conquests. From the 
 time when it exchanged liberty for empire the Im- 
 perial city was a city of paupers clamouring daily for 
 their doles of bread. 
 
 Case. Yes indeed, when we think of Rome and 
 her dominion we should think sometimes, not of
 
 26 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 millionaires like Crassus or Seneca, but of the average 
 citizens, the reputed masters of the world, sunk in 
 abject and degrading poverty. 
 
 Ego. But surely the advance of Roman arms was 
 accompanied by the advance of Roman civilisation ; 
 the losses of the conquerors were often compensated 
 by the gains of the conquered. 
 
 Case. Even then we must set the evil done in the 
 east against the good done in the west. And we 
 must not credit Roman arms with the achievements 
 of Roman law and Roman roads. In so far as he was 
 a road-maker the Roman soldier was not a soldier. 
 In so far as he was an administrator and law-giver 
 the Roman general was not a director of battles and 
 campaigns. Listen to Virgil on the Roman strategy : 
 
 " Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento. 
 Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, 
 Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos." 
 
 Arbiter. It is a curious fact that the economic 
 benefits which occasionally appear to have accrued 
 from some wars were as often as not obtained by the 
 beaten party. Spain has rallied wonderfully since the 
 war with the United States ; and Italy since the war 
 with Abyssinia. In each case the financial embarass- 
 ments of the overtaxed nation were relieved by its 
 being compelled to relinquish costly provinces that had 
 been a perpetual drain on its revenues. Perhaps if 
 Russia is beaten she will find similar compensation. 
 But these are hardly exceptions to the general rule 
 that war injures all concerned. They are cases where 
 by one short war nations may be quit of continuous 
 warfare and unproductive expenditure.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 27 
 
 "The wars of Europe for these two hundred years 
 past" wrote Tucker in 1763, after the conquest of 
 Canada and the Sugar Islands and many other glorious 
 exploits, " by the confession of all parties have really 
 ended in the advantage of none but to the manifest 
 detriment of all." Had the contending princes and 
 rulers, he adds, employed their subjects in cultivat- 
 ing and improving such lands as were clear of all 
 disputed titles instead of trying to remove their 
 neighbour's landmarks " they had consulted both their 
 own and their people's greatness much more effica- 
 ciously than by all the victories of a Caesar or an 
 Alexander." The course they took involved them one 
 after the other in disappointment, want and beggary. 
 
 In the eighteenth century wars were still lightly 
 undertaken by sovereigns for personal and dynastic 
 reasons ; but one of the great curses of the world, 
 religious animosity, was ceasing to be a cause of war. 
 At the same time, with the expansion of commerce, 
 trade jealousy was becoming more acute, and * wars 
 for trade' were almost as popular as wars for religion 
 had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
 In the struggle of the American colonies for complete 
 political independence, in the great social uprising of 
 the French Revolution, and in the national wars that 
 followed on the settlement of 1815 a nobler set of 
 passions came into play on one side at least. Wars 
 were not only less frequent, but they were entered upon 
 in some cases, by the Hungarians for example and 
 the Italians in 1848, with more justice; though I am 
 certain that in both these contests better results would 
 have been attained, without cruelty, bloodshed, waste 
 or unnecessary suffering, by moral and political action.
 
 28 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Francis Deak, the wisest of revolutionary leaders, 
 would have nothing to do with war or violence. 
 
 But now that most of the States of Europe have 
 been reconstructed on national lines trade jealousy has 
 once more become the most serious danger to peace. 
 True the slowly spreading science of political economy 
 has done something to combat the superstition that 
 war can advance trade ; but truth is still sadly obscured 
 by error, and a vast mass of prejudice still provides 
 fuel for unscrupulous disturbers of the world's peace. 
 Men are apt to forget, when warlike metaphors about 
 " the cut-throat competition " of some commercial rival 
 are dinned into their ears, that the world is composed 
 of different soils and different climates, that its in- 
 habitants are suited to different occupations and 
 endowed with different talents, that there is a wonder- 
 ful diversity of products all designed by providence 
 in order that the different peoples of the earth may 
 carry on a commercial intercourse mutually beneficial 
 and universally benevolent. Let us borrow an illustra- 
 tion. No more skilful and industrious populations are 
 to be found than in South Lancashire and South-West 
 Yorkshire. They are only separated by a range of 
 hills ; but the climate of one has been found peculiarly 
 adapted to the manufacture of cotton, that of the other 
 to the manufacture of woollen and worsted goods. 
 Yet had Manchester and Bradford been the capitals 
 of two neighbouring kingdoms there might have been 
 a history of jealousy, discord, and war. And who can 
 doubt that such would have been the case if the 
 boundary line of a kingdom had divided Leeds from 
 Bradford, or Manchester from Liverpool ? The states- 
 men and journalists of one town would have declaimed,
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 29 
 
 whenever the popular wind blew war or the interests of 
 party required it, that their prosperity was involved 
 in the other's downfall. Doleful laments would have 
 been heard about the loss of trade and the formidable 
 progress of their enemy ; and each government would 
 have had a set of patriotic orators and patriotic 
 scribblers closing their speeches and leading articles 
 with a thundering delenda est Carthago. " Bradford 
 must be destroyed " would be the cry of Leeds, " she 
 is our commercial enemy, our manufacturing rival, her 
 interests are antagonistic, and our success depends on 
 her ruin." And vice versa. Is this illustration far 
 fetched when we think of the history of the inde- 
 pendent cities of ancient Greece or of mediaeval Italy 
 and Germany ? Yet there are still people endowed 
 with the ordinary faculties who cannot see that the case 
 for commercial war between two English towns or 
 between two German States is at least as strong as 
 the case for a commercial war between England and 
 Germany. An English merchant who envies the com- 
 mercial growth of Germany and wishes to retard it is 
 exactly like a shopkeeper who wants to see his best cus- 
 tomer reduced to beggary. For obviously the richer one 
 nation is, the more is it likely to buy of its neighbour's 
 produce and manufactures. How largely the increasing 
 wealth and prosperity of British trade is due to the 
 commercial expansion of Germany may be drawn from 
 this simple fact, that in every year from 1898 to 1903 
 Germany was easily our best customer in Europe. 1 
 
 1 In those years the annual exports of the British Empire to 
 Germany varied from 46 to 57 millions, attaining the larger figure 
 in the last year of the series. See Statistical Abstract for the British 
 Empire (1905), p. 4.
 
 30 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 By the miraculous spread of commerce and inter- 
 course strong ties are being created between nations, 
 which it is more and more difficult for mischief-makers 
 to snap. Slowly, very slowly, mankind is being dis- 
 enchanted from the spell of trade jealousy. But I 
 have such belief in the power of argument to hasten 
 the process and pacify the jingoism of commerce, that 
 I will ask your leave to make another quotation : 
 
 "Of all absurdities, that of going to war for the sake of getting 
 trade is the most absurd ; and nothing in nature can be so ex- 
 travagantly foolish. Perhaps you cannot digest this ; you don't 
 believe it : I grant, therefore, that you subdue your rival by force 
 of arms ; will that circumstance render your goods cheaper at 
 market than they were before ? And if it will not, nay if it tends 
 to render them much dearer, what have you got by such a victory ? 
 I ask further, what will be the conduct of foreign nations when 
 your goods are brought to their markets ? They will never en- 
 quire whether you were victorious or not ; but only, whether you 
 will sell cheaper, or at least as cheap as others. Try and see, 
 whether any persons, or any nations, ever yet proceeded upon any 
 other plan ; and if they never did, and never can be supposed to 
 do so, then it is evident to a demonstration, that trade will always 
 follow cheapness, and not conquest. Nay, consider how it is with 
 yourselves at home ; do Heroes and Bruisers get more customers 
 to their shops because they are Heroes and Bruisers ? Or, would 
 not you yourself rather deal with a feeble person, who will use 
 you well, than with a Brother-Hero, should he demand a higher 
 price." 1 
 
 Such being some of the causes of war, some of the 
 stored-up fuel which lies ready for the match of the 
 incendiary, it is next proper to enquire who are they 
 that strike the light and endeavour to produce a 
 conflagration. These firebrands have always existed. 
 But there are many different sorts. They vary 
 
 1 From one of Dean Tucker's Tracts.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 31 
 
 from country to country, and from age to age. In 
 England, in Dean Tucker's time, no less than seven 
 distinct species could be discerned. 
 
 First there was the Mock-Patriot, who, having got 
 what he wanted war made every defeat or victory 
 a reason for going on. If an expedition failed, or an 
 army was cut to pieces, another expedition must be 
 fitted out and another army sent to avenge defeat. 
 If a victory was won he would say : " Now, being vic- 
 torious, let us follow up the blow without regard to 
 the sacrifice of life and treasure. Another campaign 
 will force the enemy to submit to our own terms : for 
 he cannot last much longer." 
 
 Next came the hungry pamphleteer who wrote for 
 bread. He is described as a kind of jackal to the 
 patriotic lion ; he beats the forest and starts the game ; 
 he explores the reigning humour and whims of the 
 populace, and discovers where a peace ministry is 
 most vulnerable. His principal use now is as a panic- 
 monger or tout. He writes largely for the manu- 
 facturers of war material, endeavouring to find a 
 market for their surplus stocks, and to enlarge their 
 trade by pretending that the guns and rifles of the 
 army are defective, or that the fleet is very weak, or 
 that some part of the coast should be fortified, or, in 
 times of widespread madness, that fortresses should be 
 erected in the interior, or a gold reserve borrowed, in 
 order to pay for the next war. 
 
 From time to time he raises the alarm of an in- 
 vasion, sometimes writing a novel, which ends, of 
 course, in the destruction of our fleet and the conquest 
 of England. It is rather characteristic of the change 
 in popular feeling, and a hopeful sign, I think for it
 
 32 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 shows that a war of aggression can no longer be made 
 popular that fear of an invasion is the staple of the 
 new pamphleteer. The function of the old pamph- 
 leteer 150 years ago was to intoxicate the mob with 
 stories of Agincourt and Crecy. His cry would be : 
 " Let a British army march to the gates of Paris, 
 and bring the King of France to sue for peace on 
 his knees at the Bar of the House of Commons." 
 
 A third, and nowadays a far more important char- 
 acter, is the " news writer," whom we should call the 
 jingo journalist. He is the favourite pest of a free 
 democracy. Often he is not a mere mercenary, but 
 has a natural zest for his job. But the owners of the 
 Yellow Press that employs him may almost be said 
 to trade in blood. In Tucker's time Gazette Extra- 
 ordinarieSy published at sixpence, occupied the place 
 of the halfpenny dreadful. War was their harvest, 
 and the report of a battle, which might or might not 
 have taken place, would multiply the circulation a 
 hundredfold. How then could the news writers be 
 expected to be the friends of peace or the opponents 
 of war ? As well expect a glazier to help to put down 
 window breakers. " Yet these are the men," wrote 
 Tucker, "who may be truly said to govern the minds of 
 the good people of England, and to turn their affections 
 whithersoever they please ; who can render any scheme 
 unpopular which they dislike, and whose approbation 
 or disapprobation is regarded by thousands as the 
 standard of right or wrong, of truth or falsehood ; 
 for it is a fact, an undisputable fact, that this country 
 is as much news-mad and news-ridden now as ever 
 it was popery-mad and priest-ridden in the days of 
 our forefathers." Nowadays we find salvation in the
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 33 
 
 multiplicity of newspapers ; but there are occasions 
 when capitalists spend large sums of money in order 
 to create a temporary agreement to suit their purpose 
 between a number of independent newspapers. It has 
 been found that by quietly purchasing a few respect- 
 able papers (by preference of liberal or democratic 
 traditions), and by gently and almost imperceptibly 
 altering their policy, something very like public opinion 
 may be fabricated. The old mills of the Cobdenites 
 may be used to grind new Imperialist corn. 
 
 Ego. I see what you mean. Let news be so sub- 
 edited that anything adverse or premature is cut 
 out, let suitable comments be made upon doctored 
 facts, let popular indignation be roused by atrocities 
 which never took place, and it is possible that a 
 national movement in favour of a most iniquitous 
 war may be successfully engineered. 
 
 Arbiter. Burke compared newspapers to a battery, 
 " in which the stroke of any one ball produces no 
 great effect, but the amount of continual repetition 
 is decisive." " If," he said, " we suffer a person to 
 tell us his story morning and evening, for a twelve- 
 month, he will become our master." Yet, on the 
 whole, when I think of the dangers and temptations 
 of journalism I am struck rather by the probity than 
 by the corruptibility of the profession. There are 
 plenty of honest and able journalists in this country, 
 and I believe they do more good and prevent more 
 evil (because they have more power to do both) 
 than any other class of good men. 
 
 The fourth kind of firebrand distinguished by our 
 author is " the broker and the gambler of Change Alley." 
 It is rather interesting to read a description of the
 
 34 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 methods of this monster, as they struck the impartial 
 moralist in 1763. "Letters from the Hague, wrote 
 in a garret at home for half a guinea ; the first news 
 of a battle fought (it matters not how improbable), 
 with a list of the slain and prisoners, their cannon, 
 colours, etc. ; great firings heard at sea between squad- 
 rons not yet out of port ; a town taken before the 
 enemy was near it ; an intercepted letter that never 
 was wrote ; or in short, anything else that will elate 
 or depress the minds of the undiscerning multitude, 
 serves the purpose of the bear or the bull to sink 
 or raise the price of stocks, according as he wishes 
 either to buy or sell. And by these vile means the 
 wretch, who perhaps the other day came up to London 
 in the waggon to be an under-clerk or a message boy 
 in a warehouse, acquires such a fortune as sets him 
 on a par with the greatest nobles of the land." This 
 character is still recognisable, and there are times 
 when he seems to sway the City, and does an immense 
 amount of mischief. On the other hand, the ordinary 
 brokers and financiers are, or may be, very useful 
 members of society. If only they and the bankers 
 could take longer views of their own interests, and 
 do more to propagate sound opinions on financial and 
 commercial policy, they might exercise a salutary in- 
 fluence on the government. 
 
 The fifth, and in my view, the most dangerous 
 and mischievous company of war-makers, are those who 
 have a direct pecuniary interest in the vast expenditure 
 which wars and warlike preparations entail. 
 
 Ego. Like Barry Lyndon who "as long as war 
 lasted was never without a dollar in his purse." 
 
 Arbiter. In the eighteenth century this evil was
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 35 
 
 already gigantic. Compared with the total income 
 of the nation, the gains of the contractors, though 
 absolutely far smaller, were relatively far greater then 
 than now ; and the case was aggravated by the 
 corruption and incapacity of those who gave out the 
 contracts, as well as by the absence of an effective 
 system of financial control. To revert again to our 
 author : 
 
 " The jobbers and contractors of all kinds and of all degrees for 
 our fleets and armies ; the clerks and pay-masters in the several 
 departments belonging to war ; and every other agent who has 
 the fingering of the public money, may be said to constitute a 
 distinct brood of vultures, who prey upon their own species, and 
 fatten on human gore. It would be endless to recount the various 
 arts and stratagems by which these devourers have amassed to them- 
 selves astonishing riches, from very slender beginnings, through the 
 continuance and extent of the war ; consequently, as long as any 
 prospect could remain of squeezing somewhat more out of the 
 pockets of an exhausted, but infatuated people, so long the American 
 war-hoop would be the cry of these inhuman savages ; and so long 
 would they start and invent objections to every proposition that 
 could be made for the restoring peace, because Government Bills 
 would yet bear some price in the Alley, and Omnium and Scrip 
 would still sell at market." 
 
 With the regular contractors and manufacturers of 
 war material may be associated a sixth class of mer- 
 chants and manufacturers, not (I hope) very numerous, 
 who imagine that war will benefit their particular 
 business. The general interest of trade is very 
 different from the particular interest of traders, and 
 war undoubtedly does give an artificial stimulus to 
 certain branches of trade at the expense of the re- 
 mainder. The favour of certain manufacturers or 
 producers is usually won by extravagant promises ;
 
 36 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 but unless they actually obtain lucrative contracts from 
 the government, their hopes of profit are certain to 
 be disappointed. During Chatham's wars it was pre- 
 dicted that if once we became masters of Canada 
 there would be a great importation of skins and beavers 
 and a prodigious extension of fine hat manufactures. 
 " Every man might afford to wear a beaver hat if 
 he pleased, and every woman be decorated in the 
 richest furs ; in return for which our coarse woollens 
 would find such a vent throughout those immense 
 northern regions as would make ample satisfaction 
 for all our expenses." Well, Canada was taken, and 
 after we had possessed it for several years, beavers, 
 furs, and hats were dearer than ever. As for woollens, 
 the Canadian consumption of English cloth was hardly 
 as much as would have been required by the English 
 soldiers who had been lost in taking, defending, and 
 garrisoning Canada. 1 
 
 Similar and even more extravagant hopes were 
 held out at the time of the Boer War. You will 
 remember the vast increase in the supplies of gold 
 which was to follow our occupation of the Rand, 
 and the wonderful expansion of our trade to South 
 Africa. I need not say how these hopes have been 
 disappointed. But it is specially noteworthy that 
 the very purpose for which the war was undertaken 
 
 1 It was complained at the end of the Seven Years' War that, owing 
 to the growth of taxes and the rise of prices in England, the sales 
 of our manufactures in foreign countries had much decreased, and 
 even our colonies, on whose behalf the war was supposed to have 
 been undertaken, were buying goods " in Holland, in Italy, and 
 Hamburg or any other market where they can buy them cheapest, 
 without regarding the interest of the Mother country."
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 37 
 
 the enhancement of mining values was so far from 
 being achieved that a depreciation of mining shares, 
 amounting, it is calculated, to no less than 200,000,000, 
 was brought about by the war. 
 
 Here Meyer groaned audibly, but the Arbiter took no 
 notice and continued. Seventhly and lastly, "The land 
 and sea officers are of course the invariable advocates 
 of war. Indeed it is their trade, their bread, and 
 the sure way to get promotion ; therefore no other 
 language can be expected from them, and yet, to 
 do them justice, of all the adversaries of peace, they 
 are the fairest and most open in their proceedings ; 
 they use no art or colouring, and as you know their 
 motive, you must follow accordingly." 
 
 Seymour. Thank you. 
 
 Arbiter. Don't mention it. Those words are in 
 quotation marks. It is an eighteenth-century com- 
 pliment. But I think you still deserve it. 
 
 This analysis of the classes of men who support 
 war is useful, because it helps to explain why a 
 mischief that is so revolting to morality, so destructive 
 of happiness, and so repugnant to common sense 
 can still exist and flourish. It is supported as it 
 were by a standing army of people who live on it 
 in every nation. From it come their livelihoods or 
 their profits ; without it they think they would 
 starve. Baseless panics have made many a fortune, 
 and many more have been accumulated from unjust 
 and unnecessary wars. 
 
 But this is certainly not the whole psychology of 
 war. Sometimes the idea of war seems to steal 
 like an infectious disease from individual to individual 
 and from nation to nation. Do you remember a great
 
 38 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 preacher's description of the war which followed upon 
 the French Revolution how making its first appear- 
 ance in the centre of the civilised world, like a fire 
 kindled in the thickest part of the forest, it spread 
 during twenty years on every side, and burnt in 
 all directions, gathering fresh fury in its progress till 
 it enwrapped the whole of Europe in its flames. 
 That fearful conflagration was originally due to a 
 discord between the opinions and institutions of 
 society, but war soon made a disease of the cure. 
 Militarism supervened upon Republicanism ; a military 
 dictatorship took the place of a feudal tyranny. 
 Liberty, equality, and fraternity were all forgotten, 
 and for years the flower of French manhood was 
 enlisted in order to promote the military glory of 
 Napoleon. Real war is a very different thing from 
 the painted image that you see at a parade or review. 
 But it is the painted image that makes it popular. 
 The waving plumes, the gay uniforms, the flashing 
 swords, the disciplined march of innumerable feet, 
 the clear-voiced trumpet, the intoxicating strains of 
 martial music, the pomp, the sound, and the spectacle 
 these are the enticements to war and to the profession 
 of the soldier. They are not what they were. But 
 they still form a popular prelude to a woful pan- 
 demonium. And when war bursts out it is at first, 
 as a rule, but a small minority even of the peoples 
 engaged that really sees and feels its horrors. The 
 populace is fed by excitements ; the defeats are 
 covered up ; in most countries the lists of killed 
 and wounded are suppressed or postponed ; victories 
 are magnified ; successful generals are acclaimed, and 
 the military hero becomes the idol of the people.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 39 
 
 The overfed, seedy malingerers of a smart society 
 join with the starving loiterers about the gin palace in 
 applauding the executioners of ruin. If their heroes 
 are successful, what are the trophies ? prisons crowded 
 with captives, hospitals filled with sick and wounded, 
 towns sacked, farms burnt, fields laid waste, taxes 
 raised, plenty converted to scarcity or famine, and 
 vast debts accumulated for posterity. Then, when 
 these heroes have done their work, the heroes of 
 peace, the unobtrusive philanthropists, the unrewarded 
 reformers, appear, and by long and patient labour 
 amid scenes of universal misery and lamentation seek 
 to mitigate the sufferings of their repentant fellow 
 country men. Let me conclude this part of my 
 subject by placing before you two pictures drawn 
 by very different pens the first by a German 
 Gelehrte of the results of the Thirty Years' War ; the 
 second by an English journalist of his impressions 
 in France, in 1814, just before the return from 
 Elba. 
 
 The Thirty Years' War, you will remember, was 
 brought to a conclusion by the Peace of Westphalia 
 in 1648. But its dreadful effects were still discernible 
 in many parts of Germany a century and a half later. 
 " A prodigious number of towns," wrote Ptltter, in 
 I786, 1 "have never been able to recover the losses 
 they sustained through the horrors of the Thirty 
 Years' War. If we were to compare each individual 
 town of Germany in the state it was in before and 
 after the war of thirty years, the picture would be 
 dreadful beyond conception. The city of Magdeburg 
 
 1 See Putter's Historical Development of the Germanic Empire, 
 translated by Dorndorf (London, 1790), vol. ii., pp. 209-10.
 
 40 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 alone had formerly no less than 30,000 inhabitants ; 
 but after its destruction by Tilly, only 400 remained. 
 The city itself was razed to the ground, and had 
 scarcely one stone left upon another. In the city 
 of Frankenthal, where there were 1800 inhabitants, 
 who were mostly artists and manufacturers, the 
 number was reduced to 324. In Gottingen there 
 were 1000 houses; in the war 179 were pulled down 
 or fell of themselves, 237 remained uninhabited, 
 137 inhabited only by widows, and only 460 by 
 burghers and strangers. At Nordheim, near Got- 
 tingen, upwards of 320 houses which were un- 
 inhabited, were destroyed to procure fuel from the 
 timber for the winter ; and the number of distressed 
 widows exceeded that of the burghers. The repairs 
 of Minden, which was one of Tilly's garrison-towns 
 in 1625, cost, in two years, 600,000 dollars; and 
 a tax was fixed upon the houses of the burghers, 
 under the name of the " Eintheilungs Capitalien," 
 which continues even now [in 1786]. In the baili- 
 wick and town of Leonberg, in the country of 
 Wurtenberg, 1270 burghers emigrated, 885 houses 
 were destroyed by fire, and 11,594 acres of land 
 went out of cultivation. In the whole dutchy of 
 Wurtenberg, no less than 57,721 families were 
 ruined; 8 cities, 45 villages, 158 houses of the 
 clergy and school-masters, 65 churches, and 36,086 
 private houses, were burned to ashes ! " I pass now 
 to my second picture. 
 
 An English journalist, 1 who visited France in 1814 
 after Napoleon's retirement to Elba, has described 
 
 1 John Scott, A Visit to Paris in 1814.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 41 
 
 the impression made on his mind by the first French 
 crowd he saw at Dieppe where he landed : 
 
 " The most impressive feature of the crowd before us, and that 
 which most struck us with a sense of novelty and of interest, was 
 its military aspect. Almost every man had some indication of the 
 military profession about his person, sufficient to denote that he had 
 been engaged in war. At the same time we could scarcely imagine 
 that the dark-visaged beings, some in long, loose great-coats, some 
 in jackets, some in cocked hats, some in round ones, some in caps, 
 who darted at us keen looks of a very over-clouded cast, had ever 
 belonged to regiments, steady, controlled, and lawful ; they seemed, 
 rather, the fragments of broken-up gangs, brave, dexterous, and 
 fierce, but unprincipled, and unrestrained. Much of this irregularity 
 and angriness of appearance was doubtless occasioned by the great 
 disbandment of the army that had just taken place. The disbanded 
 had no call to observe the niceties of military discipline, although 
 they still retained such parts of their military uniform as they 
 found convenient. They had not then either pursuits to occupy 
 their time, or even prospects to keep up their hopes ; they still 
 lounged about in idleness, although their pay had been stopped 
 and disappointment and necessity threw into their faces an expres- 
 sion deeper than that of irritation approaching, in fact, to the 
 indications of indiscriminate and inveterate hatred. They carried 
 about with them in their air, the branded characteristics of forlorn 
 men, whose interests and habits opposed them to the peace of man- 
 kind ; men who would cry with the desperate Constance in King 
 John: 
 
 ' War ! war ! no peace ! peace is to me a war ! ' ' 
 
 The English journalist's first impression was only 
 too correct. France had become a great barrack of 
 idle, unpaid, discontented soldiers, who, unable or 
 unwilling to work, soon began to thirst again for 
 pillage and promotion. The restoration of Napoleon 
 in 1815 was the work of a disbanded or discontented 
 soldiery. 
 
 Most of the evils that have scourged mankind
 
 42 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 have been cherished by absolute rulers or, it may 
 be, by " the governing classes " who claim falsely 
 to represent the democracy, to amuse or awe the 
 mob. Is it not one of the principal purposes of the 
 Russian army to keep down the peoples of Russia ? 
 But military preparations and even war itself will be 
 impossible, as soon as the world is democratically 
 governed in spirit as well as in form, as soon as the 
 object of every government is the greatest good of 
 the greatest number. Under present circumstances 
 national defence is an intelligible ground for maintain- 
 ing a naval or military establishment ; but the necessity 
 of national defence neither explains the continuance 
 of wars (though in much diminished number) nor 
 accounts for the continued increase of armaments. 
 We must find the main cause of the continuance of 
 war and the growth of armaments in the desires 
 of rulers and governing classes, and their notions 
 (generally false) of advantage, but above all in the 
 manifest interests of professional soldiers and sailors 
 and of manufacturers of war material a vast and 
 ever-growing trade, which can afford to keep its 
 agents provocateurs in the press and can subsidise 
 bodies to agitate for military preparations. On the 
 continent the army is still a fetish. Take as an 
 example of honest illusion, the case of a contemporary 
 of mine, Francis Joseph, a man who has been taught 
 (if only he could have learned) in the bitter school 
 of experience, the miseries of war and the futilities 
 of armaments. A well-meaning man, but what a slow 
 learner ! He began as the absolute monarch or 
 suzerain of a vast territory from Passau to Padua 
 and Venice. After the Revolution of '48 he robbed
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 43 
 
 Hungary of her constitution. The war of '59 
 deprived him of part of his possessions in Italy. 
 The rest was taken from him in '66. In the same 
 year he was forced to regrant Hungary her constitu- 
 tion, and to give Parliamentary Government to 
 Austria. Yet he still thinks that the Army is his 
 salvation. It is really the origin of discontent. He 
 thinks that every penny he can wring from the 
 taxpayer should be spent on the army. The Court 
 of Vienna believes that the army is the emblem of 
 Unity and the safeguard of the House of Hapsburg. 
 The eye of the economist sees that it is the axe 
 laid at the root of an Imperial Government, that 
 the House of Hapsburg is tottering because the 
 tax-gatherer and the drill sergeant make the very 
 name of Austria odious to the nations that constitute 
 the Empire. 
 
 If the same economy that has been practised in 
 naval budgets had been applied to the army the 
 position of Austria-Hungary since 1867 would have 
 been enviable. We should have beheld a rapid and 
 steady improvement in the condition of the labouring 
 classes, if even a partial relief had been offered from 
 the burdens of conscription and onerous taxation. 
 
 What could have been effected may be seen by 
 the example of Italy, which has made wonderful 
 progress during the last nine years in consequence 
 of a very modest scheme of military and naval 
 retrenchment. I believe, Meyer, you can give us a 
 note on that. 
 
 Meyer. Ach, yes. Between December, 1895, and 
 December, 1904, Italian 5 per cents, rose from 84 to 
 104. In the same period British 2 per cents, fell
 
 44 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 from about 102 to 88. I have done pretty well out 
 of Italians, for I bought in their Black Week after 
 the defeat of Adowah, and they have never looked 
 back since. Unluckily I tried the same with our 
 Consols in our Black Week. 
 
 Arbiter. And they have never looked forward 
 since ! Look again at Austria. If Dr. Koerber 
 had embarked on a real policy of retrenchment and 
 reform instead of gradually surrendering to the military 
 clique, I make no doubt that the racial difficulties and 
 troubles would have subsided. Slavs and Italians 
 would not look over the border if they had better 
 conditions and prospects at home. The advantages 
 of fiscal and political union are so obvious that the 
 disintegration of the Austrian Empire would never 
 have been thought of, had the central government been 
 reasonable in its military demands and had it allowed 
 a fair field to local and private enterprise. As it is 
 imperial taxes have choked the spirit of improvement. 
 Everywhere we see stagnation. No wonder that the 
 people are dispirited and dissatisfied with their govern- 
 ment. Fundamentally this feeling of discontent in 
 Austria-Hungary is healthy. In every civilised 
 country, from Russia upwards, it is well that the 
 Government should be discredited if things are at 
 a standstill or if progress is slow, still more if there 
 is such a decline in national credit, such a growth 
 of pauperism and crime, as we have had here in 
 England during the last five years. Upon this divine 
 discontent and the sister passion for improvement 
 we ground our hopes for the future. They are the 
 foundations of our belief in the perfectibility of man 
 and state. No man and no country are to be despaired
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 45 
 
 of however miserable, however debased, however poor 
 and overloaded with debt they be, if discontent and 
 the will to be better survive. In a community that 
 is stationary or falling back every good citizen must 
 be either a reformer or a revolutionary. Therefore, 
 I say the popular antipathy that prevails in almost 
 all Europe against the Military State, however efficient 
 and successful it may appear when judged by military 
 standards, is a sure sign of approaching redemption. 
 It may be slow in coming, there may be great disasters 
 yet in store ; but let nothing deprive us of a glorious 
 faith in the possibility of our demands and the 
 practicability of our programme. 
 
 Clarke. Besides the diminution of war and the 
 establishment of law and order in a greater or less 
 degree over the habitable globe are encouraging. But 
 what of the establishment of conscription on the 
 Continent of Europe, in Japan, and in some of the 
 South American Republics, together with this vast 
 increase in the military and naval budgets of all the 
 principal states and kingdoms of the world during 
 the last forty years ? In the very act of establishing 
 a precarious peace have we not robbed it of half 
 its fruits ? 
 
 Arbiter. Our answer must be that the good achieved 
 far outweighs the accompanying evil. The average 
 European has been incomparably better off morally 
 and physically during the last half century than he 
 ever was before. Progress has been incomparably 
 more rapid. The establishment of peace as the normal 
 condition of states for the first time since the collapse 
 of the Roman Empire, and of personal freedom as 
 the normal condition of individuals for the first time
 
 46 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 in history, are unexhausted and inexhaustible improve- 
 ments. They cannot, humanly speaking, cease to 
 work for good. Civilised man has had his first long 
 taste of secured freedom. He has felt the advantage 
 of industry over barbarism, of the rule of justice 
 over the rule of the stronger. True, more wealth 
 has been wasted on war and armaments during the 
 last century than in any previous century ; but the 
 sum wasted in proportion to income has been con- 
 siderably less. The world is clearly passing from the 
 stage of militarism into the stage of industrialism. In 
 the eighteenth century almost the whole produce of 
 taxation was spent on defence and police. Popular 
 government has already seized upon large sums for 
 education and public health, for roads, parks, and the 
 like. It is every day asking for more. Only by 
 looking back can we measure the rate of progress or 
 even realise that we are progressing. 
 
 II. 
 
 To remove doubts and to strengthen our belief 
 that war itself is a removable evil let us recollect first 
 of all how rapidly some evils which philosophers and 
 philanthropists deemed fixed and irremovable insti- 
 tutions have disappeared or are disappearing. 
 
 Look at slavery. The last vestiges of serfdom 
 are vanishing in Russia. Europe is practically free 
 from the curse. Slavery has been abolished in the 
 United States, and I suppose one may say that America 
 from Alasca to Patagonia is a continent where men 
 cannot own men. The slave trade is nearly abolished 
 in Africa, and though European capitalists in the
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 47 
 
 Congo and on the Rand have devised forms of servi- 
 tude for natives and coolies which may well excite 
 our indignation and alarm, yet I feel confident that 
 economic causes as well as the revolt of humanity 
 will prevent these institutions from being profitable 
 or lasting. 
 
 Look at torture: a practice which flourished in every 
 civilised country but England at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, and was regarded as an almost 
 indispensable aid to justice, has been absolutely abol- 
 ished. With what joy would Beccaria and Voltaire 
 have beheld this wonderful transformation. Here at 
 any rate reason has converted the world. 
 
 Look at the altered treatment of prisoners and 
 lunatics and paupers, and at the rationalisation of 
 punishment. What a triumph for Bentham. And 
 with what full hearts would Howard and Elizabeth 
 Fry have greeted the change that has come over the 
 institutions they visited and condemned. 
 
 Look again at the duel. It is a declining practice 
 in Spain. It exists as a somewhat dangerous and 
 exciting sport in the crack corps of German univer- 
 sities ; it is artificially maintained in the German 
 army, and one hears of bloodless encounters between 
 French journalists. But it is everywhere discredited, 
 and will soon be extinct. In our own country it 
 has not been heard of for half a century. If the 
 false ideas of honour among gentlemen that gave 
 rise to the duel are exploded, will not the same fate 
 overtake the same false ideas of honour which have 
 been the fertile source of disastrous wars between 
 nations ? If the law can arbitrate upon individual 
 quarrels and afford sufficient vindication to insulted
 
 4 8 
 
 honour, can it not equally well discharge the task 
 when nations quarrel ? It is quite clear I think 
 that international commonsense will no longer allow 
 a drunken officer, or for that matter a sober one, 
 to plunge two nations into war by insulting a flag. 
 
 But the disappearance of the duel is no isolated 
 phenomenon. The duel was only one form of private 
 war. With it we must associate the virtual suppres- 
 sion of brigandage in civilised countries and of piracy 
 at sea. In the middle ages every petty baron made 
 war on his own account ; a knight errant was a 
 robber ; poverty was the traveller's best passport in 
 the most orderly kingdoms of Europe. The seas 
 were equally insecure ; the coasts of England, France, 
 and the Netherlands were infested by pirates, and 
 most of our naval heroes, in Queen Elizabeth's name, 
 practised what was then an honourable profession as 
 long as you only plundered the foreigner. It was 
 dangerous to cross the Channel even in those rare 
 intervals when we were at peace with Europe. To 
 a patriot pirate all aliens were enemies, though curi- 
 ously enough our wisest monarch encouraged alien 
 immigration. In the second half of the seventeenth 
 century, under the patronage of France and England, 
 the buccaneers harried and plundered the Spaniards 
 in the West Indies by land and sea. For the sack 
 of Panama a monster like Henry Morgan was rewarded 
 with the government of Jamaica. In the eighteenth cen- 
 tury the police of the seas improved ; but it is less than 
 a hundred years since a British fleet bombarded Algiers, 
 to punish the Bey for preying upon commerce in the 
 Mediterranean ; it is little more than forty years since 
 our jingoes applauded, rather more than thirty since
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 49 
 
 they paid for, the exploits of the Alabama. It was a 
 thin partition that divided the privateer from the pirate. 
 The day of both has gone by. If the movements of 
 civilisation are so plainly in the right direction, we shall 
 be further encouraged by observing their dependence 
 on causes that cannot cease to operate, and are almost 
 certain to have an ever-growing influence. 
 
 The progress of discovery and invention has multi- 
 plied the fruits of the soil and the rewards of industry. 
 Never before has there been in the world so rapid 
 and extensive an exchange of things and persons 
 and ideas. Think of steam, electricity, the post, and 
 the telegraph ! Every country has opened its gates 
 to the tourist and commercial traveller. Traffic, 
 cheapened and accelerated by land and sea, has 
 mocked the miserable barriers set up by ignorance 
 or corruption in the old world and the new. Thus 
 the nations have been drawn together by innumer- 
 able ties of friendship and interest, light as air but 
 strong as steel, invisible to the mind of the sensa- 
 tional journalist, but none the less real and difficult 
 to break. I have seen over and over again the 
 growing strength of these ties manifesting itself 
 whenever irresponsible mischief-makers on either side 
 have endeavoured to create or inflame a misunder- 
 standing. Our immense commerce with Germany, 
 America, France arrays the millions who are depen- 
 dent upon it against any action that might endanger 
 it. We may be quite sure that a strenuous opposi- 
 tion would be offered to anything like war. It may 
 be said, however, that commercial competition, " the 
 war for the world's markets " as silly writers like 
 to call it, is a new cause of war. This I doubt very
 
 50 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 much. I think a thousand pounds worth of trade was 
 more likely to produce war two centuries ago than 
 a hundred millions' worth to-day. Besides, the fact 
 that no war for trade has ever recouped itself, and 
 the obvious improbability that such a war would 
 ever " pay," are reasons for hoping that this pecu- 
 liarly base and foolish species of imperialistic enter- 
 prise is doomed. 
 
 Again, the decline of religious intolerance and the 
 practical disappearance of religious persecution remove 
 a fertile source of war, and especially of civil war. 
 The spread of democracy and of a feeling that men 
 are naturally free and equal, the idea that the dis- 
 tinction of ranks is artificial, and that the accidents 
 of wealth and birth should be as far as possible 
 counteracted, have already made dynastic wars and 
 wars of succession an anomaly. Yet a century ago 
 these were rightly counted by European publicists 
 among the principal dangers to peace. Whether the 
 risk that a military genius like Napoleon might 
 again arise, establish a tyranny, and seek to dominate 
 the world has quite disappeared I will not inquire. 
 But obviously he would not get the same welcome, 
 and I think we may reasonably hope that he would 
 not entertain the same ambition. 
 
 Seymour. Is there not a danger that the races which 
 are becoming humane and refined may be enfeebled 
 and fall victims to ruder races that retain the passion 
 for war and the lust of conquest ? 
 
 Case. That is part of the argument about the 
 purifying and bracing influences of war that one some- 
 times hears from the pulpit in times of excitement and 
 crisis, and from poets, laureate and other.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 51 
 
 Arbiter. Yes. Poor Tennyson fell into a sort of 
 frenzy when the Crimean War appeared. He be- 
 lieved that it would destroy " the canker of peace " 
 and dissipate all our social evils. 
 
 Clarke. And think of Henley, who wrote a paean 
 every time De Wet's capture was predicted or 
 announced ; and of Kipling, who could not bear to 
 think of a schoolboy wielding a bat when he might 
 have been potting at a Boer with a rifle. 
 
 Arbiter. I have not spoken of the invigorating 
 influences of war, because war in my judgment always 
 leaves a nation weaker, morally, physically, and finan- 
 cially, than it was before. It used to be argued for 
 duels, as it now is for wars, that they " served to 
 counteract the effeminate tendencies of sedentary states 
 of society, and to admonish men of the healthiness 
 and necessity of courage." But Englishmen, who have 
 less of duelling and military drill than any other 
 nation, are the most devoted to sport and physical 
 exercises. I doubt if it can be said that even animal 
 courage is fostered by modern war, though doubtless 
 it makes tremendous demands on the nerves. 
 
 Meyer. You have said a great deal about the justice 
 and necessity of war, and you have shown that many 
 wars ought to be avoided and would be avoided if 
 their consequences could be foreseen. But what about 
 patriotic wars ? Is not patriotism the great cause of 
 war ? It was the national patriotic feeling of Germany 
 that brought on the war with France ; and it is the 
 national feeling of Japan that has brought on the war 
 with Russia. 
 
 Arbiter. Undoubtedly patriotism is a word, if not 
 a sentiment, with which statesmen who want war may
 
 52 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 conjure. But before we call it a cause of war we ought 
 to define it carefully. Shall we define it simply as 
 " love of one's country " ? 
 
 Case. Properly speaking it is " love of one's native 
 land " ; but that would rule out nationalised aliens, so 
 that a considerable number of citizens in every country 
 would be incapable of patriotism. And we know that 
 an alien is often fonder of his adopted country than 
 a native. I therefore agree with your definition. 
 
 Meyer. And I also. Look at the United States. 
 There you have English and Irish, Russians and Poles, 
 Germans and Roumanians and Italians all equally 
 devoted to the Star-Spangled Banner. 
 
 Arbiter. Very well then, patriotism is the love not 
 necessarily of one's fatherland, but of the country in 
 which one lives, exercising the rights and enjoying the 
 privileges of citizenship. Now, Meyer, you say that 
 this virtue of patriotism is the principal cause of war. 
 
 Meyer. Yes ; for a patriot cannot allow his country 
 to be insulted, or her interests to be endangered. And 
 surely a patriot wants his country to win. 
 
 Arbiter. Nay, that is not enough for your argument: 
 you should say : " A patriot wants his country to go to 
 war." We are not considering what is the state of 
 mind of the citizen after war is declared ; we are con- 
 sidering its condition before war is declared. Do you 
 think that a patriot must want his country to go to 
 war whenever the opportunity offers ? 
 
 Meyer. No; certainly not. Just now, for instance, 
 with consols at 90, it would be most disastrous. We 
 could not afford it. 
 
 Arbiter. But supposing there were a good oppor- 
 tunity, and we had a grievance and plenty of money ?
 
 Meyer. Even then there might be differences of 
 opinion. 
 
 Arbiter. Among patriots ? 
 
 Meyer. Yes, I suppose so ; but after the war had 
 once begun there could be none. 
 
 Arbiter. Do you mean that those who thought it 
 foolish and wrong before would have to think it 
 wise and righteous afterwards ? 
 
 Meyer. No, not quite that. But the patriot would 
 want his country to win, whether the war was right 
 or wrong, wise or foolish, and during the struggle 
 he would not say that he thought her in the wrong. 
 
 Clarke. Then in the war of American Independence 
 Chatham and Burke and Fox were not patriots ? 
 
 Meyer. Chatham ! 
 
 Clarke. Yes ; and he advised his eldest son, who 
 was an officer in the army, to resign his commission 
 rather than fight against the Americans. 
 
 Meyer. There must be some mistake ; Chatham, the 
 founder of the British Empire ! Could he have 
 thought it would do us more harm to win than to 
 lose ? 
 
 Browne. The American War was an exceptional case. 
 
 Arbiter. The exceptional case often clears away 
 doubts and difficulties. We are now all agreed not 
 only that patriots may be opposed to war, but also 
 that, after the war they are opposed to is declared, 
 they may dread the success even more than the failure 
 of their country's arms. And they may continually 
 endeavour to bring about peace as Burke and the 
 " Pro-Americans " did in the early years of the 
 American War, as Fox did in the early years of the 
 French War, as Cobden and Bright and afterwards
 
 54 
 
 Gladstone did in the Crimean War, and as the so-called 
 " Pro-Boers " (men who were by no means confined 
 to one political party) did during the late war with 
 the South African Republics. Patriotism is indeed a 
 virtue. But there is a true patriotism and a false 
 patriotism. The true patriot is the man who sees 
 what is best for his country and tries to do it. If 
 war is always, or generally, bad for a country, the 
 true patriot will be always or generally opposed to 
 it. So far is patriotism from being a warlike virtue, 
 or a cause of war. 
 
 Clarke. In a slightly different sense patriotism is 
 used for the feeling that binds men of the same race 
 and blood and literature. This may lead to war in 
 two ways. They may be living under antagonistic 
 governments, as the ' unredeemed ' Italians in Austria, 
 who want to be joined to Italy, or the Poles, who 
 want to restore the independence of Poland. This 
 is a cause that ennobles, even if it does not justify war. 
 Or, again, they may be so violently national (in their 
 antipathies) that they cannot get on with other people. 
 The love of their own land and nation may degenerate 
 into an ignorant hatred of their neighbours. 
 
 Arbiter. No doubt warlike dispositions may be cul- 
 tivated and flourish on the soil of nationality. In 
 that way certainly the instinct of patriotism does be- 
 come aggressive. It may be played upon by an 
 unscrupulous government anxious to divert popular 
 attention from grievances at home. 
 
 Truelove. A godless device. 
 
 Browne. But an old one. Alison, an accurate and 
 painstaking historian as well as a strong Tory, has ex- 
 posed very frankly and sympathetically the motives that
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 55 
 
 led the landed aristocracy of England (in alliance with 
 the corrupt corporations of the towns and the whole 
 force of the Established Church) to clamour for a war 
 with France. The French Revolution, he says, had 
 awakened democratic ambition in England. " The 
 desire of power under the name of reform was rapidly 
 gaining ground among the middle ranks, and the institu- 
 tions of the country were threatened with an overthrow 
 as violent as that which had recently taken place in 
 the French Monarchy. In these circumstances, the 
 only mode of checking the evil was by engaging in 
 a foreign contest,- by drawing off the ardent spirits 
 into active service, and, in lieu of the modern desire 
 for innovation, rousing the ancient gallantry of the 
 British nation." That is a candid avowal of the 
 motive that drove Pitt into the longest and most 
 disastrous of all our wars. 
 
 Arbiter. Another great danger to peace is the spirit 
 of meddling. It was to counteract this danger that 
 the United States made it their settled policy not to 
 interfere in the concerns of Europe. As far as Eng- 
 lish policy is concerned, the doctrine of non-inter- 
 vention, if not invented, was first brought prominently 
 forward and pressed on our statesmen by Cobden. 
 It came to this : under no circumstances is it desir- 
 able or expedient, under few if any circumstances is 
 it permissible or justifiable, for a State like ours to 
 depart from a position of absolute neutrality in the 
 quarrels, either internal or external, of other States. 
 It amounts, I think, to a condemnation of alliances 
 certainly of offensive alliances. Before the doctrine of 
 non-intervention had fairly taken hold we drifted into 
 the Crimean War. That is the only plain exception
 
 56 
 
 I know of to our maintenance of the new rule of 
 statesmanship, until it was again infringed in the 
 case of the Transvaal, and that exception is now 
 admitted by all parties to have been a disastrous mis- 
 take. It often happens that disorders arise in other 
 States ; perhaps there is a revolution ; perhaps there 
 is gross corruption and maladministration of justice ; 
 perhaps a British citizen who has gone there for sport, 
 or to make money, or to make converts for some 
 religious organisation, suffers some injury to his person 
 or property. What is to be done ? Above all, be 
 cool and dignified. Do not bluster or bully, as 
 Palmerston did in the case of Don Pacifico. Gener- 
 ally the best way, as a good friend of mine once 
 pointed out in an address on this subject, to help a 
 State which is in disorder to get back to order is to 
 allow " medicatory influences " to operate. Let its 
 self-respect, its notions of what is right and fitting, 
 come into play, and such a State will work out its 
 own salvation. So Abyssinia after British, and Mexico 
 after French intervention, recovered their prosperity 
 for themselves. In other cases, such as Belgium and 
 Greece, good has certainly been done by the bene- 
 volent intervention of neutral Powers acting in concert. 1 
 Belgium was saved from the Dutch, whose rule was 
 felt to be oppressive. Russia, France, and Great 
 Britain certainly did good by joint action when they 
 insisted that the Sultan of Turkey should recognise 
 the liberty of Greece. The intervention of the United 
 States in Cuba was single-handed, and their war with 
 Spain lost its disinterested character when they seized 
 
 1 Cp. Switzerland and Luxemburg and the proposed neutralisation 
 of Holland and Denmark.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 57 
 
 and held Puerto Rico and the Philippines. To pro- 
 ceed by concert with other Powers is one thing. 
 Single-handed armed intervention, however good its 
 motives and aims e.g. to rescue the oppressed, to 
 restore liberty, or prevent massacre must always be 
 suspected. In short, I doubt whether results have ever 
 justified one nation in going to war alone on behalf 
 of another, or in making a treaty which would require 
 them to go to war on behalf of another State. No 
 statesmen should ever sign a document that might 
 bring his country into a war, not on the merits, but, 
 as it were, on the bond. Friends of liberty, I know, 
 are under a great temptation to assist revolutionary 
 factions in other countries. But such assistance often 
 prejudices the cause. For a party that calls in foreign 
 assistance always incurs odium and sometimes merits 
 it. Upon the whole I should say that the improve- 
 ment of the world during the last fifty years is very 
 largely due to the adoption by most civilised States in a 
 greater or less degree of the grand rule of non-inter- 
 vention. Nearly all our own misfortunes during the 
 last ten years may be traced to neglect of this principle. 
 But we have not yet slipped back to where we once 
 were. To show you the old style of English foreign 
 policy and the tradition which Palmerston kept up 
 as long as he could, let me read you a quotation from 
 an English newspaper for October 22nd, 1834 : 
 
 " As at home, so abroad ; the Whigs have failed in all their 
 negotiations, and not one question have they settled, except the 
 passing of a Reform Bill and a Poor Law Bill. The Dutch ques- 
 tion is undecided ; the French are still at Ancona ; Don Carlos 
 is fighting in Spain ; Turkey and Egypt are at daggers drawn ; 
 Switzerland is quarrelling with her neighbouring states about Italian 
 refugees ; Frankfort is occupied by Prussian troops in violation of
 
 58 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the treaty of Vienna ; Algiers is being made a large French 
 colony, in violation of the promises made to the contrary by 
 France in 1829 and 1830 ; ten thousand Polish nobles are still 
 proscribed and wandering in Europe ; French gaols are full of 
 political offenders, who, when liberated or acquitted, will begin 
 again to conspire. In one word nothing is terminated." 
 
 Upon this Cobden remarked, "It is plain that, if 
 this writer had his will the Whigs would leave 
 nothing in the world for Providence to attend to." 
 The particular case under consideration was that of 
 Turkey. His special argument against interposing 
 there was that, if we would remodel Turkey, we 
 must act in conjunction with Russia, Austria and 
 France, and that there was at the time no hope of 
 inducing these powers to a sincere and disinterested 
 co-operation. But his general argument for strict 
 neutrality is so cogent and instructive that you 
 must let me give it in his own words : 
 
 " We are aware that it would be a novel case for England to 
 remain passive, whilst a struggle was going on between two 
 European powers ; and we know also, that there is a predilection 
 for continental politics amongst the majority of our countrymen, 
 that would render it extremely difficult for any administration to 
 preserve peace under such circumstances. Public opinion must 
 undergo a change ; our ministers must no longer be held respon- 
 sible for the every-day political quarrels all over Europe : nor, 
 when an opposition member of Parliament, or an opposition 
 journalist, wishes to assail a foreign secretary, must he be suffered 
 to taunt him with neglect of the honour of Great Britain, if he 
 should prudently abstain from involving her in the dissensions that 
 afflict distant communities." 
 
 Twenty-five years later Cobden rejoiced to see 
 such an outburst of public opinion in England against 
 intervention in the Italian War as made it impossible
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 59 
 
 for a Palmerstonian cabinet to do anything but observe 
 strict neutrality. " I must congratulate this country," 
 he said, in a speech at Rochdale which I well re- 
 member, " that we have for the first time almost in 
 our modern history, seen great armies march and 
 great battles take place on the continent without 
 England having taken any part in the strife." This 
 habit of non-intervention in the domestic concerns 
 and civil strife of other countries, together with the 
 habit of being content to look on when other countries 
 are so foolish as to go to war, is now almost as 
 universal as the opposite custom was in the eigh- 
 teenth and all preceding centuries. Professional states- 
 men are slow learners ; but it is to their credit that 
 they have at last learned, first from the United States 
 then from England, the wisdom of neutrality. When 
 a great war breaks out the instinct of neutral states 
 is, if not to put out the fire, at least to prevent it 
 from spreading. 
 
 Meyer. But surely if there were non-intervention 
 there would be no war and patriotism would die out. 
 
 Arbiter. My friend, you are incorrigible ; you are 
 making the old mistake of regarding patriotism as 
 the distinctive virtue of soldiers. If that were so 
 the Germans would be the most patriotic, the English- 
 men the least patriotic ; for in Germany every citizen 
 is a soldier, whereas we carry on our wars with 
 mercenaries who are paid so much a day for killing 
 our enemies. Patriotism is the love of one's country, 
 of its laws and institutions, its languages and traditions. 
 
 Meyer. I admit I was mistaken in counting patriot- 
 ism a purely military virtue ; but surely it is the 
 highest mark of patriotism to die for the State.
 
 60 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Seymour. Then the soldier is more of a patriot 
 than the general. 
 
 Meyer. Why ? I don't understand. 
 
 Seymour. Because the general only telephones the 
 instructions which lead to the soldier being killed, 
 whereas the soldier is actually killed. 
 
 Clarke. And I suppose the Prime Minister is less 
 patriotic than the General ; for he is still further 
 removed from true patriotism, which is death. He 
 only frames the policy that sets armies in motion and 
 enables the General to give the instructions that lead 
 to slaughter, 
 
 Seymour. Politics are beyond my province, but I 
 am quite sure Admiral Tracy will agree with me 
 that patriotism is no necessary part of a soldier's or 
 a sailor's stock-in-trade. Any brave semi-barbarous 
 race, if well handled, may be induced to fight the 
 battles of a civilised conqueror. Look at the long 
 devotion of the ferocious Croats to the House of 
 Hapsburg, or look at our own experiences in India. 
 We found races with plenty of animal courage like 
 the Sikhs and Ghourkas ; we fed them and paid them 
 properly and they have fought almost as well for 
 us as they did against us. 
 
 Admiral Tracy. During the war with Napoleon 
 many of our sailors were Americans and Norwegians 
 pressed into the service. They fought well enough. 
 
 Browne. There was a time when the Swiss Mer- 
 cenaries were esteemed the best soldiers in Europe, 
 and for centuries it was the custom of German princes 
 to let out troops on hire to a friendly sovereign. 
 The Swiss were regarded as specially loyal and trust- 
 worthy troops.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 61 
 
 Clarke. What of the Poles and the Tirolese and 
 the Hungarians and the Boers ? 
 
 Arbiter. It is not denied that patriotism often 
 inspires desperate valour. But valour, not patriotism, 
 is the military virtue. Men naturally courageous 
 and fond of adventure but devoid of patriotism may, 
 and often have, been the best soldiers. Then I suppose 
 it will hardly be contested that military qualities are 
 but a slight protection to nationality. The German, 
 whose courage and aptitude for military discipline are 
 renowned, denationalises very quickly. Meyer can 
 tell us how soon his friends from the Fatherland take 
 colour from their English surroundings. 
 
 Browne. And what have the splendid conduct and 
 victories of the German soldiers in Austria done to 
 maintain the Ost Reich. Fashion all but Germanised 
 Hungary and Bohemia in the days of Maria-Theresa, 
 but force has not helped the empire against the dis- 
 integrating forces of nationalism. 
 
 Seymour. Nations strong in national feeling may 
 be very deficient in military virtues. Yet for all 
 that they may recover their liberty and extrude the 
 military conqueror. Do you remember that excellent 
 saying of Bismarck's when he was told that the 
 Italians had regained a province. " What, and with- 
 out losing a battle ! " The German Tirolese still 
 remember the drubbing they gave the Italians at 
 Custozza in 1866. 
 
 Clarke. The fact is, you can't govern a nation 
 against its will. What are the weakest spots in the 
 German and Russian Empires ? The Polish pro- 
 vinces. In Austria the Poles give comparatively little 
 trouble, because they have autonomy.
 
 62 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 T'ruetove. Conquest and dominion invariably injure 
 the conquering, or as we love to call it, the imperial 
 race. But to the governed may not an empire under 
 certain circumstances, and for a time, be a real 
 blessing ? 
 
 Arbiter. It depends upon your system and your 
 governor. In his account of the Straits Settlements 
 Lieut-General Sir A. Clarke states that when he 
 arrived as governor at Singapore, in November, 
 1873, the sea was infested with pirates and the coast- 
 ing trade suspended. The question was how to 
 restore order and prosperity ? 
 
 The principles on which he acted were very simple. 
 Personal influence always has great effect upon natives 
 of the type of the Perak chiefs, and this influence he 
 endeavoured to apply. Where it was possible he sought 
 interviews with them, and pointed out the effect of 
 the evils from which the country was suffering. 
 Their real interests were peace, trade, and the opening 
 up of their country. In place of anarchy and irregular 
 revenues he held out the prospects of peace and plenty. 
 " I found them in cotton ; I told them that if they 
 would trust me I would clothe them in silk. Their 
 rule had resulted in failure ; I offered them advisers 
 who would restore order from chaos without curtailing 
 their sovereignty." They listened to reason ; and since 
 that time, adds this experienced administrator, " I have 
 often wondered how many of our useless, expensive, 
 and demoralising small wars might have been avoided 
 by similar modes of procedure. The temptations to 
 make war are far stronger than is generally known. 
 A butcher's bill appeals to the dullest imagination, 
 and speedily brings down rewards and honours,
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 63 
 
 which the mere negotiator, however successful, cannot 
 hope to obtain. Perhaps a future analyst of causation 
 will be able to tell us for how much slaughter and 
 wasted treasure decorations are responsible." 
 
 To show what advantages followed the adoption 
 of this system let me give just one sentence of 
 statistics: From 1876 to 1896 the imports of 
 Perak as a British Protectorate, rose from 831,000 
 to 8,700,000 dollars, the exports from 739,000 to 
 15,596,000 dollars; and the population from less 
 than 50,000 to 280,000. 
 
 Ego. I wish you woul'd enlarge upon the govern- 
 ment of dependencies. 
 
 Arbiter. Ah ; that is a vast subject indeed. I 
 have only opened it. What a bubble is the bubble 
 of expansion. How worthless, empty, and attractive. 
 I doubt if the thirst for empire will be quenched 
 before the whole habitable globe is mapped out into 
 spheres of influence. However, that process is nearly 
 accomplished. As to the government of dependencies, 
 when any young man asks me about colonial empire, 
 I advise him to read the whole series of Lord Cromer's 
 Reports on Egypt. There you have the record told 
 year by year of the regeneration of Egypt ; how in 
 twenty short years that miserable Turkish province 
 has been rescued by sound finance, lawful adminis- 
 tration, tact, moderation and patience. But our 
 empire is far too large. In Southern and Central 
 Africa we have clearly done more harm than good 
 to others as well as ourselves. The hundreds of 
 millions of money that have been spent out there 
 on useless wars ought to have been kept at home. 
 If half the organising ability and half the treasure
 
 64 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 that have been squandered to conquer savages in 
 the tropics had been laid out at home in rebuilding 
 slums, in reclaiming criminals and unemployables, 
 and in making the life of the poor more tolerable, 
 we should be a stronger, healthier, and happier nation. 
 
 Clarke. It is difficult, of course, to lay down any 
 maxim of government that is of universal application 
 at all times, and under all circumstances. But experi- 
 ence is surely teaching Europe not to seek empire 
 in tropical countries. The conquest of alien races, 
 especially of a different colour, nearly always corrupts 
 the individual, and never profits the state. Think 
 of Brutus and his financial gang in Asia Minor ; think 
 of the Slave Trade ; think of the East India Com- 
 pany and Burke's catalogue of its iniquities ; think 
 of the Spanish hunt for gold ; of the Chartered Com- 
 pany and Rhodesia ; of Germany and the Herreros ; 
 of the water cure in the Philippines ; think of the 
 Congo State and King Leopold. It makes one shiver 
 and shudder, this picture of Europeans and their colo- 
 nists as the bloody extortioners of Asia and Africa. 
 And then there is always retribution ; punishment 
 may be slow and halt, but she never fails to over- 
 take a guilty nation. See how pirate peculators and 
 speculators have corrupted the political life, sapped 
 the vigour, and often brought financial ruin upon 
 the nations whose governments permitted, or abetted, 
 or concerted their crimes against humanity. 
 
 Arbiter. I believe in my heart that the days when 
 civilisation could be spread by armies are gone by. 
 Commerce and printing are the distributors of inven- 
 tions, art and science and learning are the agents of 
 civilisation. How could European conquests have
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 65 
 
 communicated European standards of law and govern- 
 ment to Japan ? The Japanese have learnt more 
 from the West, infinitely more, in twenty years 
 than the natives of India in ten times that period. 
 And the Japanese have kept their vivid sense of 
 nationality, their pride, their self-respect. 
 
 Clarke. They have learnt, but they have not 
 surrendered. The Indians have surrendered but they 
 have not learnt. Abyssinia is another case. It was 
 well for her that she was strong enough to resist 
 the European invader. 
 
 Meyer. Why, I believe you are glad that the Mad 
 Mullah escaped us. 
 
 Case. And why not ? If you read between the 
 lines of the official blue books he was a man to have 
 been encouraged and helped, not hindered. His only 
 faults were his virtues. He was so good a judge 
 that his authority and influence extended until it awoke 
 the envy of a British Consul, who imagined (I suppose) 
 that war would mean promotion. 
 
 Arbiter. A wise government with an extended 
 Empire should keep a very tight hand upon its agents, 
 and should take care that men of good sense and 
 intelligence and sympathy are posted in places where 
 the native chiefs need careful handling. 
 
 Ego. Of course the Consular Service is a branch 
 of the diplomatic. Do you regard diplomacy as a 
 means of preventing war ? 
 
 Arbiter. Certainly it should be. It is a question 
 of the men selected and of the spirit breathed into 
 the foreign office by its chief and his principal sub- 
 ordinates. If an administration wants war the 
 Ambassador is instructed to find a pretext. I hope
 
 66 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 there are Ambassadors certainly the late Sir Julian 
 Pauncefote was one who would rather resign their 
 office than become the instruments of war-making 
 diplomacy. But there have been and are undoubtedly 
 others who have led peacefully disposed governments 
 into war. When Lord Clarendon said we ' drifted ' 
 into the Crimean War he only expressed half the truth. 
 The other half is that Lord Aberdeen and his col- 
 leagues were piloted into war by Lord Stratford de 
 RedclifFe, their Turcophile Ambassador at Constan- 
 tinople. 
 
 Clarke. And in the same way Milner as High 
 Commissioner and representative of the Colonial 
 Office made a peaceful settlement with Kruger very 
 difficult. 
 
 Ego. You remind me of two epigrams I once heard 
 in the All Souls Common Room. The talk ran on 
 war and diplomacy and one of the Fellows said : In 
 the middle ages war was the normal, peace the excep- 
 tional state. Now the position is reversed and we 
 see the difference in diplomacy. Mediaeval diplomacy 
 aimed at the conclusion of peace. Modern diplomacy 
 aims at the conclusion of war. " Yes," exclaimed 
 another, "and therefore the Mediaeval diplomacy 
 started with a furious exchange of insults and gradually 
 sank into courtesy. Modern diplomacy starts with 
 compliments and ends with threats." 
 
 Case. That was certainly so in the preliminaries of 
 the Boer War and of the present war between Russia 
 and Japan. 
 
 Seymour. What you said about ambassadors resigning 
 office rather than becoming the instruments of injustice 
 would apply logically to other branches of the public
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 67 
 
 service. Is it not better that the whole responsibility 
 should be taken by the Ministers, and that the 
 ambassadors, generals, and so on should be regarded 
 as guiltless instruments. 
 
 Arbiter. If the instrument is guiltless what an awful 
 load of blood guiltiness rests upon the Ministers who 
 bring about an unjust war. But I don't see myself 
 how it is possible for soldiers, sailors, and servants, 
 and other paid agents of the State to shuffle off 
 all moral responsibility. Leading officers in the 
 British army and navy refused to serve in the war 
 against our American colonies. They could not 
 prevent the crime, but they would not participate. 
 
 Seymour. I have never seen the question touched 
 in the military text-books, it is always assumed that 
 soldiers must " submit their judgment." 
 
 Clarke. And yet I doubt if you would find any 
 Christian or Pagan Moralist to admit that in such 
 cases personal responsibility ceases. 
 
 Admiral. So far as I can see, war, whether by sea or 
 land, requires implicit obedience to orders. On a ship 
 of war almost every act of the sailor's life is regulated 
 by his superior officers. Such a life naturally weakens 
 and destroys habits of independent thought. You 
 can't expect the crews of the navy, or the rank and 
 file of the army, to judge the justice or injustice of 
 a particular war. They have chosen a career which 
 binds them to fight when required. As for officers 
 I have never seen anything for it but this. If you 
 are asked to serve in a war which you feel to be 
 unjust you should refuse, and if necessary resign 
 your commission, only taking up arms in such a 
 case where the defence of the country requires it.
 
 68 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Seymour. I like your rule, it seems workable. 
 
 Arbiter. But it leaves one with the conviction that 
 for the great mass of soldiers and sailors discipline 
 is a substitute for morals. 
 
 True/ove. And the habit of obedience for the voice 
 of conscience. 
 
 Seymour. Certainly ; and that is as you would expect ; 
 for, as the Duke of Wellington said, war is a most 
 detestable thing. We soldiers agree to fight, if necessary, 
 though we know it to be detestable. Under a system 
 of conscription every one is compelled to learn how 
 to fight, though I believe in most countries con- 
 scientious objectors are allowed to pay a fine instead. 
 Is a conscript less of a moral person than a soldier who 
 enlists ? And what about the morals of a volunteer ? 
 
 Case. My dear Captain ! You are leading us 
 into a labyrinth of casuistries. Let us be content 
 with a simple statement : 
 
 " Rara fides pietasque viris qui castra sequuntur." 
 
 If you want morals you don't go to a camp or a 
 battleship. 
 
 Admiral. Any more than if you want justice you 
 go to the Temple. 
 
 Arbiter. After that exchange of courtesies I had 
 better go on with my paper. 
 
 The great features of military history in the last 
 50 years are first the development of explosives, guns, 
 artillery, and all the machinery of destruction by land 
 and sea, and second, the extension of the system of 
 conscription over practically the whole continent of 
 Europe. This might seem to confirm the theory that 
 as war always has existed it always will exist. Does
 
 it not at least betray a nervous consciousness among 
 all nations that their disputes must be decided by 
 war, and that therefore their whole population must 
 be trained to fight. 
 
 In my judgment it is far more probable that 
 conscription will be the cure of militarism. Military 
 development has run its course and ended in a 
 mire. Every able-bodied Russian, German, French- 
 man, Austrian, Italian is a soldier, in order that his 
 Government may have the advantage of its neighbour 
 or rival in a dispute. The result is no gain, but 
 much loss. A standing army of say one soldier to 
 1000 or of one soldier to 10,000 of the population 
 would give the same balance of power, and would 
 enable all the nations to reap the fruits of peace ; 
 and if they are content to abandon the idea of extending 
 their boundaries, and removing their neighbour's 
 landmarks, diplomacy and arbitration will settle 
 disputes in a manner far more equitable and satis- 
 factory to all parties. But it would seem the govern- 
 ing classes of Germany and Russia at all events hold 
 the opinion that great armies are the support of 
 Government, that great armies alone can deliver the 
 existing order from the menace of Socialism and 
 Nihilism, and that, apart from the overwhelming 
 power with which the army supplies the executive, 
 military service acts beneficently on the masses, 
 teaching discipline, obedience, and order. The view 
 that government rests upon force, that force is embodied 
 in the army, and that compulsory service raises the 
 morality, the physique, and even the intelligence of 
 the population, is highly characteristic of modern 
 bureaucratic policy.
 
 yo THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Bloch declares that on the Continent the pro- 
 pertied classes see safety in large armies, safety 
 apparently not so much from external foes as from 
 an internal revolution. If he had said " official 
 classes " he would have been right ; but I think that, 
 in western Europe at any rate, merchants and manu- 
 facturers, generally speaking, dislike militarism, and 
 would disclaim the sentiment. But it is true that 
 the well-to-do, and especially those who are busied 
 with money making, are easily hood-winked by the 
 official arguments put forward for more and more 
 expenditure upon military purposes ; and of course, 
 as the army increases, an increasing number of 
 families are interested in the advancement of younger 
 sons as officers or in lucrative contracts for supplying 
 the troops. 
 
 Wherever the press is under official control, or 
 is corrupt, or is largely in the hands of syndicates, 
 possibly run by contractors, all manner of plausible 
 lies can be circulated in regard to the inadequacy 
 of national armaments, and reports are easily spread 
 of tremendous preparations or threatening movements 
 by other countries which require still more tremen- 
 dous counter preparations on our part. The public 
 does not investigate rumours, nor can it, as a rule, 
 test the statements officially made ; and so until the 
 weight of taxation becomes oppressive it suffers 
 itself to be misled by the idea that the greater its 
 army or its navy, the greater is its security. Then 
 there is always a crowd of fools who think after 
 the writers in the cheap press, imagining that huge 
 armaments stimulate industry and so actually increase 
 the prosperity of the nation. Illusions like these
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 71 
 
 will always exist, but they need not be allowed to 
 influence national policy. Every one who is capable 
 of being taught ought to be taught that public money 
 spent unnecessarily is wasted wherever it is spent. 
 The theory that war is inevitable is always mixed 
 up in argument with the theory that military service 
 is a moral, and military expenditure an economic, 
 blessing. I have said something upon the first 
 theory, and I hope that we shall be able to throw 
 more light and discredit upon it during the week. 
 In view of the recent disclosures in Germany and 
 France, it is, I hope, unnecessary to prove that 
 two years of barrack life are undesirable for young 
 men ; but it is worth while to observe that, even 
 judged by the standpoint of military bureaucracy, 
 which desires to teach the lower classes to be humble 
 and obedient instruments of their superiors, conscrip- 
 tion has not been a success. It has embittered the 
 relations between classes ; it has no doubt broken 
 the spirit of many, but it has aroused a general and 
 wide-spread feeling of disaffection and discontent all 
 over the continent. Since the war of 1870, to "the 
 lessons" of which, with its predecessors in 1848 and 
 1854 and 1859 and 1866, the necessity of compulsory 
 service has been generally attributed, revolutionary 
 tendencies have spread rapidly in Russia, Germany, 
 and France. The growing strength of the Social 
 Democrats in Germany and of the Socialists in 
 France is the best answer to the military professor 
 who tells us that conscription is the only safeguard 
 of the constitution. What if a whole population 
 strikes against war ? What will happen to an order 
 that rests on force when a majority of the army is
 
 7 2 
 
 opposed to it ? Yet it seems possible that the 
 Social Democrats (an insignificant group in the early 
 seventies) may in a few years elect a majority of 
 the members of the German Parliament. Surely it 
 is significant that only in militarist nations are revolu- 
 tionary politics in fashion. How many socialists and 
 anarchists are there in Great Britain and the United 
 States ? I think there is one avowed socialist in 
 the House of Commons, and he is dependent for 
 his seat on Liberal votes. As for the Socialists and 
 Nihilists and revolutionaries of all shades who have 
 been pouring into the United States for so many 
 years by tens of thousands a year the salt water 
 seems to have drenched their enthusiasm. Their 
 discontent with society vanishes in a country that 
 is so free and prosperous compared with their own ; 
 and if they retain their revolutionary propaganda 
 they do not direct it against the American constitu- 
 tion. No : conscription is a dangerous weapon for 
 tyrants. It is strange that the Czar, who will not 
 give a vote to one of his subjects, insists upon each 
 one having a rifle and being taught to use it. 
 Case (grimly). 
 
 " Manus haec inimica tyrannis 
 Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem." 
 
 I wonder how many Lucans or Sydneys there are in 
 the Russian and Prussian armies ? 
 
 Clarke. Good wine needs no bush ; and a good 
 constitution needs no rifles to protect it. 
 
 Arbiter. I don't think that the movements of 
 popular opinion altogether escape the rulers of those 
 two Empires. It was the Czar who summoned the 
 Hague Conference, and the German Government,
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 73 
 
 after scoffing at the Hague Tribunal, has been very 
 happy to conclude an Arbitration Treaty with us. 
 It is pleasant too to think of Kant and Tolstoi, and 
 to remember that some of the noblest pleas in favour 
 of peace have been raised in the most unlikely 
 quarters. Forces growing in majesty aid us in this 
 struggle against war and militarism. Humanity, Utility, 
 Christianity, are more than symbols and catchwords. 
 The teaching of Christ in the Gospels, and pre- 
 eminently in the Sermon on the Mount, is nothing if 
 it is not a gospel of peace and love. Our Lord's mean- 
 ing is so unmistakable that a man who endeavours 
 to incite war or disturb peace between nations, let 
 him be Pope or King, Bishop or Minister, preacher 
 or writer, is no Christian. If he succeeds, the guilt 
 of bloodshed is upon him far more than upon the 
 humble agents who pull triggers and load maxims, 
 though, as I said, they cannot wholly escape responsi- 
 bility. I can imagine no Furies so dreadful, no 
 remorse so intolerable, no penitence so unavailing as 
 attend the man who has instigated an unjust or unneces- 
 sary war. On the other hand no one will be blessed 
 with a good conscience and all the inward peace and 
 happiness that God can give or man enjoy in ampler 
 measure than the peacemaker and the peace pre- 
 server, who, to the best of his ability, has exerted 
 himself to prevent the outbreak of war or to hasten 
 the return of peace. Such a man is the true 
 Christian, the true hero ; his moral courage, when he 
 withstands the popular fury, when he warns, con- 
 ciliates, and inspires, is infinitely loftier and nobler than 
 the physical courage of the warrior who risks his 
 life in the pursuit of glory. It has been objected, I
 
 74 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 know, by some very religious writers, who believe 
 war to be a necessity and even a good thing, a sort 
 of national purification, that war was never prohibited 
 in so many words by Christ. He repeated the com- 
 mandment, " Thou shalt not kill," which was no 
 doubt directed against the murder of one individual 
 by another in a private quarrel ; but he never said, 
 " Thou shalt not go to war." This is of course 
 perfectly true, but a satisfactory answer is very easily 
 made. The method of Christ as the teacher of an 
 improved system of morality was to transfer praise 
 and censure from the outward act to the inward grace 
 or sin from the crime or good deed to the inten- 
 tion or disposition which results in good or bad 
 conduct ; and though he never forbids war in express 
 terms, as he never forbids slavery, yet he does attach 
 guilt to all the passions which lead to war as 
 well as to all the actions which war involves. As 
 Erasmus said, " Christians who defend war must 
 defend the dispositions which lead to war ; and these 
 dispositions are absolutely forbidden." If you love 
 your enemies, it is difficult to see how you can run 
 them through with a bayonet, or pick them off" with 
 a rifle, or blow them to pieces with a shell, or send 
 them to the bottom of the sea with a torpedo. 
 
 This objection a learned apologist for war has met 
 by recommending a soldier to maintain feelings of 
 friendliness and goodwill towards his enemies even 
 while he is shooting and stabbing them. 1 So Gisborne, 
 in his Duties of Men, gravely advises the soldier 
 " never to forget the common ties of human nature 
 by ^which he is inseparately united to his enemy." 
 !\V. Hay, F.R.S., in his Essays.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 75 
 
 If any further argument were required to elucidate 
 what is plain to the humblest reader of the New 
 Testament I would give two more indications. One 
 is, that of all the Beatitudes the most emphatic is 
 pronounced upon the peacemakers. " Blessed are the 
 peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of 
 God." Another is, the attitude of James, who asks 
 in the Epistle : " Whence come wars and fightings 
 among you," and answers in the form of a question : 
 " Come they not hence even of your lusts that war 
 in your members ? " 
 
 Thus James, no questionable interpreter of his 
 divine brother and Master, directed the infant church 
 to work for the abolition of war, not by direct 
 prohibition, but by the removal of the dispositions, 
 passions, false notions of interest, and wrongful 
 ambitions that lead to it. 
 
 It is not at all necessary for me, looking upon war 
 as a barbarous and uncivilised thing, and regarding 
 it as in the nature of promiscuous murder, to clamour 
 for its immediate cessation, to demand that my own 
 country should immediately disarm and totally abandon 
 the maintenance of an army and navy. Nor, I con- 
 ceive, is it necessary, wise, or right that I should follow 
 Tolstoi's example by advising English soldiers to refuse 
 to fight, though I might, I think, be justified in so 
 doing if an attempt were made to introduce conscrip- 
 tion into England. The duty of an opponent of war 
 is to endeavour to promote its abolition by the means 
 which are most likely to attain the end in view. In 
 the first place, we should discredit the shallow pre- 
 texts that have so often been held to justify war ; 
 secondly, we should discredit the excessive armaments
 
 76 
 
 which only serve to stimulate competition in this most 
 disastrous and devilish branch of human industry ; 
 thirdly, we should seize every opportunity of explain- 
 ing and popularising the only civilised and reasonable 
 method of settling international disputes, that is, by 
 resort to arbitration. There are other indirect means 
 by which lovers of peace will strenuously endeavour 
 from time to time to serve the cause ; they will bring 
 home to the minds of their fellow-citizens the essential 
 connection of unproductive expenditure with oppres- 
 sive taxation and of oppressive taxation with high 
 prices, low wages, and lack of employment. They 
 will insist on the folly of intervening in the internal 
 politics of other countries, and on the duty of friendly 
 mediation to prevent or to put an end to war, and 
 they will never be tired of illustrating the truth, so 
 often denied, that the prosperity of other countries is 
 not prejudicial but contributory to our own. 
 
 III. 
 
 Clarke. You have given us an account of the causes 
 of war and what wars have at different times been 
 regarded as just and legitimate. But you haven't 
 told us what the Greek philosophers thought about 
 the subject. I remember that Aristotle has discussed 
 it ; and as there are two Oxford men here, and every 
 Oxford man is an Aristotelian, we might fairly ask 
 them to give us an exposition of their master's views, 
 so that we may see in what respects, if any, twenty- 
 three centuries have improved the philosophy of war 
 and peace. 
 
 Truelove. Aristotle is very concise in his treatment
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 77 
 
 of war ; and I cannot pretend that the philosopher 
 appears in this at his best. He falls far short of 
 Christian enlightenment, and there is one unregenerate 
 sentence that almost foreshadows the worst type of 
 modern jingoism. It is in the I5th chapter of the 
 Fourth Book of the Politics. After saying that courage 
 and endurance are the virtues of an active life, and 
 that " philosophy " is required for the life of contem- 
 plation and leisure, he says that both, but the latter 
 especially, need moderation and justice, "for war 
 compels men to be just and moderate, but the enjoy- 
 ment of good fortune and peaceful ease tends to make 
 men insolent." 
 
 Ego. But I think he never actually argues that war 
 purifies a State or the men who engage in it, much 
 less that it is a good thing in itself; on the contrary, 
 he is fond of saying " the end of war is peace." This 
 is, at any rate, better than the awful European con- 
 ception that the end of peace is war, and that the 
 great object of peaceful interludes is to enable great 
 nations to prepare vast armaments with a view to 
 fighting their neighbours. 
 
 Truelove. I quite agree. In the previous chapter 
 Aristotle analyses the causes of war and the reasons 
 for training soldiers. It is not, he says, to enslave 
 men who do not deserve slavery, but first to prevent 
 ourselves from being enslaved by others ; second, to 
 seek power, not with the object of obtaining a uni- 
 versal despotism, but for the good of our subjects ; 
 and, thirdly, in order to make slaves of those who 
 deserve to be slaves. Thus a justifiable war must be 
 waged either in self-defence or in order to extend a 
 sway and influence that will be beneficial, or, thirdly,
 
 78 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 to carry out the intentions of nature by enslaving 
 those who were naturally fitted to be slaves bar- 
 barians and the like. But, he says warningly, the 
 law-giver should be very careful to make his military 
 regulations subservient to peace and to the promotion 
 of leisure for his citizens. This principle, he says, is 
 inculcated by experience and history. For most cities 
 save themselves by war, but collapse on the acquisi- 
 tion of empire. And if, like steel, they lose their 
 temper in peace, that is the fault of their legislation 
 and government. 
 
 Clarke. Thank you. I wonder if you remember 
 but I suppose he is forgotten in modern Oxford 
 that Congreve, who transplanted Positivism to Eng- 
 land, wrote a commentary on Aristotle. There he 
 mentions two other grounds of war, the maintenance 
 of the balance of power and the duty of strong States 
 to interfere to prevent the oppression of weak States. 
 The maintenance of the balance of power was the 
 favourite cause, or pretext, of the eighteenth-century 
 wars ; the moral obligation of the strong to defend 
 the weak has been so often put forward as a ground 
 for unjust and indefensible wars that one is perhaps 
 inclined to deprecate it altogether, and to assume too 
 hastily that it never was or can be the real motive of 
 a nation. Curiously enough, Comte, the founder of 
 positivism, is said to have approved the Crimean War 
 on this ground as a measure of police, and his Eng- 
 lish disciple Congreve, though he denies its application 
 to the Crimean War, looks forward to a time when 
 the civilised nations of Western Europe, " who form 
 the vanguard of humanity," shall do their best to 
 put an end to the reign of unlawful domination, by
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 79 
 
 whomsoever exercised, whether in India, Algeria, Italy, 
 or Hungary. " But the time is distant yet," he says, 
 writing in 1855, " wnen such a ground can fairly be 
 taken." For my own part I own that it is hard to 
 find many examples of wars which could fairly be 
 called just, necessary, and advantageous. But in my 
 opinion a successful war of self-defence waged against 
 the encroachments either of a domestic tyrant like 
 Charles I. of England, or of a foreign tyrant, like 
 Philip II. of Spain, deserves to be so styled. 
 
 Arbiter. Your examples are strong, and one might 
 plead that such tyranny is not practised now. But 
 remember that even where the morality of resistance 
 is made out, a very important question remains, 
 namely, what method should be adopted. It is not 
 always advisable to fly to arms. The method of the 
 Finns in the face of far greater provocation may well 
 prove more efficacious than that adopted by the 
 Boers. In the same way the Irish Nationalists have 
 rightly attracted far more sympathy and have made 
 far more headway since they adopted constitutional 
 resistance in lieu of nihilism, or, if you like, parlia- 
 mentary obstruction in lieu of agrarian outrages. From 
 Fenians and dynamitards Ireland got coercion acts; 
 from Parnell and Redmond she has got Land Reform 
 and local self-government. 
 
 Seymour. How about Holland ? 
 
 Browne. Whether the Netherlands could have main- 
 tained their privileges against Philip without war is 
 a difficult question ; but certainly the early stages of 
 the controversy were badly handled. Romance has 
 done its best for the Beggars ; but they were not 
 enlightened patriots nay, I'm afraid we must say they
 
 80 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 were sad rascals, and very lucky to have gone down 
 to posterity as Founders of the Dutch Republic. 
 
 Seymour. Well ; how about England, then ? 
 
 Browne. As for the Civil War, would not English 
 liberties have been established sooner without it ? 
 
 Clarke. I remember that, in an imaginary conversa- 
 tion of Macaulay's Milton, he is made to defend the 
 Civil War as the only means of securing good govern- 
 ment. The argument was, that people are too apt to 
 consider war as a worse calamity than tyranny, because 
 its miseries are concentrated in a short space of time 
 and so may easily be taken in at one view, whereas 
 the misfortunes of tyrannical government, being dis- 
 tributed over a long period, make a less display, 
 though they may be more grievous and oppressive. 
 When the devil of tyranny has sojourned long in 
 the body politic he will not go forth without great 
 convulsions. Shall he then be suffered to remain in 
 the body, lest in going out he should tear and 
 rend it ? 
 
 Arbiter. You remind me of a saying in these parts, 
 that there are many more ways of killing a dog than 
 choking it with butter ; and I say, with all respect 
 to Macaulay's Milton, that there are more ways of 
 ridding a state of tyranny than by war. Hampden did 
 better for England by steadfastly refusing to pay ship 
 money than by taking up arms. Our own glorious 
 revolution and our still more glorious Reform Bill 
 were accomplished practically without bloodshed. I 
 think they did more, on balance, for liberty and good 
 government than most of the revolutions that have 
 been accomplished by force of arms. But the time 
 is getting late, so I shall ask our historian to bring
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 81 
 
 the day's proceedings to an end by reading a brief 
 narrative which he has been good enough to prepare 
 at my request. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Browne. A work that should exhibit a comprehensive 
 comparison of the actual /product of wars with the 
 declarations and promises that accompanied their out- 
 break would be a treasure of inestimable value ; for 
 the warning voice of the historic Muse is never so 
 clear as when she contrasts the pretexts and occasions 
 that provoke hostilities with their conclusions and con- 
 sequences. Peace, Trade, Freedom, Honour, Security, 
 Defence, Justice. How many declarations of war have 
 turned upon these words ? How many rhetorical 
 flourishes have they not contributed to those who 
 by tongue and by pen have excited and defended 
 particular wars ? My task is to undertake such a 
 comparison of causes and consequences for one short 
 period to write as it were a chapter of the great 
 work. I confine my attention to the principal wars 
 in which England was engaged from our Revolution 
 to the French Revolution : 
 
 No sooner had William III. ascended the throne of 
 England, than the nation engaged as a principal in the 
 war carried on against France by Austria, Holland, 
 and Spain. Our intentions, as set forth in the declara- 
 tion of war, were to assist the Emperor to repel the 
 encroachments of the French upon the Newfoundland 
 fishery, and to recover possession of Hudson's Bay, 
 to maintain the interests of English commerce and 
 the supremacy of the English flag, to protect the 
 French Protestants, and to oblige Louis to withdraw
 
 82 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 his support from the Stuarts. The Dutch complained 
 chiefly of injuries to their trade ; the Emperor of the 
 aggressions of Louis in general, and the seizure of 
 the Palatinate in particular. 
 
 When " the war of the Grand Alliance " had lasted 
 seven years during which Italy, Germany, France, 
 Hungary, and Spain, had been deluged with blood ; 
 while England had seen her commerce almost ruined, 
 taxes multiplied, and a national debt contracted for 
 the first time a temporary suspension of hostilities 
 was produced by the Treaty of Ryswiclc. By that 
 instrument, the claims of the Palatinate were left 
 to arbitration. Louis gratified the honour of the 
 Emperor by demolishing the fortifications on the 
 right bank of the Rhine. He also restored some 
 territory to Austria, but only on condition that the 
 severe laws which supported the Catholic worship 
 should remain unaltered ; in consequence of which 
 nearly two thousand churches were compelled either 
 to abjure the reformed religion, or to suffer the penal- 
 ties attached to its profession. A memorial was 
 presented to Louis on behalf of his persecuted 
 Protestant subjects, but upon its rejection they were 
 abandoned to their fate. Yet zeal for the Protestant 
 cause was one of William's ostensible motives for 
 entering upon this war. To Spain, indeed, the King 
 of France made some sacrifices, but only with the 
 design, afterwards executed, of more easily ensuring 
 the whole Kingdom to the House of Bourbon ; more- 
 over, it was evident, from the question of the Spanish 
 Succession being left undetermined, that Europe was 
 soon to be the theatre of a new war, derived from the 
 very evils the old one had been intended to remove.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 83 
 
 We meanwhile had deserted our German allies ; our 
 claim to Hudson's Bay was referred to future arbitra- 
 tion ; and how far the remaining objects for which 
 England and Holland had declared war were from 
 being attained is manifested by the respective declara- 
 tions of each nation when war again broke out in 
 1702. 
 
 England then protested against fresh infringements 
 of her commercial rights, and against the continued 
 countenance afforded to the Pretender. The Dutch 
 declared that " the Republic was deprived of a barrier 
 for which she had already maintained two bloody 
 wars " ; and that " the late treaty was no sooner 
 ratified," than the French recommenced their encroach- 
 ments on her trade. The House of Austria claimed 
 by right of inheritance, and by virtue of the partition 
 treaty signed in 1700, a large part of the kingdom and 
 dependencies of Spain, which the French monarch had 
 already succeeded in appropriating to the Bourbon 
 family. England and Holland also thought them- 
 selves interested in preventing the growth of the 
 power which might result from a union between these 
 two kingdoms. The King of France, of course, in 
 his counter-declaration, charged the allies with being 
 the aggressors, and asserted the justice and necessity 
 of self-defence. After all the sanguinary battles 
 fought in pursuit of these objects, between the years 
 1702 and 1713, the following were the principal condi- 
 tions of the Peace of Utrecht. The grand aim of the 
 Grand Alliance, which had been to effect a permanent 
 separation between the French and Spanish crowns, was 
 secured only by an unguaranteed promise on the part of 
 the Bourbon family, that the two kingdoms should
 
 8 4 
 
 never be united ; a renunciation to which they readily 
 consented, having declared it to be null and void by 
 the fundamental laws of France ; and one so fallacious, 
 in the words of a protest entered in the House of 
 Lords, that no reasonable man, much less whole 
 nations, could ever look upon it as any security. The 
 commercial treaty procured for England was thought 
 so unfavourable to the interests of trade, that the Bill 
 for rendering it effectual was rejected by the Commons, 
 in consequence of the numerous petitions against it 
 from merchants in all parts of the country. Nor was 
 any alteration produced in Louis's conduct towards the 
 Pretender by his recognition of Anne's title. 
 
 The Dutch were hurried into a treaty, in many 
 respects less advantageous than the one by which their 
 pensionary Heinsius had declared they would lose 
 the fruit of all the blood and treasure hitherto 
 expended. In regard to Austria, Marshal Villars justly 
 remarked that " after a war of fourteen years, during 
 which the Emperor and King of France had nearly 
 quitted their respective capitals, Spain had seen two 
 rival kings in Madrid, and almost all the petty states of 
 Italy had changed their sovereigns, a war which had 
 desolated the greater part of Europe was concluded 
 on the very terms that might have been procured 
 at the commencement of hostilities." 
 
 The grants of Parliament in the course of thirteen 
 years had exceeded eighty millions, of which about 
 fifty had been spent on war, and at the death 
 of Queen Anne the interest on the national debt 
 required an annual sum of nearly three millions 
 to be raised in taxes on the labour and property of 
 the people.
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 85 
 
 The next war in which England engaged, in 1718, 
 had for its professed object the protection of her 
 merchants against the Spaniards; it was also intended, 
 by obliging the King of Spain to accede to the 
 quadruple alliance, to secure to the Emperor the 
 undisturbed possession of Sicily. Philip was indeed 
 forced to comply with the demands of the allies ; 
 but the continued depredations upon British vessels 
 soon became again a subject of complaint, and in 
 1735 Sicily was restored to Spain. 
 
 The dreadful conflicts to which the disputed claim 
 to the Polish throne soon after gave rise, originating 
 in the restless ambition of all the belligerent powers, 
 led to the partition of Poland and the destruction 
 of a national life. Charles the Sixth of Austria, by 
 his uncontrollable love of war, reduced his once 
 flourishing dominions to the lowest state of degrada- 
 tion and weakness. In 1739 England renewed hos- 
 tilities with Spain about the Right of Search, but 
 four years later the pretext was changed to the 
 question of the Austrian succession, and in 1744 
 war was also declared against France. 
 
 In 1748, at the Peace of Aix la Chapelle, when 
 a general restitution of conquests took place, nearly 
 thirty millions had been added to the national debt; 
 the trade of the country was encumbered with addi- 
 tional customs and excise ; and the nation, in regard 
 to its foreign possessions, was in exactly the same 
 state as at the commencement of the war. "Every 
 defeat in this war," wrote Bolingbroke, " like every 
 triumph in the last, became a reason for continuing 
 it." Nor had the continental powers, whose quarrels 
 (prosecuted for seven years with the utmost animosity)
 
 86 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 were also decided at the conferences of Aix la 
 Chapelle, any better ground for satisfaction. France 
 had failed in her object of dispossessing the Austrian 
 princess of her hereditary dominions. Maria Theresa, 
 the original cause of the war, told the British Ambas- 
 sador, when he asked permission to offer his con- 
 gratulations on the return of peace, that compliments 
 of condolence would be more appropriate ; while the 
 acquisition of Silesia by the King of Prussia, who 
 seems to have been the only gaining party, led to 
 the outbreak in 1756 of a fresh war, which, sup- 
 ported by the rival ambitions of Frederick and the 
 Empress-Queen, and subsequently connected with the 
 disputes of the French and English respecting their 
 territorial possessions in America, gradually drew all 
 the states of Europe within its focus, and extended 
 its ravages to Asia, Africa, and America. 
 
 Hoping so to gain success in the famous Seven 
 Years' War (1756-1763), Maria Theresa relinquished 
 the friendship of England, to whose assistance she 
 had been largely indebted for the preservation of 
 her crown ; at the same time her alliance with France, 
 her neglect of the barrier towns in the Netherlands, 
 and the family compact between the two houses of 
 Bourbon, to which the events of the war gave rise, 
 overthrew the whole system of continental policy, to 
 the maintenance of which the peace of Europe had 
 been sacrificed for more than a century. But let us 
 look at the wisdom of the part played by England. 
 Our troubles with France in Canada had begun in 
 1754; but when it was proposed with English money 
 to combine the states of the Continent against France 
 in defence of Hanover, Pitt declared in the House
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 87 
 
 of Commons that this whole scheme of policy was 
 " flagrantly absurd and desperate." 
 
 " It was no other than to gather and combine the powers of 
 the Continent into an alliance of magnitude sufficient to with- 
 stand the efforts of France and her adherents against the Elector 
 of Hanover at the expense of Great Britain. The three last wars 
 with France had cost Britain above 120 millions of money; the 
 present exhibited a prospect of an effusion of treasure still more 
 enormous." 
 
 " Who," he cried, " will answer for the conse- 
 quences or insure us from national bankruptcy ? We 
 have suffered ourselves to be deceived by names and 
 sounds The General Cause, The Balance of Power , The 
 Liberty of Europe and have exhausted our wealth 
 without any rational object." But Pitt no sooner 
 found himself in power, a popular and successful 
 War Minister, than he fell in love with the folly he 
 had so eloquently denounced. 
 
 When George the Third came to the throne in 
 1760 the war still raged. The new King, who 
 " gloried in the name of a Briton," told Parliament 
 that he loved peace and would prosecute the war 
 vigorously. It was recognised that the original cause 
 of war had been altered ; for the House of Commons 
 voted supplies, not to vindicate our Canadian claims, 
 but " to obtain peace and secure the Protestant 
 interest." The war, which, as Burke put it a year 
 or two later, had been begun in America about a 
 piece of land, " was now to be carried on for the 
 Protestant religion ; and the Atheist King of Prussia 
 (the Robber of Silesia) was to fight the battles of the 
 Lord and His anointed." At last, on the fall of Pitt, 
 
 1 See Pitt's speech in Parliament November, 1755
 
 88 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Lord Bute was able to conclude a peace, the most 
 advantageous perhaps ever negotiated by Great Britain 
 so far as the acquisition of important dependencies 
 is concerned. But as a matter of fact Canada is 
 the only one of the territories then acquired that can 
 be regarded as a source of strength to the British 
 Empire ; and the immense addition of 72 millions 
 to the national debt, together with the oppressive 
 weight of war taxation, led directly to the loss of a 
 territory infinitely wealthier in soil, climate, and popu- 
 lation than all the rest of the Empire put together. 
 In 1763 a general treaty of peace was signed at Paris. 
 This treaty, to quote Coxe, " placed the affairs of 
 Germany in precisely the same situation as at the 
 commencement of hostilities, and both parties [Prussia 
 and Austria], after an immense waste of blood and 
 treasure, derived from it no other benefit than that 
 of experiencing each other's strength, and a dread 
 of renewing the calamities of a destructive contest." 
 England wrested Florida and Minorca from Spain, 
 but restored them again by the treaty of 1783. The 
 differences between France and England in the East 
 and West Indies, and in Africa, were compromised 
 by mutual concessions, though large additions were 
 made to the British Empire. But the financial cost 
 was immense. Our national debt had been aug- 
 mented from 75 to 146 millions. It was, however, 
 loudly asserted, that by the additional security which 
 the acquisition of Canada had afforded to her colonies 
 in North America, Great Britain would ultimately 
 acquire ample indemnification for all her losses, in 
 the increasing trade and prosperity of the colonies ; 
 and that the long peace which this war was supposed
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 89 
 
 to have secured would result in a steady diminution of 
 debt ; in short, it was confidently predicted that the 
 war policy, in spite of the heavy losses it had involved, 
 would prove a fine commercial speculation. 1 
 
 But mark the short-sightedness of politicians ! It 
 was in order to lessen the weight of the debt incurred 
 in the pursuit of this war, that Great Britain made that 
 attempt upon the liberties of her American subjects,' 2 
 which, after reviving the horrors of war on both 
 sides of the globe, and costing the lives of a hundred 
 thousand British soldiers, terminated in the entire 
 loss of our American colonies, and in the addition 
 of nearly a hundred millions to the burden of the 
 national debt. The French, whom the hope of injuring 
 us had drawn into the American war, acquired nothing 
 by the treaty of 1783 ; the Dutch lost some com- 
 mercial privileges ; and the Spaniards simply regained 
 what they had been deprived of in the preceding 
 war. Such were the results of the conflicts that 
 desolated Christendom during a whole century. 
 
 Truelove. When I have had time to ponder over 
 all this, I feel sure I shall ask myself how it is that 
 sane men can induce themselves to promote war ; 
 above all how statesmen, who know anything of 
 history, reconcile it with their consciences to steer 
 nations into hostilities. 
 
 Arbiter. It seems to be clear -common sense tells 
 it us as well as history that in ninety-nine cases 
 out of a hundred war leaves a balance of evil to 
 
 1 See Annual Register, 1762. 
 
 2 Besides the question of taxation there were difficulties as to 
 boundaries, which also grew out of our Canadian conquests. The 
 old colonies wanted to be enlarged.
 
 90 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 both parties, a balance, if I may quote from our great 
 political teacher, " of uncompensated mischief and 
 irreparable wrong." 
 
 Browne. It is a puzzle indeed. I suppose the 
 answer is, that the lessons of history make but a 
 faint impression. They are swept away by storms 
 of passion and prejudice. Moreover, the average 
 history is singularly uninstructive on this point. We 
 learn much of the pomp and little of the uselessness 
 of conquest. 
 
 Clarke. Yes, if only historians would try to com- 
 pare the moral, social, and economic condition of a 
 country before and after a great war ! But even so, 
 the impressions derived from books are but a 
 secondary experience. Only those who have seen 
 and felt the miseries and burdens of war can taste 
 the full blessings of peace. But always and every- 
 where there is growing up a generation that knows 
 not war. 
 
 Case. " War's sweet to them that never tried it," 
 as Edie Ochiltree said to Lord Glenallan. 
 
 Arbiter. Yes, and he might have said : " War's 
 sweet to them that won't have to serve." To one 
 of the large, rich, and populous empires of the modern 
 world a little war in some remote colony or depen- 
 dency is merely an unhealthy excitement. Hardly 
 anyone counts on suffering more from it than perhaps 
 a small addition to his taxes. In such cases we have 
 to trust to the good sense and self-restraint of 
 Ministers ; for the popular checks upon such an 
 insensate thing as the Somaliland expedition are 
 deplorably weak in an empire like ours. But when 
 a war is imminent between great powers, peace has
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 91 
 
 powerful champions. All manner of interests are 
 endangered. The manufacturer of war material, the 
 ambitious officer, and here and there a newspaper 
 proprietor, may hope indeed to win fortunes or 
 titles ; but the great mass of the community is 
 sensitive to the approaching catastrophe. Take, for 
 example, the case of a war between England and 
 Germany. Fire-eaters in both countries are declaring 
 that it is the cherished ambition of England to 
 destroy the fleet and commerce of her most danger- 
 ous rival, or that the German Government is secretly 
 preparing to invade England and seize her colonies. 
 Suppose that either of these awful lies were true, 
 instead of being mere bogies, serviceable to naval 
 contractors and spendthrift Admiralties on either side 
 of the North Sea. Suppose some such intention 
 were really harboured by a responsible statesman or 
 an irresponsible Emperor, and that war came in 
 sight. In a moment all the merchants, manufac- 
 turers, and workpeople in England and Germany 
 who earn their profits and wages by the direct trade 
 of over 60 million sterling that passes annually 
 between the two countries foresee instant ruin. The 
 effect of this upon railway traffic and shipping lines 
 can be appreciated by the most humdrum mind. 
 There would at once be a first-class panic on the 
 Stock Exchange and the Berlin Bourse. The least 
 evil that the well-to-do can expect is a twenty or thirty 
 per cent, fall in the value of their investments and 
 a doubling of the Income Tax ; the least that the 
 working classes can look forward to will be lower 
 wages, less employment, and higher prices. In such 
 a crisis, if diplomacy seems likely to fail, will not the
 
 92 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 cry for arbitration be almost universal and well nigh 
 irresistible ? You see I am no pessimist. I feel that 
 the task of the war-maker is infinitely more difficult 
 than it was in the eighteenth century. Tell me, 
 Meyer, do I overstate the feeling of the City ? 
 
 Meyer. Indeed no : there would be a horrible 
 panic. 
 
 Admiral. It ought to be as you say. But I am a 
 pessimist. Passion might gain the day, as it did in 
 the autumn of 1899. 
 
 Meyer. Ah ; but then we expected gain, not loss. 
 Rhodes told us that the Boers could not fight. We 
 thought it would all be over in a few weeks, and 
 that there would be no bills to be paid. Why, on 
 the outbreak of war we actually put up the prices 
 of Kaffirs and Consols. 
 
 Arbiter. I admitted, you remember, that the 
 prospect of a small war is but a small deterrent. 
 If only the dimensions of the Boer War could have 
 been measured and discounted beforehand, our diplo- 
 macy would have been very different. The war 
 would have been impossible, instead of inevitable. 
 
 Meyer. It is the small states more than the big 
 ones that endanger the peace of the world. See 
 how stubborn and warlike the Boers were. See how 
 they clung to their abuses. They hated us as aliens ; 
 they refused to treat us as citizens. A few con- 
 cessions would have satisfied the mining interest and 
 avoided the war. That I know well ; for Kruger's 
 rule, with all its faults, was better for the industry 
 than Milner's. 
 
 Case. No doubt. But you City men are apt to think 
 that mining interests are human rights. I studied
 
 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 93 
 
 the whole case at the time, and I convinced myself 
 that we had no just grounds for interference in the 
 affairs of the Transvaal. Time and patience would 
 have solved the problem. Milner and Chamberlain 
 gave no time and exercised no patience. They could 
 think of nothing but a quick triumph either of 
 diplomacy or arms. 
 
 Arbiter. Well, my friends, we must talk this out 
 another time. There goes the dinner bell, and we 
 all need refreshment.
 
 THE SECOND DAT. TUESDAY. 
 
 MODERN WARFARE. 
 I. 
 
 Clarke. After yesterday's discussion we are all, I 
 think, inclined, Mr. Arbiter, to agree with you that 
 the progress of intelligence and civilisation has begun 
 to check, and is likely at no distant period to put an 
 end to, war between nations. But one must remember 
 what is urged on the other side. In the first place, 
 we are reminded that this view was widely held by 
 the French philosophers of the eighteenth century, who, 
 heralds of the reign of Reason, promulgated the gospel 
 of man's perfectibility. If their doctrine was sublime, 
 their confidence was premature. As if to mock their 
 anticipations, the French Revolution plunged Europe 
 into a series of wars on a larger and costlier scale 
 than any of which mankind has had experience. I 
 remember reading an article in an old number of the 
 Edinburgh Review (in the year, I think, of the battle 
 of Leipzic), where the writer, a level-headed and 
 apparently humane man, argued it to be overwhelm- 
 ingly improbable that war, " by far the most prolific 
 and extensive pest of the human race," as he called 
 it, could ever be abolished. In the first place, he
 
 MODERN WARFARE 95 
 
 said, it is manifest that, instead of becoming less 
 frequent or destructive, European wars have been 
 incomparably more constant and sanguinary since 
 Europe became more enlightened and humane ; and 
 he argued further that war was more popular and 
 more obstinately waged in the polished and refined 
 than in rude and barbarous countries. For example, 
 he said, " the brutish Laplanders, the bigoted and 
 profligate Italians, have had long intervals of repose ; 
 but France and England are now pretty regularly 
 at war for about fourscore years out of every 
 century." 
 
 Case. A paradoxical pessimist. 
 
 Arbiter. Yes, one of those clever writers who are 
 apt to make sweeping generalisations from a very 
 limited view and experience. The answer to his first 
 argument is, that the eighteenth century, taken as a 
 whole, was a great improvement upon its predecessors, 
 and the nineteenth (which began so badly) has shown 
 a still greater advance upon the eighteenth. Then 
 again, if any reliance can be placed upon the historians 
 of the Middle Ages, their battles were as a rule 
 far more sanguinary than those of our own day. I 
 mean the percentage of killed and wounded to the 
 number of combatants was higher in mediaeval than 
 in modern battles. 
 
 Browne. That is certainly true. 
 
 Seymour. It is inevitable, as hand-to-hand fighting 
 disappears, and the fighting lines are separated by 
 greater and greater distances, that slaughter as well 
 as atrocity should diminish. Though of course mines, 
 especially at sea, may put enormous numbers of men 
 to death by a single explosion.
 
 96 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Clarke. A third argument of the Edinburgh Re- 
 viewer was that the lovers of war and professional 
 warriors are by no means the most ferocious or the 
 stupidest of the human species. Human nature, he 
 thought, is so constituted that war gives us real enjoy- 
 ment in spite of the pains and miseries it entails. It 
 exercises the talents, calls forth energies, holds men 
 up conspicuously as objects of public admiration, 
 gratifies their pride and love of power, dispels ennui, 
 and sets the game of existence on a higher stake. 
 If every man were a free man, and a gentleman, like 
 Sir John Moore, or Nelson, or Wellington, would 
 there not be just as much war as if half the world 
 were serfs and slaves, and the majority of the re- 
 mainder cads ? Is not the gentleman, as we know 
 him, an excessively pugnacious animal ? 
 
 Arbiter. There again the argument, though plausible 
 at first sight, is surely untenable. Pugnacity no more 
 involves war than it involves duelling. War is an 
 unhealthy and depraved outlet for the passionate side 
 of our nature. Obviously the pleasures of war can 
 be obtained in games and pursuits that do not involve 
 the innocent in wholesale misery. 
 
 Admiral. What the Edinburgh Reviewer might have 
 urged, I believe, with truth is that, once a state of war 
 has arisen, a civilised man rapidly becomes a brute, 
 ruthless, rapacious, and cruel. Patriotic and religious 
 feeling may animate men to fight. But when once 
 fighting has begun all virtues vanish away. The hired 
 foreigner fights as well as the native conscript or the 
 volunteer. If patriotism and nationalism were the 
 principal forces, why should civil wars be the fiercest 
 and bloodiest !
 
 MODERN WARFARE 97 
 
 Browne. There is a wonderful passage in the recol- 
 lections of Tocqueville that exactly illustrates your 
 opinion. It is about the fighting in the streets of 
 Paris during the Revolution of '48. May I read it ? 
 
 " As I went along the Quai de la Ferraille," he says, " I met 
 some National Guards, from my neighbourhood, carrying on litters 
 several of their comrades and two of their officers wounded. I 
 observed, in talking with them, with what terrible rapidity, even 
 in so civilised a century as our own, the most peaceful minds 
 enter into the spirit of civil war, and how quick they are, in 
 these unhappy times, to acquire a taste for violence, and a con- 
 tempt for human life. The men with whom I was talking were 
 peaceful sober artisans, whose gentle and somewhat sluggish natures 
 were even further removed from cruelty than from heroism. Yet 
 they dreamt of nothing but massacre and destruction. They com- 
 plained that they were not allowed to use bombs, or to sap or 
 mine the streets held by the insurgents, and they were determined 
 to shew no more quarter ; already that morning I had almost 
 seen a poor devil shot before my eyes on the boulevards, who 
 had been arrested without arms in his hands, but whose mouth 
 and hands were blackened by a substance which they sup- 
 posed to be, and no doubt was, powder. I did all I could to 
 calm these rabid sheep. I promised them that we should take 
 terrible measures the next day. Lamoriciere, in fact, had told me 
 that morning that he had sent for shells to hurl behind the barri- 
 cades ; and I knew that a regiment of sappers was expected from 
 Douai, to pierce the walls and blow up the besieged houses with 
 petards. I added that they must not shoot any of their prisoners, 
 but that they should kill then and there anyone who made as 
 though to defend himself. I left my men a little more contented, 
 and, continuing my road, I could not help examining myself and 
 feeling surprised at the nature of the arguments I had used, and 
 the promptness with which, in two days, I had become familiarised 
 with ideas of inexorable destruction that were naturally so foreign 
 to my character." 
 
 Seymour. A very true picture. Where there is 
 anything like hand-to-hand fighting it will always be
 
 difficult, if not impossible, for any commander to 
 induce his men to give quarter. It is not the pro- 
 gress of humanity so much as the progress of art 
 that diminishes butchery. Undoubtedly the perfection 
 of fire-arms their increasing range and precision- 
 has done more to mitigate this sort of savagery 
 than anything else. Mechanics hinder massacre and 
 medicine lessens suffering. If armies were deprived 
 of gunpowder and ambulances humanity would be 
 staggered. 
 
 Admiral. But supposing it to be true, as the 
 Reviewer appears to have argued, that high-minded 
 and cultivated soldiers delight in war a supposition 
 which it would be rather difficult to prove it does 
 not at all follow that their enjoyment is equal in 
 quality or intensity to that of their barbarous pre- 
 decessors. I much question whether the majority 
 of our officers and soldiers enjoyed the Boer war. 
 Of course as professional men they like to see active 
 service ; there is the scientific interest, and there is 
 the excitement of action ; but outside the newspaper 
 office and the music-hall I doubt if the old passion 
 for blood can be said to exist. 
 
 Seymour. Certainly it is no longer the fashion to 
 boast, as the old Jewish and Homeric warriors did, 
 of the number of men we have slain. 
 
 Browne. In a rude age military prowess was almost 
 the only road to glory and power, and even wealth. 
 The Chronicles of the Cid show clearly how far we 
 have travelled since the eleventh century. At that 
 time Spain was one of the most refined countries in 
 Europe. But the Cid, who was the perfect pattern 
 of that century, is presented as one who found joy
 
 MODERN WARFARE 99 
 
 only in fighting. His least murderous sport was the 
 tournament, and with few exceptions the pages of 
 the Chronicle are a catalogue of battles, ambuscades, 
 assaults, plunder of armed and unarmed, which would 
 be dreary but for the pride of the narrator and the 
 gusto with which he recites these glorious exploits 
 of a national hero. May I give you three incidents 
 taken from three or four consecutive pages in Southey's 
 admirable version ? The first displays the taste of 
 the ladies, the second the spirit of the Church, and 
 the third shows you the Cid at his best, after an 
 ambuscade had turned the enemy to flight. 
 
 1 . " Alvar Salvadores went on hacking and hewing 
 
 all before him, for he thought the ladies were looking 
 
 
 on. 
 
 2. "At cock-crow they all assembled together in 
 the Church of St. Pedro, and the Bishop Don 
 Hieronymo sung mass, and they were shriven and 
 assoyled, and howselled. Great was the absolution 
 which the Bishop gave them : He who shall die, 
 said he, fighting face forward, I will take his sins, 
 and God shall have his soul. Then said he, A boon, 
 Cid Don Rodrigo ; I have sung mass to you this morning ; 
 let me have the giving the first wounds in this battle ! 
 and the Cid granted him this boon in the name of 
 God." Afterwards we are told how " the Bishop 
 Don Hieronymo, that perfect one with the shaven 
 crown, had his fill in that battle, fighting with both 
 hands ; no one could tell how many he slew." 
 
 3. "And the Cid Ruy Diaz did so well, and made 
 such mortality among the Moors, that the blood ran 
 from his wrist to his elbow." When the battle was 
 over he went in to his wife and his daughters with
 
 ioo THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 his bloodstained sword, " and the ladies knelt down 
 before him, and kissed his hand and wished him a 
 long life." 
 
 Clarke. I have read bits of the poem, but never 
 went through it carefully. I remember I often 
 wondered how he kept himself going, and how he 
 disposed of his spoils. 
 
 Browne. Ah, that is explained in an earlier book. 
 Let me see. Here it is. The Cid lay near Burgos 
 under the King's displeasure. He was in distress for 
 want of money. Shall I read you the passage ? It 
 is a little long, yet entertaining enough. 
 
 We all begged him to let us hear it. Browne then 
 read as follows : 
 
 " ' Martin Antolinez,' said the Cid to his nephew, ' you are a 
 bold Lancier ; if I live I will double you your pay. You see I 
 have nothing with me, and yet must provide for my companions. 
 I will take two chests and fill them with sand, and do you go in 
 secret to Rachel and Vidas, and tell them to come hither privately; 
 for I cannot take my treasures with me because of their weight, 
 and will pledge them in their hands. Let them come for the 
 chests at night, that no man may see them. God knows that I 
 do this thing more of necessity than of wilfulness ; but by God's 
 good help I shall redeem all.' Now Rachel and Vidas were rich 
 Jews, from whom the Cid used to receive money for his spoils. 
 And Martin Antolinez went in quest of them, and he passed through 
 Burgos, and entered into the castle ; and when he saw them he 
 said : ' Ah, Rachel and Vidas, my dear friends ; now let me speak 
 with you in secret.' And they three went apart. And he said 
 to them, ' Give me your hands that you will not discover me 
 neither to Moor nor Christian ! I will make you rich men for 
 ever ! The Campeador went for the tribute, and he took great 
 wealth, and some of it he has kept for himself. He has two 
 chests full of gold ; ye know that the King is in anger against 
 him, and he cannot carry these away with him without their 
 being seen. He will leave them, therefore, in your hands, and
 
 MODERN WARFARE 101 
 
 you shall lend him money upon them, swearing with great oaths, 
 and upon your faith, that ye will not open them till a year be 
 past.' Rachel and Vidas took counsel together, and answered, 
 ' We well knew he got something when he entered the land of 
 the Moors ; he who has treasures does not sleep without suspicion ; 
 we will take the chests, and place them where they shall not be 
 seen. But tell us with what will the Cid be contented, and what 
 gain will he give us for the year ?' Martin Antolinez answered 
 like a prudent man, ' My Cid requires what is reasonable ; he will 
 ask but little to leave his treasures in safety. Men come to him 
 from all parts. He must have six hundred marks.' And the 
 Jews said, ' We will advance so much.' ' Well, then,' said Martin 
 Antolinez, ' ye see that the night is far spent ; the Cid is in 
 haste, give us the marks.' 'This is not the way of business,' 
 said they; 'we must take first and then give.' 'Ye say well,' 
 replied the Burgalese ; 'come then to the Campeador, and we will 
 help you to bring away the chests, so that neither Moors nor 
 Christians may see us.' So they went to horse and rode out 
 together, and they did not cross the bridge, but rode through 
 the water that no man might see them, and they came to the 
 tent of the Cid. 
 
 " Meantime the Cid had taken two chests, which were covered 
 with leather of red and gold, and the nails which fastened down 
 the leather were well gilt ; they were ribbed with bands of iron, 
 and each fastened with three locks ; they were heavy, and he 
 filled them with sand. And when Rachel and Vidas entered his 
 tent with Martin Antolinez they kissed his hand ; and the Cid 
 smiled and said to them, ' Ye see that I am going out of the 
 land, because of the King's displeasure, but I shall leave something 
 with ye.' And they made answer, ' Martin Antolinez has 
 covenanted with us, that we shall give you six hundred marks 
 upon these chests, and keep them a full year, swearing not to 
 open them till that time be expired, else shall we be perjured.' 
 ' Take the chests,' said Martin Antolinez ; ' I will go with you and 
 bring back the marks, for my Cid must move before cock-crow.' 
 So they took the chests, and though they were both strong men 
 they could not raise them from the ground ; and they were full 
 glad of the bargain which they had made. And Rachel went to 
 the Cid and kissed his hand, and said, ' Now, Campeador, you 
 are going from Castille, among strange nations, and your gain
 
 102 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 will be great, even as your fortune is. I kiss your hand, Cid, 
 and have a gift for you, a red skin ; it is Moorish and honourable.' 
 And the Cid said, * It pleases me ; give it me if ye have brought 
 it ; if not, reckon it upon the chests.' And they departed with 
 the chests, and Martin Antolinez and his people helped them, 
 and went with them. And when they had placed the chests in 
 safety, they spread a carpet in the middle of the hall, and laid a 
 sheet upon it, and they threw down upon it three hundred marks 
 of silver. Don Martin counted them, and took them without 
 weighing. The other three hundred they paid in gold. Don 
 Martin had five squires with him, and he loaded them all with 
 the money. And when this was done he said to them, ' Now Don 
 Rachel and Vidas you have got the chests, and I who got them 
 for you well deserve a pair of hose.' And the Jews said to each 
 other, ' Let us give him a good gift for this which he has done ' ; 
 and they said to him, 'We will give you enough for hose and 
 for a rich doublet and a good cloak ; you shall have thirty marks.' 
 Don Martin thanked them and took the marks, and bidding them 
 both farewell, he departed right joyfully." 
 
 Meyer. The best story of a war loan I ever heard. 
 
 Arbiter (smiling). An allegory, my friend. Money 
 is sometimes still lent on a sandy security, slightly 
 salted. 
 
 Meyer. Ha ! Ha ! If you want to know about that 
 ask the directors of the Chartered Company. 
 
 / said it reminded me of the device by which Lord 
 Milner and the Rand magnates got a thirty-five million 
 loan from the British Government by a promise of thirty 
 millions. The promises were like the two chests filled with 
 sandy and when opened a year or two afterwards their real 
 value was discovered. 
 
 II. 
 
 Arbiter. Now, Captain Seymour, I think we may 
 call upon you to enlighten us about the conditions
 
 MODERN WARFARE 103 
 
 of modern warfare and the changes that have been 
 brought about in the military art and practice. 
 
 Seymour. I have done my best in the last few 
 months to collect material and throw my ideas to- 
 gether; but I'm afraid you will find what I put 
 before you desultory, inconclusive and disappointing. 
 But the Admiral will come to my assistance later on, 
 and at any rate I hope to provoke plenty of criticism 
 and discussion. There is one circumstance which par- 
 ticularly entitles me to your indulgence ; for I am a 
 member of the profession that all, or nearly all, of you 
 desire to abolish, and I am discoursing upon an art 
 which, if not an anachronism, is at best a necessary 
 abomination. My situation, as well as my subject, 
 puts me in mind of Fabrizio Colonna, the veteran 
 warrior, who, returning from the wars in Lombardy, 
 stayed to repose himself a few days in Florence and 
 was invited by a worthy and hospitable citizen, Cosimo 
 Rucellai, to discourse upon the Art of War in one 
 of the most delightful gardens of the town. Machia- 
 velli, the author of the discourse, gives Fabrizio the 
 advantage not only of age and martial reputation, but 
 of a youthful and appreciative audience full of military 
 ardour. I, alas, have neither years or laurels. At best 
 I am the student of a black art, and my only consola- 
 tion is that it is not as black as it was. Indeed one of 
 my first duties is to paint its progress from black to 
 grey, and from this point of view I can hardly do 
 better than read aloud the little speech with which 
 Fabrizio introduced his disquisitions : 
 
 " War being an occupation by which a man cannot support him- 
 self with honour at all times, ought not to be followed as a business 
 by any but Princes or Governors of Commonwealths ; and if they are
 
 io 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 wise men they will not suffer any of their Subjects or Citizens to 
 make that their only Profession. Indeed no good man ever did : for 
 surely he cannot be called a good man who exercises an employment 
 that obliges him to be rapacious, fraudulent, and cruel at all times, in 
 order to support himself; as all those must be of course (of what 
 rank soever they are) who make a trade of war ; because it will not 
 maintain them in time of peace; upon which account they are under 
 a necessity either of endeavouring to prevent a peace, or of taking all 
 means to make such provision for themselves in time of war, that they 
 may not want sustenance when it is over. But neither of these 
 courses is consistent with common honesty ; for whoever resolves to 
 heap up as much in time of war as will support him for ever after, 
 must be guilty of robbery, murder, and many other acts of violence 
 upon his friends as well as upon his enemies : and in endeavouring to 
 prevent a peace, Commanders must have recourse to many pitiful 
 tricks and artifices to deceive those that employ them. But if they 
 fail in their designs, and find they cannot prevent a peace, then 
 as soon as their pay is stopped, and they can live no longer in 
 the licentious manner they used to do, they set up for soldiers of 
 fortune, and having got a parcel of their disbanded men together, 
 make no scruple of plundering a whole country without mercy or 
 distinction. You must have heard that when the late wars were 
 over in Italy and the country full of disbanded soldiers, they formed 
 themselves into several bands, and went about plundering some towns 
 and laying others under contribution. You must likewise have read 
 how the Carthaginian Soldiers (after the first war was ended in which 
 they had been engaged with the Romans) assembled together under 
 the banners of Matho and Spendius (two officers whom they had chosen 
 to head the mutiny) and made a more dangerous war upon their 
 own country, than that which had been just concluded. In the 
 days of our ancestors, Francisco Sforza, in order to support himself 
 in splendour and magnificence in time of peace, not only betrayed 
 the Milanese who had employed him in their service, but deprived 
 them of their liberties, and made himself their sovereign. All the 
 rest of our Italian soldiers, who made war their only occupation, 
 acted the same part in those times ; and if they did not succeed 
 in their villanies like Sforza, they were not less blameable; for if 
 we consider their conduct, we shall find their designs were altogether 
 as iniquitous as his. Sforza, the father of Francisco, obliged Jane, 
 Queen of Naples, to throw herself into the arms of the King of
 
 MODERN WARFARE 105 
 
 Arragon, by suddenly quitting her service and leaving her disarmed, 
 as it were, in the midst of her enemies, with an intention either 
 to deprive her of her kingdom, or at least to extort a great sum 
 of money from her. Braccio da Montone endeavoured by the same 
 arts to have made himself King of Naples ; and if he had not been 
 routed and killed at Aquila, he would certainly have accomplished 
 his design. Such evils, and others of the same nature, are owing 
 to men who make war their only occupation ; according to the 
 proverb, War makes thieves, Peace hangs them ; for those that know not 
 how to get their bread any other way, when they are disbanded, 
 finding nobody that has occasion for their service, and disdaining 
 the thoughts of living in poverty and obscurity, are forced to have 
 recourse to such ways of supporting themselves as generally bring 
 them to the gallows." 
 
 This illustration is more eloquent, I venture to 
 say, of the improvements that have taken place in 
 my profession than many pages which might be written 
 dilating upon the advantages of a regular army pro- 
 perly paid and disciplined over a system which made 
 every soldier long for war as an unemployed workman 
 longs for employment. 
 
 This most important and salutary change was 
 accompanied by the diminution of private wars, 
 brigandage and piracy. In the middle ages any 
 knight might gather a company to plunder a village, 
 a town, or a caravan. These glorious exploits 
 gradually came to be regarded as high-way robberies. 
 At sea more licence was allowed than on land ; the 
 privateer, it is true, was solemnly proscribed by the 
 Declaration of Paris in 1856; but even now the navy 
 claims the right, long abandoned by armies, of 
 destroying an enemy's commerce. In an essay on 
 military punishment and rewards, published so late as 
 1796, I find the author, a military judge in Canada, 
 bitterly contrasting " the hopes and expectations "
 
 106 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 of officers and men in the two services. He first 
 points out that the miseries of hunger, heat and 
 cold, the certainty of blows, the uncertainty of 
 rewards and improbability of plunder are the lot of 
 the soldier. " Towns taken are never now given 
 up to plunder," he complains, "as was formerly the 
 practice among the ancients, by which the conquerors 
 were not only enriched, but it often served to 
 aggrandise their posterity ; but at present, countries 
 exposed to pillage redeem themselves by contribution, 
 no part of which comes into the hands of the officers 
 or men." 1 
 
 But the hopes and expectations of the Navy 
 would, he declares, fill a moderate sized volume : 
 " Suffice it barely to observe on what is notoriously 
 known, that one fortunate capture will enrich a 
 captain of a man of war and his crew for ever." 
 Another century has passed and prize money has 
 disappeared as completely from the Navy as it then 
 had from the Army. So that the prospect of private 
 booty is no longer a motive for entering either 
 service. In Great Britain we attract more men into 
 the two services by the prospect of regular pay than 
 ever we could have hoped to do by the prospect of 
 drawing a prize in the lottery of licensed theft. 
 
 Clarke. The odd thing is that in abolishing whole- 
 sale theft we have retained wholesale murder. 
 
 Seymour. I shall not treat that interruption seriously. 
 Murder, my dear sir, as you know very well, is a 
 technical term of law. But I was speaking of the 
 attractions that are left. Regular pay is a new one 
 for the men. Social consideration attracts officers ; 
 
 1 See Treatise on Courts Martial, S. Payne Adye, London, 1 796.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 107 
 
 and I have heard of many impecunious gentlemen who 
 joined the army solely with a view to providing for 
 themselves by a good match. But Germany is almost 
 the only modern country in which militarism gives 
 the tone to society. 
 
 Clarke. How long will its manufacturing and com- 
 mercial classes take it lying down ? 
 
 Meyer. They do not like it. They will not pay 
 the piper much longer. But there is the Kaiser 
 Idee. The personal influence of the Kaiser counts 
 for a good deal. The fear of France and Russia 
 counts for a good deal more. But the financial 
 burden is not cheerfully borne. Look at the growth 
 of the Social Democrats ; and look at the timidity 
 of the Government. They dare not to raise the 
 taxes. For the last many years there has been a 
 large annual deficit, which has to be provided for 
 by additions to the debt. 
 
 Seymour [continues]. Altogether it is hard to ex- 
 aggerate the immense change which has been brought 
 about by the new laws of warfare, applied I believe 
 in the discipline of all modern armies. No doubt 
 practice lags woefully behind law, custom, and con- 
 vention. In the late expedition to China, for instance, 
 horrible excesses murder, theft, arson, rape, were 
 committed by the European troops with impunity. 
 Indeed the German Emperor haranguing his troops 
 before embarkation exhorted them to make no 
 prisoners ! These atrocities were justified as acts of 
 reprisal for the atrocities of the Boxers. 
 
 Case. As if the law of retaliation permitted A to 
 do to B what C had done to Z), because B happened 
 to be under the same government as C.
 
 io8 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Seymour. To show you how very strict the rule 
 is I will quote from our own Army Act. By 
 Section 6 every person subject to military law who 
 breaks into any house or other place in search of 
 plunder shall, on conviction by Court Martial, if he 
 commits such offence on active service, be liable to 
 suffer death. And the same penalty may be inflicted 
 on a soldier who " commits any offence against the 
 property or person of any inhabitant of, or resident 
 in, any country in which he is serving." 
 
 To mark the contrast let me remind you of a 
 chapter in Grotius on " the right of acquiring things 
 captured in war." With two authorities on Grotius 
 in the room I speak subject to correction ; but I 
 think I am right in saying that Grotius' favourite 
 method of arriving at an improved rule in each 
 department of his subject was to examine customs, 
 practices, and authorities, especially in ancient times, 
 and then to select the best as most in accordance 
 with natural law, religion, utility, and reason. 
 
 Clarke. Your statement tallies precisely with my 
 recollection. 
 
 Case. And if he could not find a humane precedent 
 he was sometimes tempted to invent one, or rather I 
 should say that for want of a library of reference he 
 would draw on his memory, so that his quotations are 
 sometimes coloured by his sympathies. I mean they 
 are more to the purpose than they should have been. 
 
 Seymour. That only makes my point stronger ; for 
 Grotius admitted that the custom of pillaging the 
 enemy had always prevailed in all nations. He 
 explains that even in the old Republican days of 
 Rome, when the spoil taken was supposed to enrich
 
 MODERN WARFARE 109 
 
 the public treasury, the common soldier was allowed 
 to keep a certain amount for himself. In the 
 European armies of Grotius' time the amount a 
 soldier might take for himself varied : 
 
 "The French call this spoil or pillage, and comprehend in it 
 clothing, and gold and silver within ten crowns. In some places 
 a certain fraction of the booty is given to the soldiers, as in Spain. 
 Sometimes a fifth, sometimes a third, in other cases, a half goes 
 to the king, and a seventh (sometimes a tenth) to the general. The 
 rest is kept by the captors, except the ships of war, which go 
 altogether to the king. In some cases account is taken in dividing 
 the booty, of trouble, danger, and expense ; as among the Italians, 
 the third part of a captured ship goes to the captain of the 
 victorious ship, a third part to the merchants to whom the cargo 
 belonged, and a third part to the sailors. In naval warfare those 
 who fight at their own danger and expense do not always take 
 the whole booty, but are obliged to give a part to the public, or 
 to those who derive their right from the public. So with the 
 Spaniards, if ships are sent out at private expense, part of every 
 prize goes to the king, part to the High Admiral. By the custom 
 of France, the Admiral has a tenth ; and so with the Hollanders ; 
 but here a fifth part of the booty is taken by the State. By land, 
 the common use everywhere now is, that in pillage of towns, and 
 in battles, every one keeps what he takes ; but in expeditions for 
 booty, the captures are common to those in the company, and 
 are divided according to their rank." * 
 
 I venture to think that the improvement of our 
 own rules upon these is due largely to the enormous 
 increase of national wealth, which has enabled every 
 nation to support a regular army, and to maintain 
 and pay it regularly. This alone has made it possible 
 for generals to prevent plunder and theft. 
 
 Now I have proved, I hope, that we have wit- 
 nessed, since the days of Grotius, a great improvement 
 
 1 Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacts, book iii. chap, vi., 7, 8.
 
 no THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 in at least one portion of military law the right 
 of individual plunder has ceased. But there is 
 another and less satisfactory subject that must be 
 faced. It would be cowardly to read a paper like 
 this without saying something about military stra- 
 tagems, and the deceits that are practised in warfare. 
 It is a distasteful topic. And when you come to 
 cross-question me about it, please remember that I 
 have no opinion. Indeed I have not been able to make 
 up my mind further than this, that I do not see how, 
 while war exists, you can abolish spies any more 
 than soldiers, or how you can avoid trying to deceive 
 any more than trying to kill your enemies. Certainly, 
 so far as can be seen, we have not been able to 
 moralise this branch of military art during the last 
 two centuries. I will take two Commanders-in-Chief 
 of very unequal genius, but both, I think, rather 
 above than below their contemporaries in their treat- 
 ment of wounded, prisoners, non-combatants, etc., 
 and in the standard of military discipline which they 
 set up Frederick the Great and Lord Wolseley. 
 As they have both written on the subject of stratagems 
 for the instruction of their armies, their writings afford 
 a convenient means of measuring the movements of 
 opinion. 
 
 Frederick the Great of Prussia, who had distin- 
 guished himself in his youth by answering Machiavelli l 
 chapter by chapter, with many high-spirited reproaches 
 the book was published in 1740 at the Hague with 
 a laudatory preface by Voltaire was probably on the 
 
 1 Carlyle calls it "that celebrated Anti-Macchiavel, ever praiseworthy 
 refutation of Macchiavel's Prince . . . now become like the book 
 itself [!] inane to all readers." Frederick the Great, book x. c. 6.
 
 MODERN WARFARE in 
 
 whole at least as humane as the other commanders 
 of his day. An accident, however, robbed him of 
 some of the virtues associated in the popular mind 
 with the military hero or Happy Warrior. On one 
 misty morning of February 1760, at the opening 
 of the fifth campaign of the Seven Years' War, 
 Czetteritz, one of Frederick's generals, was surprised, 
 and in his luggage was found a manuscript copy of 
 the military instructions with which Frederick pro- 
 vided all his generals. Militarische Instruction fur die 
 Generate it was called. It was carried to Daun's head- 
 quarters and speedily printed, to discredit Frederick 
 in the eyes of the world. Carlyle gives no hint of 
 its contents save that it is admired, he says, not a 
 little by some studious soldiers. 1 
 
 Perhaps it will be best to give Article xn. on spies 
 as it stands. I have used the best English transla- 
 tion (that of 1762) and revised it carefully, sentence 
 by sentence, with the German text. The tide runs " Of 
 Spies, their use on every occasion, and the manner of 
 obtaining constant intelligence of the enemy" 
 
 If it were possible always to penetrate the intentions of the enemy, 
 it would be no difficult matter to maintain a superiority, even with 
 an inferior army. Ever)' general endeavours to obtain this advantage, 
 but very few succeed. 
 
 There are several sorts of spies: 
 
 1. Low people who make shift to live by this craft. 
 
 2. Double spies. 
 
 3. Spies of consequence. 
 
 4. Those whom one forces into this hapless employment. 
 
 The first and lowest class, i.e. townsfolk, peasants, priests, etc., 
 whom one sends into the enemy's camp, are only useful to 
 
 1 Cp. Carlyle's Frederick, xix. 9, and Sir C. Napier' '/ Life, by his 
 brother, vol. iii. 365 et al.
 
 ii2 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 inform you of the enemy's position. Their reports are generally 
 so confused and unintelligible that they serve only to increase your 
 ignorance and uncertainty. 
 
 The report of a deserter is generally no better. . . . 
 A double spy is of service in hoaxing the enemy with false 
 information. At Schmiedeburg the Austrians had an Italian spy. 
 We made him believe that on the approach of the enemy we 
 should retire on Breslau, and by this assurance Prince Charles 
 of Lorraine was deceived. Prince Eugene for a long time paid 
 a salary to the postmaster at Versailles. The pitiful rogue opened 
 the letters and orders sent by the Court to the Generals in the 
 field, and sent copies of them to Prince Eugene, who generally 
 got the copies before the French commanders received the 
 originals. Luxemburg corrupted one of King William's secretaries, 
 and so obtained constant information of his movements. But the 
 King discovered it and made all the profit he could from a thing 
 of such unusual delicacy. He compelled the traitor to write to 
 Luxemburg and inform him that next day the allies would make 
 a grand forage. In consequence the French were surprised at 
 Steinkirk and would have been utterly overthrown had they not 
 fought with quite uncommon resolution. It is very difficult to 
 employ such spies against the Austrians. Not so much that 
 Austrians are more difficult to corrupt than other people as that 
 their army is enveloped by a crowd of light troopers who search 
 and rifle everyone they meet. This has made me think of winning 
 over some of their Hussar officers to enable a correspondence to 
 be carried on. For the light troops on either side after their 
 skirmishes are in the habit of arranging a sort of armistice [Still- 
 stand] and on such occasions letters might be delivered and 
 received. 
 
 When you want to convey false intelligence to the enemy, 
 or want to get news of him, you may use the following device : 
 send a trusty soldier (as a deserter) out of your camp to the 
 enemy to report all that you would have them believe ; or he 
 may secretly distribute letters among the troops to encourage 
 desertion. 
 
 If you are in hostile territory and you cannot find any other 
 means of getting information about the movements of the enemy, 
 there is yet another expedient which you can adopt, although it 
 is very hard and cruel ; you select a well-to-do burgher who
 
 MODERN WARFARE 113 
 
 has a home, and estate, a wife and children ; take another man 
 who understands the language of the country, and disguise him 
 as a servant. Force the burgher to take the [Knecht] serving man 
 with him as valet or coachman, and to make his way into the 
 enemy's army on the pretext of having been hardly treated by 
 us. At the same time threaten him sternly that if he fails to 
 bring back his man after they have stayed long enough in the 
 enemy's camp you will both murder his wife and children and 
 plunder and set fire to his house. 1 I was compelled to adopt 
 this expedient when we were encamped at ; and it had 
 good success. To all this I would add that in paying spies you 
 should be generous and even prodigal. A man who so risks 
 his neck in your service deserves to be well rewarded." 2 
 
 A curious parallel to Frederick's instructions may 
 be found in the Tactica, a Greek work on the art 
 of war, written by the Byzantine Emperor Leo about 
 900 A.D. He takes a professional pride in explaining 
 how parlementaires are to be sent to the enemy 
 merely to spy out his strength and numbers. He 
 advises a defeated general to cover his retreat by 
 sending an emissary to the hostile commander to 
 feign a surrender. He recommends the old trick of 
 addressing treasonable letters to officers of the enemy 
 and contriving that they shall fall into the hands 
 of the general. 3 
 
 1 " Man bedrohet ihn zugleich scharf, dass, wenn er seinen Mann 
 nachdem sich derselbe zur genuge in dem feindlichen Lager 
 aufgehalten, nicht wieder zuruck bringen wurde, seine Frau 
 und Kinder niedergehauen, sein Haus aber geplundert und anges- 
 tecket wurden solle." 
 
 2 There is a good introduction to the English translation (by 
 an English officer) 1762 no hint however that any part of the 
 book is not an admirable mirror for gallant officers and generals. 
 The first article on Prussian troops comprises a number of queer 
 dodges to prevent men from deserting. 
 
 3 See Oman's Art of War, chap. iii. 
 
 H
 
 u 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 In his well-known Soldier s Pocket Book Lord 
 Wolseley explains how spies should be sent in the 
 guise of peasants into an enemies' lines, and how 
 they may then send information written in lemon 
 juice on the leaves of a New Testament. He is 
 one of the few military writers who refers to the 
 moral objections that have been raised to these and 
 similar proceedings. " As a nation," he says, "we 
 are bred up to feel it a disgrace even to succeed by 
 falsehood ; the word spy conveys something as 
 repulsive as slave ; we will keep hammering along 
 with the conviction that honesty is the best policy, 
 and that truth always wins in the long run. These 
 pretty little sentiments do well for a child's pocket 
 book ; but a man who acts upon them had better 
 sheathe his sword for ever." * 
 
 There is, I suppose, a moral philosophy though 
 it is often more like casuistry underlying the custo- 
 mary deceits of war. Certainly the partitions are very 
 thin that divide what is thought lawful from what is 
 thought unlawful in this branch of military ethics. Of 
 the legal authorities the most useful, I think, for our 
 purpose is Vattel, the author who after Grotius has 
 perhaps done most to curtail licence and unnecessary 
 cruelty in war. He discusses rather elaborately what I 
 may call the rationale of deceiving the enemy. Some 
 kinds of deceit are permissible, and even laudable, some 
 detestable, and utterly prohibited. And the criterion 
 seems to be whether perfidy is involved, though in 
 some cases the criterion fails and Vattel seems to 
 appeal to men's consciences in order to justify a higher 
 standard or more humane custom. I propose to follow 
 1 Soldier's Pocket Book, p. 81.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 115 
 
 him in one or two illustrations of the subject, though I 
 shall endeavour to be less prolix. First he introduces 
 a celebrated question on which authors had been much 
 divided whether in war any means may justifiably be 
 employed to take away an enemy's life ? It is well 
 known that the cross-bow and the musket when first 
 invented were regarded as unfair and dishonourable 
 weapons. But the delicate consciences which pro- 
 hibited particular weapons as unsportsmanlike were 
 generally ready enough to condone assassination, or 
 even to poison a dangerous enemy. Upon this some 
 had maintained that where there is a right to take 
 away life, as when one is at war, the manner is indiffe- 
 rent. Vattel rejects the proposition with indignation ; 
 but in order to brand assassination as odious and 
 unlawful he distinguishes it from " surprises," which 
 he says in war " are doubtless very allowable." 
 
 For instance, " should a resolute soldier in the night 
 time steal into the enemy's camp, get to the general's 
 tent, and stab him, in this there is nothing contrary to 
 the natural laws of war, nothing but what in a just and 
 necessary war is commendable." Vattel indeed admires 
 such bold strokes, declaring that they have only been 
 censured by writers anxious to please the great, who 
 would of course like to leave the dangerous parts of 
 war to common soldiers and subalterns. Vattel himselt 
 strongly protests against the practice of punishing 
 with cruel tortures and death those who make bold 
 and open attempts of this kind. He admits, how- 
 ever, that the generous warriors of his own age 
 discountenanced the practice, and would never 
 sanction it except on rare occasions when the safety 
 ot their army required the most desperate attempts.
 
 n6 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Assassination proper, however, is a treacherous murder, 
 where the king or general is attacked by a person 
 in disguise, or by poison. Such an act, says Vattel, 
 is unlawful, because it is pernicious to human society. 
 It is no use to defend it by calling it a stroke on behalf 
 of right and justice, " since in war all pretend to have 
 right on their side." The fanatics who murdered 
 William the Silent and Henry the Great thought 
 they were performing acts of supreme piety and 
 religion. 
 
 A treacherous poisoning has about it something more 
 odious than ordinary assassination, and already in the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, only two hundred 
 years after Machiavelli, it may be said to have been 
 condemned by the general consent of all civilised 
 peoples : " the sovereign practising such execrable 
 means should be accounted an enemy of mankind, and 
 the common safety calls on all nations to unite against 
 him and join their forces to punish him." 
 
 Clarke. That is the most potent medicine of civilisa- 
 tion, the fear of the odium men will incur if they 
 violate its laws or offend its sense of right. 
 
 Seymour. Yes, and I think Vattel's objection to the 
 use of poisoned arms is equally sound. Their use 
 may be excused, he says, with a little more plausibility, 
 since they involve neither treachery nor clandestine 
 practice. a But their use is no less interdicted by the 
 law of nature, which forbids us to multiply the evils 
 of war. To get the better of an enemy he must be 
 struck ; but if once he is disabled what necessity is 
 there that he should die of his wounds ? Besides, if 
 you poison your arms, the enemy will follow your 
 example."
 
 MODERN WARFARE 117 
 
 To my mind the last reason is the best, and suffi- 
 ciently accounts for the generally received maxim 
 which prohibits this practice. The poisoning of wells 
 and springs was even more generally condemned, 
 because it might involve the death of non-combatants. 
 But though poison may not be used it was, and is, 
 perfectly allowable to divert or cut off the water. 
 This was done by the Boers at Bloemfontein, and led 
 directly to a vast amount of disease, suffering, and 
 death, both among our own troops and among the 
 non-combatants in the town. The object of war is 
 to disable the enemy by means that are not regarded 
 by civilised opinion as dishonourable. To make him 
 hungry or thirsty, and so to spread exhaustion or 
 disease is just as legitimate as to kill or wound him. 
 Far more armies have been defeated, far more for- 
 tresses captured, by famine and disease than by 
 gunpowder or steel. Perhaps the most sensible 
 criterion of what we are justified in doing against 
 our enemies is never to forget that they are men ; 
 then as Vattel says, " our courage will preserve itself 
 from every stain and cruelty, and the lustre of victory 
 will not be tarnished by inhuman and brutal actions." 
 One may add that, besides the honour and good 
 fame that wait upon fairness and clemency, they are 
 also attended by immediate and real advantages. 
 The enemy is more likely to surrender if he has 
 confidence that he will not be brutally treated, or 
 perfidiously massacred ; an advantageous peace is 
 more likely to be secured ; and if it should happen 
 that a piece of the enemy's territory has to be occupied 
 and administered that difficult task will be infinitely 
 less difficult if the conquered entertain no just feelings
 
 n8 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 of resentment against the victorious army. In the 
 eighteenth century, when a distinct improvement in 
 military customs was taking place, owing no doubt 
 to the precepts of Grotius, and to the success of 
 the armies of the great Gustavus, who was the first to 
 put the new code into practice, a certain amount of 
 false chivalry and politeness came into vogue. It was 
 usual, for instance, not to fire on the quarters of 
 the king or commander-in-chief. By the ancients 
 the soldier who killed a king or general was highly 
 commended. In Vattel's time such an achievement 
 would hardly have been disclosed, much less rewarded. 
 "Sovereigns tacitly agree on the safety of their persons," 
 wrote Vattel, but he pointed out, as I have mentioned, 
 that there is neither law or reason in such an usage ; 
 there is no more obligation to avoid killing the person 
 who is perhaps responsible for the war than those 
 whom he has hired or compelled to fight for him. 
 
 Clarke. I am delighted to hear you say that. I 
 have often wished that every minister who is respon- 
 sible for the declaration of war and every editor and 
 orator who has incited it might be placed in the 
 front rank, and might have an opportunity of ex- 
 periencing those perils, pains and hardships which he, 
 with so much show of patriotism, imposes upon others. 
 
 Seymour (laughing). Well, at any rate you will 
 be glad to know that since Vattel and the French 
 Revolution there has been no tendency to spare dis- 
 tinguished persons at the front. In fact, in modern 
 wars, the mortality in actual fighting has been much 
 higher among the officers than among the private 
 soldiers. A shell is no respecter of persons. 
 
 So far I have dealt with disputes that have been
 
 MODERN WARFARE 119 
 
 decided, but modern warfare still presents many cases 
 for the casuists. How far must good faith be kept 
 between two nations at war ? Obviously the declar- 
 ation of war puts an end to most of the relations 
 and most reciprocal duties. But it is equally certain 
 that all ties are not broken and that all duties are 
 not abrogated. 
 
 Ego. The enormous development of international 
 commerce and of finance during the last century has 
 sharpened and multiplied what may be called the 
 paradoxes of warfare. If, for example, a war were 
 to take place between England and the United States 
 there can be little doubt that Englishmen would 
 continue to eat American corn and that the mills of 
 Lancashire would continue to spin and weave the 
 cotton of the Southern States. Well-to-do people 
 would still receive their dividends in American Rail- 
 ways, and American millionaires would continue to 
 receive their quarterly interest on Consols. 
 
 Seymour. The old authors used to make a distinc- 
 tion between conduct required in just and unjust 
 wars ; but there is no reason for the distinction though 
 there is a practical one of some importance for dis- 
 criminating between regular and irregular troops. 
 Generally speaking, 1 think the right answer to the 
 question as to what obligations remain between enemies 
 in the field is that all duties not necessarily sus- 
 pended by war subsist. In one sense the obligation 
 to keep faith is more binding than ever. What, for 
 instance, would become of prisoners of war, and 
 towns that surrendered if the enemy's word could 
 not be relied upon ? How could any bounds be set 
 to licentiousness and savage reprisals ? If faith were
 
 120 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 banished how could any war be ended save by the 
 total destruction of one side ? Clearly it is expedient 
 that faith should be kept between enemies, but 
 good faith consists not only in observing promises 
 and respecting conventions but also, as Vattel says, 
 in not deceiving where there is an obligation to speak 
 or act the truth. Here, however, the Swiss lawyer 
 has to make some subtle suggestions in order to 
 define " the lawful use of truth or duplicity towards 
 an enemy." Truth must be told where we have 
 expressly or impliedly engaged to speak it and also 
 whenever we are naturally bound to do so by the 
 laws of humanity. But " when by leading an enemy 
 into an error, either by a discourse where we are not 
 obliged to speak the truth, or by some feint, we 
 can procure ourselves an advantage in the war which 
 it would be lawful to seek by open force this 
 doubtless is legal. 1 say further, as humanity obliges 
 us in the pursuit of our rights to prefer the mildest 
 means, then if by stratagem (which may be defined 
 as a feint void of perfidy), we can make ourselves 
 masters of a strong place, surprise the enemy, and 
 overcome him, it is much better, it is really more 
 laudable to succeed in this way than by a bloody 
 siege or battle. But the saving of blood is not of 
 such weight as to warrant perfidy ; " for, as he has 
 shown, the consequences of perfidy are infinitely 
 dreadful. A stratagem, then, or lawful deceit of the 
 enemy consists in artifices devoid of perfidy and 
 consistent with the customs and conventions of war. 1 
 Case. You have opened, without closing, a cele- 
 brated question on which natural lawyers used to 
 
 1 See Vattel, pp. 329 sqq. and 342 sqq. ed. of 1/93.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 121 
 
 be at variance; that is, whether in war all means are 
 lawful to take an enemy's life. Wolfius, for example, 
 decided so late as the year 1724 that we are natur- 
 ally allowed to make use of poisoned weapons in 
 wars. 1 
 
 Seymour. You surprise me. I thought that since 
 Grotius philosophers and even lawyers had aimed at 
 mitigating the ferocity of war. Wolfius seems to 
 have written up to his name. 
 
 Case. Well; but don't you think after all there 
 may be humanity as well as logic in his attitude ? 
 Would you have any objection to poisoned bullets 
 if they could be successfully manufactured, I mean 
 such a bullet as would cause death, however slight 
 the wound it might inflict ? 
 
 Seymour. Your question revolts me. Certainly, I 
 should object. Why ; if such barbarities were cus- 
 tomary in ordinary wars I doubt if it would be possible 
 for any civilised nation to get men to enlist. 
 
 Case. A true soldier's reason ; but is not that the 
 very object which a natural lawyer like Wolfius might 
 have had in view? 
 
 Arbiter. Do you take the same objection to explosive 
 bullets ? 
 
 Seymour. No, not precisely. There seems to be a 
 difference in kind between poisoning a man and 
 causing as ugly a wound as possible. Shells are ad- 
 missible in pom-poms but not in rifles. That seems 
 to me to be rather too subtle a distinction. I don't 
 see myself that there is any good ground for saying 
 that a shell under 14 ounces shall be unlawful and a 
 shell of greater weight lawful. 
 
 Un his Jus Gentium, 878.
 
 122 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Arbiter. Then about the expanding bullet ? 
 
 Seymour. Well, the object of the Mark IV. ammuni- 
 tion and of the Dum-dum bullet that was manufactured 
 in Calcutta was the same as that of an explosive bullet 
 to make sure that it did not hit without hurting. 
 No doubt our military representatives were actuated 
 by the best motives, but I'm afraid that they did not 
 shine at the Hague Conference. They declared that 
 the object of the Mark IV. and of the Dum-dum was 
 to place men hors de combat " without causing needless 
 
 r o 
 
 suffering." I confess that I find it difficult to dis- 
 tinguish between needful and needless suffering. A 
 small ordinary bullet, if it passes through a fleshy 
 part, may make very little difference to the soldier's 
 fighting capacity ; a larger one causes more suffering 
 and makes him less effective ; a Dum-dum, where the 
 core of the bullet is not completely covered by the 
 jacket, would give still more pain and inconvenience ; 
 an explosive bullet striking in the same place might 
 cause the man's death. You see it is a question of 
 degree. In truth, the object of shooting in war is 
 not to place a man hors de combat temporarily, but 
 permanently, i.e. to maim or kill. 
 
 Case. Then where did our representatives blunder ? 
 
 Seymour. Well, in the first place, they incurred a 
 lot of unnecessary odium; for when it came to the 
 point (in the Boer War) they shrank from using the 
 vast stores of Mark IV. ammunition. Secondly, they 
 exposed Britain to the charge of want of chivalry. 
 For all that they were asked to do was to agree not 
 to use expansive bullets against the other civilised 
 powers joining in the convention, which bound them- 
 selves to observe a similar restriction.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 123 
 
 Arbiter. It was certainly a shortsighted policy, and I 
 think also an inhuman one. It is possible that science 
 may make war impossible ; but the desire of nations 
 to make it less cruel is a sign of grace, and should be 
 welcomed, not repelled. Who ever heard of war being 
 shortened by barbarity ? Certainly, for one war that 
 has been so shortened, twenty have been prolonged. 
 
 Clarke. What restrictions are now imposed by inter- 
 national law in relation to arms and explosives ? 
 
 Seymour. Practically none. By the declaration of 
 St. Petersburg (1868) all the Powers except Spain 
 renounced the use of explosive projectiles weighing 
 less than 14 ounces. At the Hague Conference in 
 1899 all the Powers except Great Britain agreed 
 that in any war they might undertake against one 
 another their troops should not launch explosives or 
 projectiles from balloons. This agreement was only 
 made for a term of five years, but was extended at 
 the beginning of the present war by mutual consent 
 of Russia and Japan. Further, all the Powers, except 
 Great Britain, the United States, and Portugal, agreed 
 to abstain from the use of expanding bullets, and all 
 except Great Britain and the United States agreed not 
 to use projectiles, " the object of which is the diffusion 
 of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." 
 
 Admiral. Of course, the advantages of these three 
 declarations are not extended to Great Britain ; so 
 that in a war with any civilised power the British 
 soldier is liable to be wounded by expanding bullets 
 and to be poisoned by gases ? 
 
 Seymour. That would be so ; and it is difficult to 
 see what advantages the War Office and the Admiralty 
 have gained by their attitude upon these matters at
 
 i2 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the Hague Conference. In the war with the Boers 
 we used lyddite (with disappointing results), but 
 abstained from the use of expanding bullets. 
 
 III. 
 
 From the subjects of discipline, plunder and deceit, 
 I pass to the battlefield and the campaign. 
 
 Mr. Oman's vivid essay on the Art of War in 
 the middle ages leads us through all the changes 
 and revolutions which came over military tactics 
 between the days of the Roman legion and the Wars 
 of the Roses. Yet how small were those changes and 
 revolutions ! The clumsy cannon of the fifteenth 
 century was certainly a more dangerous and a far 
 more terrifying weapon than the catapult of the fifth. 
 But to judge by the esteem which military writers of 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries entertained for 
 Roman discipline and tactics, there seems to be reason 
 for thinking that Caesar's army might have rendered 
 a good account of any equal force which Spain, or 
 France, or Germany could have organised fifteen 
 hundred years later. In all that period of incessant 
 warfare and incessantly changing tactics the long bow 
 of the English archer was the most destructive novelty 
 introduced into battles ; and in the age of chivalry 
 both the long bow and the cross bow were condemned 
 by accomplished warriors as unfair contrivances, con- 
 trary to Christian usage. The true dividing line 
 between ancient and modern warfare is not the 
 invention of gunpowder, but the invention of small 
 arms. From the first use of the musket and its 
 subsequent improvement we trace a gradual but really
 
 MODERN WARFARE 125 
 
 revolutionary change in military tactics and military 
 habits and military fashions. The typical soldier is 
 no longer the Roman legionary who, with close-fitting 
 shield and short sword, cut his way through the 
 thickest phalanx and stood firm before the fiercest 
 onset of barbarians. Still less is he the knight career- 
 ing about the field in a suit of mail. Size and 
 muscular strength are no longer qualifications. A 
 little wiry man who can march long distances, live 
 on little, and endure fatigue is the ideal soldier of 
 to-day. The modern warrior crouches in safe cover, 
 peering through a telescope and firing from time to 
 time at a conjectural enemy perhaps a mile or more 
 away. War is still a terrible business, but it has lost 
 most of its pageantry and excitement. The grand 
 object of the modern soldier, as of the Periclean 
 woman, is to escape notice. Red coats, waving 
 plumes, gold brocades are no longer worn. Hand-to- 
 hand fighting is almost extinct, and therefore I will 
 go so far as to say that there are greater and more 
 essential changes if we compare our battlefields with 
 those of only a century ago than you would find if 
 you compared the battlefields of Napoleon with the 
 battlefields of Julius Caesar. 
 
 For recollect it is during the last fifty years that 
 the old muzzle loading rifles have given way first 
 to breech-loaders and then to magazine rifles. Fifty 
 years ago the bayonet was a most formidable arm, and 
 cavalry charges were still a feature of every battle. 
 Now the bayonet is going out. The sword is a 
 useless ornament. The lance is being abandoned. 
 The only possibility of using cold steel, or even of 
 getting within revolver range, is by surprise.
 
 126 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 There are many ways in which the rifle of to-day 
 excels the rifles of twenty or thirty years ago. In the 
 first place the calibre has been so reduced that the 
 soldier can carry many times more cartridges. For 
 instance, with a five mil. rifle, a soldier can carry 
 between two or three hundred cartridges as easily 
 as the Russian soldier carried eighty or ninety cart- 
 ridges in 1877. Further, the magazine rifles can be 
 fired very much more rapidly than the old breech- 
 loaders. Some pretend that sixty shots can be fired 
 per minute by a soldier who is actually taking aim. 
 In the early nineties, when Bloch was writing his 
 famous book, 1 twelve times as many shots could be 
 fired in a given time from the rifle then in use as 
 could be fired from the rifle in use thirty years before. 
 Secondly, the range of the modern weapon is much 
 longer. For example, neither the French chassepot 
 nor the Prussian needle gun used in the Franco-German 
 war could penetrate a human skull at 1760 yards; 
 bullets from modern low-calibre rifles will penetrate 
 the harder bones of an ox at over 3000 yards. 
 
 Again, the use of smokeless powder in modern 
 battles greatly facilitates aim, though the use of it 
 by your enemy makes it difficult to ascertain his 
 exact position. With the aid of field glasses troops 
 can shoot pretty accurately on a clear day at objects 
 that twenty years ago would have been considered 
 far out of range. Further mechanical improvements 
 have been made to assist the aim, by showing the 
 direction of the barrel. It was calculated by a German 
 
 1 The work took him eight years. It appeared in Russian in 1898 
 in German (in 6 vols.) in the following year. There is no complete 
 English translation.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 127 
 
 expert (Professor Gebler) some years ago that, if the 
 German and French armies in the war of 1870 instead 
 of being armed with needle guns and chassepots had 
 carried the improved rifles of the early nineties, their 
 fire would have been four to five times more effective. 
 So that the losses in the war would (theoretically) l 
 have been quadrupled. 
 
 The developments of artillery in recent times have 
 been equally stupendous. In the year 1891, Pro- 
 fessor Langlois calculated that with an equal number 
 of charges artillery was five times as effective in 
 destruction as in 1870. This only allowed for 
 accuracy of aim, for range, size and ammunition. But 
 as the field gun of 1891 could be fired twice at least 
 while the gun of 1870 was being fired once the power 
 of artillery fire was really ten times greater than twenty 
 years before. Since 1891 another series of inventions 
 has been made, especially in the quick-firing guns. 
 It would be difficult to say whether the superiority 
 of modern artillery is due mainly to rapidity of dis- 
 charge or to the greater weight and destructiveness 
 of the explosives with which it is charged. As regards 
 destructiveness alone it was proved a tew years ago 
 by experiment that, whereas a shell in 1870 would 
 burst into twenty or thirty fragments, a modern shell 
 of the same weight would burst into 240 fragments. 
 
 Another illustration may be taken to show the 
 diabolical character of modern artillery fire. The 
 experts declare that one round of shrapnel will do 
 as much destruction over the same area as 2000 
 
 1 By "theoretically" I mean upon the assumption, in itself 
 quite impossible and extravagant, that the distances between the 
 combatants had not been altered.
 
 128 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 rifle bullets fired by soldiers attacking in loose forma- 
 tion. With the aid of balloons, watch towers, and 
 all the other complicated apparatus of modern war, 
 large guns can be trained to throw shells with re- 
 markable precision for distances of three or four miles. 
 
 What are the general consequences of these extra- 
 ordinary developments ? In the first place, the area 
 of battle is enormously extended, the combatants are 
 driven further and further apart, troops advancing 
 to the attack are bound to adopt a looser and looser 
 formation ; and unless the ground is much broken 
 anything like a bayonet charge upon an enemy well 
 armed and intrenched has become impossible. In 
 fact a bayonet charge is a rare and almost accidental 
 occurrence. The Boers had no bayonets, and soon 
 a bayonet will be as obsolete as a suit of mail. The 
 defence has become stronger and stronger in com- 
 parison to the attack, and the wonderful power of 
 illuminating the night by means of searchlights has 
 made attacks upon properly provided forts almost 
 as hazardous by night as in open day. Starvation, 
 or immense superiority of artillery, or such a command 
 of numbers as make a commander willing to sacrifice 
 multitudes in an attack, are the only means left of 
 reducing a well planned fortress provided with suffi- 
 cient ammunition, suitable artillery, and a garrison 
 of resolute men. 
 
 Thanks to the system of conscription, progress of 
 wealth, facility of credit, and the miraculous improve- 
 ments in transport by land and sea, the size of armies 
 is much less restricted than was the case even a hundred 
 years ago. I believe that the Japanese, a compara- 
 tively poor nation, have placed in Manchuria a larger
 
 MODERN WARFARE 129 
 
 army than ever Napoleon assembled on the frontiers 
 of France. The war office of Lord Lansdowne and 
 Mr. Brodrick, comparatively as bad as that of the 
 Duke of Newcastle and Lord Panmure, was able 
 to place in South Africa with less difficulty an army 
 ten times as large as it had placed in the Crimea 
 less than half a century before. More men mean 
 more food for powder, and the casualty lists in 
 Manchuria show how deceptive were the arguments 
 founded on the comparatively trifling losses suffered 
 in the field during the Boer War. It is true that the 
 increasing distance of the conflicting armies more than 
 compensates for the increasing deadliness of their 
 weapons ; but their augmented size more than com- 
 pensates as a rule for the smaller percentages. 1 
 Allowing for time and numbers of course the blood- 
 shed even in Manchuria could not be compared with 
 that of battles between armies equally brave and dis- 
 ciplined a hundred years ago. It sounds a paradox, 
 yet it is perfectly true that far greater execution 
 would have been done had the same armies fought 
 for the same length of time with the far less deadly 
 weapons of Napoleonic warfare. Again, though the 
 sufferings of both sides are enormous, they are cer- 
 tainly not comparable to those inflicted and suffered 
 by Napoleon's army in Russia. 
 
 There are many points of similarity and con- 
 trast between the two campaigns ; but as we have 
 
 1 More men, it seems, were killed and wounded in the two great 
 battles of Liao Yang, Manchuria, than in any two great battles of 
 the Napoleonic or Franco-German wars ; and this has been due, 
 first, to the greater number of men employed, and second, to the 
 greater length of time over which the fighting was prolonged. 
 
 l
 
 130 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 been reading vivid accounts of the Manchurian war 
 every day in the newspapers, I need not labour 
 the comparison. It will be enough to remind you 
 of some of the incidents of the Russian Expedition 
 as they are related by Labaume; whose narrative 
 supplies the best illustration of the improvements 
 which invention, discipline, public opinion, and inter- 
 national conventions have brought about in the 
 conduct of warfare by civilised powers. 
 
 Eugene Labaume was an engineer and staff-officer 
 in the Fourth Corps of Napoleon's army. He 
 wrote down day by day what passed under his own 
 observation from the 24th of June, 1812, when 
 Napoleon, with an army of over 400,000 men, crossed 
 the Niemen, to the morning of I3th December, when, 
 in Labaume's words, " scarcely 20,000 repassed it, of 
 whom at least two-thirds had not seen the Kremlin." 
 A few incidents, taken almost word for word from 
 the intrepid soldier's diary, will convey an impression 
 of the atrocities which could be committed more than 
 a century and a half after the age of Grotius. As 
 Napoleon's army advanced the Russians retreated, 
 carrying off the inhabitants with their cattle, burning 
 the villages, and destroying corn and forage. At 
 Smolensk they gave battle, and, after an obstinate 
 engagement, fired and evacuated the town. The 
 French, we are told, entered Smolensk on the follow- 
 ing day, marching over ruins and blackened corpses. 
 The streets and squares were strewn with wounded 
 Russian soldiers. All the inhabitants who had escaped 
 the slaughter and the conflagration were turned out 
 of their homes and took refuge in the cathedral. A 
 fortnight later at the Borodino there fell eighty
 
 MODERN WARFARE 131 
 
 thousand men. The victorious French marching over 
 the field after the battle saw a surface of about 
 nine square miles strewn with killed and wounded, 
 " with the wreck of arms, lances, helmets, and cuirasses, 
 and with balls as numerous as hailstones after a violent 
 storm." As the army marched by, thousands of 
 wounded Russians " besought us to put an end to 
 their torments." Riding into Rouza on September 
 9th, Labaume saw a mob of soldiers pillaging the 
 houses, regardless of the tears and cries of the women 
 and children. This licentious conduct he owns was 
 excusable in some who were famished, but with many 
 hunger was a mere pretext for plundering everything, 
 and even stripping the women and children of their 
 clothes. By this time rumour had reported the 
 ferocity of Napoleon's army far in advance. 
 
 All the villages between Rouza and Moscow were 
 deserted ; the inhabitants, setting fire to their houses 
 and to the crops they had just gathered in, hid 
 themselves in the recesses of the forest. 
 
 Thus the misconduct of the grand army was already 
 aggravating the difficulties and discomforts of the 
 advance, and preparing for the unexampled miseries 
 and privations of the most calamitous retreat in the 
 annals of military history. On September I5th 
 Labaume's corps entered Moscow. A thick column 
 of smoke was rising from the centre of the deserted 
 city. The fire started in shops and warehouses, and, 
 fanned by a high wind, spread so rapidly that it defied 
 all the efforts of the French generals, who soon 
 received orders to quit the city. Then ensued a scene 
 of extraordinary horror. " The hospital containing 
 more than 12,000 wounded began to burn ; almost all
 
 132 
 
 these wretched victims perished." Labaume declares 
 that it is impossible to depict the confusion and 
 tumult which followed Napoleon's decision to evacuate 
 Moscow. " The whole of this immense city was given 
 up to plunder. Soldiers, sutlers, galley-slaves, and 
 prostitutes ran through the streets and ransacked the 
 deserted palaces." All the brutish passions of the 
 soldiery were let loose. No woman was safe, no place 
 however sacred was secure from their rapacity. 
 
 These brutal orgies, he adds, so soon and so 
 horribly avenged, were "the consequences of a savage 
 war, in which sixteen united nations, differing in 
 language and manners, thought themselves free to 
 commit every crime, persuaded that one nation alone 
 would be held responsible." So Moscow was sacked 
 as it burned. At night, while the conflagration was 
 spreading, Labaume heard the shrieks of those who 
 were being murdered or undone, and the howlings 
 of dogs which, chained to the gates of the houses 
 according to Moscow custom, could not escape the 
 flames. It was not till late in October, after the 
 defeat at Tarontina, that what remained of Moscow 
 was wholly evacuated. Then the army of invaders 
 began to experience the full horrors of retreat through 
 a twice-devastated country. Appalling enough is 
 Labaume's account of the early stages of the retreat, 
 before the very cold weather set in. "The first 
 division, on leaving their night quarters, generally 
 consigned them to the flames, and also the towns 
 and villages they passed through. The few houses 
 that escaped the first division were burnt by the 
 second." Labaume, whose corps brought up the 
 rear, saw no houses, only ruins in which were entombed
 
 MODERN WARFARE 133 
 
 soldiers, peasants, children wantonly murdered, and 
 young girls slain on the spot where they had been 
 violated. In the first 150 miles of march from 
 Moscow, the Abbey of Kolotskoi was the only 
 undemolished building. 
 
 But at first the weather was fine and the march 
 easy. Of a sudden, on the 6th of November, 
 as they neared Smolensk, the sun disappeared, the 
 wind howled, the snow began to fall, and the 
 main road could no more be distinguished. Ill 
 clothed, ill shod, and ill fed, the weaker soldiers 
 began to sink. No aid could be given. " We saw 
 them only by the heaps of snow that covered them 
 like little mounds in a graveyard. Flocks of ravens 
 croaked ominously over our heads, and troops of 
 dogs, which had followed us from Moscow and 
 lived solely on the corpses, howled about us as if eager 
 to hasten the moment when we should become their 
 prey. Meanwhile, they contended with the soldiers 
 for the dead horses that were left on the roadside. 
 Every day that passed increased the horrors of the 
 march. Many were drowned or cut off by the 
 Cossacks at the passage of the Vop. After describing 
 this in his diary (Nov. 8th) Labaume adds : 
 
 " The last night had been dreadful. To form an idea of it? 
 rigours, conceive an army encamped on the snow, in the depth 
 of a severe winter, pursued by an enemy to whom it could oppose 
 neither artillery nor cavalry. The soldiers, without shoes and 
 almost destitute of clothing, were enfeebled by hunger and fatigue. 
 Seated on their knapsacks, they slept on their knees. From this 
 benumbing posture they only rose to broil a few slices of horse 
 flesh, or to melt some pieces of ice. They were often without 
 wood, and to keep up a fire demolished the houses in which the 
 generals were lodged."
 
 134 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 The line of march was strewn with the spoils of 
 Moscow, which could not be transported for want of 
 animals. More than thirty thousand horses perished 
 in a few days. At intervals they saw groups of 
 soldiers frozen to death round the green branches 
 and twigs which they had vainly tried to kindle. 
 The moral effect upon the survivors was not, as the 
 pulpit would have us believe, c purifying ' : " These 
 horrors, so far from exciting our sensibility, only 
 hardened our hearts. Having no longer the power 
 of being cruel to our enemies, we were cruel to one 
 another. The best friends were estranged ; whoever 
 experienced the least sickness was certain of never 
 seeing his country again, unless he had good horses 
 and faithful servants. To save the plunder of Moscow 
 was an object of more moment than the saving of a 
 comrade. We heard around us the groans of the 
 dying and the plaintive voices of those who were 
 abandoned ; but all were deaf to their cries, and, if 
 any one approached his perishing comrades, it was 
 for the purpose of stripping them and searching 
 whether they had any food left." 
 
 The only recorded instance of compassion was at 
 Liadoui in Lithuania, where three barns filled with 
 wounded, having been set on fire, some soldiers who 
 were passing by, at the urgent entreaties of the 
 wretches, put an end to their sufferings. I cannot 
 omit Labaume's description of the bivouacs before 
 the awful passage of the Beresina (Nov. 2yth) : 
 
 " At these bivouacs we saw men fighting for a morsel of bread. 
 If anyone else, numbed with cold, drew near a fire, the soldiers 
 to whom it belonged drove him away ; and if, mad with thirst, 
 you begged a drop of water from one who had a full bowl, you
 
 MODERN WARFARE 135 
 
 were sure to be refused with execrations. Often men of education, 
 who had been friends, quarrelled over a handful of straw or a bit 
 of dead horse. The most dreadful feature of this war was that 
 it demoralised our characters, and gave birth to new vices ; men 
 who had been generous, humane, and upright, became selfish, 
 greedy, cruel, and unjust." 
 
 At the passage of the Beresina all imaginable 
 horrors of rout and defeat were crowded together. 
 One of the bridges broke down ; at the other, 
 while the Russians made a furious attack in the 
 rearguard, there was a frightful contest between 
 cavalry and infantry. For three days a miserable 
 crowd pressed round the bridge. The women and 
 children left their carriages, and begged in vain for 
 pity and succour. " The strong threw into the 
 water the weak who impeded their progress, and 
 trampled under foot the sick and wounded." 
 
 Hundreds were crushed under the wheels of the 
 artillery, thousands and thousands threw themselves 
 into the river and perished. Girard's division having 
 crossed, set fire to the bridge to prevent the Russians 
 from pursuing, and left the remnant of the army 
 to choose between the Cossacks and the Beresina. 
 For a fortnight longer this awful flight continued. 
 Here are a few passages taken from the last pages of 
 the diary : 
 
 Dec. 5. " Brave officers, once the terror of our enemies and 
 the conquerors of two-thirds of Europe, now covered with rags and 
 icicles, dragged themselves slowly along unaided and unpitied by 
 the soldiers they had commanded. Their plight was the more 
 wretched because whoever had not the strength to march was aban- 
 doned, and whoever was abandoned was a dead man within an 
 hour. Every bivouac presented next day the appearance of a field 
 of battle. Whenever a soldier sank from fatigue his next neighbour
 
 136 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 rushed on him and stripped him of his clothes, even before he was 
 dead. Every moment we heard them begging the aid of some 
 charitable hand : ' My comrades,' one would cry in heart-rending 
 tones, 'help me to rise; deign to lend me a hand to pursue my 
 march.' All passed by without even regarding him. ' Ah : I con- 
 jure you not to abandon me to the enemy : in the name of 
 humanity grant me the trifling assistance I ask : help me to rise.' 
 Instead of being moved by a prayer so touching, they considered 
 him as already dead, and began to strip him ; we then heard his 
 cries, ' Help ! Help ! they murder me. Why do you trample me 
 under foot ? You even take away my clothes ! ' If some officer 
 urged by generous feelings, did not arrive in time to prevent it, 
 many in the like situation would have been assassinated by their 
 own comrades." 
 
 Dec. 8. "The road was covered with creatures, no longer men, 
 whom the enemy disdained to take prisoners. Every day furnished 
 scenes too painful to relate. Some had lost their hearing, others 
 their speech, and many, by excessive cold and hunger, were reduced 
 to such a state of stupid phrenzy, that they roasted the dead bodies 
 for food, and even gnawed their own hands and arms. Some who 
 were too weak to lift a piece of wood, or to roll a stone towards 
 the fire, sat down upon their dead companions, and with an un- 
 moved countenance gazed upon the burning logs. When they were 
 consumed, these livid spectres, unable to get up, fell by the side 
 of those on whom they had been seated. Many, distraught, plunged 
 their bare feet into the fire ; or with a convulsive laugh, threw 
 themselves into the flames, and uttering shocking cries, perished in 
 the most horrible contortions." 
 
 Dec. 10. " Every day's march presented us with a repetition of 
 the mournful scenes of which I have given a faint sketch. Our 
 hearts, completely hardened by these loathsome scenes, lost all sensi- 
 bility. We were reduced to a state of brutality that left us no 
 feeling but the instinct of self-preservation." 
 
 Dec. 12. "Exhausted by one of the longest and most fatiguing 
 marches we reached Kowno, where the wrecks of each corps were 
 reunited. They encamped as usual in the streets ; and as we knew 
 that our deplorable situation did not admit of our maintaining 
 any position, the magazines, which were well stored, were given 
 up to pillage. We had an immediate and abundant supply of 
 clothing, flour and rum. Our quarters were filled with broken
 
 MODERN WARFARE 137 
 
 casks, and the liquor that was spilt formed a pool in the public 
 square. The soldiers, long deprived of stimulants, drank to excess, 
 and more than twelve hundred of them, in a state of intoxica- 
 tion, lay down to sleep in the houses or in the snow and were 
 frozen to death." 1 
 
 Such is the narrative of a soldier who saw and suffered. 
 It is not the story of a Quaker or a philanthropist, 
 but of one who had chosen the profession of arms, 
 and as an officer in the grand army, was at least 
 as sensitive to the glory of war as to the ruin, deso- 
 lation, and misery which it involves. 
 
 Ego. How did the Russian army fare in the 
 pursuit r 
 
 Seymour. The best authority I can find states that 
 the Russian army under Kutusow, which, when the 
 pursuit began, had numbered 120,000 effective men, 
 could not array 35,000 on the frontier of the Duchy 
 of Warsaw ; and when the campaign closed with the 
 crossing of the Vistula and the occupation of Kalish, 
 only 18,000 men were left in the ranks. 
 
 Next to retreats, I suppose that sieges have given 
 rise to the most terrible scenes of carnage and atrocity, 
 though I much doubt whether it is really worse to 
 sack a town than to lay waste a country side 
 whether, for instance, the devastation of the Pala- 
 tinate by order of Louis XIV. was any less execrable 
 than Tilly's sack of Magdeburg. But I propose to 
 go back only to the Napoleonic wars. From 1794 
 to 1815 Europe ran with blood. On the whole the 
 
 1 The foregoing extracts are rendered from "Relation Circonstanciee, 
 de la Campagnc en Russie en 1812. Par Eugene Labaume, Chef 
 d'Escadron, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, etc. ^.me edition. 
 Paris, Fevrier, 1815."
 
 138 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 verdict of history will be that the standard of mili- 
 tary conduct and morality was considerably higher than 
 in the previous centuries. Nevertheless, even in the 
 Spanish Peninsula, where the chivalry of the French 
 and English troops (towards one another) often 
 excited admiration and wonder, there is a long list 
 of horrors that would be inconceivable, and I think 
 impossible now in a European war. I will simply 
 give in order three extracts from the pen of the most 
 brilliant and trustworthy of our military historians. 
 They relate to three incidents that occurred in a 
 space of eighteen months. In the first Napier 
 describes the sack of Ciudad Rodrigo on January 
 1 9th, 1812 : 
 
 " Now plunging into the town from all quarters, and throwing 
 off all discipline, the troops committed frightful excesses ; houses 
 were soon in flames, the soldiers menaced their officers and shot 
 each other, intoxication increased the tumult to absolute madness, 
 and a fire being wilfully lighted in the middle of the great magazine 
 the town would have been blown to atoms, but for the energetic 
 coolness of some officers and a few soldiers who still preserved their 
 senses. To excuse these excesses it was said, 'the soldiers were 
 not to be controlled.' Colonel M'Leod of the 43rd, a young man 
 of a noble and energetic spirit, proved the contrary. He placed 
 guards at the breach and constrained his men to keep their ranks 
 for a long time ; but, as no organised efforts were made by higher 
 authorities, and the example was not followed, the regiment dis- 
 solved by degrees in the general disorder." 
 
 In April came the still more terrible storm of 
 Badajos. Here we are told " the desire for glory 
 on the British part was dashed with a hatred for 
 the citizens from an old grudge." Also recent toil 
 and hardship with much spilling of blood had 
 infuriated the soldiery : for the very things which
 
 MODERN WARFARE 139 
 
 make nobler minds averse to cruelty harden the 
 vulgar spirit. a Numbers also, like Caesar's centurion 
 who would not forget the plunder of Avaricum, were 
 heated with the recollection of Rodrigo and thirsted 
 for spoil." When at last the place was stormed 
 the soldiers proceeded to sack it ; here is Napier's 
 account of the scene that followed : 
 
 " Now commenced that wild and desperate wickedness which 
 tarnished the lustre of the soldier's heroism. All indeed were not 
 alike ; hundreds risked, and many lost, their lives in striving to 
 stop violence ; but madness generally prevailed, and the worst men 
 being leaders all the dreadful passions of human nature were dis- 
 played. Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty 
 and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, im- 
 precations, and hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing 
 of doors and windows and the reports of muskets used in violence 
 resounded for two days and nights in the streets of Badajos ! On the 
 third, when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted 
 by their own excesses, the tumult rather subsided than was quelled ; 
 the wounded men were then looked to, the dead disposed of! 
 
 Five thousand men and officers fell during the siege, including 
 seven hundred Portuguese ; three thousand five hundred were 
 stricken in the assault, sixty officers and more than seven hundred 
 men were slain on the spot. 
 
 Let it be remembered that this frightful carnage took place in 
 a space of less than a hundred yards square : that the slain died, 
 not all suddenly nor by one manner of death : that some perished 
 by steel, some by shot, some by water ; that some were crushed and 
 mangled by heavy weights, some trampled upon, some dashed to 
 atoms by the fiery explosions ; that for hours this destruction was 
 endured without shrinking, and that the town was won at last : these 
 things considered, it must be admitted that a British army bears with 
 it an awful power." 
 
 Altogether, the assault, capture, and sack of Badajos 
 present a dramatic picture of heroic courage and 
 devilish ferocity.
 
 1 40 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 We now pass on to the third incident the sack 
 of San Sebastian on the thirty-first of August in the 
 following year (1813) : 
 
 "This storm [a thunderstorm] seemed to be a signal from hell for 
 the perpetration of villany which would have shamed the most 
 ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication 
 and plunder had been the principal objects ; at Badajos lust and 
 murder were joined to rapine and drunkenness ; at San Sebas- 
 tian the direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to the 
 catalogue of crimes ; one atrocity, of which a girl of seventeen was 
 the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, inde- 
 scribable barbarity. Some order was at first maintained, but the 
 resolution to throw off discipline was quickly made manifest. A 
 British staff-officer was pursued with a volley of small arms and 
 escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for a provost- 
 marshall ; a Portuguese adjutant, striving to prevent some ruffianism, 
 was put to death in the market-place, not with sudden violence, but 
 deliberately. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, 
 many men were well-conducted, yet the rapine and violence com- 
 menced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the 
 place, and the disorder continued until fire, following the steps of the 
 plunderer, put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town." 
 
 Modern sieges seldom end in an assault. If they 
 do there is the same risk of brutality. When, for 
 instance, the Japanese took Port Arthur by assault 
 from China they were reported to have butchered 
 most of the defenders. But the poor Chinamen never 
 seem to be treated as civilised opponents, or even 
 as human beings. They were slaughtered like vermin 
 by the Russians at Blagatoveschenk, and thousands 
 are said to have been driven into the river and 
 drowned. Is it because they rate their own lives so 
 low ? The siege of Port Arthur is already the longest 
 siege of modern times. It has lasted six months, twice 
 as long as the siege of Ladysmith and a month longer
 
 MODERN WARFARE 141 
 
 than the siege of Plevna, though Stoessel's garrison 
 is not quite so strong as Osman's was in 1877. But 
 Osman never had more than forty-five thousand 
 men ; yet behind earthworks, which he threw up in 
 a position previously unfortified, he defied for five 
 months the whole force of the Muscovite Empire. 
 He began to entrench himself there in July after 
 learning of the fall of Nicopolis. On the last day 
 of that month he was attacked by a strong Russian 
 army under Schahoffskoy and Krudener, but drove 
 them back with a loss of more than a third of their 
 men. In September the Russians attacked him in 
 still greater force. " For five long days and nights," 
 wrote Archibald Forbes, " they rained on him a storm 
 of missiles from their great siege guns. On the sixth 
 day they assailed his position furiously with eighty 
 thousand men. Osman was ready for them ; he slew 
 them in thousands, and tens of thousands, and sent 
 them reeling back on their supports." They then 
 set to work to starve him out and succeeded after 
 three months, during which time other operations 
 had to be suspended. 
 
 Osman, it will be remembered, was badly off for 
 artillery. Yet all the attempts to take his extem- 
 porised positions failed. Hunger alone reduced 
 Plevna. The wider the zone of fire, the further 
 the combatants are separated, the greater the distance 
 between the line of investment and the invested 
 forts, the more difficult it becomes to carry a place 
 by assault. 1 Clearly the advantages of defence over 
 
 1 Evidently if he had had a little more obstinacy and perhaps a few 
 thousand more men, Stoessel could have held Port Arthur as long as 
 his food and ammunition lasted.
 
 i 4 2 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 attacks increase with every increase in the range of 
 rifles and cannon : the American Civil War of 1861-4, 
 the Franco-German War of 1870-71, the Russo- 
 Turkish War of 1877-8, the various defensive actions 
 fought by the Boers against vastly superior forces 
 in 1900 and 1901, and finally the crowning examples 
 of the battle of Liao Yang and the siege of Port 
 Arthur in the present Russo-Japanese war, prove 
 conclusively what immense sacrifices of men and what 
 vast expenditure of ammunition are necessary in order 
 to obtain the victory over an enemy well armed and 
 entrenched. 
 
 From this point of view nothing can be more 
 instructive, or I may add more strongly corroborative 
 of the principal conclusions and predictions of Bloch's 
 profound and laborious volumes, than this long-drawn 
 battle, in Manchuria. After more than a week's fight- 
 ing, the Japanese have driven the Russian army from 
 its position, yet in spite of the wretched condition of 
 the roads they have been unable to pursue or to 
 make any significant capture of men or guns or muni- 
 tions of war. 1 Nor, so far as I can ascertain, 
 were the troops often less than five hundred yards 
 apart. For most of the time it was an artillery duel. 
 Telegrams are sent describing bayonet charges, but 
 these things are only seen by correspondents at a 
 distance of two or three miles. Wounds inflicted 
 by the bayonet cannot have been more than i per 
 cent., I doubt if they were i per cent., of the 
 total casualties in the battle. What a change since 
 the war of 1866, when about 4 or 5 per cent, of 
 
 1 In the second battle the Russians attacked and were driven 
 back after several days of fighting.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 143 
 
 the German casualties were inflicted by cold steel. 
 In the war of 1870-1 cold steel accounted for only 
 i per cent., while artillery fire caused 5 per cent, 
 and rifle fire 94 per cent, of the German losses. 
 
 After sieges let us consider what may befall an 
 army that does nothing at all. The example I take 
 will also serve to illustrate the consequences of mili- 
 tary inefficiency. The Walcheren expedition consisted 
 of thirty-four thousand infantry and two thousand 
 cavalry, sixteen companies of artillery, thirty-nine sail 
 of the line, thirty-six frigates and several hundred 
 smaller vessels. The expedition included one person 
 acquainted with the navigation of the Scheldt, but had 
 with it no plans of Antwerp, Lillo, or Liefenshoek. 
 The person selected to command this army (a greater 
 force of English soldiers than ever Marlborough 
 led) was the Earl of Chatham who had seen no 
 service and was only known as a civilian by his 
 misconduct of the Admiralty " from which on account 
 of the universal complaints against him he had been 
 removed by his own brother." The moment chosen 
 for this expedition in aid of the Austrian Monarchy 
 was July 28th, 1809, three weeks after the battle 
 of Wagram ! The climate of Zealand was well known, 
 and the diseases of the English army employed there 
 in 1747 had been described by Surgeon-General Sir 
 John Pringle in a well-known book which could be 
 had anywhere for a few shillings. Pringle there 
 explained that epidemics usually appeared in Zealand 
 at the end of July and ended with the commencement 
 of the frosts. But in 1810 no medical man was 
 consulted by the Government which planned, or by 
 the General who conducted, the expedition, nor
 
 i 4 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 were any preventive measures taken against the 
 marsh fevers. Sir Lucas Pepys, President of the 
 Medical Board, knew that in Walcheren the marsh 
 fever and other epidemics prevailed from July to 
 September and were worse than in any other part of 
 the world except Batavia. From the evidence he gave 
 afterwards it appears that he was not consulted until 
 six weeks after the departure of the expedition. Had 
 he known of its destination he would have recom- 
 mended extraordinary precautions. When the ex- 
 pedition was about to start, Keate, the Surgeon-General, 
 wrote imploring the War Office to provide two 
 more hospital ships. Lord Castlereagh answered by 
 his secretary that one had already been provided, 
 and refused the request. So the fleet, provided with 
 one pilot, sailed with one hospital ship. On the 
 23rd September nine thousand and forty-six of the 
 rank and file were returned as sick. 
 
 On the 28th of July, as I have said, the expedition 
 sailed : it had failed by the 29th of August. " All 
 progress of the army is at an end," wrote the Earl 
 of Chatham on that day ; and a fortnight later he 
 returned to London. On September 9th, Wal- 
 cheren was a beleaguered island. The French were 
 in complete command of the mainland and of the 
 canals. If Walcheren is to be retained, wrote Sir 
 Eyre Coote, its inhabitants, thirty-seven thousand in 
 number, must be fed from England. After vainly 
 pointing out the critical situation and the futility of 
 remaining, Coote resigned and was succeeded by 
 General Donne, who wrote (October the 27th), that 
 the island was in an almost defenceless state ; he 
 had only four thousand effectives and needed twenty-
 
 MODERN WARFARE 145 
 
 three thousand. But the order to evacuate was not 
 given till November I3th, or carried into execution 
 till December 3Oth. The Walcheren inquiry showed 
 that from the time when it was known that nothing 
 more could be done until the date of the evacua- 
 tion twelve thousand men sickened and two thousand 
 died. I should mention that in the middle of 
 September Canning who, as Foreign Secretary, shared 
 the responsibility for the expedition, 1 resigned 
 office. Castlereagh followed suit, and on the 22nd 
 the Ex-Secretary for War fought and wounded the 
 Ex-Secretary for Foreign Affairs on Wimbledon 
 Common. From a political point of view perhaps 
 the most remarkable thing is that the Earl of Chatham 
 became Master General of the Ordnance with a 
 seat in the Cabinet a few months later, and only 
 resigned after the Walcheren inquiry had made 
 public the details of his shameful but unblushing 
 incompetence. 
 
 Ego. How does the incompetence of the War 
 Office in 1809 compare with its performances in the 
 Crimean War and again in the Boer War ? 
 
 Seymour. I should say, allowing for the difference 
 in conditions and for the comparatively short dura- 
 tion of the expedition, the War Office wasted more 
 lives and less money on the first than on the two 
 later occasions. Of course the early history of the 
 Concentration Camps until Mr. Chamberlain inter- 
 fered and took over the management is a detestable 
 page in our annals. But you must remember the sick- 
 ness and mortality of the Boer women and children 
 
 1 Canning is even said to have agreed to it in the hope of 
 ruining his colleague Castlereagh, the Secretary for War.
 
 146 
 
 were the result of a policy suddenly adopted by the 
 generals in the field in the hope of bringing the 
 war to an end by wholesale devastation and farm 
 burning. The Walcheren Expedition, as I have 
 shown, was planned by the Secretary of War, and 
 he had not the slightest excuse for the negligence 
 which failed to provide against epidemics. Lord 
 Castlereagh first shut his eyes to probabilities, and 
 then, when the probable actually happened, he shut 
 his ears to appeals. At the end of August 1809 
 the Deputy-Inspector of the Walcheren hospitals 
 reported to Coote : " There is an absolute necessity 
 of sending express for medical aid, and of applying 
 that a fast sailing vessel should be appointed to bring 
 out the assistance so urgently required." What was 
 the response ? On the 25th there being then 9000 
 men sick there were sent out one stafF surgeon and 
 five hospital mates, but no wine or bark. 
 
 The number of sick and wounded sent from Wal- 
 cheren back to England in ninety-seven days was 12,863. 
 And in the first six months of 1810, from the troops 
 that had served there, 36,500 patients (including 
 relapses) were received into our hospitals ! I should 
 add that the total loss of lives from the expedition 
 was put at 8000, and of money at between two and 
 three millions. In our recent war in South Africa 
 also, though there was plenty of fighting, far more 
 of our men died of disease than by bullet or shell. 
 The Japanese, if their statistics can be trusted, seem 
 to have managed much better. Without doubt, generals 
 are quite as likely to lose a campaign by neglecting 
 the health of their armies as by errors of strategy. 
 
 While I was preparing this paper I got a letter
 
 MODERN WARFARE 147 
 
 from the president of the conference telling me not 
 to forget how very slight is the impression produced 
 by casualty lists or by general descriptions of carnage. 
 It would seem that our imaginations and sympathies 
 are more easily and deeply stirred by the individual 
 case than by an account of wholesale slaughter. This 
 must be my excuse, after describing some of the 
 horrors of retreat, siege, and disease, for reproduc- 
 ing as concisely as I can an incident described with 
 graphic prolixity by Archibald Forbes in his Memoirs 
 of War and Peace}- After quoting some curiosities 
 of modern chivalry, Forbes contrasts the practice of 
 the Franco-German war, when, especially during the 
 siege of Paris, " there was a miserably great amount 
 of simple coldblooded murder perpetrated on the fore- 
 posts " ; for murder, he thinks, is the only word for 
 the killing of a lone sentry by a pot shot at long 
 range. " It is like shooting a partridge sitting." At 
 this game the French had the advantage because of 
 the longer range of their chassepots, which would 
 carry a thousand yards. The scene of our military 
 drama is laid in the region about Villemomble and 
 the Chateau de Launay. 
 
 " ' Please you, Herr Major, Corporal Zimmermann has returned 
 to the picket with Sly Patrol No. 2. He reports that in the gap 
 of the hedge in front of the large field over against the park 
 wall of the Schloss Launay, No. 1,420 soldier Claus Spreckels, of 
 Captain Hammerstein's company, was killed by a shot fired from 
 the little house by the gate. That makes the seventh man killed 
 this week by the pig-dog who lurks there and never misses a 
 chance ! ' 
 
 1 Cassell & Co., 1895, p. 98 sqq. The work of a journalist struck 
 off with rapidity for the hasty eye of the newspaper reader always 
 requires and sometimes merits abridgment.
 
 148 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 So spoke Under Officer Schulz to the commander of his battalion 
 which was doing duty on the East side of Paris, opposite Mont 
 Avron. While he made his report a shell exploded on the roof 
 of the chateau, once a fine suburban mansion, now the shot and shell 
 riddled head-quarters of a Saxon regiment. The evening before 
 the Field Post had brought them Christmas packets, love gifts from 
 their homes, and Forbes had seen Spreckels tear open the box of 
 cigars his mother had sent him from Kamenz. And now with cigars 
 sticking from the buttons in his tunic, the body of Claus Spreckels 
 lay on the doorstep of the chateau, and the blood oozed from 
 the bullet wound in his head. His grave was being dug. The 
 f pig dog ' Frenchman who had fired the fatal shot was a marks- 
 man who had established himself in front of the French outpost, 
 in a gardener's cottage near the gate of the Chateau de Launay. 
 He had spent some days there taking deliberate aim, as occasion 
 offered, at every German soldier who exposed himself within the 
 range of his chassepot. He never gave the hostile marksmen a 
 chance, for though he fired through a window, he kept at the 
 back of the room, well out of the line of fire. He had already 
 killed seven. The officers took counsel that night, and at last 
 it was decided that a young baron who was reckoned the best 
 shot in Saxon Switzerland should go out to stalk the Frenchman. 
 Next day he ambushed himself in a shrubbery 300 yards from 
 the cottage. Four times that day the Frenchman fired but never 
 showed himself. At nightfall the lad, half-frozen, trudged back 
 to the mess, to hear that the Frenchman had added two more, 
 one sentry killed, another wounded, to his list of victims. The 
 Saxon listened imperturbably to the taunts of his comrades, and 
 took ambush on the second day as before. Again the French- 
 man fired several times but never came into view. Just before 
 dusk he fired a last shot, and for the first time forgot himself. 
 Anxious to see whether he had done execution he moved forward, 
 projecting his head and shoulders over the window sill, and peered 
 out in the direction he had fired. He was in the act of withdrawing 
 when the ambushed sharp-shooter fired. The Frenchman fell for- 
 ward with his head and shoulders out of the window. The 
 Baron saw the momentary convulsive grasp, the tearing up of the 
 snow with the hands, and then the sudden stillness which showed 
 that the pig-dog would take no more German lives. He dared 
 not leave his cover till dark ; then he returned and told his comrades.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 149 
 
 Neither side ventured to visit the cottage for some time; and the 
 body hung there as it had fallen until early in January, when 
 the German siege guns forced back the French defence. Their 
 outposts were drawn in, and the region about Villemomble and 
 the Chateau de Launay was occupied by the Saxons, who buried 
 the dead Frenchman under the window. 
 
 He had lived regularly in the cottage. It was found to be 
 well victualled with bacon, tinned food, wine, and coffee ; and the 
 man had brought with him a small library of good books, as well 
 as writing materials. On the table in the back room there lay 
 a half-finished letter, which began, Ma tres chere femmc, and told 
 in the most matter of fact manner the results of his ball practice. 
 He sent his love to his children, and begged them to pray for 
 his continued success. He was not a soldier of the line. He 
 wore the coarse uniform of a private of the National Guard, 
 but his linen was fine and marked with a good name. In the 
 left breast-pocket of his tunic was found the photograph of a 
 handsome woman, with a little child at her knee, and a baby in 
 her arms." 
 
 No doubt, moralises the correspondent, this ver- 
 dammte franzosicher Schweinhund was a devoted 
 patriot according to his light, righting the good fight 
 pro aris et focis. There are so many different ways of 
 looking at the same thing. Schonberg's men gave 
 Forbes the relics of the Frenchman ; and soon after, 
 when Paris fell, he delivered them at the address. 
 The sharp-shooter turned out to have been a journalist 
 who had enlisted the moment danger threatened 
 France. He had escaped from Sedan to aid in the 
 defence of Paris, and burning with zeal and devoted 
 patriotism, he had taken a dangerous post at what 
 Forbes describes as " the unworthy business of pot 
 shooting," or sniping, as we should say. " The poor 
 wife thought him a veritable hero, and his works 
 glorious and patriotic. His children had a cribbage 
 board with the pegs of which they had proudly kept
 
 150 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the tally of his homicides. I believe, before the Com- 
 mune days came, that I had almost got to look at 
 the matter from their point of view. I never knew 
 sweeter children." 
 
 One of the most cruel features in future battles 
 will be the contrast between the great improvement 
 in the medical service, and the increasing difficulty, 
 despite the Red Cross, of giving aid to the wounded. 
 The late Dr. Billroth, the great Austrian surgeon, 
 who was with the Prussians in the war of 1870, 
 came to the conclusion that in future " it will be no 
 longer possible to remove the wounded from the 
 field during the battle by means of bearers, since 
 every man of them would be shot down, as bearers 
 would be more exposed than men in the fighting 
 line ; and the most that can be aimed at is that the 
 wounded man of the future shall be attended to 
 within twenty-four hours." I know myself of an 
 officer of high rank in the Boer War who was shot 
 through the chest, in Buller's attack on Pieter's Hill, 
 when we were trying to relieve Lady smith. He lay 
 there for fourteen hours before his orderly (who 
 stayed by his side) could get medical assistance. 
 Dr. Bardeleben, who was Surgeon-General of the 
 Prussian army during the Franco-German War, dis- 
 cussed this same subject. " Some," he wrote, " urge 
 an increase of bearers ; but we must not forget that 
 bearers have to go into the zone of fire and expose 
 themselves to the bullets. If we go on increasing 
 their number shall we not also be simply increasing the 
 number of the wounded?" His conclusion was that 
 the whole system of carrying away the wounded 
 on litters during the battle must be abandoned as
 
 MODERN WARFARE 151 
 
 altogether impracticable. This, I believe, has proved 
 to be generally true. And now battles last a week or 
 ten days ! Something, of course, can be done under 
 cover of night though the practice of fighting at 
 night prevails more and more. 
 
 A veteran war correspondent, after seeing the Franco- 
 German and the Russo-Turkish wars and the great 
 losses suffered by both bearers and surgeons, came to 
 precisely the same conclusion : " In the warfare of the 
 future the service as now existing will be found utterly 
 impracticable, since with the improved man-killing 
 appliances certain to be brought into action, the first 
 battle would bodily wipe out the bearer organisation 
 carried on under fire." These opinions have been con- 
 firmed by experience. It is probable that, in spite of 
 all improvements in medicine and ambulance, the suffer- 
 ings of the wounded in the great battles in Manchuria 
 and at the siege of Port Arthur have been as great 
 as, if not greater than, those in any wars of recent 
 times. No doubt the use of the Red Cross is some 
 protection, when once the battle or assault is over and 
 the wounded have been removed to a place apart from 
 the combatants. The Boers besieging and bombarding 
 Lady smith were able to respect the hospital; but in 
 Port Arthur, which was one great fort or series of 
 forts, the hospital is said to have been riddled by shells, 
 and one can easily understand that in the circumstances 
 of the siege stray shots were certain to strike a building 
 that was out of sight yet within the zone of fire. It 
 is indeed impossible for anyone to picture to himself 
 the horrors of actual warfare under present, to say 
 nothing of future, conditions. Forbes speaks of the 
 weirdness of wholesale death scattered from weapons
 
 152 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 whose whereabouts cannot be discerned in the absence 
 of smoke. Edison and Maxim both claim to have 
 invented a military flying machine which can be steered 
 so as to drop five hundred pounds of explosive material 
 with accuracy at any given point, or to rain down a 
 shower of dynamite that will spread death incalculable 
 upon a subjacent army. It is true that this mode of 
 aerial warfare was prohibited for five years by the 
 Hague Convention, but how can we expect such an 
 artificial rule to remain in force ? Why should a 
 flying machine be prohibited and a submarine be 
 allowed ? Why should a mechanical mine that blows 
 up a battleship or a fort be considered fair if it is 
 considered unfair to drop explosives from above? 
 
 Much has been said and written about " amenities 
 in warfare," and about the opportunities for chivalry 
 which it affords. In the stories of mediaeval warfare 
 such episodes often afford us an agreeable relief as we 
 read of the indescribable treachery and cruelty that 
 mark almost every victory arid capture. In the 
 Peninsular War, though the most ferocious cruelty 
 and reprisals were exchanged between the French 
 troops and the Spaniards, the relations between the 
 English and the French outposts were so friendly 
 that they gave uneasiness to Wellington. In the 
 American Civil War the pickets often bartered tobacco, 
 coffee, and whisky. Human beings are curiously con- 
 structed. It is easy to be relentless in a wholesale 
 slaughter where the individual is lost in the mass ; 
 but the most ruthless commander sometimes indulges 
 in a freak of humanity. Thus at Austerlitz when 
 about 5000 Russians fled across the ice of Satschan 
 Lake, Napoleon ordered his guns to play on them,
 
 MODERN WARFARE 153 
 
 which was done with such success that almost the 
 whole body was engulfed. But the next morning 
 as he rode round the positions he descried a Russian 
 officer on an ice floe imploring succour. The 
 Emperor showed the utmost concern and anxiety to 
 save the man, and when with great difficulty the 
 rescue was accomplished he is said to have shown 
 more pleasure than after his great victory the day 
 before. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Ego. What do you really think, Seymour, of a 
 military life ? 
 
 Seymour. It has been defined as a life of ennui 
 relieved by homicide. 
 
 Arbiter. Why that is sharper even than John Bright's 
 description of the army as a huge system of outdoor 
 relief for the younger sons of the aristocracy. No, 
 give us your opinion. 
 
 Seymour. Well it is improving undoubtedly. Since 
 purchase was abolished, and competitive examinations 
 instituted, there has been more interest in the pro- 
 fession, less slackness, less lazy incompetence, and more 
 criticism. As for the rank and file you hear com- 
 plaints of them, but think of the Duke of Wellington's 
 description of his men as mere rifF-raff tempted into 
 the army solely by drink. When I say that the pro- 
 fession is improving I don't mean to assert that active 
 service is as exciting as it was. War has certainly 
 lost its romantic glamour for the soldier. That is 
 appropriated by the reading public. Every year 
 fighting men are more at the mercy of chemists and 
 mechanics.
 
 154 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Ego. Then is not war becoming impossible ? 
 
 Seymour. I'm not sure if it is quite fair to ask a 
 professional man whether his profession is becoming 
 impossible. But the question whether war between 
 great nations may become impossible, simply because 
 the machinery of destruction has become so terrifically 
 effective, is quite debatable, and is certainly worth 
 debating from a technical point of view. Bloch's book 
 caused a great sensation in the military academies of 
 Europe, and I have seldom met a military man of 
 intelligence and imagination who did not concede that 
 the Polish Jew made out his case in some parts. 
 I speak as a professional soldier, whose lot it is to 
 survey the organisation of war from the mechanical 
 centre rather than from the human circumference. 
 But when I read the history and try to think out the 
 philosophy of the subject I never fail to wonder how 
 long war between nations will last for a generation, 
 for a century, or in perpetuity ? Many signs point to 
 its gradual abolition. It is fitting therefore that some 
 of the best minds in every nation should anticipate, 
 prepare for, and help to hasten the coming of universal 
 peace. 
 
 Arbiter. I am glad to hear you say that. The way 
 to abolish war is to alter the dispositions that lead to 
 war. Then with the need (or apparent need) for them 
 armies and navies will gradually disappear. 
 
 Truelove. 
 
 " Far is the time remote from human sight 
 When war and discord on the earth shall cease ; 
 But every prayer for universal peace 
 Avails the blessed time to expedite." 
 
 Case. Better work for peace than pray for peace.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 155 
 
 Seymour. It is equally necessary that others should 
 work at the national defence and try to render the 
 army and navy as efficient and economical as possible. 
 These institutions are a necessity, however much we 
 deplore it, so long as it is impossible to insure our- 
 selves by any other means against the dangers of attack. 
 I fully agree with the Admiral that our present scale 
 of armaments is utterly extravagant, leading to waste, 
 corruption, and inefficiency, as well as arresting the 
 growth of commerce and the diffusion of comfort. 
 I wish Ministers understood the political harm they 
 do both in the War Office and the Admiralty by 
 letting parliamentary control of the purse slacken. 
 So long as military and naval establishments are kept 
 up let them be carefully attended to. 
 
 Clarke. You do not seem to think that the horrors 
 of a campaign have been lessened ? 
 
 Seymour. A wound is a wound still ; and I really 
 don't see that the horrors of a battlefield are much 
 lessened on balance. Just look at this description. 
 I hardly like to read it aloud. It is the impression 
 made upon the best war correspondent of our time 
 by the battlefield of Sedan. 
 
 Here Seymour passed round to us a piece of paper 
 on which the following was written : 
 
 " Let your readers fancy masses of coloured rags glued together 
 with blood and brains, and pinned into strange shapes by fragments 
 of bones. Let them conceive men's bodies without heads, legs 
 without bodies, heaps of human entrails attached to red and blue 
 cloth, and disembowelled corpses in uniform, bodies lying about 
 in all attitudes with skulls shattered, faces blown off, hips smashed, 
 bones, flesh and gay clothing all pounded together as if brayed in 
 a mortar, extending for miles, not very thick in any one place,
 
 156 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 but recurring perpetually for weary hours, and then they cannot 
 with the most vivid imagination come up to the sickening reality 
 of that butchery." 
 
 I have tried to show that changes in practice, 
 tending on the whole to restrain the passions of those 
 actually engaged in battle, have been brought about 
 of necessity by the discovery of gunpowder and by a 
 long succession of consequent inventions which have 
 separated the combatants more and more from one 
 another. 
 
 Clarke. Certainly, and it is an important considera- 
 tion that has been too frequently neglected. But is 
 that all? 
 
 Seymour. Perhaps I ought to have admitted that, 
 in spite of all difficulties, the sufferings of the wounded 
 have been mitigated by the Red Cross Dumont's 
 happy inspiration and by international convention, 
 as well as by improvements in the art of medicine 
 and surgery. You know the story of the French 
 surgeon who always cauterised the wounded on the 
 field of battle. One night he went to bed after 
 a hard day's work, leaving many still uncauterised. 
 He could not sleep at night for thinking of these 
 poor fellows, but in the morning when he went over 
 the field he found that of those whom he had attended 
 a far greater proportion had died in the night than 
 of those whom he had neglected ; and from that 
 time the medical profession began to abandon its 
 time-honoured custom of cauterising wounds. But 
 some improvements in the art of war seem to lead 
 to greater suffering. Winter campaigns are a case in 
 point. Machiavelli, whose dialogue on the art of war 
 is universally admired, made his principal character
 
 MODERN WARFARE 157 
 
 lay it down as a sound maxim that even in Italy 
 it was not safe to make winter campaigns in an 
 enemy's country. To neglect of this caution he 
 attributed the defeat which the French sustained at 
 the hand of the Spaniards near the Garigliano in 
 1504. 
 
 Two and a half centuries later we find Frederick 
 the Great instructing his generals that winter cam- 
 paigns (in Germany and Austria) are the ruin of 
 your troops, not only on account of the sickness 
 they occasion, but because an army in continual motion 
 can neither be clothed nor recruited. It is, he wrote, 
 abundantly certain that the best army in the world 
 cannot long support winter campaigns ; " for which 
 reason they ought by all means to be avoided." 
 Nevertheless Frederick confesses to having had 
 recourse to " this ruinous kind of war " oftener than 
 any other general of his time, so that remembering 
 the much colder climate of which Frederick is speak- 
 ing a comparison of his opinion with Machiavelli's 
 discloses the facilities which improved transport and 
 other mechanical inventions placed at the disposal of 
 the later strategist and also the sufferings which 
 were thereby entailed upon soldiers. As to the 
 present operations in the Far East, time will show 
 whether the Japanese can really conduct a winter 
 campaign effectively in Northern Manchuria as they 
 did in Southern Manchuria against the Chinese. 
 Frederick, I may observe, especially warned his 
 generals against winter expeditions where there are 
 many fortified towns, "as in that season sieges are 
 impracticable." 1 
 
 1 See Frederick's Military Instructions. Article 28.
 
 158 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 But the mere fact that both sides contemplate a 
 winter campaign in those icy regions is enough to 
 prove that the same invention which mitigates suffer- 
 ing in one direction may produce new horrors in 
 another. I confess to shuddering at the hardships 
 which both armies are about to face not of course 
 that one need fear a recurrence of the appalling horrors 
 of the retreat of Moscow. 
 
 Clarke. The influence of the mechanical arts on war 
 are certainly far reaching, and, as you have shown, 
 not always softening. But science and the arts are 
 not the only factors in improvement ; and one cannot 
 help feeling that these mechanical causes are insufficient 
 to account for some of the moral changes you have 
 noticed such as those that have occurred in the treat- 
 ment of hostages and prisoners and non-combatants, 
 in the laws of pillage, and so on. 
 
 Arbiter. I see that you have a theory of your own 
 and I think we have a right to demand it. 
 
 Clarke. Certainly; but first of all, if you please, 
 I shall quote a few examples of the customs of war 
 in the fifteenth century. 
 
 At the siege of Rouen in 1418 Henry the Fifth 
 erected gibbets round -the city, and from time to time 
 as he took prisoners hung them up in full view of 
 their friends within the walls. Not content with this, 
 on the capitulation of the town, he reserved by an 
 express article a certain number of men on whom he 
 should be allowed to exercise his rights of vengeance. 
 
 In 1421, at the siege of Meaux, Vaurus, the 
 Governor, sent his English prisoners regularly to an 
 elm (which on this account was called the Elm of 
 Vaurus), where they were hanged without mercy.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 159 
 
 The English of course retaliated, and with compara- 
 tive mildness and justice contented themselves on 
 the fall of the place with putting to death Vaurus 
 with five of his principal officers. 
 
 In 1431 the Commandant of Guerron, a town 
 in Champagne, being pressed to extremity by a 
 French general named Luxemburg, could only save 
 the majority of his soldiers by yielding up every 
 fourth and sixth man to " the mercy of the con- 
 queror." The garrison passed in review before 
 Luxemburg ; the victims were chosen, and executed 
 on the spot by one of their own body, who was 
 forced to serve this bloody office. 1 
 
 In 1476, so Ward writes in the year 1795, "I 
 find a strange law of war which in these days would 
 be held equally infamous. The Duke of Burgundy 
 having besieged Nanci, efforts were made by several 
 gentlemen to throw themselves into the place. One 
 of them being taken in the attempt, the duke ordered 
 him to be immediately hanged, saying that it was 
 contrary to all the rights of war, when a general had 
 begun the siege of a town and the fire of the artillery had 
 commenced^ for any one to attempt to enter the fortress in 
 order to defend it" Comines, who gives the account, 
 adds that this was really the custom in Spain and 
 Italy. In 1749 Maximilian, Archduke of -Austria, 
 incensed at his military progress being arrested for 
 three days by the little castle of Malauny, near 
 
 1 These examples, with many others, are quoted by Robert Ward 
 from Monstrelet's Chronicles. As Henry the Fifth of England 
 was rather more humane than his contemporaries the abominable 
 cruelties which he practised in France were due, not to natural 
 barbarity, but to the custom and practice of war.
 
 160 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Terouenne, hanged the gallant governor, Raimonet, 
 as soon as he surrendered. From these and other 
 instances Ward concludes that the interval of nearly 
 three hundred years which separated the reign of 
 Richard I., when such enormities were most fre- 
 quent, from that of Maximilian had produced no 
 amendment in the laws of European warfare. It 
 is true that the more civilised maxims and policies 
 of later times are usually traced to the fifteenth 
 century ; but whatever may have been the output of 
 maxims, the practices and customs of war throughout 
 that century are, according to Ward, " peculiarly 
 shocking." Take for example the account in the 
 chronicles of France 1 of the ravages of the French 
 and English, in consequence of which neither man 
 nor woman was to be seen in the whole country of 
 Caux, except in the garrisons of fortified places, or 
 that yet more harrowing description of the miseries of 
 war in barbarous times which appears in Speed's 
 translation from Polydore Virgil : 
 
 " ' While the English and French ' (quoth he) ' contend for 
 Dominion, soveraignty and life itselfe, men's goods in France were 
 violently taken by the licence of warre, Churches spoiled, men 
 everywhere murthered or wounded, others put to death or tor- 
 tured ; Matrons ravished, Maydes forcibly drawne from out of 
 their parents' armes to bee deflowered, Townes daily taken, daily 
 spoiled, daily defaced, the riches of the inhabitants carried whither 
 the Conquerours thinke good ; houses and villages round about set 
 on fire; no kind of cruelty is left unpractised upon the miserable 
 French. Neither was England her-self void of these mischiefes, 
 who every day heard the newes of her valiant Childrens funerals, 
 slaine in perpetual skirmishes, and bickerings, her generall wealth 
 continually ebd and wained, so that the evils seemed almost equall, 
 
 1 Chroniques de France, p. 124.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 161 
 
 and the whole Westerne world echoed the groanes and sighes of 
 either Nations quarrels, being the common argument of speech 
 and compassion throughout Christendom." 
 
 Yet the English were thought in those ages to 
 have been more regular than other nations in their 
 conduct of war ! 
 
 The change in the treatment of captives also 
 precedes the period to which Captain Seymour has 
 confined himself. Speaking generally, the ancient 
 rule of civilised warfare seems to have been that 
 prisoners were the lawful slaves of the captors, and 
 Grotius admits that this rule was still in conformity 
 with the law of nations. By nature, he writes, no 
 men are slaves; though natural justice may permit 
 slavery to arise out of human convention or delict. 
 By the law of nations, however, which Grotius was 
 analysing, slavery had a wider scope. 
 
 International law at that time recognised as slaves 
 not only those who surrendered themselves into 
 slavery, but all persons without exception taken cap- 
 tive in a regular war ; and this though they might 
 have committed no fault. All were doomed, even 
 those who by chance were found and taken in the 
 enemy's territory when war suddenly broke out. 
 
 " What just punishment have these men incurred ? 
 some one may say, when he sees prisoners of war sold 
 into slavery with their wives and children. These 
 calamities are by the law of war to be borne by those 
 who have done no wrong" Such are the melancholy 
 words of the historian Polybius ; and Grotius, after 
 examining the authorities, feels bound to admit that 
 they are strictly accurate. On the other hand, as 
 he says, a milder rule had already been established
 
 1 62 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 among Christians whereby prisoners of war might not 
 be made slaves in the ordinary sense ; that is, they 
 might not be sold and forced to work or to suffer 
 what slaves suffer : " a most righteous provision, 
 since Christians have been, or ought to have been, 
 better taught by the great Teacher of all charity 
 than to refrain from killing their wretched captives 
 only in return for exacting some smaller cruelty." 
 This advance, says Grotius, small though it be, was 
 produced by reverence for the law of Christ. Socrates 
 had tried, but vainly, to procure its adoption by the 
 Greeks in their wars with one another. 1 
 
 True/ove. I am glad we have Grotius' authority 
 for that. 
 
 Case. You will find, however, if you look at the 
 passage, that Grotius further mentions that the rule 
 which the Christians follow about prisoners of war the 
 Mahomedans also observe among one another. But 
 the Christians of that day were inferior in this respect, 
 that they had substituted for slavery the usage of 
 keeping captives till a ransom was paid for them. 
 Their rule was that a captive belonged to his captor, 
 and was a prize of war. 
 
 Clarke. Whatever may have been their relative 
 merits in the time of Grotius we shall all agree that 
 since his day the Christian nations have made more 
 progress than the Mahomedan in civilising warfare. 
 You will ask however what my object was in raising 
 this discussion. I wanted in the first place to point 
 out that Seymour's theory of a purely mechanical 
 causation will not do. Our moral habits and our 
 progress in refinement are not due merely to electric 
 1 See Grotius, b. Hi., c. vii.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 163 
 
 light and motor cars, or even to magazine rifles and 
 eighty-one ton guns. Further, I wanted to insist 
 that, while it is quite proper to observe customs 
 and conventions of war very strictly in the sense 
 of not falling below the standard of decency prescribed, 
 yet nothing can be more unfortunate than that 
 publicists should acquiesce in current rules and 
 regard them as in any way fixed and unimprovable. 
 Of course I am no lawyer, or only a natural lawyer, 
 and therefore I speak subject to the correction of 
 my learned friend Mr. Case. But I believe I know 
 my Grotius, and I think I see why he built up his 
 whole structure on a foundation of natural law and 
 utility. His ultimate object was not to ascertain the 
 practices and customs of war and peace. He ascer- 
 tained them in order to select and he selected in 
 order to improve. But he was one of those great 
 men who think far ahead of their day. He was a 
 reformer not merely or mainly for his own genera- 
 tion but for the far distant future. Many of the 
 most approved practices of the noblest warriors of 
 the past were odious to Grotius. He felt them 
 to be utterly inconsistent with the dictates of humanity 
 and with the natural feelings of fellowship among 
 men. So he gave the best form he could to existing 
 customs, but invoked the aid of nature, morality, 
 good sense and religion to nurse men into a higher 
 conception of international laws and duties. In this 
 spirit Vattel often a worthy disciple in righteous 
 indignation at the usage so often sanctioned by the 
 tyrants of his age of retaliating upon an adversary's 
 perfidy by putting his hostages to death, declares : 
 " the custom of nations, the most constant practice,
 
 164 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 cannot justify an instance of barbarous cruelty con- 
 trary to the law of nature." l 
 
 Browne. That is a fine saying. But as to the 
 custom of murdering hostages by way of reprisals I 
 believe it was denounced and renounced by Gibbon's 
 favourite, Julian the Apostate. It is a grievous fact 
 that so many Christian monarchs during the four- 
 teen succeeding centuries should have committed this 
 peculiarly atrocious type of murder. 
 
 Seymour. In the treatment of prisoners you certainly 
 have a bright example of progress that is not due to 
 mechanics. But remember that even now quarter is 
 not always granted. In the Russo-Turkish war it 
 was persistently refused, and the Turks frequently 
 mutilated the wounded before killing them. That 
 the general standard of military conduct has been 
 raised by the Geneva Convention, by the declaration 
 of the Brussels Conference, by the regulations adopted 
 at the Hague in the year 1899, and by the Military 
 Manuals (if not by the Soldier's Pocket Book) I do 
 not doubt : but to mention the first only I feel 
 bound to recall the saying that, " in order fully to 
 carry out the idea of the Geneva Convention it 
 would be necessary to cease to make war." 
 
 Arbiter. That makes a very eloquent peroration to 
 your paper ; and I shall now adjourn the conference 
 till after dinner when Tracy is to tell us about Sea 
 Power and Food Supply. 
 
 1 Book ii., chap. xvi. ad Jin.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 165 
 
 Dinner over we were summoned together to hear the 
 Admiral's paper. After protesting against an old sea- 
 faring man, who had never written anything better than 
 a log book, being called upon for an essay, he read as 
 follows : 
 
 When I first joined the service steam was just 
 beginning to be introduced. The change came very 
 slowly, and the new power was looked on with 
 dislike and disapprobation by all the old Admirals 
 and sea-captains of the Navy. In the Crimean War 
 about a score of our vessels were worked wholly or 
 partially by steam power ; the French had a dozen, 
 and the Russians five or six steam frigates, in the 
 Black Sea. All were of course wooden, but during 
 the war I remember that both we and the French 
 constructed floating batteries, protected with iron 
 plates, for the purpose of attacking shore ports. 
 From the Crimean War therefore both the steam 
 and the iron revolution may be said to date. But 
 it was not until 1858, two years after the Crimean 
 War, that the French set the example by building 
 an armoured frigate. The Gloire, as she was called, 
 was designed by Dupuy de Lome, who prophesied 
 that his ironclad among wooden ships would be a 
 lion in a flock of sheep. Thus, under the auspices 
 of the Third Napoleon, was introduced into Europe 
 what has proved the most expensive of all modern 
 inventions in naval warfare. The Gloire cost 280,000, 
 nearly three times as much as the biggest line of 
 battleship previously constructed ; but it was not until
 
 1 66 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the battle between the Monitor and Merrimac proved 
 the value of armour, that wooden ships were 
 finally superseded. Then all the fleets of all the 
 Powers became suddenly worthless for war purposes, 
 and the new types of battleship began to be laid 
 down in England, France, Russia, and a little later 
 in Austria, Italy, and Germany. According to Bloch, 
 whose figures are generally reliable, the old first-class 
 line-of- battle ship, the sailing vessel, never cost more 
 than ,115,000. The first English ironclad, the 
 W arr ior, begun in 1860, cost ,350,000. A German 
 ironclad, launched in 1868, cost half a million, and 
 an Italian ironclad in 1886 cost a million. Of 
 course the engines in modern ships of war are 
 a very formidable item of expense compared 
 with the old masts, sails, and rigging; but by far 
 the greatest part of the cost, at least in battleships, 
 is armour. For instance, of the total sum (840,000) 
 expended on the Italian Magenta, 600,000, i.e. 71 
 per cent., was for armour. I suppose one may say 
 that the average price of a first-class battleship is now 
 from a million to a million and a half, according to 
 its size. In actual war a mechanical mine may send 
 it to the bottom in five minutes. Anyhow, in six 
 or eight years it becomes obsolete, and is relegated 
 to the reserve ; but until it is actually scrapped as 
 old iron, its cost for upkeep and repairs is enormous. 
 The annual expense of repairing the British navy 
 has risen incredibly during the last ten years. 
 
 These figures only become intelligible by com- 
 parisons. The Russian cruiser, Rurik, is of 10,933 
 tons burden. But its engines and boilers take up a 
 space 192 feet long. To give a comparative idea of
 
 MODERN WARFARE 167 
 
 the size of the Rurik's machinery, Admiral Makaroff 
 observed in describing the vessel : " If we were to 
 take out of the ship the engines and boilers, also 
 the coal bunkers, and fill the vacant space with 
 water, a frigate of the old type might easily be 
 moored inside, with all its equipment and all its guns. 
 Around the frigate there would be sufficient space to 
 steer a pinnace." Yet not an inch of this vast space 
 was wasted. The machinery was compressed to a 
 seemingly impossible extent. " The engineer," wrote 
 the Admiral sympathetically, " must be an acrobat, 
 and the stoker, who by forced draught has to make 
 the boiler give twice the steam pressure that cor- 
 responds to its dimensions, must in endurance and 
 energy give way in little to Satan himself." 
 
 After these revolutions from wind to steam, and 
 from wood to steel, has come a third, perhaps more 
 tremendous in its possibilities than either. When I 
 left the service, torpedoes and torpedo boats were 
 only just coming in. An "American tortoise" might 
 be exploded by a boat with a long pole against the 
 side of a sleeping ironclad, moored near the shore on 
 a dark night. Special craft, called torpedo boats, 
 had begun to be built to expose as little surface 
 above water as possible, so that they could steal up 
 to a war vessel unnoticed. In the Russo-Turkish 
 War of 1877 the Russians sank one Turkish iron- 
 clad in this way, and injured three others. In 1885, 
 fighting the Chinese in Tonkin, the French Admiral 
 Courbet sent two steam cutters into the harbour of 
 Shein. They sank a Chinese frigate and got away 
 undamaged. In the Chilian War an ironclad was sent 
 to the bottom.
 
 1 68 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Talking of steam power I may as well read you a 
 prognostication written in the year 1839 by Fenimore 
 Cooper in his Naval History of the United States : 
 
 " An opinion is becoming prevalent that the use 
 of steam will supersede the old mode of conducting 
 naval warfare. Like most novel and bold proposi- 
 tions, this new doctrine has obtained advocates, who 
 have yielded their convictions to the influence of 
 their imaginations rather than to the influence of 
 reflection. That the use of steam will materially 
 modify naval warfare, is probably true ; but it can- 
 not change its general character. No vessel can be 
 built of sufficient force and size to transport a suffi- 
 ciency of fuel, provisions, munitions of war, and 
 guns, to contend with even a heavy frigate, allowing 
 the last to bring her broadside to bear. It may be 
 questioned if the heaviest steam vessel of war that 
 exists could engage a modern two-decked ship even 
 in a calm, since the latter, in addition to possessing 
 much greater powers of endurance, could probably 
 bring the most guns to bear in all possible positions. 
 Shot-proof batteries might indeed be built that, pro- 
 pelled by steam, would be exceedingly formidable for 
 harbour defence, but it is illusory to suppose that 
 vessels of that description can ever be made to 
 cruise." 
 
 Seymour. If a steam cruiser were inconceivable to 
 naval experts in 1839, we must not wonder that 
 army experts take little account of flying machines. 
 But there seems good reason to think that, if the 
 custom of war continues, we or our posterity will 
 " see the nations' airy navies grappling in the cen- 
 tral blue." It is odd, by the way, that you may
 
 MODERN WARFARE 169 
 
 fire at a balloon, but a balloon may not drop ex- 
 plosives on you. But I beg the company's pardon. 
 I had forgotten for a moment that the paper is not 
 upon aerial navigation. 
 
 Admiral. No. I am at sea ; very much at sea. 
 
 When the laughter had subsided the Arbiter said : 
 " All this is very interesting, Tracy ; but I want you 
 to tell us seriously what you think about ' the price 
 of Admiralty.'" 
 
 Admiral. I remember my father, who served under 
 Nelson, saying that Sir Robert Peel and Cobden were 
 quite right about the Navy. It was large enough. 
 If twelve English line of battle ships could not beat 
 nine French we had better give up shopkeeping, and 
 emigrate to a safer country. His sentiments are my 
 sentiments. I can't bear to think of those half-pay 
 officers and naval writers screaming for money on 
 behalf of the contractors, and proclaiming to the 
 world that three Englishmen ain't equal to one 
 German. 
 
 Meyer. But surely the country must secure itself 
 against invasion, and the danger of its food supplies 
 being cut off in time of war. 
 
 Admiral. There speaks the true-born, up-to-date 
 Briton. It is really for your sake that we are sitting 
 up to-night. For nothing would suit my brother-in- 
 law but that I should try to calm your fears with 
 a bit of a paper on the Invasion Scare and the Food 
 Supply Panic. It's taken me the devil of a lot of 
 trouble ; the ink does not run easily from my old pen. 
 But here goes ; if it strengthens your nerves and puts 
 a little heart into the City, I shall be well rewarded ; 
 for I want the income tax to go down before I die.
 
 i yo THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Let me see. I have spoken already of steam and 
 ironclads and torpedoes. I ought to add something 
 about the conditions of the service. Of course, as 
 Seymour says, they are vastly improved, and most 
 of the improvement in pay, food, and treatment has 
 occurred in the last century, if not in my own life- 
 time. Then the customs of warfare really are better. 
 An idea of the brutality with which sea fights were 
 conducted even so late as the reign of Charles II. 
 may be got from Charles Molloy's standard Treatise 
 of Affairs Maritime and of Commerce^ It was thought 
 necessary to provide, by the ninth article of our 
 naval code, that when foreign vessels were taken as 
 prizes without fighting, " none of the captains, masters, 
 or mariners, being foreigners, shall be stripped of 
 their clothes," etc. But Molloy points out that " this 
 law most expressly doth not extend to those that 
 obstinately shall maintain a fight ; for most certain 
 by the law of arms, if the ship be boarded and taken, 
 there remains no restriction but that of charity." 
 And if a ship persists for a long time in resistance, 
 and only yields to mercy at the last moment, " there 
 hath been some doubt whether quarter ought to be 
 given to such ; for they may ignorantly maintain with 
 courage a bad cause." There was a special provision 
 that persons found in the boats of an enemy's fire- 
 ships should be put to death if taken alive, the 
 reason why the extremity of war is used in such cases 
 being that " by how much the mischief is the greater 
 by the act of such men, if executed, by so much the 
 punishment is aggravated, if taken, and quarter denied 
 them by the law of war." 
 
 1 2nd ed., 1682.
 
 MODERN WARFARE 171 
 
 Discipline in the British Navy was maintained in 
 Charles the Second's reign by various punishments, 
 such as the cat, the wooden horse, and the gauntlet. 
 An offender might be ducked in the water, beaten at 
 the capson's head, hoisted up the mainyard end with 
 a shovel at his back, and the like. The penalty for 
 being convicted of telling a lie on board ship was 
 elaborately set forth. The liar was " hoisted upon the 
 main stay with four braces, having a broom and shovel 
 tyed to his back." There he continued an hour, every 
 man crying, " A liar ! a liar ! " and for a week follow- 
 ing he had to clean the ship's head and sides without 
 board, " according to the ancient practice of the navy." 
 
 I don't think naval life was much better (for the men) 
 in the reign of George the Third. In some ways it 
 was worse. Listen to this from a letter of Horace 
 Walpole, dated 1760: "Sir Cloudesly Shovel said 
 that an admiral would deserve to be broke who kept 
 great ships out after the end of September, and to 
 be shot if after October." Yet in the month he 
 wrote (January) Hawke, in the Bay of Quiberon, 
 was weathering one of the severest winters on record 
 after conquering in a storm. Certainly during the 
 Napoleonic wars, even when numbers of workmen in 
 town and country were starving, it was impossible 
 to recruit men for the Navy. The press gang was 
 constantly at work in the coast towns. Americans, 
 Swedes, and Norwegians were habitually seized and 
 " pressed " at sea in defiance of international law. 
 Under the circumstances, it is surprising that our 
 fleet could generally be counted upon ; though at the 
 time of the Mutiny of the Nore our sailors were on 
 the point of hoisting the Republican flag.
 
 172 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 But I am drifting out of my course. You want 
 to know what I think about the invasion of England, 
 and I had better read what I have put down upon 
 the subject. 
 
 THE INVASION OF ENGLAND. 
 
 I am an old man now of course, and cannot pretend 
 like Seymour to be equipped with all the latest in- 
 formation, still I have had the advantages of long 
 experience. I have kept myself tolerably up to date ; 
 and what, perhaps, is of a good deal more importance, 
 I have (latterly) tried more and more to apply common 
 sense to problems of national defence, and to test 
 the conclusions of military and naval experts (especially 
 expert writers] by the ordinary rules of reasoning. 
 Seymour said he would leave to me the question 
 whether Great Britain could be starved to death or 
 invaded by any Power or probable combination of 
 Powers. I have had a talk with him, and we are 
 pretty well agreed; but I'm not furnished with any- 
 thing like an elaborate treatise on the subject. I have 
 a good many notes, and Seymour and I are both 
 prepared to answer questions on this and on other 
 problems of imperial defence, such as the protection 
 of merchant shipping and trade in general during a 
 war. Let me begin by reading a brief memorandum 
 a sort of summary of facts and of my own con- 
 clusions. History recounts four conquests of England 
 by aliens the first, by the Romans, who, in the course 
 of a long century (B.C. 55 to A.D. 84) conquered the 
 scattered and disunited tribes of barbarous Britons; 
 the second, by the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, who
 
 MODERN WARFARE 173 
 
 conquered all England except Wales in about 380 
 years, A.D. 400-780 (when Offa made his dyke). So 
 long did it take to subdue the unwarlike population 
 of Roman England after the withdrawal of the Roman 
 garrison. The third was by the Danes, who harried 
 the country from 787 to 1017, when the Danish 
 Canute was chosen king of England. The fourth 
 and last was by the Normans, A.D. 1066-1071. On 
 all these occasions England was thinly populated and 
 loosely governed. In none can it be said that there 
 was a united and strenuous national resistance. The 
 Roman conquest may perhaps be compared to the 
 English conquest of India or Egypt. It was the 
 introduction of law and order into a weak, divided, 
 and barbarously governed country. The Saxon inva- 
 sion was an immigration, and so were the Danish 
 raids, which ended in considerable settlements all along 
 the eastern coast. In 1066 the sovereignty was con- 
 tested and the people divided. The whole population 
 of England was probably smaller than that of Liverpool 
 is now, and much the greater part consisted of serfs, 
 who had no particular reason for preferring one kind 
 of thraldom to another. It was not a nation of free- 
 men, but a governing class divided against itself, that 
 William's French Northmen met and overthrew at 
 Hastings. Afterwards, indeed, but too late, there 
 were popular uprisings in the north and east against 
 the Normans. Then slowly the work of consolidation 
 began, and the pe pie of England became the English. 
 From that time to the present, a period of eight 
 centuries and a half, there has been no serious, much 
 less any successful, invasion of England by a foreign 
 army Scots excepted.
 
 174 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Excuse this invasion of mine into the province of 
 history. I trust I have not been romancing. 
 
 Browne. You exclude of course invasions by invita- 
 tion. The barons in 1216 offered the crown to the 
 Dauphin. He landed at Sandwich and reached 
 London unopposed. Then there are the cases of 
 Henry VII., Monmouth, William of Orange. 
 
 Admiral. Certainly. I include them all, though I 
 had forgot the Dauphin. But I freely admit that 
 if part of the nation desires to change its government 
 and obtains aid from abroad for that purpose, an 
 invasion of England might at any time be feasible. 
 I have often been told that the discontent of the 
 labourers and working classes starving and unen- 
 franchised as they were a century ago was the real 
 reason why Napoleon's invasion was projected and 
 feared. If the fleet had mutinied at that time, the 
 English revolutionaries might have risen, and a 
 Republic might have been established here by the aid 
 of a French army. Of course, between the Conquest 
 and the Armada there were several projected invasions 
 of England. You will find most of them collected 
 in Sir George Clarke's book on Imperial Defence. 
 There were plenty of raids made upon our shores ; 
 coast towns like Portsmouth and Scarborough were 
 burnt in the reign of Richard the Second, and when 
 the Navy went to rot in the time of Charles the Second 
 the Dutch burnt British shipping in the Thames. At 
 that time there was no naval obstacle to the invasion of 
 England. Nor was there from June 1690, when Lord 
 Torrington was defeated by the French off Beachy 
 Head, till May 1692, when our naval supremacy 
 was restored by the Battle of La Hogue. But,
 
 MODERN WARFARE 175 
 
 though our population then was smaller in comparison 
 with that of foreign nations than it is now, and though 
 Scotland could not be counted on, the English nation 
 was far too formidable to be attacked with a view to 
 subjugation. No foreign monarch dared to make such 
 an attempt even in days when the difficulty of govern- 
 ing a nationality against its will was less appreciated. 
 
 The military objection to invading England now 
 takes this form : " If we succeeded in landing a big 
 army, how could we get it out again ?" The political 
 objection comes as a corollary : " And what possible 
 good could we do there ? " The idea of conquering 
 and governing the thirty-five millions of people who 
 inhabit England and Wales and Scotland against their 
 will, even if there were no organised resistance, is quite 
 absurd. 
 
 Arbiter. I gather that there are three reasons why 
 the invasion and conquest of England are impossible, 
 and that each would be valid even if the other two 
 objections were removed the Naval obstacle, the 
 Military obstacle, and the Moral or Political obstacle. 
 
 Admiral. That is my meaning ; and in my opinion 
 the last is the most conclusive. Since England has 
 been a nation it has often been in a military or 
 naval sense, sometimes in both, almost defenceless 
 if you doubt me read Macaulay's description of the 
 English army and the state of our military defences 
 in the days of the second Charles and James but 
 never in the long centuries of bitter and almost con- 
 tinuous warfare against the great Powers of the 
 Continent have we suffered a serious invasion. If, 
 then, history teaches us anything, it teaches us that 
 the invasion scare is the emptiest of all bogeys. But
 
 176 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 let us put history aside and see whether new possi- 
 bilities have been introduced by modern inventions, 
 or by changes in the organisation of warfare. That 
 there have been important changes I do not deny. 
 The question is whether they have been mainly on 
 the side of the offensive or defensive, or rather, 
 whether they have made it easier or more difficult to 
 defend an island like ours against an invasion. 
 
 The establishment of conscription in France, Ger- 
 many, and Russia is a formidable fact ; but to us 
 it brings an important grain of comfort. Continental 
 conscripts have an invincible repugnance to be shipped 
 away from home. I say continental advisedly ; for I 
 think that Japan, an island like ourselves, is the only 
 modern country except Great Britain which has ever 
 shipped a large army overseas. She landed 200,000 
 fighting men in Corea at the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century, and she has landed twice as many now ; 
 but history tells us of no invasion of Japan. The 
 idea of a sea voyage to a hostile country is altogether 
 repugnant to the military feeling of continental soldiers. 
 
 Seymour. The feeling no doubt exists. But France 
 sent considerable armies by sea to the Crimea, and 
 again to Mexico ; and Spain sent, from first to last, 
 over 200,000 men to subdue the Cuban insurrection. 
 
 Admiral. You are quite right. Those cases should 
 have been mentioned. But now let us come direct 
 to this question of an invasion. An invasion may be 
 deliberate, concerted, and expected, or a secret, sudden 
 surprise. First as to a surprise and its difficulty. 
 Suppose the German Government or the French 
 Government wished to surprise us, they obviously 
 could not prepare secretly on a very large scale. If they
 
 MODERN WARFARE 177 
 
 did so in a time of peace suspicion would quickly be 
 roused, and protests made by the friends of peace, 
 or the friends of England would hear of it and 
 expose it. Then whatever happened there could be 
 no surprise. A surprise invasion during a war was 
 infinitely more feasible in the old days, when tele- 
 graphs and telephones did not extend from every 
 town and pass over every border, when there was 
 but little trade or intercourse between countries in 
 time of peace, and scarcely any in time of war. But 
 if England were unhappily at war with Germany, 
 we should know as much, probably more, about 
 movements in Germany than we do now ; and of 
 course our fleets would be on the alert, and all 
 branches of the army 1 would be ready to move if 
 required to any point of danger. 
 
 If it were proposed to land an army of 100,000 
 men, with their proper equipment of guns, ammunition, 
 and provisions, to attempt the conquest, I will not 
 say of England, but of some great town or group 
 of towns, a large fleet of transports would have to 
 be got together ; probably a fleet of 250,000 tons. 
 At any ordinary time such a quantity would not be 
 available in the northern ports of our nearest neigh- 
 bour, France. Even if it were all these ships would 
 have to be collected into one port, along with a strong 
 force of battleships, cruisers, etc., to guard them. 
 Under the most favourable circumstances it would 
 certainly take more than a whole day of twenty- 
 four hours to land 100,000 men on an absolutely 
 unguarded coast. If they began at daylight, and 
 
 1 Say 100,000 regulars, 100,000 militia men, and 200,000 
 volunteers. 
 
 M
 
 178 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 were not discovered or suspected till then, they 
 would certainly be attacked both by sea and land 
 before they had disembarked with all their stores 
 and munitions. The Armada would be exposed to 
 the probability of a most frightful catastrophe the 
 moment it appeared off our coast. But the experts 
 say it would take at least two whole days for such 
 a body to disembark in calm weather, though they 
 were absolutely free from disturbance or interruption. 
 Yet they would after two days inevitably be opposed 
 by an army at least twice their size ! And then there 
 would be our fleet ! See what a series of impossi- 
 bilities has to be assumed by anybody who is persuaded 
 that England is in danger of invasion. First, you 
 must have an Armada with a great fleet of transports 
 assembled by stealth, at a base within a few hours' 
 steam of our shores. Then for forty-eight hours after 
 it has started and is discovered it must be supposed 
 to remain unmolested by a fleet three times as 
 powerful, and by an army which should be twice as 
 strong long before the landing has been effected. 
 
 The real thing to notice is the effect of steam 
 power. The invention of steam terrified the Duke 
 of Wellington and Lord Palmerston. Indeed in my 
 young days it was the fashion to say that steam had 
 bridged the Channel. Those whose minds or interests 
 were inclined to panic, being either naturally timid 
 or bent on making the nation military and spending 
 as much as possible on the army and on fortification, 
 thought only of the rapidity and precision which steam 
 gave to the movements of an invader. They forgot 
 or ignored the inconvenient fact that it gave the 
 same rapidity and precision to the concentration of
 
 MODERN WARFARE 179 
 
 the defending fleet and army. And now that we 
 have telephones, telegraphs, and wireless telegraphy, 
 the advantages given to the invader are greatly over- 
 balanced by the advantages that have accrued to the 
 defence ; so much so that, apart from our access of 
 strength by sea and land, the impossibility of a 
 successful invasion of England is more certain and 
 complete than ever before in our history. 
 
 When, for example, Napoleon was assembling an 
 army near Boulogne and building a great flotilla to 
 transport them across the Channel, it was possible for a 
 British panic-monger to argue with some plausibility : 
 " No doubt we have the superiority at sea, and if our 
 fleet can arrive in time at the scene of action it will 
 be able to destroy the Armada, or at least drive it 
 back ; but suppose a head wind or a calm prevented 
 our fleet coming up, might not Napoleon get such 
 an army rowed across and safely landed as could 
 occupy London, and with the aid of the revolutionaries 
 at home destroy the English monarchy?" 
 
 Such an argument could not be advanced now. 
 Telegraphy and steam preclude the possibility of a 
 large army being landed without an action at sea or 
 without an almost immediate attack from land at 
 the point of debarcation. Steam indeed has joined 
 together not merely England and France, or England 
 and Germany, but the whole world for mutual 
 intercourse and trade. But it has not bridged the 
 Channel for the purposes of invasion. It has made 
 defence easier and invasion more hazardous. 
 
 Now about Food Supplies. I take it the position 
 is this. After the harvest we have about three months' 
 supply of corn, and from that time until just before
 
 i8o THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the next year's harvest the supply dwindles to perhaps 
 five or six weeks. Our principal sources of supply for 
 all kinds of food, including meat, butter, and eggs, are 
 the United States, Russia, Argentina, Canada, Australia, 
 France, India (in good seasons), and Denmark. 
 
 Taking the worst case (because it is the only one 
 in which our food supplies could possibly be en- 
 dangered), the defeat of our navy. The enemy, I 
 will suppose, is master of the seas, and is able to 
 intercept many of the neutral vessels carrying food 
 and raw material to our shores. In the present state 
 of international law the enemy's ships of war can 
 seize and sink as many British vessels as they like ; 
 only they must take the crews and passengers on 
 board. But they cannot interfere at all with neutral 
 vessels unless they are carrying contraband of war 
 to England. There's the rub. The Jurists tell me 
 that neither international law nor civilised opinion 
 will allow a belligerent to declare food generally to 
 be contraband. Theirs is not a mere pious opinion. 
 Great Britain is the best customer of some of the 
 most powerful nations in the world, who would 
 certainly not allow their trade interests to be law- 
 lessly and violently interfered with. 
 
 Enough ! What is the use of being long and 
 tedious, especially at this time of night ? I hope the 
 company, including Mr. Meyer, will agree that the 
 thing is as plain as a pikestaff, and that old men 
 like me can go to bed and sleep securely. 
 
 Meyer looked as if he would have liked a little more 
 discussion ; but there was a strong feeling that we had had 
 enough for the day, so the Arbiter thanked Seymour and 
 the Admiral^ and the Council adjourned.
 
 THE THIRD DAT. WEDNESDAY. 
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL. 
 
 I. 
 
 Arbiter. In arranging our programme of proceedings 
 I thought that, after a general discussion on the first 
 day, we ought to consider the actual conditions of 
 warfare and the changes which have been introduced 
 in modern times by discovery and convention. Upon 
 this topic we were informed yesterday by our military 
 and naval advisers, and I think we were all encouraged 
 and stimulated encouraged by the progress that has 
 been made and stimulated to fresh exertions by the 
 enormous improvements, short of stopping war 
 altogether, that still remain to be accomplished, especi- 
 ally in the direction of confining hostilities strictly to 
 the combatant armies, of enlarging the rights of 
 neutrals, and of exempting all peaceful commerce 
 from the interference of belligerents. 
 
 It is sometimes argued that by humanising war, 
 by alleviating its cruelties and circumscribing its 
 horrors, you are prolonging its life. War, they say, 
 cannot be otherwise than a cruel scourge ; it is a 
 thing not to be improved but abolished. This atti- 
 tude is like that of an uncompromising teetotaller,
 
 1 82 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 whose only remedy for the drink curse is absolute 
 prohibition ; it is one from which I for my part, 
 as a practical reformer, entirely dissent. The move- 
 ment of civilisation is felt in many directions. All 
 history and experience shows that war becomes less 
 frequent as warfare becomes less cruel. The same 
 influences that led to the refinement of the duel are 
 contributing to its extinction, and we may now, 
 with reasonable certainty, forecast for public wars 
 between nations a similar fate to that which has 
 overtaken private wars between individuals and 
 small communities. But I am trenching upon the 
 subject of this morning's paper, and I therefore 
 call upon our historian to distribute the knowledge 
 he has been storing up for our benefit. 
 
 Browne. The title of my paper is Private War and 
 the Duel. I make no pretensions to original research. 
 Every branch of the subject has been investigated 
 by an array of learned writers, among whom I will 
 only mention here Selden, Spelman, Du Cange, and 
 Henry Charles Lea of Philadelphia, whose treatise 
 .on the Wager of Battle is an elaborate and judicious 
 examination of the original authorities. In the Roman 
 Empire it was not lawful or customary for individuals 
 or subordinate societies to settle their disputes by 
 the sword. The imperial authority imposed law and 
 conferred citizenship over a vast extent of territory 
 from Hadrian's Wall to the banks of the Euphrates. 
 With the disruption of Roman society law and order 
 almost disappeared from Europe, and when a new 
 civilisation began to emerge from the ruins of the 
 old the first obstacle to the progress of government 
 was the custom of private warfare. Twelve centuries
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 183 
 
 after the fall of Rome Grotius himself, having regard 
 to the actual state of Europe, felt bound to distinguish 
 two kinds of war, public and private ; for he could 
 not deny that in his day both were legitimate, though 
 he put severe limitations upon the rights of indivi- 
 duals and non-sovereign bodies to appeal to the 
 arbitrament of the sword. 
 
 As war is divided into two kinds, public war 
 between sovereign states and private war, so again 
 private war comprises two principal species con- 
 tests between individuals and contests between groups. 
 When two men quarrel and wage private war, then 
 if one kills the other we call it murder, or at least 
 manslaughter, unless the act can be shown to have 
 been done in self-defence. But in mediaeval societies 
 single combats were generally permitted by custom, 
 and in certain cases actually prescribed by law. 
 Indeed learned writers have justly distinguished 
 between the duel as a judicial process and the duel 
 as an affair of honour ; and if we were treating the 
 subject at length it might be expedient to make a 
 triple distinction, namely, trial by combat, the chivalric 
 duel, or tourney, and the modern duel. But Case 
 has kindly agreed to supplement my discourse with 
 a legal one, so that I need not guard too anxiously 
 against the confusion which might result from taking 
 a general view of the whole subject. And a general 
 view is essential ; for the permanent interest ot 
 duelling in its various forms depends upon the 
 general drift and tendency of the currents that go 
 to make up the history of the abolition of private 
 war over the greater part of the world. It is, I 
 think, upon the whole the most promising of all the
 
 184 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 changes that have taken place in the social organism 
 to those at least who seek a sign of the advent of 
 peace. By the end of the eighteenth perhaps, cer- 
 tainly by the end of the nineteenth century, every 
 state of Western Europe had established sufficient 
 order for its inhabitants to live peacefully in time of 
 peace under the laws of the land. There were from 
 time to time abnormal outbreaks of civil war, violent 
 revolutions ; but we can now say that private war 
 (in the sense usually given to that term) has almost 
 disappeared. Even those forms of it which lasted 
 longest, piracy, brigandage, and duelling, are practi- 
 cally extinct. We admit indeed it is part of our argu- 
 ment that the distinction between private and public 
 war is only a distinction of degree. Of the two steps 
 leading from universal war to universal peace the 
 longest and most difficult has been taken. For how 
 do we stand ? Single robbers, or a few associates, 
 to borrow a sentence from Gibbon, are branded with 
 their genuine name, but the exploits of a numerous 
 band assume the character of a lawful and honourable 
 war. 1 We are at a half-way house. 
 
 By private war then is to be understood unlaw- 
 ful war, or war that is not authorised by sovereign 
 public authority. A war between municipal corpora- 
 tions like Manchester and Liverpool would be private 
 war, though a war between Florence and Milan in 
 the fifteenth century (much smaller towns but sovereign 
 republics) was public war. The duel proper between 
 two private persons is the most private of private 
 wars. When seconds and thirds came in and fought 
 beside their principals, as Montaigne describes, the 
 1 Decline and Fall, chap. 50.
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 185 
 
 scale was enlarged. It was the privilege of a man 
 of quality to attack his equals and to defend himself 
 against them with the sword. To private war in 
 this sense only gentlemen had the right. When great 
 barons came into conflict private war ensued on 
 a large scale ; for all kinsmen and dependents were 
 involved in these bloody feuds. Private war, whether 
 waged by barons or by robbers or buccaneers, disappears 
 when the sovereign in each state is strong enough 
 to establish law, and when the police of the land 
 and seas has become effectual. In England, for 
 instance, it practically came to an end with the 
 wars of the Roses, and what remained of it was put 
 down by the stern rule of the Tudors. But in the 
 Highlands of Scotland feuds and private wars between 
 the clans lasted until after the rising of 1745, and in 
 Ireland agrarian war continued into our own times. 
 
 Freeman points out that the central power was at 
 first stronger in Germany than in France. But it is 
 to Germany that we turn for the later history of private 
 war ; for there, owing to the decadence of imperial 
 authority and the number of small states, its ravages 
 lasted longer than in any other part of Western 
 Europe in spite of all the efforts that were made to 
 restrain it. The miserable impotence of public law 
 in Germany might be illustrated by the language of 
 the imperial edicts. Thus the famous edict called the 
 Landfriede or Public Peace which was promulgated 
 by the Emperor Frederick I. in 1187 A.D., towards 
 the end of his life, was so expressed that, though 
 incendiaries and many other disturbers of tranquillity 
 were menaced with the Ban of the Empire, yet a 
 special clause was inserted authorising everyone to
 
 1 86 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 reserve the right of doing justice to himself by force, 
 provided he gave three days' notice to his adversary 
 and declared his hostile intentions. 
 
 While in France and in England 1 from the four- 
 teenth century private wars if we refuse this title to 
 the religious and civil struggles engendered by the 
 Reformation were almost confined to single combats 
 and duels, in Germany barons with their retainers, 
 corporate towns, principalities and states frequently 
 took up arms against one another ; nor was there 
 any approach to internal peace until after the final 
 catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War, which left 
 many parts of Germany desolate and ruined for 
 generations. For a long time the most that the 
 Emperors dared to attempt was to threaten with 
 punishment all who indulged in private war without 
 giving three days' notice, and these denunciations were 
 solemnly re-enacted in the Golden Bull of Charles IV. 
 (1356). Apart from imperial manifestoes there is ample 
 evidence that the ' right ' of private war was constantly 
 exercised by German potentates in the fourteenth 
 century and that their example was not lost on their 
 inferiors. In 1312, for instance, the Counts of 
 Schwartzburg and the Elector of Mentz made war 
 on the Margrave of Misnia and the city of Erfurt. 
 They lost forty knights and esquires ; but an officer 
 in the service of the Elector captured fifty knights 
 and esquires from the Misnians and people of Erfurt. 
 He imprisoned them at Arnstadt, and they paid the 
 Elector of Mentz 2000 marks of pure silver (2600) 
 
 1 In the reign of Stephen there were said to be above iioo 
 forts and castles in England, whose proprietors exercised the right 
 of private warfare.
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 187 
 
 for their ransom. In another private war against the 
 Counts of Hanstein the Schwartzburgs invaded with- 
 out provocation the territory of Mentz, and burned 
 a village with its inhabitants and many horses belong- 
 ing to the Elector ; they also sacked ten churches, 
 and burned them with the people who had fled into 
 them for refuge. About the same time, it is recorded, 
 the Counts of Hohenstein seized and hanged four 
 castellains of Mentz ; with a troop of 200 horsemen 
 they attacked Duderstadt by night, where they seized 
 two burghers and hanged them "without either judge 
 or law." l It is asserted with confidence by the learned 
 and cautious Putter that in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries there was scarcely a habitable district in 
 Germany which was not almost incessantly troubled 
 and devastated by private war. 
 
 Hunting and fighting were in that age the only 
 occupations worthy of a lay gentleman ; to a needy 
 knight the profession of arms afforded the only means 
 of livelihood and the possibility of a career. He 
 might hire himself out for wars private and public, 
 or might join with other bravoes in quest either of 
 plunder, or of some rich merchant or noble whose 
 capture would yield a fat ransom. Clubs and combin- 
 ations of this kind were prohibited in the Golden 
 Bull, a sign that they were numerous and formidable 
 at the time. They adopted such fancy names as the 
 Knights of the Horn, of the Star, of the Club, or 
 of the Red Sleeve. The Golden Bull did not stop 
 the mischief; for in 1367 we hear of a Swabian band 
 called Martin's Birds because they came together on 
 St. Martin's Day or f Bruisers ' (Schlageler) because 
 1 See Gudenus, Cod. Diplom, vol. iii., pp. 456-458.
 
 1 88 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the emblem of their order was a silver club. These 
 jolly bandits soon made themselves famous. They 
 heard that Count Eberhard of Wiirtemburg was resting 
 at Wildbad after* the hardships of war. It occurred 
 to Martin's Birds that here was a noble ransom going 
 begging, and it would be fine sport also to take such 
 a prize as Eberhard. On a sudden they swooped 
 down upon Wildbad ; and would have seized the Count 
 and his family without difficulty had not a faithful 
 shepherd given warning and guided them by a secret 
 path into a place of safety. The Count, who had 
 himself been the scourge of the Imperial Cities, was 
 now resolved at all costs to punish the impudence 
 of the Birds ! To this end he obtained the support 
 of the Emperor Charles the Fourth, but apparently 
 without much success ; for four years afterwards he 
 was treating with the City and Bishop of Strasburg 
 for assistance against his foes. 
 
 It may seem astonishing that any sort of civilised 
 life should have been possible in that miserable country. 
 The mystery is explained by Leagues for the main- 
 tenance of the public peace. In 1241 the Hanseatic 
 League was formed by Lubeck and Hamburg for 
 the purpose of guarding trade routes and protecting 
 commerce. They were joined by the important town 
 of Brunswick, then a staple mart for Italian wares, 
 and afterwards by Bremen, Cologne, Magdeburg and 
 many other towns not only in Germany but in the 
 Low Countries and Scandinavia. 
 
 The Hanseatic League in the days of its strength 
 maintained a fleet of warships to guard its com- 
 merce on the high seas, and also patrols of armed 
 men to guard the roads between the Elbe and the
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 189 
 
 Trave. It was a commercial federation and was at the 
 height of its power in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, when Germany was suffering most from 
 the mischief of private war. 
 
 A less famous League was the Rheinbund, a federa- 
 tion of seventy Rhenish towns formed for purposes of 
 mutual aid and protection under the patronage of 
 William of Holland. 
 
 Another important check on the progress of private 
 war was the Swiss Confederacy, which took shape by 
 degrees in the first half of the fourteenth century, and 
 developed the most formidable infantry in Europe. 
 In a great part of Germany however the evils of 
 private war were rather aggravated than diminished 
 until towards the end of the fifteenth century, when 
 the establishment of the Swabian League at length 
 fortified the imperial authority. Many plans were 
 indeed proposed in the long reign of Frederick the 
 Third (1440-1493), but they were, with the one 
 exception of the Swabian League, wholly unsuccessful, 
 and a contemporary writer frankly describes Germany 
 as " a den of murderers." 
 
 The English historian of the House of Austria l 
 devotes an unusually lively paragraph to " the right 
 of difHdation or private warfare " as it was exercised 
 in Germany during this period. " Not only did 
 sovereigns and states," he writes, " engage in hostili- 
 ties from interest or revenge, but the lesser barons 
 and even associations of tradesmen and domestics 
 sent defiances to each other on the most ridiculous 
 pretences and in a manner scarcely credible at the 
 present day [1807]." He cites a declaration of war 
 
 1 Coxe, House of Austria, chap. xix.
 
 190 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 from a private individual, Henry Mayenberg, against 
 the Emperor himself, another from the lord of 
 Prauenstein, against Frankfurt, because a young lady 
 of the city refused to dance with his uncle ; another 
 in 1450 from the baker and domestics of the 
 Margrave of Baden against Eslingen, Reutlingen, and 
 other imperial cities ; another in 1462 from the 
 baker of the Count Palatine Lewis against the cities 
 of Augsburg, Ulm, and Rothweil ; another in 1471 
 from the shoe-blacks of the University of Leipzig 
 against the provost and some other members ; and 
 finally a defiance issued in 1477 by a cook of Eppen- 
 stein, with his scullions, dairy maids, and dish washers, 
 against Otho, Count of Solms. A few years before 
 his death, as we have seen, a step was taken by 
 Frederick the Third towards abolishing private war 
 and ensuring the peace of Germany by the formation 
 of the Swabian League. By this league in a short 
 time no less than 140 strongholds "of nobles or 
 banditti " were successively demolished. Thus the 
 way was paved for Charles the Fifth, whose power, 
 in co-operation with the German princes, became so 
 formidable that he was thought to be aiming at 
 universal monarchy. 
 
 But I pass from these forms of private war, which 
 are now quite obsolete, except in such countries as 
 India, Russia, and South America, to the duel. Un- 
 known to the ancient Greeks and Romans the duel 
 was introduced into Roman Europe by the Germans 
 and the Northmen. The heroes of the Edda were 
 rewarded at the Court of Odin by being allowed 
 every morning as soon as they were dressed to go 
 out into the court and fight with one another till
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 191 
 
 the close of the day, when they returned to the 
 Valhalla to drink beer or mead. 
 
 By a law of the Burgundian Gundebald (A.D. 501) 
 all disputes were to be decided by the sword, and 
 the same custom prevailed among the Lombards. 
 Trial by single combat came to be regarded as a 
 form of justice in which the decision was left to 
 God. It was curbed by Charlemagne, but revived 
 under his successors. The Norman conquest intro- 
 duced the judicial combat into England (where it 
 had not been recognised by the Saxon or Danish 
 laws), but with the restriction that no priest should 
 fight without the leave of his bishop. For a long 
 time, however, there were plenty of fighting bishops 
 to grant the privilege and encourage the practice. 
 From the time of the Norman conquest for several 
 centuries wager of battle was universal in Europe, 
 and formed an integral part of every nation's judi- 
 cial constitution. Late in the seventeenth century 
 it was necessary in Spain to restrain bishops and other 
 dignitaries of the Church from fighting. Cardinal 
 de Retz fought two duels. From time to time both 
 the Church and the Empire intervened. The Truce 
 of God (1041) forbade fighting from Thursday 
 sunset to Monday sunrise in each week, and on all 
 Church festivals. In 1 1 73, to encourage trade, Frederick 
 Barbarossa granted Flemish traders immunity from 
 the duel. The Emperor Frederick the Second, in 
 his Neapolitan Code (1231) prohibited wager of 
 battle in nearly all cases, and he also ordered the 
 nobles to relinquish their " privilege " of plundering 
 travellers. Yet one of the complaints against this 
 Emperor made at the Council of Lyons was that
 
 1 92 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 he had compelled clerics to fight duels ! Early in the 
 twelfth century Chivalry arose. The Templars, the 
 Knights of St. John, and other powerful orders were 
 instituted, ostensibly to defend the honour of the 
 weak and to rescue the oppressed, really to strengthen 
 the grip of the Church on Feudalism and of 
 Feudalism on society That chivalry had some ten- 
 dency to refine manners, and to raise the position 
 of women may be conceded. Certainly it shed a 
 romantic glamour over the daily violence and cruelty 
 that marked private and public life. How chivalry 
 was viewed by the statesmen of the Church may 
 be gathered from a discourse of St. Bernard's (A.D. 
 1127), wherein he extolled the order of Knights 
 Templar as a combination of monasticism and knight- 
 hood, and described it as a design to give knightly 
 militarism a serious Christian direction, and to 
 convert war into something that God might approve. 1 
 In England the single combat as a judicial proceeding 
 was not admitted in the Admiralty Courts or in 
 Mercantile Law. Even as a civil remedy or as a 
 substitute for criminal justice it never really flourished, 
 and after the legal reforms of Henry II. and 
 Edward I. it practically disappeared, though it was 
 not formally abolished until the year 1833 after some 
 scandalous revivals. As late, however, as 1631 the 
 preliminaries of a trial by combat between Lord Rea 
 and David Ramsay were arranged before Robert Earl 
 of Lindsey and Thomas Earl of Arundel. Again, in 
 1638, Lilburn challenged Claxton in a civil action. 
 But in the first case, after the Court had met several 
 times in the painted chamber, the quarrel was accom- 
 1 Neander's History of the Church (English edition), vol. vii., p. 347.
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 193 
 
 modated by King Charles I., and in the second the 
 proceedings, at his suggestion, were delayed. In 1641 
 Lilburn complained to the House of Commons that 
 his battle was being illegally postponed. The House 
 thereupon resolved to bring in a bill to take away 
 trial by combat ; but the bill was never passed. 1 
 
 On the Continent the combat was in constant use 
 as a legal remedy until the fourteenth century. In 
 the reign of St. Louis, we are told, plaintiffs and 
 defendants were allowed to appeal from the law to 
 the sword, witnesses had recourse to it to establish 
 their evidence, and the judge himself was liable to 
 be challenged by a disappointed litigant, and was 
 bound to defend himself unless he was the culprit's 
 feudal lord. Yet St. Louis did all that he could to 
 restrict private war. Discouraged by the laws, single 
 combat flourished under the influence of chivalry in 
 the form of tournaments and duels, the duel alone 
 surviving when the age of chivalry was succeeded by 
 the age of honour, and the lance yielded to the sword 
 and the pistol. The code of honour and the art of 
 fencing were elaborated in Italy. Italy had supplied 
 Europe with causes of offence, methods of reparation, 
 privileges of challengers, duties of seconds ; in short, 
 with all the points of honour and minutiae of pro- 
 cedure in the law of taking and giving offence. 
 It is hardly an exaggeration to say that European 
 society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries paid 
 far more attention to the works of Mutio, Fausto, 
 Attendolo, and the rulers of the Duello, than to the 
 revelations of Grotius and his successors. With the 
 
 1 See Rushworth's Historical Collections, vol. i. part ii., pp. 788-790; 
 and vol i. part iii., p. 396. 
 
 N
 
 i 9 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 noble science of honour was of course associated the 
 noble art of fencing, and to Italy the bravoes of 
 Europe resorted to learn the latest tricks and strata- 
 gems of sword play. The line between the duellist 
 and the assassin was not too distinctly drawn, and 
 the man of honour often stooped to hire the services 
 of a professional bully. " Does the man live who 
 inflicted that wound ?" asked Henry IV. of France 
 when Lord Sanquhar, who had lost an eye at sword 
 play with an English fencing-master, was presented to 
 him. Stung by the taunt, Sanquhar returned to 
 England and avenged his honour by hiring two pro- 
 fessionals to assassinate his luckless instructor. Bayard, 
 the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, who is always 
 regarded as the last true representative of chivalry, ran 
 his sword through a Spaniard whom he had taken 
 prisoner, because the Don complained of his captor's 
 discourtesy. The story of the " Paragon of France " 
 may serve to illustrate the temper of chivalry and 
 the practical workings of the code of honour. The 
 Paragon flourished in the time of Charles the Ninth, 
 that feeble tool of Catherine de Medici who assented 
 to the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572. Bran- 
 tome (1540-1614), from whose narrative the following 
 account is drawn, is an appreciative witness and glorifier 
 of the Paragon's misdeeds. 
 
 Duprat, Baron de Vitaux, the Paragon of France, 
 was the son of Chancellor Duprat, and from early 
 life displayed symptoms of undaunted courage. He 
 commenced his career in arms by killing the Baron 
 de Soupez, who threw a candlestick at him at dinner 
 and broke his head ; for which Duprat waylaid him 
 on the road to Toulouse, and having dispatched him,
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 195 
 
 escaped in a woman's clothes (bravement en habit de 
 damoiselle]. His next exploit was to murder Monsieur 
 de Gounellieu, the Master of the Horse to Charles IX., 
 in revenge for the death of one of his brothers, 
 a lad of fifteen, whom Gounellieu had treacherously 
 slain. Fearing the king's resentment he fled to Italy, 
 but quickly returned in order to revenge the death of 
 another brother, who had just been killed by his own 
 near relation, the Baron de Millaud. He remained 
 concealed in an obscure lodging on the Quai des 
 Augustins and grew a long beard to escape recog- 
 nition. Then disguising himself as a lawyer, in 
 company with his companions, the two Boucicaux, 
 " brave and valiant men known as the Lions of Baron 
 Vitaux," he watched for Millaud. At length meeting 
 with Millaud before the lodgings, they set on him 
 and slew him. Vitaux fled, but was captured and 
 imprisoned in Paris. Thereupon Monsieur de Gua, a 
 gallant and distinguished officer and a favourite of 
 the king's, opposed the grant of pardon to Vitaux ; 
 wherefore the Paragon, six months afterwards, stole 
 into Gua's house with one of his men, and dispatched 
 him in his bed. " This deed," says Brantome, " was 
 considered one of great resolution and assurance." 
 Duprat was again pardoned through the interest of 
 the Due d'Alen9on and Queen Marguerite. How- 
 ever, his hour at length came the brother of the 
 Baron de Millaud, whom he had assassinated eight 
 years before, called him out, first securing himself 
 with a cuirass under his clothes that was painted flesh 
 colour to escape detection. The sword of Vitaux bent 
 against it ; in vain he repeated his thrusts ; the 
 Baron's brother quietly ran him through and through,
 
 196 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 without having the courtesy to offer him his life. It 
 was a fine coup (un trh-beau coup d* essay} for young 
 Millaud, but a 'fascheuse' and cruel end for the Baron 
 de Vitaux. "Thus," says Brant6me, "died this brave 
 baron, the Paragon of France, who was famed for 
 the valour and resolution with which he upheld his 
 quarrels and satisfied his revenge. He was esteemed 
 not only in France, but in Spain, Germany, Poland, 
 and England, and every foreigner who came to Court 
 was most anxious to behold him. He was very small 
 in stature, but very great in courage ; and though 
 his enemies pretended that he did not kill his men 
 fairly, but had recourse to various stratagems, still it 
 is the opinion of great captains, even Italians, who 
 are always the best avengers in the world, that strata- 
 gem may be paid for in the same coin without breach 
 of honour." Another of Brantome's heroes is one 
 D'Entragues, who stabbed his adversary to death with 
 a dagger he had treacherously concealed. Another 
 favourite is a Neapolitan bravo who killed three men 
 in one morning on the same spot, and left them with 
 the utmost nonchalance a la garde de Dieu pour estre 
 enterrer. 
 
 Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648) in his 
 entertaining autobiography tells us of a court-ball that 
 he attended while he was acting as British Ambassador 
 at Paris. At this ball he found, to his surprise, that 
 a Monsieur Balaguy, who had neither looks, birth, 
 nor dress to recommend him, was far the most popular 
 man with the Parisian ladies. One after another they 
 asked him to sit next to them. The Englishman was 
 at a loss to understand it ; until " informing myself 
 by some standers-by who he was, I was told that he
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 197 
 
 was one of the gallantest men in the world, having 
 killed eight or nine men in single fight, and that for 
 this reason the ladies made so much of him." 
 
 It is a little difficult to make out the relationship 
 between the Christian Church and the various forms 
 of fighting by which disputes were settled and glory 
 won in the middle ages ; but I hope Mr. Truelove 
 will give us an apologia pro ecclesia sua on a later day. 
 
 Truelove. No, I'm afraid that I regarded duelling 
 as outside my scope. Pray give us your view, even 
 though it be distorted by pagan prejudice ! 
 
 Browne. Well, I have put down a few quotations 
 which go to prove that the barbarians who embraced 
 Christianity made their new heaven very like their 
 old one, and left the earth very much as they 
 found it. The wager of battle seems to have been 
 an ancestral institution of nearly all the races who 
 inherited the Western Empire. Upon their conversion 
 to Christianity, as Lea puts it, the appeal was trans- 
 ferred from the heathen deities to the new God, who 
 was expected to intervene and give victory to the 
 right. Thus the judicial combat was an appeal to 
 the highest court, " and popular confidence in the 
 arbitrament of the sword was rather strengthened than 
 diminished," in proportion as the new faith was stronger 
 than the old. Comparatively enlightened lawgivers like 
 Charlemagne and Otho II. preferred the fighting test 
 to the oath in some forms of procedure. Trial by 
 combat was used to settle disputes of property as well 
 as to meet accusations of crime. Women always, 
 and ecclesiastics usually, provided themselves with 
 champions, and perhaps it was the improbability of 
 a fight between hired champions ending in accordance
 
 198 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 with divine justice, that brought the practice into 
 disrepute. Am I not right ? 
 
 Case. Doubtless ; yet for centuries the combat 
 almost suspended legal processes in Burgundy and 
 Bavaria. St. Agobard, in his treatise against the Lex 
 Gundobaldi, complained that trial by combat had made 
 proofs and witnesses useless. 
 
 Browne. But the saints were not unanimous. In 
 the middle of the thirteenth century, St. Ramon de 
 Pefiafort seems to regard the issue of a duel as a 
 judgment of God x and as a means of arriving at 
 truth. 2 For a long time there was no restriction 
 upon the right of an accused person to fight it out 
 with hostile witnesses, or even to challenge his own 
 judges. 
 
 Case. So long as the feudal system remained in 
 full vigour an appeal to arms was the only means of 
 reversing a judgment in the courts. The practice of 
 appealing to a higher court was an innovation intro- 
 duced into French law by St. Louis. 
 
 Browne. Even when the judicial duel had lost 
 authority and repute, the impiety of confusing religion 
 with homicide persisted. Thus Brantome in his dis- 
 courses on duelling tells of two gentlemen who fought 
 before the altar to decide which should use the censer 
 first. But the Council of Trent (1563) utterly abolished 
 " the detestable practice " as a machination of the 
 devil, 3 and excommunicated all from the Emperor 
 downwards who permitted duels between Christians, 
 including even spectators. 
 
 As to principals and seconds, not only were they to 
 
 1 Dei judicium. 2 Ad probationem veritatis. 
 
 3 Detestabilis duellorum usus fabricante diabolo introductus.
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 199 
 
 be excommunicated, but their persons were declared 
 infamous, their goods were to be confiscated, and their 
 bodies denied Christian burial. Some few protests 
 were made against this spiritual canon by civil authori- 
 ties ; but by that time the ruling powers of Western 
 Europe had begun to suppress the mischief. 
 
 Germany has suffered more than any other part of 
 Europe from private war, and many ineffective edicts 
 against it were issued by the emperors. At last, in 
 1495, Maximilian prohibited it in all his dominions, 
 and the Imperial Chamber was established to terminate 
 differences between members of the Germanic body, 
 with a view to ending all intestine feuds between the 
 princes of Germany. 
 
 In France the severest penalties were threatened 
 against duelling by royal edicts from the sixteenth 
 century onwards, but for some time the king's example 
 neutralised the king's warning. Francis the First was 
 anxious to meet Charles the Fifth in " a secure field " 
 in order to disprove a charge of bad faith. He 
 granted a judicial combat to two of his nobles in 
 1538, and the defendant not appearing was condemned 
 to death. Henry the Second of France, on losing a 
 favourite in a similar trial by battle, swore solemnly 
 never to sanction another, and after this the judicial 
 duel fell into desuetude. But " points of honour " 
 multiplied. In the twenty years' reign of Henry IV. 
 4000 French gentlemen fell in duels. " The madness 
 of duels," writes Henry's biographer, the Bishop of 
 Rhodes, "did seize the spirits of the nobility so much 
 that they lost more blood by each other's hands in 
 time of peace than had been shed by their enemies." 
 Sully indeed and Richelieu did their utmost to put
 
 200 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 down the custom. But duelling continued to flourish 
 until the reign of Louis XIV. 1 Even the authority 
 of the grand monarch could not altogether stamp 
 out the plague, and it raged with renewed fury in 
 the following reigns. Duels were instituted between 
 ladies of the Court, and Maussin, an infamous opera 
 singer, after killing three men retreated to Bavaria, 
 where she became the mistress of the Elector. 
 
 In England duelling always met with strong 
 opposition ; it was regarded as a foreign invention. 
 But in the reign of Elizabeth it became fashionable, 
 and some restraints were placed upon fencing schools. 
 At last Bacon determined to suppress the nuisance 
 and induced the Star Chamber to issue a decree 
 against it, which seems to have been for some time 
 effectual. Bacon said that if a new "law of reputation " 
 were permitted " Paul's " and Westminster, the 
 pulpit and the Courts of Justice, our year books and 
 statute books must give way to French and Italian 
 pamphlets. 
 
 But here I am already on ground far more familiar 
 to my learned brother, and I will ask him to complete 
 this imperfect sketch with the story of the abolition 
 of the duel in England. 
 
 Case. As you have remarked, the duel began to 
 be a nuisance in Elizabeth's reign about the same 
 time that it became so fatally fashionable in France. 
 Its rise coincides with the disappearance of private 
 
 1 Voltaire writes in the second chapter of his Sitcle de Louis XIV. : 
 " Ce n'est pas trop dire que dans le cours de vingt annees, dont 
 dix avaient etc troublees par guerre, il etait mort plus de gentil- 
 hommes fran9ais de la main des Franfais memes que de celle des 
 ennemis."
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 201 
 
 war and the disuse of the judicial combat. In the 
 eye of our law indeed the duellist who kills his 
 man has always been a murderer. But so long 
 as society admires an offence, the laws are never 
 enforced. Under the Commonwealth duelling was 
 suppressed ; but, like most private vices, it flourished 
 after the Restoration. In Selden's 'Table 'Talk (which 
 appeared long after his death in the year of the 
 Glorious Revolution) there is a paragraph on duels 
 that arrests me. " A duel may still be granted in 
 some cases by the law of England." Here he refers 
 of course to the wager of battle and the judicial duel 
 which, as we shall see, remained lawful at the 
 beginning of the last century. In an interesting 
 Latin letter written from the Inner Temple in 1618 
 Selden declare that the forms and rules regulating 
 judicial combat belong rather to the Roman than 
 to the common law, because the court for such 
 combats was a court of chivalry presided over by 
 the Earl Marshal. This does not of course mean 
 that duelling was a Roman institution. It came to 
 England, he writes quaintly elsewhere, through the 
 Normans from the breeding ground of Norway. 
 The later canon law of the Church certainly inhibited 
 duelling. Nevertheless, " that the Church allowed it 
 antiently appears by this," again I quote the learned 
 Selden, "in their public liturgies there were prayers 
 appointed for the duellists to say." The judge, he 
 adds, used to bid duellists go to such and such 
 churches to pray. Milward, Selden's faithful secretary, 
 who so judiciously took down and edited his sayings, 
 never gives them in the form of a dialogue. But 
 evidently in this discourse on duels Selden's companion
 
 202 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 asked whether duelling (granted that it had been 
 sanctioned by the Church and the laws) was also just 
 and right in accordance with the natural and moral 
 law. Selden evades the question by linking the duel 
 with war. If you hold that war is right, he says, I 
 will undertake to prove that duelling is right also. 
 If one nation has a grievance against another there 
 is no judge to decide the controversy and grant a 
 remedy. Therefore it appeals to God, i.e. to the 
 arbitrament of war. Similarly, if a man is injured 
 by another and the law can give him no redress (as 
 when he is merely injured in honour), can he not 
 with equal justice appeal to the same God by the 
 same process ? There is the difference of course that 
 a sovereign state is " supreme," in the sense that 
 it has no earthly superior; but Selden argues that 
 in certain cases the individual also is supreme, and if 
 so, may he not right himself ? 
 
 Clarke. He might have added that states have no 
 moral right to forbid their citizens to appeal to arms 
 in individual controversies if they themselves set the 
 example in national controversies. The absence of a 
 supreme judge or arbiter was not irremediable. It 
 was, and is, as easy for two states to appoint an 
 arbiter as for two men to do the same. It was, and 
 is, as easy for a collection of states to submit them- 
 selves to an international authority as for a collec- 
 tion of men to submit themselves to a municipal 
 or national authority. Is it not rather an instruc- 
 tive fact that, a century after Selden, Rousseau 
 should have drawn from the prevalence of duels 
 the melancholy inference that it would be impossible 
 to put a stop to war between nations? Is it
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 203 
 
 likely, he cries, that sovereigns will submit their 
 quarrels to judgment when by the utmost rigour of 
 their laws they have never been able to compel their 
 own subjects to forego the appeal to arms ? " If a 
 simple gentleman takes offence, he disdains to bring 
 his complaint before the tribunals of the Marshals of 
 France, 1 and do you think a King will lay his before 
 a European diet?" Another reason given by Rousseau 
 why there would be an even greater difficulty in 
 stopping wars than duels, was that rulers who go 
 to war only stake the lives of their subjects, whereas 
 duellists run a double risk, first of the sword, then, 
 if they escape that, of the rope. But it's an ill wind 
 that blows nobody good, and does not our worthy 
 Selden find in the duel a justification for parliament 
 making war upon the King? 
 
 Case. Yes ; and that, I suppose, was a reason for 
 withholding the publication of Table Talk till 1689. 
 A duke, he declares, ought to fight with a gentleman 
 because his dignity does not entitle him to do the 
 other any injury. By doing the injury the duke 
 makes himself the gentleman's equal, and is bound 
 to answer a challenge. " This will give you some 
 light to understand the quarrel betwixt a prince and 
 his subjects." In his short but very learned treatise, 
 The Duello or Single Combat^ Selden divided the 
 judicial combat, as established among us by the 
 Norman kings, into two kinds, criminal and civil 
 " criminal being waged for purgation of an imputed 
 crime, civil when deciding controversy touching private 
 wrongs or interests." In important criminal offences, 
 
 1 Courts of honour for the adjustment of quarrels established by 
 Louis XIV. in the hope of preventing duels.
 
 204 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 such as treason, murder, and robbery, appeals had 
 " from ancient times been triable at the defendant's 
 pleasure by the duel." 1 As to the existence of this 
 right Glanvil and Bracton and all the early authorities 
 are equally explicit. But "rare," says Selden, "are 
 the examples of battels waged upon criminals in the 
 annals of the English laws, and (if I forget not) the 
 least plural number doubled comprehends as many 
 as are therein reported with ensuing performance." 
 The combatants were usually armed only with a lance 
 and a shield. Their heads, hands, and feet were bare. 
 But in the famous combat between Sir John of Ansley 
 and Thomas Catrington, ensuing after many years' 
 delay upon an accusation of treason, 2 they fought 
 first with lances, then with swords, then with fauchions, 
 until at length (though with some hazard and doubt) 
 Ansley was adjudged victor and convicted his opponent 
 of treason. In the twenty-fifth year of Henry the 
 Sixth's reign occurred the last criminal duello men- 
 tioned by Selden. " John David falsely appealed his 
 master, William Catur, an armourer in Fleet Street, 
 of treason." After wager of battle Smithfield was 
 
 1 See chapter vii. of " The Duello or Single Combat from anti- 
 quity derived into this kingdom of England with several kinds and 
 ceremonious forms thereof from good authority described." The 
 treatise was finished by Selden at the end of 1609 and published 
 in the following year. 
 
 2 It was held at Westminster in the third year of Richard the 
 Second before an exceeding conflux of people from all parts of 
 the kingdom. When Catrington began to make exceptions to the 
 form of the articles of accusation, the Duke of Lancaster openly 
 menaced him with an oath that unless he would waive objections 
 of form he should be presently drawn and hanged as a traitor. 
 " Thereupon the squire ceased from his exceptions and intended 
 only the combat."
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 205 
 
 appointed for the fight. " Catur was so merry with 
 his friends before the combat that, when he had 
 most cause of circumspect observation, an Icarian 
 shadow so darkened his eyesight and weakened his 
 forces that he was unluckily there by his most 
 offending servant overcome and slain." Questions of 
 blood, nobility, and even of title to land might also 
 lawfully be referred to single combat ; but few 
 examples are recorded of battles fought and judg- 
 ments given in disputes about property, though we 
 have full descriptions of the forms and ceremonial 
 usages which had to be observed by the champions 
 in such cases before they entered the lists. Disputes 
 about coats of arms and the like were referred more 
 frequently to the arbitrament of arms, but these were 
 always decided in the Court of Chivalry under the 
 jurisdiction, not of the Justices, but of the Constable 
 and Marshal. The procedure before the Court of 
 Chivalry was very solemn and punctilious. A chartel 
 containing the accusation was exhibited to the judges 
 of chivalry and its truth confirmed by oath. The 
 chartel or challenge was then sent to the accused, and 
 if on the duel day he failed to put in an appearance 
 his honour was attainted. But I am being tempted 
 beyond the boundary of my subject; and if you are 
 curious to pursue these antiquities, are they not written 
 in Selden's book on "The Duello or Single Combat ? 
 
 The end of the duel in England may now be told. 
 Before the close of the sixteenth century the chivalric 
 duel was forgotten ; it could not be revived even 
 by the antiquarian zeal of Selden. It had already 
 fallen into desuetude when the office of Constable and 
 Marshal lapsed in the reign of Henry VIII. Hence-
 
 206 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 forth, when gentlemen fought duels upon points of 
 honour, they fought not under cover of a court of 
 chivalry, but in flat defiance of the law. With the 
 growth of rationalism in the eighteenth century the 
 fashion of duelling declined ; but there were still 
 occasions when men of spirit felt themselves com- 
 pelled to fight, however strongly they condemned 
 the practice. In the reign of George the Third it 
 has been computed that over 200 Englishmen were 
 killed in duels. Duelling was practised or approved 
 by almost all the leading public men of the time, 
 from Wilkes and Townshend, Shelburne, Pitt, Fox, 
 Sheridan, and Wyndham, to Canning, Burdett, Broug- 
 ham, Castlereagh, and the Duke of Wellington. And 
 such, in the time of our present King's great-grand- 
 father, was the state of public opinion that, though 
 in the eyes of the law every duellist who killed his 
 man incurred the death penalty, only 18 trials took 
 place, only ten persons were convicted, of these ten 
 only two were hanged, and these two sufFered not for 
 having killed their men, but for having killed them 
 by foul fighting. Until after the Reform Bill duelling 
 was very common in the army, and occurred pretty 
 frequently between members of parliament. 
 
 Meanwhile the judicial duel, or wager of battle, 
 remained an institution of English law more than 
 two centuries after it was described by Selden. 
 Twice, as Browne has shown, its revival was attempted 
 in the reign of Charles the First ; but the scandal 
 of an actual conflict was in each case averted. 
 At last, in 1817, a murderer escaped by challenging 
 his accuser, who of course refused the wager, and in 
 the following year this ancient Norman blot was
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 207 
 
 formally erased from the laws of England. The 
 ordinary duel, however, remained to be put down. It 
 was a characteristic and distinctive vice of the upper 
 classes of society, which, strange to say, had never 
 been imitated by their social inferiors. Scotland, I 
 am glad to think, took the lead in recognising the 
 folly. In 1815 a Scotch Sheriff fined two duellists 
 25 guineas apiece, and ordered the money to be 
 applied to the upkeep of a lunatic asylum. When 
 the Reform Act of 1832 substituted the rule of the 
 middle classes for the rule of the aristocracy, duelling 
 was doomed. The end is supposed to have been 
 hastened by the amazing conduct of Wellington, 
 who, in 1829, though Prime Minister of England, 
 actually fought a duel with Winchelsea. The following 
 year, in his charge to the jury in a duelling case, 
 Mr. Justice Bayley is reported to have expounded the 
 law as follows : 
 
 " We have heard several times during the course of this trial 
 of the law of honour ; but I will now tell you what is the law 
 of the land, which is all that you and I have to do with. It is 
 this : that if two persons go out with deadly weapons, intending 
 to use them against each other, and do use them, and death 
 ensue, that is murder, wilful murder." 1 
 
 1 Quoted in Walpole's History of England, chap. xvii. See also 
 Annual Register, 1830, pp. 162-167, where a good account is 
 given of the proceedings at the Old Bailey on October 8th. 
 Captain Helsham was indicted for the murder of Lieutenant 
 Crowther whom he had shot in a duel at Boulogne in the 
 previous year. According to the Annual Register the Judge in- 
 structed the Jury that, if parties went out to fight a duel and 
 death was the result of that meeting, the surviving parties in the 
 transaction were equally guilty of the crime of murder whether 
 fair or foul means had been used. The Jury however found the 
 prisoner not guilty.
 
 This was very different language from that of 
 Baron Hotham, who, a generation before, is said 
 to have told a jury that the acquittal of an officer 
 who had murdered another in a duel would be 
 " lovely in the sight both of God and man." For 
 some time longer, however, duels continued to occur, 
 and the juries were very reluctant to convict. In 
 1840 a grand jury found a true bill against Lord 
 Cardigan, who had fought a duel with one of his 
 officers, Captain Tuckett, and wounded him. The 
 peer claimed the privilege of being tried by his 
 peers. After a solemn farce in the House of Lords 
 the peers acquitted the prisoner. There was great 
 popular indignation ; and three years later, when an 
 officer killed another in a duel, the Ministry deprived 
 him of his commission and refused a pension to the 
 widow of the murdered man. The year 1844 may 
 be fixed as the year when duelling was suppressed 
 in England. A society formed in London for the 
 abolition of duelling was joined by many high 
 officers in both services. The practice was strongly 
 condemned in Parliament as criminal in its tendency 
 and contrary to divine command. Finally, the Articles 
 of War were amended ; officers were forbidden to 
 duel, and subjected to the loss of their commissions 
 if they chose to disobey. " One hundred years," if 
 I may repeat the reflection of Sir Spencer Walpole 
 in one of the most striking chapters of his history, 
 " is only a short period in the history of a nation ; 
 yet one hundred years may produce many revolu- 
 tions in politics and manners. In November, 1746, 
 a secretary at war had written to an officer in 
 command of troops that he must either fight a duel
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 209 
 
 or be broke. In April, 1844, the Queen's Regula- 
 tion declared that an officer who chose to fight a 
 duel should be cashiered. Such was the opinion of 
 Court and Ministry in the days of Pelham, and 
 such was the change in the days of Peel." 
 
 Browne. And what a transformation in France since 
 the time when Lord Herbert of Cherbury wrote from 
 the court of Louis XIII. : " There is scarce a 
 Frenchman worth looking at who has not killed 
 his man in a duel." 
 
 Seymour. Napoleon has the credit of being the 
 first commander to abolish duelling in his army. 
 *' Good duellist, bad soldier," was a saying of his. 
 
 Browne. Yes, but it was restored with the Bour- 
 bons and still lingers. In the suppression of duel- 
 ling England may certainly claim to have helped 
 Europe by her example ; and the reputation of an 
 English gentleman is higher than ever since he 
 abandoned " the law of honour." 
 
 I feel very grateful to Case for what he has done to 
 redeem my paper. It was indeed too large a subject ; 
 but I had to execute the commands of the Arbiter. 
 
 Undoubtedly we moderns have much to be thank- 
 ful for when we look back at what our ancestors 
 suffered. Private war by land is now extinct in Europe, 
 except in parts of Sicily and of the Balkan Peninsular. 
 The pirate has practically disappeared from the high 
 seas, though piracy by combatants at sea has not yet 
 been banned. The slave trade is almost suppressed. 
 This wonderful revolution has not been brought 
 about in so short a space by mere improvements in 
 the police, though these have been great. The 
 telegraph, the telephone, the railway, and the steamer,
 
 2io THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 and the wonderful developments in the art of light- 
 ing towns, have been even more potent factors in 
 securing civilisation from private wars. In the narrow 
 sense of the term, a combat between two individuals^ 
 private war is still authorised, or at least tolerated 
 and winked at in some civilised societies. But fatalities 
 are very rare. 
 
 The duel, indeed, as a mode of settling affairs of 
 honour between gentlemen, though discountenanced 
 by public law, still survives in a mild and attenuated 
 form, and " honour " still secures a few victims among 
 military men on the continent. For centuries the 
 arbiter of European justice, as between men of rank, 
 for centuries more the arbiter of honour, the single 
 combat is rapidly declining in military esteem. It 
 is still a sport for German students and Parisian 
 journalists rather more dangerous than football, 
 rather less dangerous than polo. There was a time 
 when nobles declared war on burghers, when church- 
 men and women freely entrusted their disputes to 
 voluntary champions or hired duellists, when the 
 sword decided even pretensions to office, and good 
 Christians regarded its decisions with pious reverence. 
 It was an appeal, they pretended, from the fallible 
 judgment of man to the unerring judgment seat of 
 God. One age transferred civil causes to courts of 
 law; another delivered traitors and murderers to 
 the King's judges. Another took from chivalry its 
 privilege of redressing wrongs and rescuing fair ladies. 
 A fourth suppressed tournaments. The duel remained, 
 sometimes prohibited by royal edicts, and generally 
 discouraged by laws; it long earned the applause of 
 smart society, and many a gallant won his mistress
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 211 
 
 by killing a rival. Every gentleman was bound 
 to maintain with his sword whatever his lips uttered. 
 But gradually, as enlightenment spread, Justice was 
 extricated from her confusion with Honour ; causes 
 and accusations, which had invited a challenge, were 
 by degrees submitted to the arbitration of law or 
 resigned to public opinion. " Explanations were 
 admitted, and society ceased to require, as a feather 
 in the cap of a man of honour, that he had killed 
 his man. Duelling then subsided, to become the 
 unwelcome resource of the good and the brave and 
 the prized proceeding only of the bully, the gambler, 
 and the profligate." l Virtue and courage are no 
 longer compelled to this unwelcome resource, nor 
 can the gambler and the profligate any longer rely 
 upon it as a short cut to fortune. 
 
 Ego. The abolition of duelling inevitably suggests 
 the abolition of war. I suppose we should agree 
 that aggression is equally wrong and immoral in 
 case of nations and individuals. But are both equally 
 entitled to repel aggression ? In other words, is there 
 the same right of self-defence for individuals that 
 international jurists claim for nations ? 
 
 Case. I think so, at least in the main. But Black- 
 stone, I am bound to say, hints, in an interesting 
 chapter of his Commentaries? that a distinction may 
 
 1 An Edinburgh Reviewer in 1842. Yet in another place this 
 writer has to admit that the duel still maintained itself even in 
 England : " While we thus trace its source to the ignorance and 
 ferocity of our Gothic ancestors, it is truly humiliating that it should 
 be continued to the present day; that the English gentleman of the 
 nineteenth should join with the Lombard of the eighth century in 
 saying, 'we cannot abolish it notwithstanding its impiety.'" 
 
 2 Vol. iv., chapter xiv.
 
 212 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 be drawn between the rights of nations and individuals 
 in regard to killing as a defensive operation. " The 
 law," he says, " requires that the person who kills 
 another in his own defence, should have retreated as 
 far as he conveniently or safely can, to avoid the 
 violence of the assault, before he turns upon his 
 assailant ; and that not fictitiously, or in order to 
 watch his opportunity, but from a real tenderness of 
 shedding his brother's blood." And, he goes on, 
 though it may be cowardice, in time of war between 
 two independent nations, to flee from our enemy, yet 
 between two fellow subjects the law countenances no 
 such point of honour, because the king and his 
 courts are the vindices injuriarum, and will give to 
 the party wronged all the satisfaction he deserves. 
 
 Clarke. You have made one omission in your 
 account of duels. 
 
 Browne. I have made many omissions by design or 
 from ignorance. But what is this hole in my jerry- 
 built edifice, and will you please repair it ? 
 
 Clarke. Not a gap, only a crevice. You have not 
 noticed the one sermon, or at least the one sermon 
 worth reading, that to my knowledge was ever preached 
 against duelling and you have committed a sort of 
 treason against your host and his House in the 
 Wood for the sermon I speak of was preached by 
 an Englishman at the Hague nearly three centuries 
 ago. 
 
 Arbiter. It sounds most interesting. You have 
 sharpened our curiosity and you must satisfy it. 
 
 Clarke. At the Synod of Dort, 1618, there was 
 present " the ever memorable " Mr. John Hales, and 
 one Sunday in the autumn of that year he preached
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 213 
 
 before our ambassador at the Hague (Sir D. Carleton, 
 afterwards Lord Dorchester) a sermon against duels, 
 taking as his text (from the 35th chapter of Numbers), 
 " and the land cannot be cleansed of blood that is shed 
 in it, but by the blood of him that shed it." 
 
 Arbiter. And pray, was the discourse worthy of the 
 occasion, the place, and the preacher? 
 
 Clarke nodded. 
 
 Arbiter. Could you perhaps recall to us the argu- 
 ment ? 
 
 Clarke. I will try if you have patience enough 
 with the help of this book 1 and a few notes I have 
 by me. After contrasting the retaliatory spirit of the 
 Old Testament with the gospel of peace, Hales begins 
 with some searching questions. Does the Christianity 
 of our day, he asks, correspond with that which is 
 commended to us in the writings of the apostles 
 and evangelists ? He answers : " He that shall behold 
 the true face of a Christian, as it is deciphered and 
 painted out unto us in the books of the New 
 Testament and unpartially compare it with that copy 
 or counterfeit of it which is exprest in the life and 
 demeanour of common Christians, would think them 
 no more like than those shields of gold which Solomon 
 made were unto those of brass which Rehoboam made 
 in their stead." The Christian character was to be 
 first of all meek, peaceful, and loving. St. James, 
 indeed, gave the first place to purity, but he might 
 well have written : The wisdom that is from above is 
 jirst peaceable, then pure. For when the Son of God, 
 " who is the wisdom of the father," was born, the 
 
 1 Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable Mr. John Hales. London, 
 1673.
 
 2i 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 song of the Angels was "Peace upon earth and good- 
 will towards men." 
 
 "All His doctrine was peace, His whole life was peaceable, and 
 no man heard His voice in the streets. His last legacy and bequest 
 left unto His disciples was the same : Peace, saith he, / leave unto 
 you, My peace I give unto you. As Christ, so Christians. In the 
 building of Solomon's Temple there was no noise of any hammer, 
 of any instrument of iron ; so in the spiritual building and frame 
 of a Christian, there is no sound of iron, no noise of any weapons, 
 nothing but peace and gentleness. Ex praecepto fidei non minus rea 
 ira est sine ratione suscepta quam in operibus legis homicidium, saith 
 St. Austin. ' Unadvised anger by the Law of Faith is as great a 
 sin as murther was by the Law of Moses.' " 
 
 The Gospel, therefore, would purge the Christian 
 not merely of outward strife, but of inward passion 
 and anger. But the conventional Christian of Hales' 
 day, " the Christian in passage," was irascible and 
 violent. Touch him in his goods, in his body, in 
 his reputation and honour, and see if he will not curse 
 thee to thy face. 
 
 How are the Saviour's commands obeyed His pre- 
 cepts of suffering wrong rather than to go to Law ; 
 of yielding the coat to him that would take a cloak ; 
 of readiness to receive many wrongs rather than revenge 
 one ? " These and all the Evangelical commands of 
 the like nature interpretamento detorquemus ; we have 
 found out favourable interpretations and glosses, 
 restrictions and evasions, to wind ourselves out of 
 them, to shift them all off, and put them by, and 
 yet pass for sound and current Christians. We think 
 we may be justly angry, continue long suits in Law, 
 call to the Magistrate for revenge, yea, sometimes 
 take it into our own hands : all this and much 
 more we think we may lawfully, and with good
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 215 
 
 reason, do, any precept of Christ to the contrary 
 notwithstanding.' ' 
 
 " And as it usually comes to pass, the permitting and tolerating 
 lesser sins, opens way to greater, so by giving passage and inlet 
 to those lesser impatiences and discontents, we lay open a gap 
 to those fouler crimes, even of murther and bloudshed. For as 
 men commonly suppose, that all the former breaches of our 
 patience, which but now I mention, may well enough stand 
 with the duties of Christians ; so there are who stay not here, 
 tut think, that in some cases it may be lawful, yea, peradventure 
 necessary, at least very pardonable for Christians, privately to seek 
 each others bloud, and put their lives upon their swords, with- 
 out any wrong to their vocation ; out of this have sprung many 
 great inconveniences, both private and publick. First, laws made 
 too favourable in the case of bloudshed. Secondly, a too much 
 facility and easiness in Princes and Magistrates, sometimes to give 
 pardon and release for that crime. Thirdly and chiefly (for it is 
 the special cause indeed that moved me to speak in this Argu- 
 ment), an over promptness in many young men, who desire to be 
 counted men of valour and resolution, upon every sleight occasion 
 to raise a quarrel and admit of no other means of composing and 
 ending it, but by sword and single combat." 
 
 He is sorry, he says later, that it should be neces- 
 sary among Christian men so long to insist upon a thing 
 so plain, as that murder even in a quarrel for honour 
 and reputation is a great and heinous crime. This 
 opinion had influenced the administration of law and 
 made it defective in the prevention and punishment 
 of duelling ; and so it had come to pass, " that in 
 Military Companies, and in all great Cities and places 
 of mart and concourse, few moneths, yea, few weeks 
 pass without some instance and example of bloudshed, 
 either by sudden quarrel or by challenge to duel 
 and single Combat. How many examples in a short 
 space have we seen of young men, men of hot and
 
 216 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 fiery disposition, mutually provoking and disgracing 
 each other, and then taking themselves bound in high 
 terms of valour, and honour, to end their quarrels 
 by their swords ? " 
 
 I ought to say that Hales, as a part of the 
 argument against duelling, defends public war by 
 comparison, or rather admits that blood spilt in 
 public quarrels may be justified by the command of 
 the magistrate, 1 whereas the responsibility and guilt 
 of bloodshed for private concerns cannot be shifted. 
 He points out that duelling was condemned by the 
 history of the Christian religion, as well as by 
 the civilisations of antiquity. There can be no great 
 reason, he says, for an action which was begun by 
 Cain and continued only by Goths and Vandals. 
 
 I shall conclude, if you will allow me, by citing 
 his examination of the causes and pretences alleged 
 in his day on behalf of single combat. It brings 
 out, I think, very clearly the moral solidarity of war 
 and duelling. The causes assigned in favour of 
 single combat were, he says, usually two : " First, 
 disdain to seem to do or suffer anything for fear of 
 death ; secondly, point of honour, and not to suffer 
 any contumely and indignity, especially if it bring 
 with it dis-reputation and note of cowardise." 
 
 " For the first, Disdain to fear death ; I must confess I have often 
 wondered with myself, how men durst die so ventrously, except 
 they were sure they died well : In aliis rebus si quid erratum est, 
 potest post modum corrigi, ' in other things which are learnt by 
 practising if we mistake, we may amend it ' ; for the errour of 
 
 1 In one passage indeed he argues in the manner of Grotius, 
 that the doctrine of Christ is not an enemy to soldiership and 
 military discipline. War and Justice are " lawful times of death."
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 217 
 
 a former action may be corrected in the next ; we learn then 
 by erring, and men come at length not to err, by having often 
 erred : but no man learns to die by practising it ; we die but 
 once, and a fault committed then can never afterwards be amended, 
 quia poena sta tim sequitur errorem, 'because the punishment immediately 
 follows upon the errour.' To die is an action of that moment, 
 that we ought to be very well advised, when we come to it. 
 Ab hoc momenta pendit aeternitas. You may not look back upon 
 the opinion of honour and reputation which remains behind you ; 
 but rather look forward upon that infinite space of Eternity, 
 either of bliss or bale, which befalls us immediately after our 
 last breath. To be loath to die upon every sleight occasion, i& 
 not a necessary sign of fear and cowardise. He that knew what 
 life is, and the true use of it, had he many lives to spare, yet 
 would he be loth to part with one of them upon better terms, 
 than those our Books tell us : that Aristippus, a Philosopher, 
 being at sea in a dangerous tempest and bewraying some fear, 
 when the weather was cleared up, a desperate ruffian came and 
 upbraided him with it, and tells him, ' That it was a shame 
 that he professing wisdom should be afraid of his life, whereas 
 himself having had no such education, exprest no agony or 
 dread at all.' To whom the philosopher replied, there was some 
 difference between them two : / know, saith he, my life may be 
 profitable many ways, and therefore am I loth to lose it; but because 
 of your life you know little profit, little good can be made, you care not 
 how easily you part with it." 
 
 Upon this Hales comments : it may be justly 
 suspected, that they who esteem thus lightly of their 
 lives are but worthless and unprofitable men : " our 
 own experience tells us that men who are prodigal 
 of their money in Taverns and Ordinaries, are close- 
 handed enough, when either pious uses, or necessary 
 and public expense, requires their liberality." He 
 would dissuade a man, not from fearlessness of 
 death, but from contempt of life : 
 
 " Life is the greatest blessing God gives in this world, and did 
 men know the worth of it, they would never so rashly venture
 
 the loss of it ; But now lightly prizing both their own and 
 others bloud, they are easily moved to shed it ; as fools are 
 easily won to part with jewels, because they know not how 
 to value them. We must deal with our lives as we do with 
 our money ; we must not be covetous of it, desire life for no 
 other use but to live, as covetous persons desire money, onely 
 to have it : neither must we be prodigal of life, and trifle it 
 away upon every occasion ; but we must be liberal of our lives, 
 know upon what occasion to spare, upon what occasion to spend 
 them. . . . For brutishly to run upon and hasten unto death, 
 is a thing that many men can do ; and we see that bruit beasts 
 many times will run upon the spears of such as pursue them ; 
 Sed deliberare et causas expendere, utque suaserit ratio vitae morttsque 
 consilium suscipere vel ponere ingentis animi est ; "but wisely to 
 look into and weigh every occasion, and as judgment and true 
 discretion shall direct, so to entertain a resolution either of life 
 or death, this were true fortitude and magnanimity." 
 
 As for the second cause alleged in defence of duels, 
 the point of honour^ Hales deals very briefly and faith- 
 fully with this conceit. Of the points of honour, he 
 says, by far " the greatest part were raised in Taverns, 
 or Dining Houses, or in the Stews." So rotten were 
 the bones that lay under that painted sepulchre and 
 title of Honour. The remedy would be found in 
 enacting and executing some few good laws which 
 would " quickly allay this greatness of stomach and 
 fighting humour." 
 
 Truelove. I have read of Hales in our Church 
 histories, but I had no notion that he was a man of 
 so bold and independent a cast. Bishop Berkeley 
 had the same opinion of Honour. " I could never 
 find," he says in one of his dialogues, " that Honour 
 considered as a principle distinct from Conscience, 
 Religion, Reason, and Virtue was more than an empty 
 name " ; and that specious character, the man of
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 219 
 
 honour, who deserts his wife, takes bribes, sells his 
 vote, cheats the public and cuts another man's throat 
 for a word, " is no better than a meteor or painted 
 cloud." 
 
 Case. The parson and the bishop were excellent. 
 They will have their reward with my special favourite, 
 Bernard Mandeville. 
 
 Seymour. There is one point, if I may say so, 
 that has been overlooked. I fancy it was the neces- 
 sities of public war, quite as much as the pressure of 
 public opinion or the influence of Christian morals, 
 that led to the gradual suppression of private warfare 
 and duelling. Napoleon put down duelling, not from 
 feelings of humanity, but because it was subversive 
 of military discipline. When advocates of peace and 
 arbitration deplore the existence of standing armies 
 and the immense expenditure of civilised countries 
 upon training and discipline, they are apt to forget 
 the advantage both in peace and war of disciplined 
 over undisciplined troops. By discipline it is possible 
 not only to protect peaceful inhabitants in the neigh- 
 bourhood of operations to an extent previously 
 unattempted, but also to prevent the growth of 
 licentiousness and disorder in the army itself. 
 
 Case. The need of discipline, I suppose, explains 
 the origin of military rank. If there were few differ- 
 ences of rank there would be more quarrels ; but 
 as the whole profession of arms is based upon the 
 principle of solving difficulties between states by 
 force it would be natural to settle private quarrels in 
 the army by the sword. 
 
 Admiral de Vere. Very true indeed. The connection 
 between rank and discipline can hardly be overrated.
 
 220 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 It is as easy for an officer to obey the instructions 
 of a superior as it is difficult for him to tolerate the 
 opinions of an equal. The other day I refreshed my 
 recollection of a history of the American Navy which 
 I used to read in my midshipman days. It was 
 written by the popular novelist, Fenimore Cooper ; 
 and in the introduction particular attention was drawn 
 to the dependence of discipline on rank. Here are 
 two sentences that struck me, and I am glad I took 
 them down, as they bear on the point you have 
 raised : " by minute subdivisions of rank those per- 
 sonal sensibilities, which are apt to seek relief in 
 personal quarrels, are assuaged by the habitual defer- 
 ence that is paid to the commission. The whole 
 history of the navies of the world furnishes very few 
 instances of duels between sea-officers of different 
 ranks, while unhappily too many cases may be found 
 of meetings [duels] between equals." He thinks that 
 the American naval system of that day made a grave 
 mistake in stopping at the rank of captain " where 
 in truth the great incentives and rewards of the 
 British Navy really commence." The result was that 
 the American fleet excelled in isolated combats but 
 never succeeded in large operations and general actions. 
 There is sound sense in his main argument that an 
 immense deal depends on the due division and assign- 
 ment of rank and office. According to his view the 
 commission, as representing the powers of the state, 
 becomes a substitute for personal qualities and pro- 
 duces the prompt and nearly passive obedience which 
 contributes to the success of military and naval 
 movements. Rank is an auxiliary to strengthen the 
 habit of submission, a habit indispensable to the
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 221 
 
 common man or officer who may be required at any 
 moment to risk his life at the orders of another. 
 
 Seymour. Did he distinguish between our military 
 and naval systems ? 
 
 Admiral de Fere. Yes ; he pointed out that in a 
 territorial aristocracy like ours promotion both in the 
 army and navy is the inevitable fruit of favour or 
 personal power. But there was a contrast between 
 the two services which necessarily introduced an 
 element of merit into naval promotion. " In the 
 army," he says, " the mode of purchasing rank has 
 been adopted, by means of which the affluent are at 
 all times enabled to secure the most desirable stations 
 for their children, but professional knowledge being 
 indispensable to a sea-officer a different plan was 
 introduced into the marine." But we are wandering 
 from our point. 
 
 Arbiter. Nay, we are all interested. Tell us of 
 the naval plan under which you rose in the service. 
 
 Admiral de Vere. Well, first of all, by favour the 
 boy's name was entered on the books of a ship ; and 
 after he had been thus rated for a certain number 
 of years it was competent for the Admiralty to raise 
 him at pleasure as high as the rank of captain. There 
 were only two commissions between midshipman and 
 captain, namely, those of lieutenant and commander ; 
 and this well suited the needs of the aristocracy 
 in the good old days ; for the rank of a captain 
 afforded the best opportunities of winning a fortune 
 by prize money, so that it fitted the policy of our 
 government to make the steps up to the rank of 
 captain as few as possible. " When the narrow 
 political system," I quote Cooper, " under which
 
 222 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 these probationary ranks were established was in full 
 activity." 
 
 Case. "The full activity" of favour and corruption ! 
 
 Admiral. "The sons of noblemen often passed 
 through the stations of lieutenant and master com- 
 mandant in two or three years. Nothing was more 
 common than to find captains in command of frigates, 
 who had served but eight or ten years in the navy, 
 with lieutenants to take care of their ships who had passed 
 double the time under that one commission alone." 
 But even in the good old days when armies were 
 freely given to destruction under the command of 
 a Duke of York or an Earl of Chatham, fleets were 
 generally entrusted to competent men. Promotion 
 by merit began after the rank of captain ; and while 
 there were only two commissions leading to a com- 
 petency, there were nine leading from competency to 
 high reputation and glory. 
 
 Arbiter. As we are upon discipline we might as 
 well have expert opinion upon the question of training. 
 We know that it takes a long time to make a sailor. 
 But can a soldier be extemporised ? 
 
 Seymour. For defence, yes ; but not for general 
 warfare. There is a story about this which you may 
 not have heard. Decres once said to Napoleon in 
 council : " I cannot extemporise a sailor as you can 
 a soldier. It takes seven years to make a sailor. 
 You turn out a soldier in six months." Napoleon 
 replied sharply, " Hold your tongue, such ideas are 
 enough to destroy an empire. It takes six years 
 to make a soldier." 
 
 Admiral de Vere. There was a well-known French 
 Admiral Mathieu in those days, and I recollect reading
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 223 
 
 a description he gave of the result of raw levies at 
 sea. He was as a boy on board a French corvette 
 in an action with an English vessel. " We passed 
 three times under her stern," he said, " and raked 
 her each time. We ought to have cleared her decks. 
 Not a shot touched her." With the progress of 
 invention, as the machinery of destruction and motion 
 becomes more and more intricate, skill and training 
 will tell more and more. 
 
 "What about American duels?" said the Admiral 
 suddenly turning to Clarke^ who had frequently visited 
 the States. 
 
 Clarke. In the Southern States of America the 
 custom of " shooting at sight " still continues, and 
 southern gentlemen kill people with impunity. Some 
 years ago a schoolmaster in Kentucky was shot dead 
 in his classroom by the elder brother of a boy he 
 had thrashed. The slightest insult to a woman is 
 held to justify the use of a revolver ; the lawless 
 habit of lynching and the fiendish cruelties perpetrated 
 against negro offenders are perhaps the foulest stain 
 on modern civilisation. But the formal duel is 
 unknown in the United States as in England. 
 
 Its abolition is generally said to date from the 
 fatal nth June, 1804, when Alexander Hamilton was 
 shot by Aaron Burr in a political duel at Weehawken 
 on the Hudson. It was an exemplary case. For 
 Hamilton was strongly opposed to the practice, having 
 already lost his elder son in a similar affair. But 
 he felt that political reputation bound him to accept 
 Burr's challenge. Hamilton's motive, according to 
 his own statement, was simply the wisdom of obedience 
 to the customary law of his day : " the ability to be in
 
 224 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 future useful," he wrote, " whether in resisting mischief 
 or effecting good in those crises of our public affairs, 
 which seem likely to happen, would probably be insepar- 
 able from a conformity with prejudice in this particular." 
 
 Browne. Yet nearly forty years after Hamilton's 
 death an Edinburgh Reviewer wrote : " there is no 
 people with whom duelling is so frequent and ferocious 
 as the Americans of the United States, and most 
 especially of the Southern and Western States." 
 Whether he meant duelling in the proper sense of 
 the word is not quite clear ; for in another sentence 
 he added that the bowie-knife and lynch law (stabbing 
 and mob murder) were commoner there than in any 
 other civilised country. 
 
 Arbiter. I have read in memoirs that the Revolu- 
 tionary War greatly aggravated the lawlessness of 
 the Southern States. It was a bitter and atrocious 
 struggle there owing to the numbers of the loyalists 
 who wished to preserve the English connection. 
 
 Case. I was going to have suggested that the bowie- 
 knife manners were spread by the Dutch. But New 
 York was their settlement and that does not tally with 
 your geography of private war in the States. 
 
 Arbiter. But why the Dutch ? What have you 
 against them ? 
 
 Case. Leigh Hunt says somewhere, in his Table 
 Talk, I think, that in the times when duels were 
 fought with swords the Dutch had the following 
 pretty custom. Whenever two boors happened to 
 argue over their beer and could not settle the dispute 
 they took out the knives with which they had been 
 cutting their bread and cheese and " went at it like 
 gentlemen." This was called snick-and-snee, which
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 225 
 
 means catch and cut y the parties catching hold of one 
 another and conveniently sneeing or cutting away, as 
 butchers might do at a carcase. A similar custom 
 he says, used to prevail among the Highlanders, who, 
 whenever they sat down to a meal, prepared themselves 
 for accidents, i.e. for arguments, by sticking their dirks 
 into the board beside their trenchers so as to have 
 their reasons ready at hand. If a man said, " you grow 
 hot and ridiculous," out came the cold steel to 
 disprove his words ; and the question was settled upon 
 the most logical military principles. 
 
 Clarke. The Dutch and the Highlanders were only 
 doing in their own quarrels what all men are liable 
 to be called upon to do now in the quarrels of 
 their rulers. 
 
 Case. Exactly so, and that is the point Leigh Hunt 
 immediately makes. If private and public virtues are 
 identical, as moralists insist, there is no reason why 
 the disputes of all individuals should not be settled 
 like those of nations in the good old Dutch and 
 Highland manner. At the same time he takes leave 
 to note that the most polished nations of antiquity 
 had no duels, and yet never appear to have felt the 
 want of them ! 
 
 Arbiter. The decline of duelling is but another 
 aspect of the declining glories of militarism. War 
 certainly no longer monopolises fame as it used to 
 do. Was it not a king of Thrace who used to say 
 that, when he was not at war, he felt no better 
 than one of his grooms ? 
 
 Case. Yes. And Tiridates, King of Armenia, held 
 that, while it is enough for a private man to keep 
 his own property, the glory of princes is to conquer
 
 226 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the estates of others. That at least is the sentiment 
 Tacitus puts into his mouth. And Gratian says that 
 the name of " great " properly belongs only to warrior 
 princes. " So much more noble are the arts of war 
 than those of peace." 
 
 Seymour. Machiavelli is almost as emphatic. " A 
 prince," he says, " ought to turn all his thoughts 
 and care and application to the art of war ; that and 
 the several sorts of discipline and institutions relative 
 to it should be his only study, the only profession 
 he should follow, and the object he ought always 
 to have in view. For indeed that is the only 
 profession worthy of a prince." One reason he 
 gives is that a prince unskilled in the art of war, and 
 consequently " in a manner unarmed," will certainly 
 become contemptible. 
 
 Truelove. Such a retrospect opens up an encourag- 
 ing prospect. Nowadays Peace is a Power. King 
 Edward the Seventh is very popular without having 
 any great skill in the art of war. 
 
 Arbiter. He has won his fame as a peacemaker, as 
 the author of rapprochements and ententes cordiales. 
 
 Case. Anyhow, he has not followed Machiavelli's 
 maxim that a prince should give himself up wholly 
 to warlike occupations, even more assiduously in 
 time of peace than in times of war. But I wonder 
 when Machiavelli's theory was dropped. 
 
 Browne. Elizabeth was the first English sovereign 
 who chose peace ministers. 
 
 Clarke. Yes, you get a growth of a strong feeling 
 that " peace hath her victories no less renowned than 
 war" among the great publicists and statesmen of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Bacon, Burleigh,
 
 PRIVATE WAR AND THE DUEL 227 
 
 Olden Barnevelt, Sully, Grotius, Milton, De Witt, 
 Sir William Temple. 
 
 Browne. Even Frederick the Great in his Anti- 
 Machiavel declared, " a prince who applies himself to 
 military affairs only does one half of his duty ; it 
 is evidently false that he has no occasion to be any- 
 thing but a soldier." Yet he admits, as if to remind 
 us here and now of the vast change in temperature 
 that the political barometer of Europe was to record, 
 " experience has long ago fully shown that when 
 two princes are at war together, a third who stands 
 neuter exposes his dominions to be insulted by both, 
 and probably to become the seat of the war; and 
 that the neutral power will be sure to lose, without 
 any prospect of gaining." 
 
 Arbiter. In short, it was still a maxim of good 
 policy in Frederick's time that, if any two powers 
 went to war, their neighbours had better fall to as 
 well. Bismarck's political conscience was certainly 
 not more delicate than Frederick's, but his policy 
 of the honest broker shows what a century of 
 utilitarianism and rationalism could do for Prussian 
 " Realpolitik." It is thus that humanity benefits by 
 the enlightenment of selfishness. 
 
 Arbiter. Duelling and private war are both war in 
 time of peace. Militarism is the condition of society 
 which prevails when a state turns most of its energies 
 to preparations for war in time of peace. Now what 
 is to be considered as the most evil effect of 
 militarism ? 
 
 Truelove. Barrack-room morality. 
 
 Ego. Economic ruin and the impoverishment of the 
 poor.
 
 228 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Case. The substitution of tyranny for law and of 
 discipline for order. 
 
 Clarke. In short, the loss of liberty. Yes, the 
 worst evil of militarism is the arbitrary power it 
 places in the hands of a few and the slavish obedi- 
 ence it exacts from the many. Swift, no great 
 champion of liberty, looked upon arbitrary power as 
 " a greater evil than anarchy itself; as much as a 
 savage is a happier state of life than a slave at the 
 oar." 
 
 Arbiter. And it leads to war under the plausible 
 pretext of securing you against it. But now that 
 we have got somewhat away from the subject of 
 duelling I think I ought to call " time," that we 
 may complete the day's programme. 
 
 II. 
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY. 
 
 Arbiter. We have heard much of the cruelties and 
 barbarities that arise in the course of public and 
 private wars, but nothing has been said yet of the 
 atrocity displayed by civil authorities in time of 
 peace. Had I been able to spare a day for the 
 purpose, I should have set one of my nephews to 
 work upon the natural history of cruelty in time of 
 peace as well as of war. As it is, we must be content 
 with a short and fragmentary discussion. I hope, 
 Reginald, you will not think me an offender against 
 the rule of relevancy. 
 
 Case. Oh dear no. We have given you the title 
 of Arbiter ; and if an arbiter is not arbitrary what 
 is the use of him ? Besides, I'm entirely with your
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 229 
 
 ruling in this particular case, and indeed I am armed 
 with some contributions. It seems to me that the 
 history and theory of capital punishment and torture 
 are closely related to the history and theory of 
 war. 
 
 Clarke. Agreed ; and we have already seen how 
 impossible it is to talk of war at any length without 
 mentioning such institutions as duelling, slavery, piracy, 
 brigandage, and robbery. All of these have a war 
 flavour though they occur in peace. 
 
 Arbiter. Well I'm glad my decision is approved ; 
 for the most arbitrary of tyrants cannot force men to 
 talk against their will. Now that I see some of you 
 are well provided with ammunition, I will fire my 
 shot first; and my shot is this general proposition, 
 that the world has found and will find it far easier 
 to civilise and humanise peace than war. 
 
 Case. As it is easier to establish order than disci- 
 pline, and as civil justice is more satisfactory than 
 martial law. 
 
 Seymour. But did I not prove yesterday that military 
 discipline and the usages of war have vastly improved ? 
 
 Arbiter. Yes, I think you did. But there is no 
 getting over the fact that contempt for human life 
 and suffering is the natural attendant of war. Wars 
 are less numerous, thank God. That is the great 
 thing. They have also, I think with you, lost some 
 of their old atrocity. Much as I admire his work, I 
 do dissent from the desponding conclusion of Mr. 
 Farrer, who maintains that the laws of war merely 
 fluctuate from age to age and show no real improve- 
 ment. Still more decided I take it is our disagreement 
 with his prediction that " the wars of the twentieth
 
 2 3 o THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 century may be expected to exceed in barbarity any- 
 thing of which we have any conception." 1 
 
 At the same time one is bound to admit that 
 Mr. Farrer has produced a terrible list of modern 
 atrocities, and a list that has unfortunately been 
 swollen year by year since his book was published, 
 especially by that peculiarly barbarous type of war- 
 fare which civilised powers wage against tribes of 
 inferior civilisation. When I contemplate such modern 
 heroes as Gordon, and Kitchener, and Roberts, I 
 find them in alliance with slave dealers or Mandarins, 
 or cutting down fruit trees, burning farms, concen- 
 trating women and children, protecting military trains 
 with prisoners, bribing other prisoners to fight against 
 their fellow-countrymen. These are performances which 
 seem to take us back to the bad old times. What 
 a terrible tale will the recording angel have to 
 note against England and Germany in South Africa, 
 against France in Madagascar and Tonquin, against 
 the United States in the Philippines, against Spain in 
 Cuba, against the Dutch in the East Indies, against 
 the Belgians in the Congo State. On the credit side 
 we have to set the good administrative record of 
 England in India, and of France in Algeria. But 
 the most splendid achievement of all is the regene- 
 ration of Egypt under the auspices of Lord Cromer. 
 
 But to return. Whatever doubts may be felt as 
 to the improvements in the customs and usages of 
 war, the pessimist cannot deny that the world in time 
 of peace is more humanely governed than ever before. 
 Three centuries ago perhaps it might have been argued 
 that the civil authorities and rulers were inflicting 
 
 1 Mr. J. A. Farrer in Military Manners and Customs (1885).
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 231 
 
 quite as much cruelty on the peoples once under 
 Roman sway as did the government of Imperial Rome 
 in the first century of the Christian era. But at this 
 moment the provinces of Asia Minor and Thrace are 
 probably the only ones that can be said to have 
 deteriorated. In one respect, and only one, can I see 
 an alteration for the worse. The military establish- 
 ments of the world are certainly larger and costlier, 
 if not more burdensome, than ever before, and the 
 system of conscription is an additional oppression 
 against which I hope you younger men may ere long 
 see a general revolt. But it is because we ought 
 not to be unduly depressed by these evils, enormous 
 as they are, that I wish you to cast your eyes on 
 the humanitarian movement that is leading society to 
 set a higher and higher value on life, and to devote 
 more and more attention to the removal and allevia- 
 tion of suffering. You must all contribute something 
 to the common stock ; for I have not called upon 
 any one for a paper. Tell us then, my dear William, 
 what history has to say about it. 
 
 Browne. So far as England is concerned the humani- 
 tarian movement has been skilfully traced by the 
 sympathetic pen of Sir Spencer Walpole. But so far 
 as I am aware we have in English no really adequate 
 account of the wonderful change that came over the 
 laws and usages of Europe in the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries. At the beginning of that time 
 torture was still a recognised method of examining 
 suspected persons in almost every civilised country. 
 Prisons were loathsome and disorderly dens of vice 
 and disease. There was no provision for lunatics. 
 Convicted criminals were often racked and mutilated
 
 232 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 in the most frightful way before being put to death ^ 
 Burning alive was still the proper penalty for various 
 offences, some of which are no longer regarded as 
 offences at all. Scarcely any attempt was made any- 
 where to train the children of the poor. Women, in 
 accordance with what was believed to be the Christian 
 dispensation, were mostly kept in a state of subjec- 
 tion. In the eye of law as well as of custom obedience 
 was the principal duty of women ; obscurity was their 
 fame ; cleverness was tolerable, but if they displayed 
 knowledge they were regarded with suspicion. By 
 the writers of the seventeenth century nothing lovelier 
 could be found in a woman than to study household 
 good, and to promote good works in her husband. 
 Wordsworth's ideal was very different : 
 
 "A perfect woman, nobly planned 
 To warn, to comfort and command." 
 
 But men too were almost everywhere enslaved. In 
 most parts of Europe the agricultural labourers, who 
 formed the majority of the population, were serfs ; 
 the slave trade was a recognised and important branch 
 of commerce. 
 
 Ego. In 1760 Adam Smith told his class at Glasgow 
 that " a small part of Western Europe was the only 
 portion of the globe free from slavery " ; nor did he 
 think it was ever likely to be abolished in other 
 parts of the world. It was not the spirit of Christi- 
 anity, he explained, but quarrels between clergy and 
 nobles, or king and nobles, that had led in one or 
 two countries to the emancipation of the serfs. 
 
 Truelove. Adam Smith was prejudiced against 
 religion by the intolerance of the Scottish Kirk. Let 
 me remind you of one or two facts. First, to go back
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 233 
 
 to yesterday's discussion upon prisoners of war. In 
 ancient times before Christianity they were regularly 
 sold into slavery. We hear of prisoners being maimed 
 by the Athenians, branded by the Samians, massacred 
 by Roman Sulla, tortured by Carthaginian Hasdrubal, 
 crucified by imperial Caesar, and burnt by German 
 Arminius. In the last century, before the fall of the 
 Western Empire, one of the principal uses of frontier 
 wars in the eyes of Rome was to procure suitable 
 captives for the gladiatorial games. At the end of 
 the fourth century A.D. one of Reginald's stalwarts, 
 a very worthy pagan Symmachus, at great expense, 
 procured a band of Saxons from the shores of the 
 Baltic in order that his son's praetorship might be 
 made popular by manslaughter ; and he was dreadfully 
 disgusted when the surly Northmen preferred to die 
 in their cells rather than for the public entertainment. 
 Three years later these human sacrifices were stopped 
 by the interposition of the Christian poet Prudentius, 
 and the martyrdom of a heroic monk. 
 
 Case. But that was a century after Constantine 
 succeeded to the imperial throne ; and Constantine, 
 you may remember, Christian as he was, had ordered 
 captive chieftains of the Franks and Alemanni to be 
 thrown into the arena to fight with wild beasts. Hence 
 I am not altogether disposed to credit Christianity 
 with the abolition of gladiatorial shows ; though, per- 
 haps, this claim is better founded than some that are 
 advanced by churchmen. 
 
 Truelove. Cousin, you are incorrigible. 
 
 Case. No, I admit that Christianity, that is to say, 
 the influence of Christ's teaching, has done much to 
 alleviate and even to abolish slavery. I will admit
 
 234 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 further that the gladiatorial shows were a fearful blot 
 upon pagan Rome. That men and women in many 
 ways highly civilised should for centuries have made 
 human carnage their habitual amusement, and that 
 scarcely a protest should have been raised by their 
 moralists, is, as Lecky says, one of the most startling 
 facts in moral history. 
 
 Arbiter. Let us do justice to all and be grateful 
 to all who have worked for the emancipation of man- 
 kind, whatever their religious tenets, to doubters 
 like Voltaire or Smith, and to fervent Christians like 
 Wilberforce or Buxton in England, and Channing in 
 America. 
 
 Ego. In examining the causes of emancipation, we 
 must not forget the discovery that slave labour is 
 unprofitable. 
 
 Meyer. In the past great profits have been made out 
 of slavery, and even now some hold that slave labour 
 alone can regenerate South Africa. Otherwise, they 
 say, Chinamen would not work for the good of society. 
 But I don't see that the Chinamen have sent up the 
 shares, and I tell my friends in the Kaffir Circus that 
 slavery won't help " industrials." The Yankees are 
 sharp fellows, and if slavery were any good in modern 
 industries they would never have abolished it. 
 
 Clarke. No, believe me, you do them an injustice. 
 That struggle against slavery in the States was a 
 tremendous one. I have paid some attention to the 
 abolitionist movement, and especially to Channing's 
 writings, and I am inclined to think that, but for 
 organised terrorism of the press by the slave owners 
 and their friends, American slavery might have been 
 extirpated without civil war.
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 235 
 
 Arbiter. A theme of great interest. Pray pursue it. 
 
 Clarke. I will read you my note. 
 
 In the thirties, when the movement against slavery 
 began to be formidable, the abolitionists found great 
 difficulty in placing their views before the public. 
 " The fettered press " of the country refused to admit 
 articles or letters against slavery ; and the enslaving 
 of the newspapers became a subject of almost as 
 much moral interest as the enslaving of the negroes. 
 " The newspaper press," wrote Channing to Birney 
 in 1836, "is fettered among us by its dependence 
 on subscribers, among whom there are not a few 
 intolerant enough to withdraw their patronage, if an 
 editor give publicity to articles which contradict their 
 cherished opinions, or shock their party prejudices, or 
 seem to clash with their interests." Moreover, there 
 was considerable danger from the mob. Under such 
 conditions, threatened with the loss of circulation and 
 advertisements, the proprietors of newspapers could 
 hardly be expected to afford support to an unfashion- 
 able and unpopular philanthropy. Yet the United 
 States boasted itself the freest democracy in the world, 
 and its laws gave complete freedom to the press. 
 Where was the remedy ? How were the opponents 
 of slavery to get an opportunity of being heard by 
 the public ? Editors, it was pointed out, engage in 
 their vocation like other men in order to earn a liveli- 
 hood. Newspapers, like other concerns, have to earn 
 profits ; and communications which promise to ruin 
 their circulation or destroy their advertising connection 
 would of course be regarded with little favour. 
 Perhaps, after all, the reproaches which are so freely 
 thrown at journalists and newspaper proprietors for
 
 236 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 their want of moral independence ought to be directed 
 elsewhere ; for the root of the evil lies in the intoler- 
 ance of the community. But wherever the blame 
 rests, the evil cannot be disguised. Whenever a moral 
 cause is unpopular, the newspaper press is apt to fail 
 in one of its chief duties, which is to stem corrupt 
 opinion and to stay the excesses of popular passion. 
 " It generally swells, seldom arrests, the violence of 
 the multitude. The very subjects on which the public 
 mind may most need to be reformed are most likely 
 to be excluded from its columns." One of the evils 
 of the suppression of opinion is that violence ensues. 
 It is far better that even wrong opinions should be 
 freely ventilated and discussed than that they should 
 be deprived of a hearing. But when right opinions 
 are silenced and real grievances unpublished, the very 
 foundations of democracy and liberty are endangered. 
 
 " This is true liberty, when freeborn men, 
 Having to advise the public, may speak free." 
 
 A free and independent press is the best security for 
 peace, and order, and progress. Abolitionism would 
 never have been forced (in self-defence) to organise 
 itself into societies, if the subject of slavery could have 
 been discussed in the common papers with the same 
 freedom as other topics. " That abolitionism has owed 
 not a little of its asperity to its having been proscribed 
 from the beginning, and to its having been denied 
 the common modes of addressing the public mind," 
 did not in Channing's judgment admit of a doubt. 
 It is therefore possible, if not probable, that, had 
 the discussion of slavery been allowed to proceed 
 freely, and public sentiment been allowed to grow 
 and develop naturally, the evil might have been
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 237 
 
 eradicated without the horrors of a bloody and 
 desolating war. But however that may be, the following 
 words from Channing upon journalism and the value 
 of the press ought to be pondered : 
 
 " I cannot easily conceive of a greater good to a city than the 
 establishment of a newspaper by men of superior ability and moral 
 independence, who should judge all parties and public measures 
 by the standard of the Christian law, who should uncompromisingly 
 speak the truth and adhere to the right, who should make it their 
 steady aim to form a just and lofty public sentiment, and who 
 should at the same time give to upright and honourable men an 
 opportunity of making known their opinions on matters of general 
 interest, however opposed to the opinions and passions of the day. 
 In the present stage of society, when newspapers form the reading 
 of all classes, and the chief reading of multitudes, the importance 
 of the daily press cannot be overrated. It is one of the mightiest 
 instruments at work among us. It may, and should, take rank 
 among the most efficient means of social order and improvement. 
 It is a power which should be wielded by the best minds in the 
 community. The office of editor is one of the most solemn 
 responsibility, and the community should encourage the most gifted 
 and virtuous men to assume it, by liberally recompensing their 
 labour, and by according to them that freedom of thought and 
 speech without which no mind puts forth all its vigour, and which 
 the highest minds rank among their dearest rights and blessings." 
 
 Arbiter. Thank you, my dear Clarke. That topic 
 has often been in my mind. I remember once hearing 
 John Stuart Mill enlarging upon the value of such 
 a press as an almost essential condition of successful 
 democracy. He thought that an impartial and 
 thoroughly independent organ, hospitable to new 
 ideas, ably, wisely, and fairly conducted, would be 
 an inestimable boon to the nation. And without a 
 humane press how could we hope for a rapid im- 
 provement of tone and temper in regard to cruelty,
 
 238 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 whether to men, women, children, or the poor dumb 
 animals ? 
 
 Now please you must let the conversation take a 
 fresh turn ; for the time is flying very fast ; and we 
 must dive deeper to fathom the depths of inhumanity. 
 The atrocity of whites to blacks is only a develop- 
 ment of the cruelty of the strong to the weak. I 
 want to hear something from Reginald about torture 
 in Europe. When was it abolished ? 
 
 Case. I am glad you don't ask for its history ; 
 that would be a long story. Enough that it was a 
 regular instrument of examination in the Roman Law. 
 It was never formally 'received' into England. But 
 a learned English civilian, Woods, in his New Institute 
 of the Imperial or Civil Law (1704), wrote about it 
 at the beginning of the eighteenth century : " The 
 rack is an engine on which the [supposed] criminal 
 is laid, having his joints and bones distended ; some- 
 times applying hot plates of iron to his body and 
 gnawing his flesh with hot pincers to extort a con- 
 fession." Civilian apologists pretended that it was a 
 usage devised out of tenderness for men's lives, 
 because the Romans would not endure that anyone 
 should die on the evidence of one witness, " and 
 therefore contrived this method that innocence should 
 appear by an obstinate denial or guilt by a plain 
 confession." Ecclesiastical apologists affirmed that it 
 was a tender mercy of God to purge men of the sin 
 of falsehood. 
 
 In the year 1704 the rack though unlawful in 
 England was still in use in all other civilised countries. 
 Its principal purpose was to procure a confession of guilt
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 239 
 
 and to incriminate others. But it was also employed 
 after conviction to procure confession. "If he is 
 convicted by proof," writes Wood, "it is customary 
 in France and almost everywhere beyond sea at this 
 day to put the criminal upon the rack that he may 
 own the crime, for the reputation and justice of the 
 proceedings and to take away the liberty of appeal" 
 Perhaps, if we consider some of the rules of the 
 rack and some of the arguments which were at that 
 time being advanced for and against it, we may obtain 
 a more vivid notion and a more accurate measure of 
 the barbarity that prevailed in time of peace exactly 
 two centuries ago. Let us take first some of the 
 rules, and then the theories. 
 
 1. Nobles and persons of rank were not to be 
 racked unless they were suspected of treason or some 
 high crime. 
 
 2. Persons so old as to be impotent, women with 
 child, and children under fourteen might not be put 
 on the rack. 
 
 3. The rack ought not to be so severe as to cause 
 loss of life or limb. 
 
 4. A person should not be tortured in this way 
 more than once in twenty-four hours. If he is 
 tortured three times, three times confesses, and three 
 times recants his confession, he ought to be absolved. 
 
 " After all," observed Wood, " it is very much 
 debated whether rack or torture is lawful (as it is 
 now used) according to laws of equity and reason." 
 Defenders of the practice urged : 
 
 i st. Though no one ought to be condemned with- 
 out proof, yet if one is justly suspected he ought 
 not to be discharged.
 
 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 2nd. It keeps wicked men in awe. 
 
 3rd. St. Paul was ordered to be scourged by the 
 chief captain and examined, and he did not complain 
 that that sort of punishment was unjust, but insisted 
 only that he was a Roman. 
 
 On the other hand, it was objected against the 
 rack : 
 
 i st. It is contrary to natural equity to punish any 
 man before he is found guilty. 
 
 2nd. The torture does not directly tend to discover 
 truth ; for men often confess falsely either against 
 themselves that they may die and be rid of their 
 misery, or against others that they themselves may be 
 released ; others again treat the rack with contempt. 
 
 3rd. The executioner often determines the degree 
 of torture according to what the person undergoing 
 it can pay him. 
 
 4th. There is no proof of its lawfulness in Holy 
 Writ. In the case referred to (Acts 22, 25), St. Paul 
 would have acted imprudently in disputing the reason- 
 ableness of a law with the Captain, who was bound 
 to execute the law, and had no power to repeal it. 
 
 Some took a middle course, holding that the rack 
 might be used by Government in cases of treason ; 
 the individual's rights must sometimes suffer for the 
 public good. 
 
 Clarke. This is to me very interesting. I am sur- 
 prised that Wood's New Institute should not have been 
 noticed by Lecky ; for it shows that at the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century questions were already being 
 raised as to the legitimacy of torture. 
 
 Case. Precisely so. The Roman Church, deeply 
 interested in torture as an indispensable weapon of the
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 241 
 
 inquisition, was being confronted with the question 
 whether this element of the Roman law was com- 
 patible with a Christian civilisation. You see how 
 the work of natural lawyers like Gentilis, Grotius, 
 Selden, Zouch, and Puftendorf was already bearing 
 fruit. The way was being paved for the success of 
 Beccaria. 
 
 Truelove. Beccaria ? 
 
 Case. Yes, indeed, cousin ; Beccaria of Milan, who 
 has done more than any other man to humanise and 
 rationalise the theory of punishment. Can it be that 
 a Balliol man with all his literae humaniores has not 
 even a nodding acquaintance with Dei Delitti e delle 
 Pene. 1 
 
 Truelove. Thrasymachus blushes ! 
 
 Case. And well he may ; especially when he hears 
 that Beccaria's book brought down the wrath of the 
 Inquisition, then happily declining in power, and a 
 Dominican Padre wrote a reply condemning Beccaria 
 " as the enemy of Christianity, a bad philosopher, 
 and a bad man." The Dominican argued that torture 
 is a kind of mercy purging the criminal from the sin 
 of falsehood by extorting the truth. 
 
 Browne. Never mind, Martin. The lawyers, at 
 least in France, were no better than the ecclesiastics. 
 Their opposition to Beccaria was as obstinate as that 
 which the English Bar offered to Romilly. 
 
 Case. True ; but both Bars were under ecclesias- 
 tical influence. Remember Paley. It was Paley who 
 inspired Lord Ellenborough to resist the reform 
 of our criminal laws. What I want to point 
 out is how Beccaria, young and unknown, obtained 
 
 1 Published in 1764. 
 Q
 
 242 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 so signal a triumph over the hardened prejudices of 
 Europe. Such a triumph of reason over custom, and 
 of theory over practice, is almost unparalleled. Within 
 eighteen months six editions were printed in Italian, 
 and within fifty years fifty distinct translations and 
 editions are said to have appeared in Europe. 
 
 First of all, Beccaria noticed the following fact, that 
 " countries where punishments have been most severe 
 have always been those where the bloodiest and most 
 inhuman deeds have been committed, the same spirit 
 of ferocity guiding the hand of the legislator, the parri- 
 cide, and the assassin." This observation suggested 
 that there must be a point of ferocity at which punish- 
 ment ceases to be a deterrent ; and further, that some 
 systems of punishment were merely barbarous and 
 vindictive, instead of being framed upon principles 
 of public utility. In his very first chapter, Beccaria 
 declared that laws should be prized just in so far as 
 they helped to distribute the greatest happiness among 
 the greatest number. Beccaria's book was well timed ; 
 it certainly spread a more scientific view of punish- 
 ment, and hastened the abolition of torture in civilised 
 countries. It is a coincidence that this utilitarian 
 theory of punishment appeared in 1764, the year Adam 
 Smith began his Wealth of Nations. As the softening 
 of manners prepared the world for the first, so did 
 the extension of commerce prepare it for the second. 
 At the time Beccaria wrote, torture had been dis- 
 continued in only three countries, England, Sweden, 
 and Prussia. Whose blood does not curdle as he 
 inspects the instruments which the inventive genius 
 of Nuremberg devised for the torture of suspected or 
 convicted criminals ? Yet respectable burghers, three
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 243 
 
 or four centuries ago, regarded them as the panoply 
 of justice. 
 
 In Lombardy, where Beccaria lived, torture was 
 only applicable to capital crimes ; but as the punish- 
 ment of nearly all crimes was death, the application 
 of torture was practically co-extensive with criminal 
 law. There was torture to wring confession from 
 prisoners who pleaded innocence, torture to force men 
 to betray or invent the names of their accomplices a 
 mode by which governments often sought to implicate 
 formidable opponents and lastly, there was what 
 was called the extraordinary or greater torture, which 
 preceded execution. The criminal law of England 
 at that time was equally savage in its indifference 
 to life, and though it was free from the reproach 
 of torture in the technical sense, we must remember 
 that it was still customary to whip offenders against 
 the law through the streets, to brand them, to duck 
 them, and to place them in the pillory or the stocks 
 for passers-by to pelt and insult. 
 
 Browne. Religious persecution has played a great 
 part in the history of cruelty. 
 
 III. 
 
 Arbiter. Reginald promised me something upon 
 religious persecution. 
 
 Case. Yes ; and I soon found the subject far too 
 wide for me. But if you will let me follow humbly 
 in the footsteps of Sir James Fitz-James Stephen, 
 the excellent historian of our Criminal Law, I will 
 give you briefly the story of religious persecution in 
 England, so far as it was authorised by law. For
 
 244 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 many centuries after the establishment of Christianity 
 in Great Britain the temporal and spiritual authorities 
 were in close alliance and union. The temporal 
 authorities dealt with crimes ; the spiritual authorities 
 with sins. In Anglo-Saxon times the judges of both 
 sat in the same courts and seem to have followed a 
 similar procedure. At the Norman Conquest the 
 civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions were separated. 
 The bishops judged in their own courts, and their 
 decisions, in case of need, were enforced in the King's 
 courts. But until the age of WycklifFe 1 the criminal 
 jurisdiction of the Church in England had little to 
 do with heretical opinions, " for the simple reason 
 that there were no heretics." Before the appearance of 
 heresy the disciplinary jurisdiction of the Church was 
 often inquisitorial, but seldom cruel ; for " it affected 
 neither life or limb, nor even property or personal 
 liberty, except in a roundabout way through the 
 agency of the law courts." This of course does not 
 necessarily mean that the total amount of cruelty 
 inflicted in England or in the civilised world was 
 greater in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the 
 age of religious persecution, than in the twelfth and 
 thirteenth. The Reformation was a phase in the great 
 moral and intellectual uprising. Like the conquest of 
 Romanised Europe by the barbarians it was accom- 
 panied by cruelty ; but we may be pretty sure that 
 on the whole it brought positive relief to the poor 
 and the downtrodden. 
 
 It was towards the end of the thirteenth century 
 that the religious controversy between the Church and 
 
 1 WycklifFe was deprived of his living in 1377, and was denounced 
 as a heretic by the Pope in the following year.
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 245 
 
 the Bible began. Heresy came to be viewed by the 
 Church of Rome as a capital crime for which people 
 were to be burnt alive, and measures were taken 
 for the purpose of so burning them in all parts of 
 Europe where the new religion raised its head. In 
 England Parliamentary authority was required ; and 
 the Acts of Henry IV. and Henry V. gave the 
 clergy the power of defining heresy just as they 
 pleased. This state of things lasted for about 135 
 years, that is, from 1400 to 1535, and persons 
 adjudged to be heretics continued to be burnt as 
 such at intervals during this period. 1 In 1535 a 
 check was put upon the Bishops by the Act of 
 Henry VIII., which declared what should not be 
 heresy, and though the Act of the Six Articles (1539), 
 made the law again more severe, it did not make it 
 nearly as severe as it had been throughout the fifteenth 
 and the first part of the sixteenth century. Under 
 Edward VI. all statutes relating to heresy were 
 repealed, but two heretics were burnt at common 
 law, one for denying the virgin birth, the other for 
 denying the divinity of Christ. Mary revived the 
 early statutes against the Lollards, and in her short 
 reign about 300 persons were burnt for heresy. 
 Under Elizabeth two (Anabaptists) were burnt for 
 religious opinions, and two more were burnt as Arians 
 in the reign of James I. Finally, after minor attempts 
 at persecution, the writ de heretico comburendo was 
 repealed in 1677 by an Act which also abolished 
 " all punishment of death in pursuance of any eccles- 
 iastical censures." 
 
 1 There was also supposed to be a common law writ for the 
 burning of heretics, " de heretico comburendo."
 
 246 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 By subordinating the spiritual to the civil authority 
 Henry the Eighth changed the character of persecu- 
 tion. Theological opinions became less important 
 than outward conformity. The divine right of kings 
 and the divine origin of episcopacy became the new 
 causes of strife. It was from ecclesiastical and political 
 rather than theological intolerance that the great 
 events of the seventeenth century flowed, and for 
 that reason the efforts of Grotius and others to 
 reconcile Christians by discovering the greatest 
 common measure of dogma, or Christian truth, were 
 foredoomed to failure. In England, under the two 
 first Stuarts, the ecclesiastical courts, stiffened and 
 regulated by the Court of High Commission, sought 
 to enforce uniformity of worship, " decency " and 
 general orthodoxy by means so repulsive to the 
 country that the courts themselves were abolished, 
 bringing with them in their fall first the episcopacy, 
 and then the monarchy. After the Restoration the 
 old ecclesiastical courts, though formally restored, 
 never regained their power, but the old difficulties 
 sprang up in new shapes. What degrees of perse- 
 cution were proper towards the different sects of 
 dissenters ? How should conformity with the estab- 
 lished church be rewarded ? Already, under the 
 second Charles and James, our Government had 
 abandoned the idea of punishing spiritual sins as 
 such. The main questions, as Stephen says, were 
 " first, whether conformity to the Established Church 
 should be enforced on Protestants, and second, 
 whether Roman Catholics should be allowed to 
 regain what they had lost." 
 
 In these reigns, be it observed, the Established
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 247 
 
 Church of England not only retained, but greatly 
 increased, the severity of the old laws against Non- 
 conformity; but, thanks to the want of a High 
 Commission and the weakness of the ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction, the new laws could not be enforced so 
 oppressively as the old ones. It was the policy of 
 our prelates to play off the fear and hatred enter- 
 tained by Protestant dissenters for Rome, and by 
 conservative Catholics for the republicanism of the 
 radical Nonconformists. As soon as the Crown 
 openly allied itself with Rome against the Anglican 
 Church it collapsed before the united forces of 
 Protestantism. 
 
 The Revolutions of 1688 produced a narrow and 
 niggardly toleration of Protestant Dissenters, while 
 Roman Catholics were treated as men who would 
 be rebels if they dared, and were subjected to laws 
 of almost ferocious cruelty. In this, as in so many 
 other branches of the penal code, the very harshness 
 of the law prevented its execution and made for 
 toleration. After being practically repealed in 1791 
 and 1829, the legislation against the Roman Catholics 
 in these realms was formally repealed in 1844 and 
 1846. The remark usually suggested by a study of 
 religious persecution is that our ancestors walked in 
 darkness, and that we have solved the problem which 
 was too hard for them by recognising liberty of con- 
 science as a principle of universal application which 
 avoids all difficulty. This principle is rapidly spread- 
 ing to all countries in the world, and is making it 
 an assumption of daily life everywhere that no man 
 has a right to dictate his own religion to another. 
 What does liberty of conscience mean in politics ?
 
 248 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 It means that no religion is to be regarded by the 
 legislature as truer than any other, and this again 
 (in the opinion of some who still hanker after 
 persecution, and of others who hanker after posi- 
 tive discouragement of superstition by the State) is 
 a long step towards legislating on the principle that 
 all existing religions are false. 
 
 Truelove. I was looking at that chapter of Stephen 
 and came upon the following sentence, which I think 
 you might have quoted : " If convinced unbelievers 
 ever became a practical majority I think they would 
 legislate against believers in a way hardly distinguish- 
 able from persecution." 
 
 Case. That is a mere personal expression of opinion. 
 Stephen was a historian, not a prophet ; but of 
 course you are entitled to whatever his opinion of 
 a hypothetical future may be worth. 
 
 Truelove. It may be worth something. But there is 
 a more important comment if it comes to discussing 
 the history of religious persecution and the evolution 
 of intolerance. 
 
 Case. Pray what is that ? 
 
 Truelove. I will give it in the late Bishop Creigh- 
 ton's words : " The great outbursts of persecution 
 were not purely ecclesiastical. The Church lent her 
 sanction to secular policy. The war against the 
 Albigensians was for the strengthening of the French 
 monarchy ; the persecution in Bohemia was to uphold 
 the German dominion over the Czechs ; the Spanish 
 Inquisition was established to supply the Spanish 
 monarchy with the means of welding together a 
 people with divers traditions." 
 
 Case. May I look at the book ? Thank you.
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 249 
 
 Why, I declare Martin has left out a most important 
 sentence. Talk about garbling ! What do you say 
 to this : " The purely preventive substitution of 
 punishment for argument was not designed really 
 for the suppression of wrong opinion, but for the 
 maintenance of an ecclesiastical organisation which 
 was allowed to develop from above, but might 
 never be criticised from below." A Daniel come 
 to judgment, a most admirable Creighton ! 
 
 It might be shown, I think, that the rationalism 
 of the eighteenth century did more for humanity 
 than seventeen centuries of religious zeal and fana- 
 ticism had been able to effect. In the thirty years 
 that elapsed between the publication of his theories 
 and his death Beccaria saw torture abolished in France, 
 Austria, Russia, and Portugal. The laws of England 
 were not greatly improved until the end of the 
 Napoleonic wars ; and at the time when Beccaria 
 held them up to the admiration of the Continent 
 they only appeared to be reasonable and moderate 
 by contrast. A few years later, when Blackstone 
 wrote his famous commentaries, the English penalty 
 for stealing a pocket-handkerchief was death. For 
 the more serious crime of stealing a load of hay 
 you only suffered transportation. But this incon- 
 sistency was more apparent than real. When George 
 the Third pardoned seventeen female convicts in 
 Newgate on condition of transportation, six elected 
 to be hanged. In many countries capital punishment 
 is now abandoned. In all civilised countries the 
 principle has been acknowledged that whatever exceeds 
 simple death is mere barbaric cruelty. When I say 
 that torture did not exist here in the eighteenth
 
 2 5 o THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 century, I must not conceal the horrible fact that 
 women were liable to be burnt alive for certain 
 offences until the end of the century. In 1721, 
 and again in 1726, a woman was burnt for false 
 coinage, and Lecky relates that in 1777 a girl of 
 fourteen was sentenced to be burnt alive because some 
 whitewashed farthings, meant to pass for sixpences, 
 were found upon her. A reprieve came only just 
 as the cart arrived to take her to the stake. It is 
 only fair to add that in practice a woman was 
 usually strangled before being burnt. 
 
 In some respects, as I have said, the Criminal 
 Code of England was superior to that of other 
 countries. Torture had never been acclimatised and 
 regularised, nor did it survive the downfall of 
 Charles the First. The rack was never authorised 
 as an instrument of trial at common law in England. 
 But there were " ordeals " of torture in Anglo- 
 Saxon times. The Ordalium was a trial, says 
 Selden, and was either by causing the accused to 
 pass blindfold over nine red-hot ploughshares (as 
 Queen Emma did) or by compelling the accused to 
 take in his hand a red-hot coulter, which he carried 
 so many steps and then cast away from him. The 
 feet or hands were bound up after this fiery ordeal 
 and certain charms were said. Then after a day or 
 two the bandages were removed. If the wounds 
 were healed the party was adjudged innocent, if not, 
 guilty. In his Table Talk Selden says, " The rack 
 is used nowhere as in England. In other countries 
 it is used in judicature, when there is a semiplena 
 probatio, a half proof against a man ; then to see if 
 they can make it full, they rack him if he will not
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 251 
 
 confess. But here in England they take a man 
 and rack him, I do not know why, nor when ; 
 not in time of judicature, but when somebody bids." 
 Yet many abominable cruelties continued to be prac- 
 tised. Prisoners refusing to plead might still be 
 prompted by the thumb-screw, and if this failed, and 
 the prisoner continued to " stand mute of malice " 
 the remedy authorised by law was the peine forte 
 et dure. As this horrible sentence was imposed in 
 1726, it may be as well to give the official prescrip- 
 tion for "the strong and hard punishment" as it is 
 set forth in Sir Matthew Hale's History of the Pleas 
 of the Crown : 
 
 " That he be sent to the prison from whence he 
 came, and put into a dark lower room, and there be 
 laid naked upon the bare ground, upon his back ; 
 his legs and arms drawn and extended with cords to 
 the four corners of the room, and upon his body 
 laid as great weight of iron as he can bear, and 
 more ; and the first day he shall have three morsels 
 of barley bread, without drink ; the second day he 
 shall have three draughts of water, of standing water 
 next the door of the prison, without bread, and this 
 to be his diet till he die." 1 
 
 In the case of Major Strangeways, who refused to 
 plead in 1658 and was sentenced to this punishment, 
 it is recorded that the life was pressed out of him 
 in eight or ten minutes, and that the bruised and 
 
 o 
 
 mangled body was then exposed to the public gaze. 
 
 Arbiter. What a gigantic and apparently hopeless 
 task confronted those heroic men, the utilitarians 
 and humanitarians of the eighteenth century. They 
 1 Male's Hist, of PI. of Crown, 219.
 
 252 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 owed their success to the pertinacity and courage with 
 which they applied the touchstone of utility to the 
 institutions and constitutions, the usages and conven- 
 tions of their age. Society had been accustomed to 
 acquiesce in whatever had been established. It was 
 now invited to undertake the work of self-examination. 
 
 Clarke. The pleasure which the people took in 
 executions, pillories, and public whippings was one 
 of the worst features of those times. 
 
 Admiral. Yes ; it only seems a few years since 
 criminals were regularly hanged in public, and it was 
 considered quite as proper and interesting a spectacle 
 as an ordinary music-hall performance now-a-days. 
 Large sums were paid for windows overlooking the 
 scaffold. 
 
 Arbiter. Very true. Why, it is only within our 
 lifetime that the pillory has been abolished. 
 
 Case. It was the authorised punishment for perjury 
 till 1837. Hanging was a public ceremony till 1868. 
 Branding was not discontinued until towards the end 
 of George the Third's reign. It was given up because 
 it was found to be an incentive to crime ; for a man 
 who had been branded could never get employment, 
 so he had to support himself by preying on society. 
 As for cruelty to animals ; cock-fighting, bull baiting 
 and the bear garden were the amusements of the 
 aristocracy in the seventeenth century, and remained 
 very popular until towards the end of the eighteenth. 
 Bentham was one of the first to protest against 
 cruelty to animals ; and this, the least utilitarian branch 
 of the humanitarian movement, has made great strides 
 in the last fifty years. 
 
 Ego. The mitigation of cruelty was no doubt made
 
 A DISCUSSION ON CRUELTY 253 
 
 easier by the growing wealth of society. One 
 reason for maiming, branding, or hanging criminals 
 was the cost of maintaining them in gaols. Similarly 
 the increasing wealth of society has enabled it to 
 improve the character of its prisons. They are now 
 quite sanitary. Every prisoner has exercise, light and 
 air, and enough plain food to keep his body healthy. 
 
 Admiral. Lunatic asylums are palatial institutions ; 
 and no expense is spared to make them among the 
 most magnificent of our public buildings. To me 
 the strange thing is that the liquor traffic, which 
 causes most of the crime and lunacy, gets off so 
 easily. The profits of drunkenness and inebriety go 
 to the trade; it is the nation that has to support the 
 criminal, the madman 'and the inebriate. 
 
 Arbiter. The more 1 hear the more am I struck 
 by the disparity between peace progress and war 
 progress during the last two or three centuries. A 
 barbarous law, a vindictive punishment, a brutal 
 custom, is now the exception in times of peace. 
 Very few of our English sports are any longer cruel. 
 Our most popular games are healthy and exciting, 
 and I anticipate excellent results from their adoption 
 in France, Germany, and other countries. German 
 duelling, Spanish bull fighting, English coursing, 
 otter-hunting, and fox-hunting are declining sports. 
 But the horrors of war though they change can 
 hardly be said to diminish. Is not war also a 
 declining sport ? 
 
 Admiral. Let us hope so ; for neither religion nor 
 law can humanise it. You cannot go to war in kid 
 gloves or agree to fire into the air. We are more 
 likely to succeed in extinguishing it than in refining it.
 
 254 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Seymour. But a real improvement of war has come 
 from the substitution of lead and missiles for cold 
 steel ; the introduction of doctors, surgeons, and 
 nurses and anaesthetics, has certainly alleviated suffer- 
 ing on the field of battle. Then again there is 
 not the same passion and ferocity. The rifleman 
 and the artilleryman cannot feel as the pikeman 
 and the knight felt at close quarters. Yet I agree 
 that for sheer horror nothing in ancient times could 
 equal the effect of a well-placed shell falling into 
 the middle of a company. In a moment there 
 is a heap of mangled men. Lastly, though we 
 are not likely to see another sack of Magdeburg, 
 the slaughter of women and children in cold blood, 
 yet in every war women and children are killed and 
 wounded by mistake. At the present moment one 
 of the hospitals at Liao Yang contains three hundred 
 wounded women and children. 
 
 Thus ended Wednesday's discussion.
 
 THE FOURTH DAT. THURSDAY. 
 
 PERPETUAL PEACE, OR THE FEDERATION OF THE 
 
 WORLD. 
 
 When the Council met on 'Thursday morning the Arbiter 
 called upon Clarke, who opened a large note book and began 
 
 to read as follows : 
 
 J I. 
 
 A DUTCH innkeeper with a classical and satirical turn, 
 whose house adjoined a churchyard, once inscribed 
 on his signboard PAX PERPETUA, " perpetual 
 peace," as if to declare that war is the lot of the 
 living, peace the hope only of the dead or the drunk. 
 Leibnitz called to mind this dismal lure to tipplers 
 in a moment of depression, when he was pondering 
 over the Abbe de St. Pierre's Project of Perpetual Peace y 
 and said he thought peace could only be found in a 
 cemetery, " for the dead fight no more ; but the 
 living are of another humour, and their mightiest 
 men have small respect for tribunals." 
 
 Perpetual peace is not yet within our grasp ; but 
 we are moving towards it. Perpetual war has been 
 left far behind, and the world is more inclined to 
 listen respectfully to the dreams of the peacemaker 
 than ever it was before. The political machinery of 
 peace has two parts, federation and arbitration. 
 Federation is my province, arbitration is assigned to 
 Case ; and though his remedy now-a-days is more 
 popular, let me observe that most of the good and
 
 256 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 wise men who have speculated on this mighty 
 theme, seem to have built their hopes of a permanent 
 peace more on political union and federation than on 
 such a progress of reason, law, and virtue among 
 isolated and unconnected States as would ensure 
 their submitting every dispute to neutral arbitrators. 
 
 The mighty ones of the earth have small respect for 
 tribunals. In that depressing statement of fact we 
 find the key to a whole series of political speculations 
 from Dante to Rousseau and Turgot and Kant. It 
 would be quite wrong to argue that all this divine 
 seed was vainly cast upon rocky ground because it 
 did not at the moment bring forth an hundredfold. 
 Nay, the older federal idea of union between cities 
 and states for mutual defence and support has done 
 far more than the comparatively modern idea of 
 arbitration to protect the tender plants of civilisation 
 from the ruthless hand of violence. Would it be 
 easy to overestimate the services rendered by the 
 Hanseatic League to the progress of the arts and 
 commerce ? Did not federation establish and fortify 
 the political and religious independence of Switzer- 
 land and Holland against the attacks of many 
 powerful enemies ? Has not the same idea made 
 great and prosperous the vast tracts and diversified 
 populations of the United States ? Was not Ger- 
 many perpetually plagued by civil wars and discords, 
 in spite of the Holy Roman Emperor, until peace 
 and security were at length afforded it by the Bund ? 
 
 Browne. No doubt that idea of establishing peace 
 in Germany was one of the inspirations of the Holy 
 Roman Empire ; and from time to time it found 
 expression. But you would find it difficult to date
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 257 
 
 the complete realisation of the project from the death 
 of the Empire. In fact all risk of hostilities between 
 the German States was not eliminated until after the 
 war of 1866, which extruded Austria and made Prussia 
 the predominant state in the German Confederacy. 
 
 Clarke. True ; but nevertheless in the history of 
 the pacification of Germany it would be difficult to 
 overrate the importance of the Act of 1815, con- 
 stituting the Bund, or Federal Union ; by which the 
 members of the Confederation bound themselves 
 (Article n) "under no pretext to make war upon one 
 another, or to pursue their differences by force of arms, 
 but to submit them to the Diet." Better words, as 
 Charles Sumner once said, could not be found to 
 constitute the United States of Europe, and so to 
 inaugurate a new system of European politics. Then 
 would every sovereign state of Europe, as did once 
 each sovereign state of Germany, deliberately surrender 
 the cherished right of war, and agree to settle disputes 
 by machinery worthy of a rational and enlightened 
 civilisation. This machinery is partly federal and 
 partly arbitral ; you may have one without the other ; 
 but some sort of federal scheme involving the election 
 of representatives to control common concerns and 
 solve international difficulties is almost certain to be 
 the precursor, the concomitant, or the sequel of 
 international tribunals. 
 
 In ancient and mediaeval times, though we must 
 not forget the Amphictyonic Council, the Achaean 
 League, and the Hanseatic League, the difficulties in 
 the way of extensive political unions were enormous. 
 Even the ancient Greeks, who carried the theory and 
 practice of democratic government so far, were only
 
 258 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 partially successful in their federal unions. Rome 
 never was hospitable to representative and federal ideas. 
 She extinguished states by incorporating individuals. 
 She offered peace, order, law and culture to the rude 
 tribes beyond her frontiers as the reward of submission. 
 She obliterated jurisdictions and sovereignties by giving 
 civil rights in exchange for political independence. If 
 she had trained and pruned instead of extirpating the 
 national spirit, if she could have adopted a representative 
 system of government, there need have been no decline 
 and fall. Europe would have had a diversified and 
 vigorous instead of a monotonous and decadent unity, 
 a live commonwealth of nations instead of a mechanical 
 Empire. Like the Indian Empire the Roman Empire 
 was soulless. Each of its portions had been shorn 
 of the vivid sense of nationality, and it is hard to say 
 whether the loss of barbarism compensated it for the 
 loss of patriotism. 
 
 Meyer. But surely there 'was an imperial patriotism 
 far finer than those small local patriotisms. Think 
 what the Kaiser Idee 
 
 Clarke. And the Censorship and the Zollverein 
 
 Meyer. Are to Modern Germany. And does not 
 the poorest Indian rejoice in the thought that he is 
 in the British Empire ? 
 
 Case. There was a sort of pseudo-sentiment called 
 in Silver no, I beg pardon of Quintilian in Copper 
 or Nickel Latin " Romania." A thin veneer, it served 
 to cover up and decorate a slavery that was none the 
 less squalid because it was systematic and universal. 
 
 True/ove. You are rather hard on " Romania." A 
 gifted scholar of my Church calls it " a proud and 
 elevated patriotism uniting Briton, Gaul, Spaniard and
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 259 
 
 African by a tie as strong as that of blood, and teaching 
 them to look on the eternal city no longer as their 
 tyrant but as the great mother whose stones were 
 their own." 
 
 Meyer. That is the true imperialism. 
 
 Clarke. Read Burke and visit India. 
 
 Case. Take a dose of Gibbon and Dill. Yet I 
 could almost pardon "Romania." It represented or 
 seemed to represent the sole hope and stay of culture 
 and civilisation yi the West, and it gave us, after 
 Stilicho's victory, that magnificent line of Claudian : 
 
 " Discite vesanae Romam non spernere gentes." 
 
 And to the select few, the great proprietors and slave 
 owners, who escaped the ever-increasing burdens of 
 imperial administration, "Romania" was associated with 
 a proud tradition. In their trim gardens and luxurious 
 palaces, linked by imperial roads and an imperial 
 post, those untaxed Roman mandarins, secure in their 
 immunities, untainted by any form of public activity, 
 practised " Romania " with urbanity. 
 
 Meyer. Do you mean to say that they combined 
 imperialism with profit ? And if so, why not ? A 
 virtue is none the worse for being remunerative. 
 
 Ego. And, as it were, self-supporting. 
 
 Case. Oh no ; the typical Roman grandee of the 
 third and fourth century was not a usurer like Brutus 
 or Seneca. He was content, I say, to escape taxes, 
 to evade public duties and to practise urbanity. By 
 urbanity was meant, if one may quote Quintilian's 
 famous definition, " a certain peculiar flavour of the 
 city, a quiet air of culture, 1 sprung from intercourse 
 
 1 Tacita eruditio, an easy companionable sort of learning.
 
 260 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 with cultivated people." The character of the grandee 
 is relieved by urbanity ; but was the flower worth 
 the cost of cultivation ? What can one say for 
 a form of European Government which ground 
 down millions in order to nourish such men as 
 Symmachus and Sidonius Apollinaris. No ; I have 
 little patience with the cult of empire. Self-govern- 
 ment is not merely better than good government ; it 
 alone is good government. 
 
 Clarke. My role is that of peacemaker. For peace 
 you require either universal empire or a universal 
 treaty {foedus}. Federation would combine the 
 material advantages of Empire with the spiritual 
 advantages of small States. I share all your antipathy 
 for empire. 1 agree that it destroys most of the 
 public virtues which can be counted on where men 
 govern themselves. But it does guarantee peace and 
 law to vast areas and populations that might other- 
 wise be given over to war and anarchy. Ten long 
 centuries elapsed before a divided Europe, which had 
 to settle all its disputes and frontiers by the sword, 
 could recover anything like the general level of cul- 
 ture, learning, and artistic craft it had possessed at 
 the end of the fourth century A.D. It is difficult 
 indeed to decide whether, under the customs of war, 
 civilisation has prospered best in small States or in 
 large. A little learning certainly revived with Empire 
 under Charlemagne ; and upon the whole it must be 
 owned that for centuries the petty sovereigns of Europe 
 were the great obstructors of progress. But then, on 
 the other hand, arts and crafts and, in some cases 
 learning, made the swiftest strides in the City Republics 
 of Italy and in the privileged towns of Germany and
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 261 
 
 France. Holland is an interesting case. The towns 
 of the Low Country grew up and flourished under the 
 protecting aegis of Spanish power. When Spain began 
 to oppress and persecute, Holland used her wealth to 
 win independence. But it was by federation and union 
 that the Dutch towns and provinces secured their 
 liberty and extended their trade and commerce. It 
 was by federal union that the towns of the Rhine 
 and the Hansa flourished and introduced a leaven of 
 trade into the lump of feudalism. But wars over 
 and over again destroyed what peace had created. 
 Italy was ruined in the fifteenth century, France in 
 the sixteenth, Germany in the seventeenth. In our 
 time the example of union set by Switzerland and 
 Holland, followed by the United States, has freed 
 Italy and Germany from civil war. It is said, of 
 course, that nations have been formed by force, that 
 William the Conqueror made England, that a long 
 line of fighting kings made France, that Moltke made 
 Germany, Garibaldi Italy, that Washington's victories 
 forged the great American Republic, and so on. We 
 need not dispute about words. This is certain. The 
 only wars that have made nations and created powerful 
 and homogeneous States are those which have made 
 peace and given scope to arts, manufactures, com- 
 merce, letters, learning to all the things that bind 
 people together and render them happy, strong, and 
 prosperous. Union is strength. 
 
 Case. " Concordia res minimae crescunt, discordia 
 maximae labuntur." l 
 
 Clarke. Leagues and federations may be based upon 
 
 1 By concord the weakest things grow strong, by discord the 
 strongest totter.
 
 262 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 interest or sentiment. It is obviously easier for States 
 of the same race and language to enter into political 
 association ; but we must remember that Switzerland 
 provides an example of an enduring political union 
 between French, German, and Italian cantons. Again, 
 the Hanseatic League was not national but commercial. 
 It proves conclusively that community of interest can 
 unite very distant societies. If Switzerland shows 
 that when natural enemies live together they may 
 become lasting friends, the Hansa shows how, even 
 in an age when communication was slow, difficult, and 
 dangerous, Cologne and Frankfurt could work for 
 generations in political concert and commercial con- 
 cord with Stralsund and Wisby. 
 
 But commerce and self-preservation are not the 
 only incentives to European union. In the ancient 
 world empire despotically acquired and despotically 
 held seemed to afford the only prospect and guarantee 
 of peace over a wide area. But the diffusion in the 
 East of Greek language and culture, and of Latin in 
 the West, the conquest of both East and West by 
 the same Roman Law and the same Christian Church 
 afforded new material for political action and political 
 speculation. When Europe began to settle down and 
 to recover arts, and laws, and learning, she received 
 first through Spain from the Arabs, then through 
 Constantinople from the Greeks themselves, the priceless 
 treasures of Greece ; and in the glorious Renaissance the 
 peoples of Europe learned that art and learning, natural 
 science, religion, jurisprudence, and mechanical inven- 
 tion are no less impatient than commerce of national 
 and political barriers. When printing made all ideas 
 and all knowledge accessible to all, the progress of
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 263 
 
 society from a state of war to a state of peace was 
 assured. Nations may be unconscious of the invisible 
 ties that draw them together. We accept as a matter 
 of course this wonderful community of thought amid 
 this equally wonderful diversity of language. That 
 every great book is translated into every important 
 tongue, that Shakespeare's plays are produced in every 
 considerable city of Europe and America, that the 
 operas of Wagner are performed in every opera house, 
 that the news of the world is conveyed by electric 
 current to every important centre of population within 
 a few hours, that a journey of a thousand miles is 
 performed with more rapidity, certainty, safety, com- 
 fort, and convenience than a journey of a hundred 
 miles two centuries ago these are visible signs. It 
 is but a proof of the narrowness of our minds and 
 the poverty of our imaginations that we do not see 
 in them more clearly the heralds of an approaching 
 unification, the sure presages of a not far distant and 
 a perpetual peace. 
 
 International conferences, councils, congresses, con- 
 ventions, and laws are becoming more and more 
 frequent, more and more necessary, more and more 
 fruitful in their consequences. They are the inevitable 
 result of all these predisposing causes. What the 
 Christian Church alone could attempt in the centuries 
 that divided the fall of the Roman Empire from the 
 Reformation has since been brought about by a 
 .thousand different agencies. The great councils of 
 the Church were styled ecumenical, because they 
 claimed to represent the whole civilised world. Vol- 
 taire called them the Senate of Europe. Composed 
 of representatives from every Christian nation, they
 
 264 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 awoke visions of a European Republic. Not only- 
 spiritual dignitaries of the Church, but sovereigns and 
 princes in their own persons, or by their representa- 
 tives, took part in these assemblies. " All intimately 
 connected together, instructed in one another's customs, 
 obeying one common law, and in some measure 
 governed by one common interest," they appeared to 
 historians of European law and diplomacy almost to 
 deserve the appellation sometimes bestowed upon them 
 of a Republic of States. And so they would have 
 been if that excellent Radical, Marsilio of Padua, 1 could 
 have had his way. Far be it from me to depreciate 
 these examples or to question their significance. They 
 were foreshadowings of mightier things. But let us 
 beware of thinking that Europe is now less united 
 than it was then. After all, the councils were com- 
 posed mainly of ecclesiastics, and their business was 
 primarily ecclesiastical, including the definition and 
 extermination of heresy and the defence of the faithful 
 against the infidel. Take, as perhaps the most ecu- 
 menical of these assemblages, the two Councils of 
 Lyons, which have been hailed as examples or patterns 
 of a perfect high court and parliament of Christendom. 
 Lyons was chosen by Innocent the Fourth as a con- 
 venient centre. The principal subjects of debate at 
 the first Council of Lyons were the reform of abuses 
 in the Church and the defence of Constantinople 
 against the Turk. Besides a host of ecclesiastics, the 
 Emperors of the East and the West, and many of 
 the kings and princes of Europe obeyed the Pope's 
 
 1 He wrote his Defensor Pads in 1324, three years after Dante's 
 death. Marsilio would have converted the Church Councils inta 
 representative and democratic bodies.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 265 
 
 summons, and appeared either in person or by their 
 ambassadors. It was at this first Council (A.D. 1245) 
 that the Pope pronounced the famous sentence of 
 excommunication and dethronement against the Em- 
 peror Frederick. The second Council of Lyons was 
 summoned thirty years after to deal with the general 
 affairs of Europe, the relief of the Holy Land, and 
 the union of the churches. 
 
 In those times the Roman Church was in the zenith 
 of her power ; and to a Christian visionary like Dante 
 (no undervaluer of spiritual authority), whose birth 
 fell between the two Councils of Lyons, the hope of 
 mankind might well have seemed to lie in the Vicar 
 of Christ and " those venerable chief councils with 
 which no faithful Christian doubts but that Christ 
 was present." l 
 
 So much the more significant is it that the inspired 
 prophet of the middle ages should have utterly 
 rejected the pretensions of the Church to temporal 
 authority. The papal faction argued that as Pope 
 Hadrian (in 773 A.D.) summoned Charlemagne to his 
 assistance, and afterwards invested him with imperial 
 dignity, therefore the Empire must be dependent on 
 the Church. To which Dante replied, it might 
 be proved in the same way that the Church was 
 dependent on the Empire ; for had not Otto (964 
 A.D.) deposed Benedict V. and restored Leo VIII. ? 
 Two goals, said he, have been set by divine provi- 
 dence for man to aim at the one, the blessedness 
 of this life, which is prefigured in the earthly paradise, 
 and consists in the exercise by all of their natural 
 powers under the shadow of a universal Empire of 
 1 Dante's De Monarchic, Book iii., 3.
 
 266 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 peace and justice, the other the blessedness of the 
 life eternal, which is realised by our illumined powers 
 in the heavenly paradise. As man has a two-fold end, 
 he needs two guides. One is the supreme pontiff 
 to lead mankind to eternal life, according to revela- 
 tion. The other is the Emperor to guide mankind 
 to happiness in this world, according to the teaching 
 of philosophy. " And since none, or but a few only, 
 and even they with sore difficulty, could arrive at 
 this harbour of happiness, unless the waves and 
 blandishments of human desires were set at rest, and 
 the human race were free to live in peace and quiet, 
 this therefore is the mark at which he who is to care 
 for the world, and whom we call the Roman Prince, 
 must most chiefly aim : I mean, that in this little 
 plot of earth belonging to mortal man, life may pass 
 in freedom, and with peace." 1 Dante pictured to 
 himself the principate of Augustus as the nearest 
 approach ever made to this ideal government of the 
 world. The prince, monarch, or emperor was not to 
 be an absolute ruler. Kings and Consuls, he says, 
 are the servants of the citizens in each state, and the 
 supreme monarch who rules the world " must without 
 doubt be held the servant of all." 2 Again, he would 
 alter the old Roman Empire by adopting the principle 
 afterwards developed with so much wisdom and 
 ingenuity by Montesquieu, that different " climates " 
 need different institutions. The Scythians need one 
 rule and the Garamantes another. " Nations and 
 kingdoms and states have each of them certain 
 
 1 See Dante's De Monarchia, Book iii., 16. Church's translation, 
 pp. 126-7. 
 
 2 De MonanAia, Book i., c. xii.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 267 
 
 peculiarities, which must be regulated by different 
 laws." When, therefore, we say that mankind should 
 be ruled by one supreme prince, " our meaning is that 
 in those matters only which are common to all men 
 they should be ruled by one monarch, and be governed 
 by a rule common to them all, with a view to their 
 peace." Thus Dante foreshadows a federation of the 
 world, a commonwealth of nations living together in 
 freedom and peace under one princeps or president. 
 They are to have just enough unity to ensure peace 
 and concord, and not enough to impair freedom or 
 to extinguish those differences of constitution and law 
 which diversities of race and climate require. 
 
 II. 
 
 From the death of Dante to the birth of Erasmus is 
 a period of more than 150 years. Dante died in 1321. 
 In the next century the torch of peace was passed 
 from Italy to the Netherlands. " The good man of 
 peace " was portrayed in those troublous times by 
 Thomas a Kempis, called after his birthplace, Kemp, 
 on the Yssel, in the diocese of Cologne. Dutch, 
 therefore, was his native tongue, and he learnt Latin 
 in the neighbouring town of Deventer, where a school 
 for poor scholars had been founded by Gerard Groot. 
 Deventer was one of the Hanse towns ; but the author 
 of the Imitation had no hope of peace on earth. 
 His cloistered virtue never dreamed of a peaceful 
 world. In this miserable life, he writes, our whole 
 peace, " the perfection of joy," consists in humble 
 endurance of suffering. " He that knoweth best how 
 to suffer, will best keep himself in peace." Such was
 
 268 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the gentle hermit's protest. With it we may com- 
 pare and contrast another monastic precept : To let the 
 world jog on as it pleases ; always to speak well of his 
 reverence the Prior; and to do ones duty in a middling 
 way. 
 
 Thomas a Kempis studied at Deventer in the last 
 decade of the fourteenth century. He lived till 1471, 
 and five years after his death Desiderius Erasmus 
 of Rotterdam went as a boy of nine to the same 
 excellent school, where he showed such prodigious 
 ability and scholarship that his master predicted " he 
 would one day prove the envy and wonder of all 
 Germany." The prophecy was fulfilled. But it is 
 Erasmus the philanthropist, the first great populariser 
 of peace in modern Europe, whom I would celebrate. 
 A Kempis represents the passive piety of a good 
 monk, Erasmus the active piety of a good man. 
 Seldom has the cause of peace found a readier, a more 
 zealous, a more powerful pen ; for recollect that of 
 all modern Latinists Erasmus is the most captivating. 
 His fluency, his vigour, his descriptive power, his 
 wide and easy learning, enriched by travel and obser- 
 vation, his diversity of topic and variety of treatment, 
 won him European favour, and gave his books a 
 circulation quite unparalleled. Of war and peace, writes 
 one of his biographers, he often treated, and always 
 with that vivacity, eloquence, and strength of reason 
 which he applied to every subject. 1 Nay, Erasmus 
 I am quoting a criticism only ninety years old " was 
 
 1 As in his Adagui under the proverb dulce helium inexpertis, in the 
 Quere/a Pads, and in his Instruction of a Christian Prince, addressed 
 to the Emperor Charles V., who, however, was not diverted by the 
 remonstrance of Erasmus from his warlike designs.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 269 
 
 so singular in his opinions on this subject that he 
 thought it hardly lawful for a Christian to go to war ; " 
 and in this respect, as Jortin observes, " was almost a 
 Quaker." In the epistle to Volsius, written in 1518, 
 and prefaced to the famous Militis Christiani Enchiri- 
 dion, he lets fly many shafts of satire and persuasive 
 argument against a war with the Turks which was 
 then preparing. Suppose, he says, we conquer, and, 
 failing to kill them all, compel the remnant to become 
 Christians to which school or sect shall we force 
 them to adhere ? Suppose we make them nominalists, 
 how can they settle it with the realists except by the 
 arbitrament of the sword ? When the Turks see how 
 we Christians love one another, when they see the 
 cruelty, the brutality, and the rapacity of Western 
 Europe, are they likely to fall in love with our 
 religion ? " The most effective methods of vanquish- 
 ing the Turks would be to let them see in our lives 
 the light which Christ taught and expressed, to let 
 them feel that we were not lusting for their dominions, 
 nor thirsting for their gold, but seeking their salvation 
 and Christ's glory. That is the old true Christian 
 faith, which once subdued the contempt of the philo- 
 sophers, and grasped the unconquered sceptre of the 
 Emperors. But if the Christian spirit is lacking, we 
 are more likely to decline to their level than to draw 
 them up to ours." Moreover, Erasmus remarks, 
 even if they won the doubtful hazards of war, the 
 result would be to extend the realm, not of Christ, 
 but of the Pope and his Cardinals. " For the king- 
 dom of Christ only prospers where piety flourishes, 
 and love, and peace, and chastity." W T e must re- 
 member, he says, that the Turks are men with feelings
 
 2 7 o THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 and reasoning faculties. We should have assailed 
 them, at any rate in the first place, not with arms,, 
 but with arguments. But the Christian sentiment had 
 been corrupted, the original purity of the faith had 
 been lost, and for that reason Erasmus had forged 
 " a little dagger " for Christian soldiers. 
 
 "The Plaint of Peace everywhere ejected and cast 
 down " is an argument as compact and eloquent as 
 I have ever read against war in general and par- 
 ticularly against war between Christians. The ancient 
 Romans refused to allow that a war proper could be 
 waged between Italians ; a war in Italy they called 
 a tumult. Erasmus carries the thought further. He 
 compares the slaughter of Christians by Christians to 
 parricide, and asks how Christians who are cutting 
 one another's throats can charge the Turks with 
 impiety. The heathen sacrifice to idols, but what 
 victim could be more acceptable, what sacrifice more 
 pleasing to them, than the slaughter of one Christian 
 by another? By such steps this hardy pioneer leads 
 up to the conclusion that, as between Christian 
 princes at any rate, peace should be established and 
 maintained, and private jealousies yield to the common 
 interests of their subjects. Let public utility prevail. 1 
 But Erasmus was not content with general doctrine. 
 To him as to Dante the desirability of peace should 
 be the great motive of a scheme of European policy, 
 and as Dante called for co-operation between Pope 
 and Emperor so Erasmus addresses the thrones and 
 dominations of his own day : 
 
 " All things dictate peace ; first natural feeling and 
 humanity itself; then Christ the ruler and author 
 1 Privates affectus publica vincat utilitas."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 271 
 
 of all human happiness ; and, thirdly, the multitude 
 of advantages that peace affords, the multitude of 
 calamities that war inflicts." To give an air of 
 feasibility to his peace project Erasmus feigns for 
 I fear the wish was father to the thought a unani- 
 mous desire for peace among Christian powers. 
 
 "The chief rulers themselves are inclined to peace, as though 
 by a divine inspiration. See how the great peacemaker, gentle 
 Leo, has given the signal inviting all to peace, acting the part of 
 a true vicar of Christ. If ye are truly sheep follow your shepherd. 
 If ye are sons listen to your father. Francis, in name and deed 
 the Most Christian King of France, invokes you. Not ashamed 
 is he to purchase peace ; for it is by the public advantage alone 
 that he measures his royal dignity, teaching us that the true glory 
 of kings is to deserve best of the human race. In the same strain 
 speaks Prince Charles, a youth of unblemished talent and high 
 renown. Nor does the Emperor Maximilian decline, nor Henry 
 the famous King of England. Surely the rest may gladly follow 
 the example of these great princes. As for the people, they for 
 the most part detest war and pray for peace. A few only, whose 
 impious weal depends on the public woe, are eager for war. 
 Whether it is just that their wickedness should have more weight 
 than the will of all honest folk it is for you to deliberate. 
 Hitherto, as you see, no good has come of treaties : nothing has 
 been promoted by marriages, nothing by violence, nothing by 
 revenge. Try now whether danger may not be averted by a 
 peaceful and beneficent spirit. War breeds war ; vengeance is 
 repaid by vengeance. Let us now try the new policy of friendli- 
 ness and goodwill. Our Lord Himself will give success to the 
 pious plans that are adopted under his guidance and auspices." 
 
 Erasmus cherished a grand design for universal 
 peace. As a Christian scholar and an heir of Latin 
 civilisation, his foremost aim was to persuade the 
 monarchs and princes of Western Europe to live in 
 amity ; and he lost no opportunities of urging upon 
 his influential friends and patrons, among whom he
 
 272 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 numbered Pope Leo, Charles V., and Henry VIII. 
 of England, the advantage of peace and the duty of 
 preserving it in Christian Europe. Bishops and 
 dignitaries of the Church were especially bound, he 
 thought, to exert themselves to put down wars. 
 " Oh tongue-tied divines," he cries, " oh dumb 
 bishops, who gaze in silence on these plagues of 
 humanity ! " To his friend Antony of Bergen, the 
 sympathetic and powerful Abbot of St. Bertin, he 
 wrote from London in March 1514 one of the most 
 telling of his pleas for peace. Preparations for war, 
 he complained, were changing the character of Eng- 
 land. A multiplicity of taxes was destroying liberality. 
 Prices were rising. Foreign trade was dislocated. 
 He himself had been nearly poisoned by some 
 wretched home-made substitute for wine. But this 
 is only the personal grievance of a familiar letter. 
 What he asked himself and what he begged his 
 friend to consider was the war plague its meaning, 
 its cause, and its cure. A tempest seemed to be 
 arising in the Christian world. Could it not some- 
 how by man's exertions and God's mercy be allayed ? 
 Would Antony use his influence with Maximilian and 
 Prince Charles l to avert the catastrophe ? The letter 
 is a long one, but I must read it to you in a com- 
 pressed form ; for I am bent on establishing the 
 right of Erasmus to a pedestal in the Temple of 
 Peace. 
 
 " I often wonder what it can be that drives, I will not say 
 Christians, but men, to such a pitch of madness that they will 
 rush, at all costs, to destroy one another. Dumb animals do not 
 all fight, but only wild beasts, and even they spare their own 
 
 1 Afterwards Charles V.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 273 
 
 species. And beasts are content with Nature's weapons ; men use 
 machines and devilish contrivances to destroy one another. We 
 Christians who glory in the name of a master who taught and 
 practised nothing but gentleness, who are members of one body, 
 and are one flesh, quickened by the same spirit, fed by the same 
 sacraments, attached to the same Head, called to the same 
 immortality, hoping for the same communion with Christ, can 
 we allow anything in the world to provoke us to war, knowing 
 it to be so calamitous and hateful a thing, even when it is most 
 righteous, that no truly good man can approve it ? Pray think 
 who are employed in war. Cut-throats, gamblers, whoremongers, 
 the meanest hireling soldiers, to whom a little gain is dearer than 
 life, these are your best warriors, and what they did in peace 
 at their peril, they will be paid and applauded for doing in war. 
 This scum of mankind must be welcomed and courted ; in fact 
 you become their slave in your eagerness to be revenged on others." 
 
 Erasmus then recounted how many crimes are com- 
 mitted in the midst of arms when laws are silent ; 
 how many acts of sacrilege, thefts, rapes, and other 
 unspeakable atrocities ; and this moral contagion was 
 bound to last for many years after the war. 
 " And if you count the cost, you will see how, 
 even if you conquer, you lose much more than you 
 gain. What kingdom can you set against the lives 
 and blood of so many thousand men ? " Everyone 
 shares in the blessings of peace. In war the non- 
 combatants suffer most, then the beaten troops ; but 
 even the conqueror weeps ; and it is followed by 
 such a train of calamities, as justifies the fiction of 
 poets, that War comes to us from Hell, and is sent 
 by the Furies. It used to be thought more glorious 
 to found than to overthrow states ; but now the 
 people build cities, that the folly of princes might 
 destroy them. 4 But gain is our object.' Yes, but the 
 happiest of wars has always brought more evil than
 
 274 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 good to the combatants ; and no sovereign can damage 
 his enemy in war without first doing a heap of mischief 
 to his own subjects. And are not human things 
 always shifting and changing, like the ebb and flow of 
 Euripus ? What then is the use of making such exer- 
 tions to build up an empire, which must presently pass 
 to others ? " But you will say, that the rights of 
 sovereigns must be maintained. I only know this, 
 that summum jus extreme right, is often summa in- 
 juria extreme wrong ; there are princes who first 
 decide what they want, and then find a legal cloak 
 for their proceedings." 
 
 Suppose, however, a real dispute, to whom some 
 sovereignty belonged, what call was there for blood- 
 shed ? Questions of dynasty do not touch a nation's 
 welfare. There were Popes, Bishops, and wise men, 
 by whom such small matters could be settled, without 
 sowing confusion. It was the proper function of the 
 Roman Pontiff, of Cardinals, Bishops, and Abbots to 
 compose the quarrels of Christian Princes. Julius, a 
 pope not universally admired, had power to raise a 
 tempest of war. Had not Leo, a learned, honest, and 
 pious pontiff, power to calm it? 
 
 " But suppose, you will say, the other side refuses 
 to yield to the arbitrament of good men ; in that case 
 what would you have me do ? 
 
 " In the first place, if you are a true Christian, I 
 would have you bear and forbear, disregarding that 
 right of yours, whatever it may be. 
 
 " If the cost of asserting it by arms is excessive, 
 and it must be so do not then insist upon a title, 
 perhaps unfounded after all, that will cost so many 
 lives and so many tears."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 275 
 
 If there were rights that required the champion- 
 ship of the sword, then was Christianity already 
 degenerate and burdened with the wealth of this 
 world ; " and I know not whether I should sanction 
 such wars; though I see that war is sometimes not 
 disapproved by pious authors, when it is undertaken 
 to defend the faith and peace of Christendom against 
 the invasion of barbarians." But why should we 
 dwell on these few human authorities, rather than on 
 those many sayings of Christ, of the Apostles, and 
 of the orthodox and most approved Fathers on the 
 subject of peace and the tolerance of evils. Could 
 not excuses and pretexts be found for any policy, 
 and could not every ruler count upon his crimes 
 being praised by flatterers and his errors being passed 
 over. The sighs and prayers of reasonable men were 
 all for peace. War generally sprang from the private 
 interests of princes. Was it consistent with humanity, 
 that the peace of the world should be at any 
 moment disturbed, because King This had some 
 complaint against King That, or pretended that he 
 had ? 
 
 We might linger for hours in stimulating intercourse 
 with Erasmus. But he has already had a double por- 
 tion in this paper, and I can barely mention in con- 
 clusion a suggestion he makes in one of his Colloquies, 
 the Ichthuophagia, that a general peace might be 
 established in the Christian world if the Emperor and 
 the Pope would make mutual concessions. But the 
 progress of the Reformation made this impossible. A 
 new Europe was arising which would be more inclined 
 to listen to reason than to bow to authority.
 
 276 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 in. 
 
 Europe was improving certainly in the time of 
 Erasmus; private war was being suppressed, law was 
 extending, natural science was beginning, learning and 
 the arts flourished ; but the very progress of enlighten- 
 ment, by exposing the abuses of Church and State, 
 led to the terrible religious and civil warfare that 
 spared no part of Western Europe in the century 
 following his death. But the seed Erasmus had sown 
 soon sprang up. In the first respite that France gained 
 under the wise administration of Henry the Fourth 
 and Sully we come upon a definite project for a 
 federation of Europe. In the thirtieth book of Sully's 
 memoirs 1 the great French minister describes le grand 
 dessein of Henry the Fourth, a plan to secure and 
 conserve the peace of Europe. He begins with a 
 brief review of French history, undertaken to expose 
 the faults of the French kings the degenerate suc- 
 cessors of Charlemagne. 
 
 "We may find a thousand things worthy to be admired in 
 Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, Philip le Bel, Charles le Sage, 
 Charles VII. and Louis XII. How pitiful that so many good 
 or great qualities were not founded on other principles of policy. 
 How dearly would one like to call them great kings, if only one 
 could conceal the miserable condition of their subjects. In par- 
 ticular what might not have been said of Louis IX. Of the 
 forty-four years of his reign, the first twenty present a spectacle 
 not unworthy to be compared with the eleven last years of Henry 
 the Great. But I much fear that all their glory is destroyed by 
 the four-and-twenty years that succeeded ; for what with the 
 exorbitant taxes imposed to satisfy his pious zeal for an ill-judged 
 
 1 First published at Paris in 1662. The earlier books were 
 published early in 1634, ** * s sa ^> seven years before Sully's 
 death. Economies royales is the title Sully gave to his memoirs.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 277 
 
 and ruinous crusade, the vast sums transported to far-away countries 
 for the ransom of prisoners, the many thousands of citizens sacrificed, 
 and the many illustrious houses extinguished, France was over- 
 whelmed with general mourning and with a sense of universal 
 calamity." 
 
 Statesmen, Sully added, ought long ago to have 
 been convinced that the happiness of mankind can 
 never arise from war. Alas, how few of the statesmen 
 who preceded him, and even of those who succeeded 
 him, have thought or cared much about the happi- 
 ness of mankind ! 
 
 Passing by the wars of Clovis, "because they seem 
 to have been in some degree necessary to confirm 
 the recent foundations of the monarchy," Sully took 
 a rapid view of the period from the death of Clovis 
 to the peace of Vervins, a period which might be 
 called the Four Hundred Years' War. First, there 
 were the wars in which the four sons of Clovis, the 
 four sons of Clotaire the Second and their descendants, 
 engaged without interruption for 160 years. Then 
 from the commencement of the reign of Louis the 
 Debonnaire the Kingdom was distracted and torn by 
 another succession of wars lasting 172 years. The 
 last period, part of which came within Sully's own 
 lifetime, was still worse. " The slightest knowledge 
 of our history," so runs his emphatic verdict, " is 
 sufficient to convince any one that France had no 
 real tranquillity from the reign of Henry VIII. to 
 the peace of Vervins in 1598." Sully did not blame 
 every king for every war during the whole of this 
 period of nearly 400 years. " Several of these princes," 
 he concedes, " were sometimes in such circumstances 
 as rendered war just and even necessary."
 
 278 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 But, taken as a whole, this incessant warfare, 
 in spite of the glorious exploits that occasionally lit 
 up the gloom, had caused nothing but desolation and 
 impoverishment. Even in Sully's day the boundaries of 
 Western Europe were pretty well defined. Weak as 
 were the sentiments of nationality then compared with 
 their modern strength it was already obvious that, 
 however princes might think and act, it would require 
 a concurrence of causes infinitely superior to the force 
 of armies to change the form of Europe. An aggressor 
 might cause blood to flow in torrents, but projects 
 for augmenting any one of the great kingdoms at 
 the expense of another would prove chimerical and 
 impossible. France had not been allowed to forget 
 that her territories were larger in the days of Charle- 
 magne. Sully was far from regarding the diminution 
 as a misfortune. It may generally be observed, he 
 said, that in proportion to its extent a kingdom is 
 the more subject to great evils. To maintain the 
 existing boundaries of the Empire was the legacy of 
 Augustus to his successor. Sully's prescription for the 
 French Monarchy was the same. " Our tranquillity 
 depends upon preserving the kingdom within its limit. 
 Climates, laws, manners, languages unlike our own, 
 chains of almost impassable mountains, are so many 
 barriers and boundaries set by nature herself." Was 
 not France rich and powerful ? What more did she 
 want ? All that she really needed was a succession 
 of good and wise kings who would employ their 
 power in preserving the peace of Europe. 
 
 This brings me to the grand dessein. I propose to 
 describe it as nearly as time will allow in the 
 language of the memoirs.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 279 
 
 " We now see," writes the great minister, " the 
 nature of the design which Henry IV. was on the 
 point of putting in execution, when it pleased God 
 to take him to himself, too soon by some years for 
 the happiness of the world." Led by the teachings of 
 French and European history, Henry deliberately un- 
 dertook a course of policy unlike anything that had 
 hitherto been undertaken by crowned heads ; and 
 this it was that won him the title of Great. His 
 dessein was not inspired by a mean and despicable 
 ambition, nor guided by base and partial interests : to 
 render France happy for ever was his desire ; and 
 because she could not perfectly enjoy this felicity, 
 unless all Europe likewise partook of it, therefore he 
 laboured for the general happiness of Europe, and 
 prepared to lay foundations of such solidity and 
 strength that nothing should afterwards be able to 
 shake the fabric. His own cold, cautious, and un- 
 enterprising temper, Sully tells us, prevented him at 
 first from seriously entertaining Henry's idea of "a 
 political system by which all Europe might be regu- 
 lated and governed as one great family." When the 
 King first mentioned it the Minister thought it no 
 more than a royal diversion ; but when he recurred 
 to the project Sully was first astonished and then 
 alarmed ; for he thought a design that presupposed a 
 union of all the States of Europe would necessarily 
 involve a terrible war and the ruin of all his own 
 schemes for the restoration of French finances. He 
 therefore earnestly represented to Henry the in- 
 surmountable obstacles that stood in the way of 
 such a project ; but in the end, after long argu- 
 ments, it was Henry who convinced Sully first of
 
 280 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the desirability then of the feasibility of the grand 
 dessein. 
 
 The means indeed at first seemed inadequate to 
 the end in view, but Sully came to the conclusion 
 that the project might be realised after a course of 
 years, in which everything should as far as possible 
 be made subservient to its execution. The " design " 
 was not in its origin a " Project of Perpetual Peace." 
 It had been formed by Henry at the time of his suc- 
 cession to the throne, when he saw that the humbling 
 of the House of Austria was necessary to his security. 
 A similar plan, with the same end in view, had also 
 occurred to Queen Elizabeth. But the Queen was 
 relieved of anxiety by the defeat of the Armada, and 
 Henry was too much occupied with other distractions 
 until after his marriage and the firm establishment of 
 peace. Letters, however, upon the subject passed 
 between him and Elizabeth, and in 1601 Sully crossed 
 the Channel to consult the English Queen. He 
 found her busily engaged upon the design, and 
 sanguine of its ultimate success, notwithstanding all 
 obstacles, religious and political. 
 
 Obviously the design would be opposed by one or 
 two powerful and ambitious princes ; but that, as 
 Elizabeth pointed out, would rather promote its 
 popularity in Europe. She was anxious that it 
 should be accomplished if possible peacefully, armed 
 force being at best but an odious necessity. Many 
 suggestions and improvements were contributed to 
 the project by the Queen, who showed in these 
 discussions all the wisdom, penetration, and other 
 perfections of her mind. Her death was a great 
 misfortune ; but new allies in Germany and Italy
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 281 
 
 were some compensation for the loss of Elizabeth. 
 The Edict of Nantes was published, as a means 
 towards a general system of religious toleration, and 
 every other step taken to gain the confidence of the 
 princes of Europe. 
 
 Affairs at home and abroad began to look favour- 
 able, and Henry, a little before his assassination, 
 considered success infallible, though he could not find 
 one person besides Sully to whom he could safely 
 disclose the whole dessein. This statement has been 
 seized upon by the critics. Sully, they say, was cleverly 
 anticipating the incredulity of his readers, and trying 
 to make a fiction plausible. It is quite possible that 
 Sully, not the King, was the principal author of the 
 dessein ; but the higher criticisms which pretend to 
 regard the whole narrative as an invention overlook 
 not only a letter from Henry to Elizabeth about 
 " the most excellent and rare enterprise," but the 
 treaty of alliance " done at the Hague," October 
 3ist, 1596, between Henry, Elizabeth, and the 
 United Provinces, 1 and the following letter, written 
 in 1608, by Villeroy, Henry's foreign Minister, to 
 La Boderie, who was then French Ambassador at 
 the Court of James I. : 
 
 " Nous sommes en train et avons de quoi faire 
 des alliances en divers endroits ; et je vous dirai, si 
 les occasions qui s'ofFrent sont menagees, comme 
 
 1 The second article of this Treaty provided " that within the 
 year 1597 there shall be a General Congress assembled and held 
 by the deputies of the different confederates and other kings, 
 princes, lords and States, who shall join in the aforesaid league, 
 at such a day, time and place, as the said King of France and 
 the said Lady, the Oueen of England, shall think convenient."
 
 282 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 elles peuvent etre, que nous pouvons batir et rendre 
 durable pour nos jours une paix universelle en la 
 chretiente. Ce seroit certes un grand heur : 
 
 il faudroit pour y arriver que les dits roys se con- 
 tentassent de posseder ce qu'ils ont sans que 1'un 
 fut advantage sur Fautre, et que les dites Provinces- 
 Unies demeurassent en liberte et en protection de 
 tous. C'est chose faisable pour un tel bien. Vous 
 direz que ce sont discours qui sont plus plausibles 
 et vraisemblables que faisables, plus a desirer qu'a 
 effectuer ou a esperer : toutefois je sais bien ce que 
 je dis, et que je ne parle sans quelque fondement." l 
 
 As Villeroy was an enemy of Sully, these sentences 
 strongly support his story against modern sceptics, and 
 make havoc of an ingenious and elaborate theory of 
 the German historian, Cornelius, who professes to think 
 that the dessein was a hoax played off upon Sully 
 by the King, who had meanwhile entrusted his real 
 policy to Villeroy. 
 
 It was inevitable under the circumstances of Europe 
 at the beginning of the seventeenth century that the 
 dessein should comprise a religious policy. On Sully's 
 religious map the Roman faith remained in complete 
 possession of Italy and Spain. It had the predomi- 
 nance in France, and the Protestants only worshipped 
 by sufferance under the Edicts. In England, Den- 
 mark, Sweden, the Low Countries, and Switzerland 
 the position was reversed the Reformed religion 
 being predominant, the Roman at best barely tolerated. 
 
 1 See Lettres d'Henry IV. et de Messieurs de Villeroy et De Puisieux 
 a Mr. Antoine le Fevre de la Boderie, \ 606- 1 6 1 1 ; Amsterdam 
 edition, 1733, vol. i. p. 331. Villeroy's letter is dated, Paris, 
 August 8, 1608.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 283 
 
 In Poland and in some parts of Germany Catholics 
 and Protestants were on an equality. In Russia the 
 people were still in great part idolaters, and those 
 who had embraced Christianity were Schismatics like 
 the Greeks or Armenians, " with a thousand super- 
 stitious practices." a Besides," Sully adds, t Russia 
 belongs to Asia quite as much as to Europe ; and 
 ought almost to be regarded as a barbarous country 
 and classed with Turkey, though for five centuries 
 it has been usual to include her among the Christian 
 powers." The religious policy of the dessein was to 
 accept the status quo, and to recognise that no amount 
 of war or persecution could exterminate either the 
 Roman, the Greek, or the Reformed faith. In Italy 
 and Spain there would be no hardship in obliging 
 all the inhabitants either to conform or emigrate. 
 The same freedom should be allowed to French 
 Calvinists, who thought the regulations too severe. 
 No new restrictions need be introduced elsewhere, 
 especially as the Protestants were far from wishing 
 to force their religion upon others. For surrendering 
 futile claims and chimerical pretentious the Pope would 
 be amply compensated by the regal dignity and by 
 the honour of acting henceforth as common mediator 
 between all the Christian princes. 1 
 
 One of the tasks of the federal union would be to 
 expel the infidels from Europe. Should the Czar of 
 Russia refuse to enter into the association he ought 
 to be treated like the Sultan, deprived of his European 
 territory and confined to Asia, " where he might as 
 long as he pleased, without any interruption from 
 us, continue the wars in which he is almost constantly 
 1 Mediateur a tous les princes chretiens.
 
 284 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 engaged against the Turks and Persians." For these 
 purposes, and for the common defence, the different 
 associated princes and republics were to contribute 
 quotas of troops according to their abilities, amounting 
 in all to about 270,000 foot, 50,000 horse, 200 
 cannons, and 120 ships or gallies. 1 
 
 Such an armament, approximating pretty nearly to 
 the size of the military and naval forces of the Roman 
 Empire in the first century, would appear, writes 
 Sully, " so inconsiderable compared with the forces 
 which the princes and states of Europe usually kept 
 on foot to overawe their neighbours, or their own 
 subjects, that if it had been necessary to maintain 
 it constantly it would have occasioned no inconveni- 
 ence." But as the enterprise for which it was designed 
 was only temporary, it could have been diminished. 
 It would, however, he admits, probably have been 
 employed also to secure the northern coasts of Africa 
 and some contiguous provinces of Asia. The principal 
 part of the design in regard to Western Europe was 
 to strip the House of Austria of all its possessions 
 in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, confining 
 
 1 The principal quotas were to have been as follows: (i) The 
 Emperor and "circles" of Germany, 60,000 foot, 20,000 horse, and 
 10 gallies. (2-6) The Kings of France, Spain, England, Sweden, 
 and Denmark, each 20,000 foot, 4000 horse, and 10 ships. (7) 
 The Pope, 8000 foot, 1200 horse, and 10 gallies. (8) The Swiss 
 Cantons, 15,000 foot and 5000 horse. (9) The Republic of 
 Holland, 12,000 foot, 1200 horse, and 12 ships. (10) The 
 Republic of Venice, 10,000 foot, 1200 horse, and 25 gallies. (11) 
 The King of Hungary, 12,000 foot, 5000 horse, 6 ships. (12) 
 The Italian Republics, 10,000 foot, 1200 horse, and 8 gallies. 
 (13) The Duke of Savoy, 8000 foot, 1500 horse, 6 ships. (14) 
 The King of Bohemia, 5000 foot and 1500 horse.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 285 
 
 it to Spain and the Islands of Sardinia, Majorca, and 
 Minorca. I need not enter into Sully's historical 
 justification of this measure, 1 but I may repeat his 
 remark that the definite surrender of its possessions 
 in Italy and the Low Countries would prove a pro- 
 digious gain to the Spanish Monarchy; for all the 
 treasures of the Indies had been insufficient to defray 
 the cost of the war against freedom in the Nether- 
 lands. 
 
 Though she might maintain and even extend her 
 empire in the new world, Spain was not to be allowed 
 to establish a commercial monopoly. All the nations 
 of Europe were to enjoy the right of trading freely 
 with Asia, Africa, and America, " and this stipulation, 
 which is of the greatest consequence, would have 
 proved not a restriction upon the old privileges of 
 the House of Austria, but a new and valuable addition 
 to its prosperity." It was thus a part of the design 
 to remove the causes of commercial wars as well as 
 of wars for religion. 
 
 In the reconstitution of Europe the first and chiefest 
 article was the restoration of the Empire, which, being 
 withdrawn from the House of Austria, would again 
 have become a dignity to which all princes, but par- 
 ticularly those of Germany, might legitimately aspire. 
 The Emperor was to be declared the supreme 
 magistrate of the whole Christian Republic. As the 
 honour would only be conferred on the most worthy, 
 his influence would increase, and especially his authority 
 over the Helvetic and Belgic Republics. There would 
 
 1 He admits its severity, but argues that the steps taken by 
 Charles V. and his son Philip to obtain a universal monarchy 
 made it both just and necessary.
 
 286 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 be this restriction only upon the Electors, that their 
 choice should never fall twice in succession upon the 
 same family. The Austrian possessions of the House 
 of Hapsburg were to be divided between Venice, 
 Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Bohemia, Hungary, and some 
 smaller states. Moravia and Silesia were to be joined 
 to the elective kingdom of Bohemia, and the elective 
 kingdom of Hungary was to be strengthened against 
 the Turk by immediately adding to it the Archduchy 
 of Austria, with Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and by 
 afterwards incorporating in it whatever might be 
 acquired in Transylvania, Bosnia, Sclavonia, and 
 Croatia. The right of electing the King of Hungary 
 was to be vested in the Pope, the Emperor, and the 
 Kings of France, England, Denmark, Sweden, and 
 Lombardy. The Pope was to be titular chief of the 
 whole Italian Republic and secular prince of Southern 
 Italy. The Duchy of Savoy was to be converted into 
 the Kingdom of Lombardy. These were the principal 
 dispositions contemplated. No additions were to be 
 made to the Kingdom of France, though some sub- 
 sidiary sovereignties, such as Artois, Hainault, Cambray, 
 and Luxemburg, would probably have been constituted 
 under Henry's suzerainty. The English views, we 
 are told, were no less temperate than the French. 
 The two royal authors of the dessein, Henry and 
 Elizabeth, were equally averse from territorial aggran- 
 disement. The Queen, in fact, in her conversations 
 with Sully had let drop the remark that the British 
 Isles, in all the different epochs of their history, 
 whether united in one or divided into several 
 monarchies, either elective or hereditary, whether 
 under kingly or queenly rule, in all the variations
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 287 
 
 of their laws and police, " had never suffered any 
 reverse or serious misfortune save when their sove- 
 reigns had wanted to go outside their own little 
 continent." 1 Nevertheless, as a set-off to the new 
 French Fiefs, some parts of Brabant and Flanders 
 were to be placed under English princes or nobles. 
 With these exceptions the seventeen United Provinces, 
 including those still obedient to Spain, were to have 
 been erected into a free and independent state with 
 the title of the Belgic Republic. Thus civilised 
 Europe would have been divided into fifteen powers 
 in such a way that no one need envy or fear the 
 possessions of its neighbours. There would have 
 been six hereditary monarchies, five elective monarchies, 
 and four sovereign republics namely, the Venetian, 
 the Italian or Ducal, the Swiss or Confederate, and 
 the Belgic or Provincial Republic. 
 
 The laws and statutes proper to cement union and 
 maintain the established harmony, the reciprocal oaths 
 and engagements regarding religion and policy, the 
 mutual assurances respecting freedom of commerce 
 might have presented serious difficulties, had not the 
 authors of the dessein devised for them a consti- 
 tutional specific the happy invention of a general 
 council representing all the states of Europe. " This 
 general council of Europe was modelled on that of 
 the ancient Amphictyons of Greece. It was an 
 Amphictyonic council adapted to fit the customs, 
 climate, and politics of Europe. It consisted of a 
 
 1 The French sounds like an echo of an Elizabethan sentence 
 it can hardly have been an invention : " N'avoient jamais eprouve 
 de revers ni de veritables malheurs, que lorsque leur souverains 
 avoient voulu sortir de leur petit continent."
 
 288 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 fixed number of commissioners, ministers, or pleni- 
 potentiaries from all the powers of the Christian 
 Republic sitting as a permanent senate to deliberate 
 on current affairs, to discuss divergent interests, to 
 
 ' D 
 
 compose quarrels, to elucidate and determine all the 
 civil, political, and religious affairs of Europe, whether 
 internal or external." 
 
 The senate was to consist of about sixty-six 
 delegates, of whom four would be appointed by each 
 of the following authorities : the Emperor, the Pope, 
 the Kings of France, Spain, England, Denmark, 
 Sweden, Lombardy, and Poland, and the Republic 
 of Venice. The other republics and lesser kingdoms 
 would appoint two representatives apiece. The senate 
 would be re-chosen every three years. Its place of 
 meeting might be fixed or "ambulatory," but should 
 be in one of the cities of central Europe at Metz, 
 for example, or Strasburg, or Basle, or Frankfurt. 
 But there was an alternative plan, no doubt suggested 
 by the difficulties of communication, for dividing the 
 council into three parts one to meet in the east at 
 Cracow, another in the south at Trente, another in 
 the west at Paris or Bourges. Smaller and subordi- 
 nate councils, or sub-committees as we might call 
 them, with delegated powers might also be convoked 
 in different parts of Europe for local convenience. 
 " But whatever the number and constitution of these 
 subordinate councils, it would have been absolutely 
 necessary to provide for their resort by appeal to the 
 great council general, whose decisions, proceeding from 
 the united authority of all the sovereigns, pronounced 
 in a manner equally free and absolute, would have 
 the force of final and irrevocable decrees."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 289 
 
 Such is the grand dessein as it is unfolded in the 
 last book of the French statesman's memoirs. I hope 
 I have not tired your patience by the fulness of my 
 description. But the bare analysis of it which one 
 meets with in English writers does no justice to the 
 magnificence of the original. As a gem loses half 
 its brilliancy when taken from its setting, so the 
 grand design no longer arrests the imagination if we 
 tear it from its context. The attraction of a great 
 thought, its splendour and its fascination, may vanish 
 and disappear if it is dissected by the unimaginative 
 surgery of science. I have already mentioned and 
 repelled a suggestion that the whole design sprang 
 from the brain of Sully, and that his history of it 
 is a mere fiction devised to give it wider currency 
 and authority. The only proof that has been alleged 
 in support of this suspicion is the want of indepen- 
 dent contemporary evidence for Sully's story. But 
 apart from Villeroy's letter and the treaty I have 
 quoted, we know from many sources that a large 
 political scheme was in contemplation between Henry, 
 Elizabeth, the States General, and some of the German 
 and Italian potentates. That Sully has minimised his 
 own share in the authorship is probable enough ; but 
 why should we doubt that Henry devised a league 
 for the humbling of the house of Austria, and that 
 Sully, having adopted the idea and worked it out 
 with estimates and details, crossed to England and 
 discussed it with Elizabeth ? Was it from the Queen, 
 whom he found so fruitful in suggestions, or from 
 some one else in England, that he got the idea of 
 the Representative Council or General Assembly of 
 the Estates of Europe ? Or had the success of the
 
 2 9 o THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Dutch States General impressed him, as it afterwards 
 impressed Penn, with the advantages of federation ? 
 The rise of the Dutch Republic may very probably 
 have directed the attention of scholars to ancient 
 examples of federations, and so Sully might easily 
 have pitched upon the Amphictyons for his model. 
 If we may assume that Sully touched up the grand 
 dessein in the last years of his life, there is the further 
 possibility that it owes something to Emeric de Cruce's 
 Nouveau Cyme. 
 
 But whatever its origin or authorship, whether we 
 look at its intrinsic merits or at the novelty and 
 grandeur of its proposals, the grand dessein must be 
 considered as the most comprehensive and attractive, 
 if not the most influential and important, of all 
 modern proposals for the reconstitution of society. 
 Its merits can hardly be exaggerated. Had Henry 
 lived, writes Sully, he would have convinced all his 
 neighbours by his moderation that his whole pur- 
 pose was first to save both himself and them those 
 vast sums that were required to provide for so many 
 thousands of soldiers, so many fortified places, and 
 so many other military expenses ; second, to deliver 
 them for ever from the fear of the bloody catastrophes 
 then so common in Europe by establishing a firm 
 peace ; in fine, to unite all Christian sovereigns by 
 an indissoluble tie, so that they might henceforth 
 live together as brothers, and visit one another like 
 good neighbours, without the embarrassment of cere- 
 mony or the expense of a train of attendants, which, 
 never more than an idle show, are often only the 
 pretentious cloak of misery.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 291 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE " grand design " of Henry IV., Elizabeth, and 
 Sully is the historical precedent of all modern schemes 
 for the abolition of war by federation. It seemed to 
 be in full train, with fair prospects of success, when 
 the dagger of Ravaillac cut short the life of Henry. 
 How much of the plan had been divulged to the 
 Chancelleries of Europe, is uncertain ; but that Henry 
 at the time of his death was forming a grand alliance 
 to secure Europe against the House of Austria must 
 have been widely known. The mere suspicion that 
 such a design had been seriously entertained by the 
 practical statescraft of Henry and Elizabeth gave 
 strength and confidence to the speculative philan- 
 thropist. Amid the horrors of the Thirty Years' 
 War, Hugo Grotius, exiled by the intolerance of 
 religious and civil strife, issued from his French 
 refuge a powerful plea for the establishment of 
 European Congresses and for the adoption of arbitra- 
 tion as a substitute for war. His first object, indeed, 
 was to humanise and regularise warfare by refining the 
 laws and customs of international intercourse. But it 
 was the high duty, he held, of Christians, sovereigns, 
 and states not merely to improve warfare, but to 
 improve it away : " maxime autem christiani reges 
 et civitates tenentur hanc mire viam ad arma 
 vitanda." 1 
 
 Grotius published his masterpiece in 1625. A 
 year before there had appeared under the name of 
 
 1 " Most of all are Christian kings and states bound to enter upon 
 this path for the avoidance of arms." De Jure Belli ac Pacts, ii., 
 chap. 23, n, 3.
 
 292 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Emeric Cruce a French book, the Nouveau 
 addressed to princes and conquerors, " whose wicked 
 passions are the principal causes of war." The 
 author, whose real name was Emeric de Lacroix, 
 implores sovereigns not to abuse the " point of 
 honour," and to beware of the warlike suggestions of 
 their military advisers. The grandeur of a king 
 does not depend upon the extension of his domain : 
 war is more likely to ruin than to establish a 
 reputation : honour is a thing to be detested, if it 
 has to be bought by bloodshed. With these and the 
 like arguments this obscure writer seeks to persuade 
 Europe to adopt a remedy for her ills. He sug- 
 gests that a permanent congress should be established 
 on neutral territory, at Venice, for the adjudication 
 of controversies between states. National distinctions 
 were no ground for hatred, much less for war. 
 " Why, because I am a Frenchman, should I wish 
 evil to Englishmen or Spaniards ? I cannot, when I 
 consider that they are men like me." Religious 
 warfare was equally hateful to the social reformer 
 and philanthropist : " A little less of this theology 
 which passes our understanding ; a little more of 
 medicine and of the arts that are useful to life." 
 The establishment of peace would pave the way for 
 reforming the laws and their administration, for 
 simplifying taxes, for the relief of poverty, for the 
 construction and improvement of roads and canals. 
 Above all, he looked for free intercourse and trade 
 between nations. Let the soldier who lived by 
 pillage give place to the merchant who lived on 
 the reciprocal advantages of commerce. It is a 
 satisfaction to feel that this good man's happy
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 293 
 
 dream of the future has been in some measure 
 fulfilled. " Quel plaisir," he cries, "serait-ce de voir 
 les hommes aller de part et d'autre et communiquer 
 ensemble, sans aucune scrupule de pays, comme si 
 la terre etait une cite commune a tous ! " 
 
 Truelove. What fine thoughts and what striking 
 phrases ! And you say the writer is unknown ? 
 
 Clarke. Quite, except as an author. The Nouveau 
 Cynee, his principal work, was published in 1624. Un- 
 less, therefore, Cruce, or Lacroix, actually derived his 
 plan from the grand dessein? he must evidently be 
 assigned the honour of precedency among the poli- 
 tical philosophers, who have made constructive pro- 
 posals for the establishment of perpetual and universal 
 peace. A good Frenchman, a good European, a 
 good citizen of the world. A dreamer, if you like ; 
 but his dreams were true visions. He was the first 
 of the Rationalists and the first of the Utilitarians. 
 He was the precursor of Penn and St. Pierre, and 
 of Bentham, and of Kant. He did not expect that 
 such a policy as his, though founded in good sense 
 and good morals, would immediately be adopted. 
 " I have wished," he wrote, in a peroration of 
 sublime faith and simple grandeur, " to leave this 
 witness to posterity " : " S'il ne sert de rien, patience 
 C'est peu de chose de perdre du papier et des 
 paroles. Je protesterai en ce cas comme Solon 
 d'avoir dit et fait ce qui m'a ete possible pour le 
 bien public." Patience was certainly required by 
 friends of peace during the Thirty Years' War. But 
 
 1 This is quite possible, for Emeric de Lacroix wrote a panegyric 
 of Henry IV. In that case we may finally discard the suggestion 
 that the dessein was an invention of Sully's old age.
 
 294 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 de Cruce's paper was not wasted. It is hardly pos- 
 sible that his book should not have been read by 
 Grotius, or by the anonymous Minister who a year 
 afterwards published Caton de Stecle, a book full of 
 pacific counsels addressed to the Chancellor of France. 1 
 Nor is it likely to have been missed by Sully, who 
 dictated his account of the grand design some ten 
 years later, and included in it, as we have noted, the 
 idea of a tribunal to terminate controversies. Let 
 us hope that De Cruce, happier than Grotius, lived 
 to see the international conferences of Miinster and 
 Osnabruch, which put an end to the Thirty Years' 
 War. Those early peace congresses, terminating in 
 the great Peace of Westphalia, were a first step 
 towards a more tranquil Europe. From that time 
 diplomacy came to be used more and more to end 
 wars or to prevent them. At Utrecht in 1713, 
 at Paris in 1763, at Vienna in 1815, at Paris in 
 1857, and at Berlin in 1878, representatives of the 
 European Powers met to treat for peace. 
 
 These congresses are a new stage in the march of 
 civilisation. Had they not been held, or had they 
 failed, the next step to a gathering, representative 
 of the civilised world, meeting at Geneva, Brussels, 
 or the Hague in time of peace, to discuss means of 
 preventing war and mitigating its evils, could hardly 
 have been taken. All honour to the projectors of 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose ideas 
 have slowly penetrated the council chambers of our 
 sovereigns. How slow the progress was, how dull 
 the intelligence of rulers seemed to men of under- 
 standing, comes home to us in reading what Voltaire 
 
 1 D'Aligre.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 295 
 
 wrote a century afterwards on Barbeyrac : l "It 
 seems that these writings may serve to console the 
 peoples for the evils which politics and war inflict. 
 They give us an idea of justice, as a portrait may 
 give us an idea of a famous person we have never 
 seen." 
 
 The next great federalist was an Englishman, 
 William Penn, 
 
 Case. Forgive me for interrupting, but I must put 
 in a word for a Spanish author. Thomas Campanella 
 died in 1639 ; but his discourse upon the Spanish 
 monarchy was only published in its complete form 
 by Ludovicus Elzevir in 1653. That final edition 
 contains an additional chapter entitled Epilogus et 
 Encomium Magni Imperii Romani, which ends with 
 these remarkable words : " Tu Deus, salus et tutela 
 rerum, da quod expedit ; da si non imperio foedere 
 coire ac jungi ; da laetos et pacatos ad laeta et pacata 
 loca tua venire." Surely it is very remarkable that 
 an author, who seemed to have pinned his hopes of 
 peace to a universal Spanish Empire, should admit 
 that after all the true solution might be a federation 
 of the world. 
 
 Clarke. You have indeed hit upon a most surprising 
 confession ; and you have shown that Campanella had a 
 final glimpse of truth. Still, I repeat, the next great 
 federalist was an Englishman. Penn wrote his essay 
 in 1693, when the groaning state of Europe called 
 for peace. He was at this time in retirement having 
 been deprived of his government of Pennsylvania. 
 Evidently he had been reading the last book of Sully's 
 
 J The learned translator and scholiast of Grotius, who did much 
 to extend and popularise the knowledge of international law.
 
 296 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 memoirs or some other account of the grand dessein ; 
 for it was Henry's scheme, he tells us, together with 
 the success of the Dutch Federation, that prompted 
 him to undertake " an essay towards the present and 
 future peace of Europe by the establishment of a 
 European Dyet, Parliament, or Estates." Penn's 
 essay was the child of a French project. It was not 
 the first or the last time that an inspiring thought 
 has crossed the channel and borne fruit in England. 
 
 According to some writers, men and their ideas, their 
 speeches and their books, are merely the inevitable 
 results of circumstances. " Things are what they are, 
 and their consequences will be what they will be." I 
 always prefer to regard great men and great projects 
 and great thoughts as something more than products 
 ground out at intervals by the mills of the world. 
 A man of genius is a producer as well as a product : 
 a man of action is a driver as well as a passenger. 
 So William Penn, the first of Quaker statesmen, the 
 daring colonist, the enterprising founder of Pennsyl- 
 vania, the author of that humane treaty with the 
 Indians, the champion of religious freedom, was no 
 doubt a product of his age, his nation, and his sect. 
 Born at another time or place and subjected to 
 other influences, we can imagine him as a bold 
 buccaneer, a devout recluse, or a crafty minister. 
 As it is, he is a mixed character, and we have 
 Macaulay's caricature to place beside Clarkson's 
 portrait. 
 
 Case. Was not Clarkson himself a little bit addicted 
 to romance ? 
 
 Clarke. No ; I think not. Sometimes, of course, 
 he made mistakes. Some later researches in America
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 297 
 
 have corrected his story here and there. But Macaulay 
 ought to have been warned by a dictum of Sir James 
 Mackintosh, 1 who writes in a footnote to his review 
 of the Causes of the Revolution : " Mr. Clarkson is 
 among the few writers from whom I should venture 
 to adopt a fact for which the original authority is not 
 mentioned. By his own extraordinary services to man- 
 kind he has deserved to be the biographer of William 
 Penn." 
 
 Case. Thank you ; that testimony is quite enough 
 for me. I only remembered that Mackintosh had 
 made some deductions from Penn's excellencies which 
 may have set Macaulay upon the path of depreciation. 
 But I have forced you into a digression. Pray go on 
 where you left off. 
 
 Clarke. I was speaking of the intimate connection 
 between political speculation and political experiments. 
 Speculators inspire statesmen, and the successful 
 experiments of statesmen give confidence to future 
 speculators. Penn was a practical statesman as well as 
 a fervid visionary. As the proprietor and legislator 
 of a province, which being almost uninhabited when it 
 came into his possession afforded a clear field for moral 
 experiments, he had if I may cite Macaulay's reluctant 
 testimony " the rare good fortune of being able to 
 carry his theories into practice without any compromise 
 and yet without any shock to existing institutions." 
 His own success as a constitution maker in a new 
 country doubtless encouraged him to try his hand on the 
 
 1 Macaulay entertained the utmost admiration for Mackintosh, 
 and in fact borrowed from him the principal count in his indict- 
 ment against Penn a letter addressed to one ' Penne,' who was- 
 almost certainly another person.
 
 298 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 ancient framework of Europe, but in his conclusion he 
 is careful to associate his own project with Henry the 
 Fourth's design and with the Dutch model : let me 
 read you his words : 
 
 " I confess I have the passion to wish heartily that the honour 
 of proposing and effecting so great and good a design might be 
 owing to England, of all countries in Europe, as something of 
 the nature of our expedient was, in design and preparation, to the 
 wisdom, justice, and valour of Henry the Fourth of France, whose 
 superior qualities raising his character above those of his ancestors 
 or contemporaries deservedly gave him the stile of Henry the Great. 
 For he was upon obliging the princes and estates of Europe to a 
 Politick Ballance, when the Spanish faction for that reason contrived 
 and accomplished his murder by the hands of Ravaillac. ... So 
 that, to conclude, I have very little to answer for in all this affair ; 
 because if it succeed I have so little to deserve ; for this great 
 king's example tells us it is fit to be done ; and Sir William 
 Temple's history [of the United Provinces] shows us by a surprising 
 instance that it may be done ; and Europe by her incomparable 
 miseries makes it now necessary to be done. That my share is 
 only thinking of it at this juncture and putting it into common 
 light for the peace and prosperity of Europe." 
 
 Penn's essay has never been reprinted since it 
 appeared in the collected edition of his works. 1 Even 
 Charles Sumner, who had a wonderful library of peace 
 literature, including such a bibliographical curiosity as 
 a copy of The New Cineas, only knew it from the 
 reference in Clarkson's Life. For this reason, as well 
 as for its intrinsic merits, not the least of which is its 
 small compass, I shall ask you to follow Penn's pro- 
 posals as carefully as those of Sully. You will, I think, 
 enjoy not only the pithy wisdom of his argument 
 against war, but the phraseology, sometimes quaint, 
 
 1 See William Penn's Collected Works, z vols., folio. London : 
 J. Sowle. 1726.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 299 
 
 often happy, in which the evil and the remedy are 
 presented. So direct and simple an appeal to the heart 
 and to the understanding will go home to many who 
 cannot be stirred by the voluminous and benevolent 
 industry of the good Abbe de St. Pierre, or by the 
 profound treatise in which the philosopher of Konigs- 
 berg has succeeded, without quite relinquishing the 
 dialect of the clouds, in bringing his heavenly thoughts 
 to the earth. 
 
 At the outset Penn disclaims any intention of 
 preaching a millenary doctrine. His design was a 
 practical one, and of all reforms this was the most 
 likely in his judgment to increase the happiness and 
 prosperity of mankind. How was it that nations 
 went to war when the miseries of war were so over- 
 whelming and unmistakeable ? The groaning state 
 of Europe called for peace. In peace capital would 
 accumulate and the rewards of industry increase. In 
 war, " the rich draw in their stock ; the poor turn 
 soldiers, or thieves, or starve." The explanation 
 seems to be that men are passionate, obstinate, slow 
 to learn, and quick to forget the lessons of experience. 
 It is a mark, Penn thought, of the corruption of our 
 natures that we cannot taste the benefit of health 
 without a bout of sickness or enjoy plenty without 
 the instruction of want, " nor finally know the 
 comfort of peace but by the smart and penance of 
 the vices of war." 
 
 From the evils of war Penn passes in a second 
 section to the means of peace. Peace can only be 
 established and maintained by justice. " The advan- 
 tage that justice has upon war is seen by the success 
 of embassies, that so often prevent war by hearing
 
 300 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the pleas and memorials of justice in the hands and 
 mouths of the wronged party." War on behalf of 
 justice, i.e. where you have been wronged and redress 
 has been refused upon complaint, is a remedy almost 
 always worse than the disease, " the aggressors seldom 
 getting what they seek or performing, if they prevail, 
 what they promised." 1 Justice, therefore, is the true 
 means of peace to prevent strife between governments, 
 or between governors and governed. Peace, therefore, 
 must be maintained by justice, which is a fruit of 
 government, " as government is from society and 
 society from consent." This thesis is developed and 
 explained in a third section, entitled " Government, 
 its rise and end under all models." 
 
 " Government is an expedient against confusion, a 
 restraint upon all disorders ; just weights and an even 
 balance ; that one may not injure another nor himself 
 by intemperance." The most natural and human basis 
 of government is consent, " for that binds freely (as 
 I may say) when men hold their liberty by true 
 obedience to rules of their own making." Penn 
 concludes his introduction by explaining that in these 
 three first sections he has briefly treated of Peace, 
 Justice and Government " because the ways and 
 methods by which peace is preserved in particular 
 governments will help those readers most concerned 
 in my proposal to conceive with what ease as well 
 as advantage the peace of Europe might be procured 
 and kept ; which is the end designed by me, with 
 all submission to those interested in this little 
 treatise." 
 
 1 Wars, he says elsewhere, are the duels of princes, and there 
 is no rod of chastisement that leaves such deep marks behind it.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 301 
 
 In his first section he had shown the desirableness 
 of peace ; in his next the truest means of it, to wit, 
 justice, not war ; and in the third, " that this justice 
 was the fruit of good government." Then follows 
 the proposal or design itself 1 which must be given 
 in Penn's own words : 
 
 " Now if the Soveraign Princes of Europe, who represent that 
 society or independent state of men that was previous to the obli- 
 gations of society, would for the same reason that engaged men 
 first into society, viz. love of peace and order, agree to meet by 
 their stated deputies in a general Dyet, estates, or parliament, and 
 there establish rules of justice for soveraign princes to observe one 
 to another ; and thus to meet yearly, or once in two or three 
 years at farthest, or as they shall see cause, and to be stiled, the 
 soveraign or imperial Dyet, parliament, or state of Europe ; before 
 which soveraign assembly should be brought all differences depending 
 between one soveraign and another, that cannot be made up 
 by private embassies, before the session begins; and that if any 
 of the soveraignties that constitute these imperial states shall refuse 
 to submit their claims or pretensions to them, or to abide and 
 perform the judgment thereof, and seek their remedy by arms, 
 or delay their compliance beyond the time prefixt in their resolu- 
 tions, all the other soveraignties, united as one strength, shall 
 compel the submission and performance of the sentence with damages 
 to the suffering party, and charges to the soveraignties, that obliged 
 their submission : to be sore Europe would quietly obtain the 
 so much desired and needed peace to her harrassed inhabitants ; 
 no sovereignty in Europe having the power, and therefore cannot 
 (sic) show the will to dispute the conclusion ; and consequently 
 peace would be procured and continued in Europe." 
 
 In a fifth section Penn reviews the causes of differ- 
 ence and the motives that lead States or their rulers 
 to settle such differences by war rather than by 
 diplomacy or arbitration. The motives of war are 
 
 1 In section iv., " of a general peace, or the peace of Europe and 
 the means of it."
 
 302 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 three, namely, Defence, Recovery, Aggression. Penn 
 imagines the warlike aggressor saying to himself: 
 " Knowing my own strength I will be my own judge 
 and carver." The aggressor would have no chance 
 in the imperial States of federated Europe ; but any 
 State claiming protection, or the right to recover 
 territory of which it had been deprived, would be 
 heard whenever it chose to plead before the sovereign 
 court of Europe, and there find justice. 
 
 Thus Penn is led to consider the titles by which 
 territories may be held or claimed. A title come 
 by right of long succession, as in England and 
 France, or as in Poland and the Empire by election, 
 or by purchase, as often in Italy and Germany, or 
 by marriage, or lastly by conquest as the French in 
 Lorraine, and the Turks in Christendom. What titles 
 then are good and what bad ? These problems must 
 be left to the sovereign states and the international 
 court to deal with and decide in each case. But 
 Penn was ready to show upon what principle such 
 controversies would be decided, by an examination 
 of titles. He decides that all are good except 
 the last. Conquest only gives a questionable title, 
 morally speaking. When conquest has been con- 
 firmed by treaty it is an adopted title. If there is 
 to be a restitution of conquests it is a tender point 
 where to begin. Could they go back for instance 
 to the peace of Nimeguen ? 
 
 In a seventh section Penn describes the constitu- 
 tion of his European parliament. The number of 
 delegates sent by each country should be in proportion 
 to its wealth, revenue and population. These would 
 have to be accurately ascertained ; but Penn makes
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 303 
 
 the following guess. He allows twelve representatives 
 to Germany, ten to France, ten to Spain, ten to 
 Turkey, and ten to Muscovy. Italy was to have 
 eight, England six, the Seven United Provinces of 
 Holland, " Sweedland," and Poland, four each. Venice 
 and Portugal were to send three delegates apiece, and 
 the smaller States in proportion. Ninety delegates in 
 all would form the diet. Its first session should be 
 held in some central town ; after that the delegates 
 would choose their place of meeting. 
 
 In the eighth section he gives some details for the 
 regulation of his Imperial States in Session. Thus, 
 " to avoid quarrel for precedency the room may be 
 round [as at the Hague Conference] and have divers 
 doors, to come in and go out at, to prevent excep- 
 tions." Members should preside by turns; voting 
 should be by ballot to secure independence and to 
 prevent corruption. A majority of three quarters 
 should be necessary. The language used would be 
 either Latin or French, the first would be best for 
 civilians, the second for men of quality. 
 
 In section nine he entertains some objections that 
 might be advanced against his design. First it 
 might be said that the richest and the strongest 
 sovereignty would never agree to this " European 
 League or Confederacy," and there would be danger 
 of corruption if it did agree. A more plausible 
 objection was that disuse of the trade of soldiery 
 would lead to effeminacy, as happened to Holland 
 in 1672. But each nation would instruct and 
 discipline its youth as it pleased. Manliness, says 
 our author, depends on education. You want men 
 to be men, not either lions or women ! Teach
 
 304 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 them mechanical knowledge and natural philosophy, 
 and the art of government. No State would be 
 allowed to keep a disproportionately large army, or 
 one formidable to the confederacy. Another objec- 
 tion would be that if the trade of soldier declined 
 there would be no employment for the younger 
 brothers of noble families, and further if the poor 
 could not enlist they must become thieves. Penn 
 answers that the poor should be brought up to be 
 neither thieves nor soldiers but useful citizens. Again, 
 it would be said : " sovereign states will cease to be 
 sovereign, and that they won't endure." No, for they 
 remain just as sovereign at home as ever they were. 
 Is there less sovereignty " because the great fish can 
 no longer eat up the little ones " ? 
 
 Finally Penn recounts " the real benefits that flow 
 from this proposal about peace." i. Not the least 
 is that it prevents spilling much "humane" and 
 Christian blood. 2. It will in some degree recover 
 the reputation of Christianity in the sight of infidels. 1 
 3. It releases the funds of princes and people, which 
 can go to learning, charity, manufactures, etc. 4. 
 Border towns and countries like Flanders and Hun- 
 gary will be saved from the rage and waste of war. 
 5. It will afford " ease and security of travel and 
 traffic, an happiness never understood since the Roman 
 Empire has been broken into so many soveraignties." 
 We may easily conceive, he adds, the comfort and 
 advantage of travelling through the governments of 
 Europe by a pass from any of the soveraignties of it, 
 
 1 " Here," he says, " is a wide field for the reverent clergy of 
 Europe to act their part in. ... May they recommend and labour 
 this pacifick means I offer."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 305 
 
 which this league and state of peace will naturally make 
 authentick. " They that have travelled Germany, 
 where is so great a number of soveraignties, 
 know the want and value of this priviledge, by the 
 many stops and examinations they meet with by the 
 way ; but especially such as have made the great 
 tour of Europe." 6. Europe will be secured against 
 Turkish inroads. 7. It will beget friendship between 
 princes and states; and from communion and inter- 
 course will spring emulation in good laws, learning, 
 art, and architecture. In short, reciprocal hospitality 
 and intercourse will plant peace in a deep and 
 fruitful soil. 8. Princes will be able to marry for 
 love. 
 
 Penn seems quite to have anticipated St. Pierre. 
 
 V. 
 
 IN the eighteenth century France more than main- 
 tained her priority in the glorious contest which Penn 
 had thought to win for England. On the calendar 
 of peace the name of Charles-Irenee Castel, Abbe de 
 St. Pierre, 1 will always be inscribed first in letters of 
 gold. This stout-hearted and persevering Christian, 
 who sought to convert an uninformed and unregenerate 
 Europe by argument to the Sermon on the Mount, 
 
 1 In a copy of the first two volumes of Palx Perfetuelle, which may 
 be seen in the library of the British Museum, the author signs 
 himself Charles Castel de Saint Pierre. This valuable exemplaire 
 was evidently one of the first struck oft. There is no title page, 
 and there are many gaps ; but they are all filled in by the Abbe 
 with his own hand, who sent it, July 21, 1712, as a presentation 
 copy to Cardinal de Rohan. It was picked up by Southey from a 
 bookseller in Darlington. 
 
 U
 
 306 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 was born in 1658 at the Chateau de Saint-Pierre- 
 Eglise, near Barfleur, in Normandy. His father, 
 Charles Castel, was governor of Valogne, and was 
 allied by blood with the great house of De Villars. 
 Charles-Irenee studied first at Caen, and then trans- 
 ferred himself to Paris, where with Varignon, Vertot, 
 and the sage Fontenelle he became proficient in mathe- 
 matics and in the infant sciences of chemistry, physics, 
 anatomy, and medicine. He discussed philosophy with 
 Malebranche, and distinguished himself by a universal 
 and critical curiosity. Under the guidance of Pascal 
 he passed to morals and thence to politics, concluding, 
 as he says, from a comparison of good books about 
 morality with good laws and good institutions that the 
 science of government is more fruitful than the science 
 of individual ethics. The good of mankind became his 
 sole passion and the sole object of his speculations. 
 With a view to this he studied history closely ; but his 
 political philosophy was based on mathematics and the 
 physical sciences. Thus guided and instructed his 
 passion for the improvement of society gradually 
 anchored itself on the principle of utility, expressed 
 in terms not less precise than those which Bentham is 
 generally supposed to have invented long afterwards : 
 " the value of a book, of a regulation, of an institution, 
 or of any public work is proportioned to the number 
 and grandeur of the actual pleasures which it procures 
 and of the future pleasures which it is calculated to 
 procure for the greatest number of men." This is 
 the Utilitarian formula of Bentham with the ampli- 
 fications suggested by Mill and Jowett; 1 for the 
 
 1 Jowett suggested that the formula should be amended to " the 
 noblest happiness of the greatest number."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 307 
 
 addition of " grandeur " to number makes it clear that 
 the quality or nobility of pleasures as well as their 
 quantity must be brought into the account. "The 
 value of a thing," he writes, in order to make his 
 whole meaning plain, " is the value men place upon 
 it, and men value or ought to value work solely 
 according to the amount by which it enhances their 
 happiness; that is to say, in proportion as it procures 
 them greater and more enduring pleasures, or relieves 
 them from greater and more enduring pains, whether 
 in the present or in the future." l 
 
 You will think that I am straying far from my 
 subject ; but the idea of a federation of Europe or of 
 a union of all civilised powers is, and always will be, 
 associated with the name of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre ; 
 and just as it was at one time the fashion with those 
 who wished to impede reform to laugh at Bentham, 
 so the idea of universal peace used to be ridiculed as 
 an unattainable project, the dream of a well-meaning 
 but impracticable visionary. But to-day so much 
 of the dream has already been realised that ridicule 
 is already felt to be out of place ; for despite 
 the growth of armaments in modern times, the war 
 system is being steadily undermined ; its advocates 
 are already apologists ; militarism is in a defensive 
 posture ; the reason and sentiments of mankind are 
 already won over to the side of peace. And how has 
 this change been brought about ? Not by Kantian 
 metaphysics, still less by Hegelian dialectics ; not even, 
 I fear, by the influence and exertions of Christian 
 
 1 See " Projet pour rendre les livres et autres monuments plus 
 honorables pour les auteurs futurs et plus utiles a la posterite," 
 in the collected works of the Abb6 de Saint-Pierre.
 
 3 o8 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 churches. The transformation is due to the gradual 
 spread of enlightenment, and, above all, to the doc- 
 trine of utility expounded and enforced by a long 
 series of thinkers and reformers, beginning, we may 
 say, with the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, and developed by 
 the genius of the French encyclopaedists, by Adam 
 Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and their followers and dis- 
 ciples in all parts of the world. To us the idea of 
 testing laws and institutions by their utility is familiar 
 enough. It was a startling novelty two centuries ago. 
 St. Pierre was the first systematic utilitarian. To 
 increase the comfort and happiness of mankind, and 
 especially of his own countrymen, was the aim and 
 object of all his projects and designs. With this 
 view he proposed that girls should be educated, that 
 complete freedom should be given to the press, that 
 priests should be allowed to marry, that a sound 
 coinage should be introduced, that a census should 
 be instituted, that the burdens of taxation should be 
 equalised, 1 that a system of poor relief should be estab- 
 lished, that useful inventions should be rewarded, that 
 the science of medicine should be encouraged, that legal 
 procedure should be simplified and shortened, and that 
 a State department should be established for the main- 
 tenance and improvement of roads 2 and canals. He 
 even proposed "Apian for rendering sermons useful." 3 
 
 1 D'Alembert tells us that Saint-Pierre's Memorial on the Proportional 
 Taille produced important and beneficial changes. " On this im- 
 portant topic the author speaks like a true statesman." 
 
 2 One of its principal duties would be to make roads passable in winter. 
 
 8 A wit seeing this title suggested instead : " A scheme for render- 
 ing useful preachers, physicians, taxgatherers, monks, journalists, and 
 horse-chestnuts." Saint-Pierre also wrote a perfectly serious treatise 
 entitled " A plan for rendering dukes and peers useful."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 309 
 
 Last, but not least, the French tongue is indebted 
 to him for the invention of one precious word, 
 bienfaisance, and of the mocking gloriole, which (as 
 D'Alembert said) hits off so well one of the principal 
 foibles of mankind, and especially of the French nation. 
 I think I have mentioned most of his minor projects, 
 and, with two exceptions, they have been adopted in 
 substance. We are all reformers now. The " dreams " 
 of the good Abbe are the institutions of a happier age. 
 Let us now look at his first and greatest project and 
 see whether it also was not built upon the rock. 
 
 In the year 1712 the Abbe de Polignac took Saint- 
 Pierre with him to the Congress of Utrecht. Many 
 obstacles and delays occurred before the plenipotenti- 
 aries could come to terms, and Saint-Pierre did not 
 see why the advantages of a treaty that took so long 
 to frame might not have been made perpetual. His 
 imagination was fired by the spectacle of this great 
 congress representing the whole of Christendom. Why 
 should it not be the means to a perpetual peace instead 
 of to a mere truce ? The moment had come to revive 
 the Grand Dessein, a copy of which he is said to have 
 found buried in a garden. Accordingly St. Pierre 
 set to work on his famous Projet de Paix Perpetuelle. 
 The first volume appeared in 1712, the third and last 
 in 1716. The author took care to lay his plan before 
 the sovereigns and statesmen of Europe. He met 
 with no response. The men in power were not in a 
 mood to be converted. " You have forgotten, sir," 
 said Cardinal Fleury, who was well inclined to peace, 
 " a preliminary condition upon which your five articles 
 must depend. You must begin by sending a troop of 
 missionaries to prepare the hearts and minds of the
 
 3io THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 contracting sovereigns." Assailed by ridicule and 
 taunts, Saint-Pierre stood firm. He saw that the 
 triumph of reason could not be speedy ; but he never 
 lost heart nor abated his efforts. Twenty-five years 
 later he spoke in much the same language as his pre- 
 decessor, Emeric Cruce : " My projects will endure ; 
 some of them, little by little, will enter into the young 
 minds of those who will one day take part in the 
 government, and be able to be of great service to the 
 public : this view of the future has always splendidly 
 repaid me for my present pains." In 1728 he pub- 
 lished a popular abridgment of the work, with a 
 title which clearly indicates the grounds of his hopes 
 for the future. " An abridgment of the project of 
 perpetual peace invented by King Henry the Great, 
 approved by Queen Elizabeth, by King James her 
 successor, by the republics, and by divers potentates ; 
 adapted to the present state of affairs in Europe ; 
 proved to be of infinite advantage to all men living 
 and to be born, but especially to all sovereigns and 
 royal families." 1 Unfortunately the abridgment was 
 hardly more popular than the original. The Abbe had 
 no style. " My stuff," he said, " is good and stout, but 
 it lacks embroidery." St. Pierre knew very well that 
 in the long run his scheme would depend for its success 
 not upon a royal pedigree, but upon the recognition 
 of its utility by mankind and their rulers. Yet 
 he dedicated his book to Louis the Fifteenth, and 
 
 1 A revised edition of this abridgment was published at Rotterdam 
 in 1738 and forms the first of 16 volumes in which most of the 
 moral and political writings of St. Pierre are collected. The last 
 volume (1740) contains the Abbe's criticism on Frederick the 
 Great's Anti Machiavel.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 311 
 
 exhorted that feeble monarch to appropriate the honour 
 of executing a project which would redound to his 
 glory, and be of the utmost service to the public. 1 
 Alas that in those years of exhaustion which followed 
 on the ruinous wars of the grand siecle a dissolute 
 regent, a worthless king, a court of obsequious politicians 
 and insistent generals were occupied with far other 
 designs as vain and foolish as this was wise and fruit- 
 ful. Could they but have known it, the elixir of the 
 Abbe de Saint-Pierre would have preserved them and 
 France from another thirty years of war that brought 
 neither glory nor gain, but only ruin to the reputation 
 of the king and the nobles and the old regime. For 
 what was it that turned the French people to despair 
 and revolution, what but the war about Poland, the war 
 of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years' War ? 
 
 The Senate of Europe, as proposed by Saint-Pierre, 
 was to consist of twenty-four deputies only, one from 
 each of the following Powers : France, Spain, 
 England, Holland, Savoy, Portugal, Bavaria, Venice, 
 Genoa, Florence, Switzerland, Lorraine, Sweden, 
 Denmark, Poland, the Pope, Muscovy, Austria, 
 Curland, 2 Prussia, Saxony, the Palatinate, Hanover, 
 and the Archbishoprics. 
 
 In his abridgment the list is altered and reduced 
 to nineteen, among whom appear the King of Sardinia 
 and the King of Naples. Savoy, Curland, Hanover, 
 Genoa, Florence, Lorraine and Saxony drop out, and 
 " the Emperor of Germany " is included. 
 
 As each deputy was to have one vote, it would 
 appear that the Abbe had no desire to proportion 
 
 1 La plus grande Utilite Publique. 
 
 - Including Dantzig, Hamburg, Lubeck and Rostock.
 
 3 i2 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the influence of the constituent powers to their wealth 
 and population. But the details of his project, which 
 are numerous and elaborate, need not detain us. 
 They were drawn up in the form of a treaty or 
 convention of eleven fundamental articles, to be signed 
 by the sovereigns or their deputies present at Utrecht, 
 which was to be made a free city of peace. In this 
 free city, the sovereigns having agreed to a permanent 
 and perpetual union, their representatives were to sit 
 in perpetual session, deliberating upon the common 
 affairs of Europe. Out of the Senate would be con- 
 stituted standing committees or bureaux of adminis- 
 tration, and from time to time temporary committees 
 of reconciliation would be formed to arrange differences 
 between sovereigns. The Committee of Conciliation 
 should first endeavour to get the contending parties 
 to sign an agreement. Failing this the Senate, after 
 hearing the views of the committee, would legislate 
 on the case. If the parties refused to submit to this 
 Private Act or privilegium, an arbitral judgment should 
 be pronounced by the Senate in its judicial capacity, 
 first provisionally, and then definitely, after an interval 
 of six months. Recalcitrant States placed under the 
 ban of Europe would be coerced by the whole force 
 of the Union. No State was to be allowed a standing 
 army of more than six thousand men ; but whenever 
 war was levied by the Union, either against an external 
 enemy or an internal dissentient, the States would 
 contribute to its expenses in proportion to their 
 revenues. It would be more tedious than instructive 
 to enumerate, however summarily, the constitutional 
 guarantees by which the projector of this grand treaty 
 of federation would have secured the Union, once
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 313 
 
 established, from disruption. The best security, after 
 all, as Saint-Pierre well knew, for the permanence 
 of the Union would have been the advantages which 
 it secured to all its members. Once released from 
 the fear of war, and from the cost of maintaining 
 large armaments, every State of the Union would have 
 been able to devote a large and ever-growing surplus 
 to the reduction of taxation, or to domestic reforms 
 and improvements. And further, by federal action, 
 Europe, through its new organ the Senate, would be 
 able to establish and maintain many common advan- 
 tages and conveniences, such as a single currency, a 
 single standard of weights and measures, and a system 
 of commercial arbitration, governed everywhere by the 
 same principles and procedure. 
 
 Unluckily, the Abbe's Utilitarianism led him into the 
 very same mistake that was afterwards committed by 
 Bentham. In his writings, elegance and form were 
 always neglected, and the difficulties of his readers 
 were enhanced by some provoking eccentricities of 
 spelling. It was fortunate, therefore, that the fame 
 of his project was not left to depend upon the literary 
 shape in which it was left by the good Abbe. Twenty 
 years after his death, the genius of Rousseau was 
 engaged in a new abridgment of the Abbe's writings ;* 
 and two essays, one an exposition, the other a judg- 
 ment, of the Projet de Paix Perpetuelle, are brilliant feats 
 of literary workmanship and political criticism. For 
 one reader of the original there will always be a 
 thousand of Rousseau's version. Mark well the 
 two introductory paragraphs of Rousseau's Jugement. 
 
 1 "Afin de les rendre," he says, " plus commodes a lire, et que ce 
 qu'ils ont d'utile fut plus connu."
 
 3H THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 I hope my poor translation may take you back to 
 the original. " The Project of the Peace Perpetual, 
 concerned as it is with a subject the most worthy to 
 engage the attention of a philanthropist, was also of 
 all the Abbe's projects the one which he thought most 
 about, and pursued most obstinately ; for there is 
 hardly another word than obstinacy * that one can 
 apply to the zeal of a missionary who never aban- 
 doned his purpose despite the plain impossibility of 
 success, despite the daily ridicule he encountered, 
 and the constant mortification he had to undergo. It 
 seems that this good soul, whose only care was the 
 public interest, measured the pains he bestowed on 
 things wholly by their degrees of usefulness, without 
 ever allowing himself to be discouraged by obstacles, 
 and without a thought of personal advantage." If any 
 moral truth is capable of proof, says Rousseau, the 
 general and particular utility of this project has been 
 amply demonstrated. The advantages which would 
 flow from its execution to every sovereign, to every 
 nation, and to all Europe, are immense, clear, incon- 
 testable ; nothing could be more solid and exact than 
 the train of reasoning by which the author establishes 
 them : realise his European Republic for a single day 
 and that will be long enough to make it endure for 
 ever, so strongly would every individual feel by that 
 brief experience his own particular share in the com- 
 mon gain. Nevertheless, the very princes who would 
 defend the project with all their might if it were once 
 brought into existence, would as strongly oppose its 
 execution, and will as infallibly prevent its being 
 introduced. Thus the work of the Abbe de Saint- 
 1 " Opiniatrite."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 315 
 
 Pierre upon perpetual peace would appear at first 
 sight useless for making peace, and superfluous for 
 preserving it ; " then it is a vain speculation," cries 
 the impatient reader ; no, it is a book of solidity and 
 sense, and it is very important that it exists. 1 
 
 Arbiter. Yes ; there Rousseau has hit the nail on 
 the head. The life work of the Abb has been 
 perpetually prolonged by his book. Mr. Morley has 
 shown how much the nineteenth century, aye, and 
 the twentieth, might learn from the French philo- 
 sophers of the eighteenth century. Every great 
 reformer renews his devotion and refreshes his 
 enthusiasm in the works of his predecessors. This, 
 I think, is especially true of the champions of liberty 
 and charity and peace. I remember so well nearly 
 thirty years ago it must have been in 1878 an 
 oration delivered by Victor Hugo at the Voltaire 
 Centenary. Remember, he said, what we owe to the 
 eighteenth century and what we have still to learn 
 from its master spirits. The tragedy of peoples is 
 not yet played out. War still raises its head. We 
 must take counsel with those mighty thinkers, Voltaire 
 and his allies, with Montesquieu, and Diderot, and 
 Rousseau. And then he went on if my memory 
 serves me right : 
 
 " We must stay the shedding of human blood. 
 Enough ye despots. Barbarism survives ; but let 
 philosophy protest. Let the eighteenth century succour 
 the nineteenth. The philosophers, our predecessors, 
 are the apostles of truth. Let us invoke their 
 illustrious shades ; face to face with monarchies bent 
 
 1 " Non, c'est un livre solide et sense, et il est tres-important qu'il 
 existe."
 
 3i6 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 on war, let them again proclaim the right of men 
 to life and the right of mind to liberty, the sovereignty 
 of reason, the sacredness of labour, the blessedness of 
 peace ; and as night issues from the thrones let light 
 radiate from the tombs." 
 
 Admiral. You almost persuade me to believe in 
 books. Men like Saint-Pierre who are in advance 
 of their age clearly ought to put their thoughts on 
 paper. 
 
 Ego. So that a wiser generation may borrow them. 
 
 Admiral. Precisely so. Let the man of genius 
 and invention write never so badly, he may always 
 hope to convey his idea to some sympathetic man of 
 letters, who will give it immortality. 
 
 Clarke. It is indeed a wonderful refreshment when 
 you have been plodding along with Saint-Pierre to 
 come upon such a passage as this in Rousseau's version: 
 
 "J'espere que quelque ame honnete partagera I'emotion delicieuse 
 avec la quelle je prends la plume sur un sujet si interessant pour 
 1'humanite. Je vais voir, du moins en idee, les hommes s'unir et 
 s'aimer ; je vais penser a une douce et paisible societe de freres, 
 vivans dans une concorde eternelle, tous conduits par les meTnes 
 maximes, tous heureux du bonheur commun ; et realisant en 
 moi-meme un tableau si touchant, 1'image d'une felicite qui n'est 
 point, m'en fera gouter quelques instans une veritable." 
 
 Now I feel that I have made some amends to 
 the shade of Jean Jacques for my translations, and 
 I will try to carry you on with English to the 
 end of the journey. 
 
 Saint-Pierre was renowned as the embodiment of 
 justice, charity and public spirit. He was nicknamed 
 soliciteur -pour le bien public. But a reformer, how- 
 ever benevolent, and a lover of truth and peace,
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 317 
 
 could not then hope to be honoured as he deserved. 
 The French Academy which had elected him in 
 place of Bergeret afterwards ejected him, by an 
 almost unanimous vote, because, impressed by the 
 miseries Louis the Fourteenth had caused to France 
 and by the vast sums he had wasted, Saint-Pierre 
 refused him the title of the Grand Monarch after his 
 death. Fontenelle alone voted against the sentence of 
 exclusion. But though Saint-Pierre got few acknow- 
 ledgments and had to endure many insults l in his 
 life time, 2 he must have been well pleased when 
 he received a letter from the great Leibnitz thanking 
 him in these terms for a copy of the Projet cTune paix 
 perpttuelle. " I have read it with attention, and am 
 persuaded that such a project on the whole is feasible, 
 and that its execution would be one of the most 
 useful things in the world. Although my suffrage 
 cannot be of any weight, I have nevertheless thought 
 that gratitude obliged me to give it, and to add some 
 remarks for the satisfaction of a meritorious author, 
 who must have much reputation and firmness to 
 have dared and been able to oppose with success 
 the prejudiced crowd and the unbridled tongue of 
 mockers." 3 Elsewhere Leibnitz, following an older 
 scheme of one of the Catholic princes of Germany, 
 Ernest of Hesse Rhinfels, suggested that a Court of 
 Arbitration for Europe should be established at 
 
 1 La Bruyere caricatured his personal peculiarities, but redeemed 
 this misdemeanour by a most brilliant satire on the mischiefs and 
 folly of war. 
 
 2 Saint-Pierre died in 1743, aged eighty-five. 
 
 3 See Leibnitz, Opera (Dutens), vol. v., pp. 56, 20, 21. This is 
 Sumner's translation.
 
 3i 8 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Rome and presided over by the Pope, that its old 
 spiritual authority should be restored to the Church 
 and that any State or prince refusing to comply with 
 the arbitral award should be excommunicated. Such 
 a plan, he thought, would be as likely to succeed as 
 that of Saint-Pierre. 
 
 A little later than Saint-Pierre and Rousseau, but 
 before the destruction of the French Monarchy, 
 Turgot, Necker, and Vattel distinguished themselves 
 by their efforts and writings in the cause of inter- 
 national justice and peace. But Turgot, the greatest 
 of the three, is the only one whose speculations 
 turned upon the possibility of a federative union. 
 Turgot was the pure and disinterested statesman 
 whom God seemed to have raised up to be the 
 peaceful deliverer of France and Europe. The story 
 of his rise and fall, of his reforms and of his 
 speculations, was written by his friend Condorcet, in a 
 book which John Stuart Mill regarded as one of the 
 most inspiring of all biographies. Turgot entered 
 into the intellectual heritage of Montesquieu, Voltaire, 
 Quesnay and Rousseau. To the first he owed the 
 scientific spirit of the legislator, to the second a 
 supreme regard for justice and a fierce hatred of 
 intolerance, to the third a determination to liberate 
 commerce, reduce expenditure, and lighten taxation, 
 a bold and radical outlook upon political problems. 
 
 In his essay on the government of Poland Rousseau 
 had proclaimed a federal republic to be the only one 
 which unites in itself all the advantages of great 
 and small States. This doctrine came to him 
 direct from Montesquieu. But in the Contrat Social 
 Rousseau maintained further that all lawful govern-
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 319 
 
 ments are " republican," meaning by republican any 
 government directed by the general will which is the 
 law. In this spirit Turgot favoured the republican 
 as the best of all constitutions. He meant a State in 
 which all the rights of men are conserved by law, 
 and the legislative power is exercised by the people 
 or their representatives ; but he used often to say, 
 " I have never known a constitution truly republican." 
 Upon this Condorcet remarks : " M. Turgot died 
 before the end of the American War and he was 
 afraid that the influence of the mercantilist spirit and 
 of English prejudices would be detrimental both to 
 the constitution of the United States and to their 
 commercial and fiscal policy." If Turgot's fears 
 were not fully justified he had at least correctly 
 diagnosed the most serious of the diseases that have 
 afflicted the politics and society of the American 
 Commonwealth. Condorcet, on the other hand, 
 was more afraid of the establishment of a military 
 caste. 
 
 In Turgot's opinion the conduct of a State, like 
 that of an individual, ought to be guided by justice, 
 reason and morality. The relations of States ought 
 to be regulated by international law just as the 
 relations of individuals are regulated by municipal 
 law. He believed in the perfectibility of every 
 individual and by consequence of every State. The 
 perfection of the order of society would naturally 
 go hand-in-hand with the progress of the moral and 
 intellectual virtues. Men would be brought by the 
 influence of reason and interest to the practice of 
 peace, and every nation would realise that its own 
 happiness was bound up with the happiness of others.
 
 320 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 He was no fanatical admirer of patriotism as it was 
 then preached and practised. It seemed to be too 
 often the desire to profit by the grandeur of your 
 country or to belong to a free slave-owning race. In 
 any case it was a passion which required to be 
 moderated and rationalised. In time, by the spread 
 of enlightenment, men would gradually be disabused 
 of their prejudices against foreigners. Abandoning 
 the grotesque policy which opposed nation to nation, 
 power to power, passion to passion, and vice to vice, 
 they would consult reason and carry out what she 
 prescribed for the good of the whole human race. 
 He had no doubt but that each succeeding age, by 
 the progress of agriculture, the arts and sciences, 
 would benefit every class of men, diminishing their 
 physical evils, increasing their means of enjoyment, 
 and averting some of the scourges under which they 
 suffer. "The nations are drawing together: soon all 
 that the soil produces, all that industry has created in 
 the different countries of the world, will be available 
 for the whole human race. Eventually all peoples 
 will recognise the same principles, will use the same 
 knowledge, and will unite to promote the general 
 progress and the common good." 1 
 
 It is in the light of this general philosophy, which 
 after all is only a particular rendering of the 
 reformer's proper temperament and faith, that we must 
 interpret and fill in Condorcet's sketch of Turgot's 
 constitutional projects. As a Republican constitution 
 was the most likely to secure justice and happiness 
 to the citizens, so a federation of Republics appeared 
 
 1 Turgot's confident optimism was fortified by a theory that 
 the invention of printing had made retrogression impossible.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 321 
 
 to Turgot to be the best means of securing the 
 Republican State against invasion from without. " He 
 thought that all neighbouring peoples, with the same 
 language, customs, and manners of life, would 
 naturally form such associations ; and he had long 
 meditated on the means of giving these leagues 
 solidity and permanence, and of constituting them on 
 fixed principles." Existing federations in Europe 
 had arisen by chance or circumstance, but, thanks to 
 the new spirit of an enlightened age, 1 America 
 had been able to procure a constitutional system, 
 simpler, more regular, and better put together than 
 the haphazard unions of Europe ; and so hopeful an 
 experiment had led Turgot to devote himself, with 
 the more interest and energy, to what was then 
 almost a novel departure in politics. 
 
 Each state of the union should agree in its legis- 
 lature to conform to the principles of natural justice, 
 which would include freedom of trade and the 
 emancipation of labour and industry from all restric- 
 tions. By these means some of the gravest perils of 
 a disunion would be averted. Turgot, it appears, 
 though he felt certain of the ultimate establishment 
 of a permanent peace, was concerned as a practical 
 statesman with the means by which the natural rate 
 of progress towards that goal might be accelerated. 
 Although Condorcet makes no definite statement on 
 the subject, he lays much stress upon the completeness 
 of Turgot's design and of the harmony which existed 
 between his domestic and foreign policy. Turgot was 
 a citizen of the world because he was a citizen of 
 France: no one was ever more convinced than he of the 
 
 1 " Grace aux lumieres et a 1'esprit qui regnent dans ce siecle." 
 
 x
 
 322 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 solidarity of the world : none more alive to the fallacy of 
 supposing that the real interest of any particular State 
 is antagonistic to the interests of other States, or in any 
 way incongruous with the common good of mankind. 
 
 At the same time he recognised that revolutions, 
 and even violence, might conduce to the establish- 
 ment of the ideal order. Thus the destruction of 
 the Turkish Empire, he thought, would be a real 
 gain to Europe and the world by enlarging commerce, 
 destroying monopolies, and opening up a better 
 prospect for the abolition of slavery. We may assume, 
 I think, that if Turgot had lived to develop the ideas 
 of which Condorcet has left a splendid but imperfect 
 impression, he would have shown how, from a number 
 of federated Republics, a union would naturally grow 
 up, embracing the whole civilised world, leaving each 
 constituent Republic perfect freedom of development, 
 and insuring a perpetual reign of peace and justice. 
 There is no difference in principle between the 
 functions of the Supreme Council, which would 
 regulate the common affairs of his federated Republics, 
 and decide from time to time such differences as arose 
 between its members, and the Supreme Council of 
 Europe, which Saint-Pierre dreamt of, or even that 
 Supreme Council of the civilised world, which was in 
 a measure realised by the Hague Congress. 1 
 
 1 After describing Turgot's " principal views " of foreign policy, 
 and particularly his ideas of federation, Condorcet observes: "On 
 voit combien elles etoient liees avec le reste de ses principles, et 
 combien la constitution d'un grand etat Republicain devroit 
 diffrer peu de celle d'une Rpublique federative ; combien meme 
 aux formes pres destinees a limiter le pourvoir du conseil supreme, 
 cette administration se troveroit rapprochee de celle qui convient 
 a toutes les grandes nations."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 323 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE work of these great French writers and thinkers, 
 which thrilled England and reconstituted America, 
 was also felt in Germany, long the home of science 
 and art, now preparing to assert herself and her 
 language in the empire of letters. Rousseau, himself 
 a native of Geneva, and half German in sympathy, 
 was fond of expressing his sense of the importance 
 of the Corps Germanique, a body formidable to foreign 
 countries from the numbers and valour of its people, 
 but serviceable in that its constitution, valueless for 
 purposes of aggression, served as a breakwater 
 against conquerors. The Empire, in Rousseau's eyes, 
 was the key to the peace of Europe ; and therefore, 
 said he, " the public law, which the Germans 
 study so diligently, is even more important than 
 they think, for it is the public law not only of 
 Germany, but in certain respects of all Europe." 
 A century afterwards Lord Brougham declared that 
 international law was the child of the Germanic 
 confederacy. At first, however, German thinkers had 
 not much to contribute to the peace idea. In 1763 
 Totze issued from Gottingen a treatise upon the 
 plan of Henry the Fourth, and four years later 
 Lilienfeld in his Neues Staatsgebaude published at 
 Leipzig, after exposing the wastefulness of armaments 
 and the foolish miseries of the battlefield (where 
 controversies are determined as by the throw of the 
 dice), urged that nations should submit their quarrels 
 to arbitrators, or, better still, institute a confederacy 
 capable of enforcing the decrees and awards of a
 
 324 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 supreme tribunal. 1 Totze and Lilienfeld are forgotten; 
 but Immanuel Kant, king of modern philosophy, has 
 associated with his own name and fame the glorious 
 cause of peace and union. Kant was sixty years old 
 in 1784 when he first approached the subject of peace 
 and war in his Idea of a Universal History from a 
 Cosmopolitan Point of View, three years after Turgot's 
 death, but two years before the appearance of 
 Condorcet's memoir. There is a remarkable resem- 
 blance between the view of the French statesman 
 and the German philosopher. Both insisted on 
 the connection between foreign and domestic policy. 
 Injustice at home leads to injustice abroad. A 
 corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, and 
 corrupt constitutions are not likely, when united, to 
 produce a good federation. If there is a difference 
 between Kant and Turgot, it is that Turgot lays 
 more stress upon the need for internal reforms. If each 
 State will found itself upon justice and right, the way 
 yill be paved for international harmony. Kant, on 
 the other hand, concludes his theory of the natural 
 history of society, with the remark that a perfect 
 civil constitution cannot be looked for until the 
 external relations of States are regulated by righteous 
 principles. The evils of war must drive States, as 
 they had already driven individuals, to seek refuge 
 in leagues and associations, in order by some sacrifice 
 of independence to gain peace and security. These 
 leagues and associations would go on forming and 
 dissolving, until at last there would arise a federation 
 of all civilised powers for the establishment of universal 
 and perpetual peace. That is the end prescribed 
 1 Cp. Sumner's War System of the Commonwealth of Nations.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 325 
 
 for humanity by reason. Then justice will reign 
 over the whole world not only between the citizens 
 of each particular State, but between States in the 
 great society of nations. To perfect the internal 
 constitution of each individual State will be a slow 
 and difficult task. " Out of such crooked material as 
 man is made, nothing can be hammered quite straight." 
 But if imperfect men have consented to forego the 
 " privilege " of private war, may we not hope that 
 imperfect States will likewise see the advantage of 
 foregoing the privilege of making public war upon one 
 another ? Was not the Hague Convention brought 
 about by the very imperfect government of Russia ? 
 
 In his next book, however, Kant's republican feeling 
 and his sympathy with the French Revolution brings 
 him nearer, as we shall see, to the standpoint of 
 Turgot. Perhaps that fierce drama and the action 
 of the European despots had impressed him with the 
 importance of constitutional machinery. In the Zum 
 ewigen Frieden^ published at Konigsberg in 1795, the 
 idea of Sully, Penn, and Saint-Pierre appears for the 
 first time in the full robes of philosophy. "The Peace 
 project," as Kuno Fischer says in his Life of Kant, 
 " is here brought into connection with a deep-laid 
 system of thought ; there is no fanatical extravagance 
 or gushy philosophy ; both are foreign alike to the 
 philosophy and character of Kant." 
 
 Schubert tells us that Saint-Pierre had undoubtedly 
 inspired Kant with the desire and missionary zeal to 
 propagate the idea of a perpetual peace in Germany ; 1 
 and it is plain from the intimate relationship between 
 this tractate and the rest of Kant's writings that he 
 1 See Schubert's Kant und seine Stellung zur Politlk.
 
 326 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 is here giving us the ripe fruits of long meditation. 
 But though the original inspiration must have come 
 from Saint-Pierre and Rousseau, the immediate occasion 
 of Kant's message and the form in which he delivered 
 it, was suggested by the negotiations at Basle, and by 
 the two treaties of peace concluded there in April and 
 July 1795 between the French Republic, Prussia, and 
 Spain. Disconcerted by the victories of French arms 
 in the campaign of 1794, Prussia withdrew from the 
 coalition and acknowledged the Rhine as the boundary 
 of a Republic, whose right to exist she had so recently 
 invaded. By joining in the unjustifiable aggression of 
 1792, the Prussian Government had shown not only 
 hatred of liberty, but a contempt for the principle which 
 forbids one country to meddle with the constitution 
 and domestic politics of another. By the Peace of Basle 
 Prussia recognised the French Republic, coolly gave 
 over to France all German territories on the left 
 bank of the Rhine, and then, to recoup herself for 
 surrendering what did not belong to her, obtained 
 from the French Republic a secret article acknow- 
 ledging the right of Prussia to annex other German 
 territories ! Yet it appears that there were Prussian 
 statesmen at this time so simple as to think, or so 
 crafty as to give out, that the Treaty of Basle 
 would pave the way to the establishment of a 
 permanent and perpetual peace in Europe. 
 
 It was rumoured during the summer of 1795 that 
 the philosopher of Konigsberg who was as inde- 
 pendent of the Prussian 1 as Tolstoi is of the Russian 
 Government was preparing a treatise on peace ; 
 and German publicists seemed to have looked forward 
 
 1 What a contrast to his successor Hegel, the court philosopher.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 327 
 
 with lively anticipations to a sharp indictment of the 
 whole course of Prussian policy, from the coalition 
 against France to the Peace of Basle. In this 
 they were disappointed. The treatise appeared in the 
 autumn, but it contained not a single direct comment 
 on either the war or the peace, nor any criticism of 
 any living king, statesman, diplomatist, or general. 
 Nevertheless if any of those who negotiated the treaty 
 read Kant they must have winced a little. Zum ewigen 
 Frieden is not merely written in the form of a treaty, 
 being divided into articles, each of which serves as 
 a text for exposition and argument, it is written in 
 the form of the Treaty of Basle, which Kant, as it 
 were, parodies, if such a word may be used of an 
 ironical imitation which produces its effect by the 
 contrast between the moral sublimity of the copy and 
 the moral depravity of the original. The Treaty of 
 Basle contained preliminary articles, so did the Kantian 
 treatise ; and the first of these is a palpable hit at 
 the Basle Treaty : 
 
 No peace shall be regarded as valid which is made 
 with the secret reservation of material for a future war. 
 
 Otherwise, as Kant points out, peace would not be 
 peace, but a mere truce. Jesuitry may approve of 
 mental reservations in solemn contracts between 
 governments, but such casuistry is in truth dishon- 
 ourable and humiliating to kings and their ministers. 
 "If indeed," says the philosopher scornfully, "we 
 accept those enlightened ideas of statescraft which 
 make the true glory of the State depend upon constant 
 augmentation of its power by any and every means, 
 then of course this judgment of mine will appear 
 schoolmasterish and pedantic." The second of the
 
 328 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 preliminary articles must also have been suggested by 
 the Basle Treaty ; for it enacts that no independent 
 State, however small, may be transferred to another 
 by inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift. For a 
 State is not a property or an estate, but a society of 
 human beings which none but they may order and 
 dispose. 
 
 " Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube ; 
 Nam qute Mars aliis dat tibi regna Venus " 
 
 had been suggested by Hungarian wit 1 as a motto 
 for the House of Hapsburg, but the idea of obtaining 
 sovereignty over another State by marriage with its 
 ruler, though still considered legitimate, was morally, 
 legally, and politically indefensible ; and the same con- 
 demnation resting on the same principle was extended 
 by Kant to the plan of hiring the troops of a neutral 
 State to fight against an enemy. It is some satisfaction 
 to reflect that in the course of a century civilised 
 opinion has made so much progress towards a recog- 
 nition of the dignity of nations, even of those who 
 are still the subjects of an absolute monarchy. A 
 monarch who dreamed of acquiring alien territory by 
 marriage would be thought crazy, and no country 
 would allow its troops to be hired out to a foreign 
 power. To do so would, I suppose, be tantamount 
 to a declaration of war. 
 
 The third article, alas, in these preliminaries, is 
 still far, very far, from being adopted. Standing armies 
 shall be gradually abolished. Yet Kant's argument 
 against them is so conclusive that it must tell in 
 
 1 King Matthias Corvinus : " Let others wage wars ; do thou, 
 happy Austria, marry ; for kingdoms which Mars gives to others 
 Venus gives to thee."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 329 
 
 the long run. Armies, he says, that stand in constant 
 readiness for war are a menace to other countries. 
 One army is put into competition with another, and 
 no limit can be set to their increasing size and 
 costliness. At last armies become so burdensome that 
 a war may be undertaken in the hope of obtaining 
 relief. A short war, it is argued, may be a quick cut to 
 a smaller army. Another objection to standing armies 
 is that the state ought not to hire men to kill and to 
 be killed as if they were mere machines an objection 
 which does not apply to a volunteer force of citizens. 
 A government easily gets into the habit of thinking 
 that its soldiers are instruments to be used, and that 
 their lives are of no human value. So when the Greek 
 Emperor proposed to a prince of Bulgaria that they 
 should save the lives of their subjects by settling their 
 quarrel in a duel, the prince replied : " A smith who 
 has tongs won't handle the red-hot iron." 
 
 In a fourth article Kant provides that " no national 
 debts shall be contracted in connection with the 
 external business of the State." The abandonment 
 of loans for war purposes would greatly conduce to 
 peace by putting an end to a system by which war 
 can be waged (for a time) with comparative ease 
 and convenience. 
 
 What do you think of that proposal ? 
 
 Ego. To me it seems, like the third article, quite 
 impracticable. Loans for war must continue as long 
 as wars. You might almost as well try with Tolstoi 
 to abolish wars by abolishing governments and taxes. 
 Credit is part of the machinery of modern finance, 
 and is legitimate, if used in moderation, for extra- 
 ordinary expenses of all kinds.
 
 330 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Meyer. And what a poor way Kant chose of 
 recommending peace to the Bourses ! 
 
 Ego. I am surprised that he did not confine himself 
 to forbidding neutral States to lend money to 
 belligerents. That, I think, was one of Cobden's 
 proposals. 
 
 Arbiter. Yes ; and Cobden did manage to spoil the 
 loan which the Austrians tried to raise in London for 
 the Hungarian war. But I am afraid the Russian loan 
 raised for the same wicked purpose was successful. 
 
 Admiral. There is something indecent in the 
 spectacle of rich powers, like England, France, and 
 the United States, financing a war between two poor 
 nations like Russia and Japan. 
 
 Clarke. Yes, indeed ; and I accept the amendment 
 of the article. Kant I should say was rather weak 
 in economics, and would probably have agreed to 
 the change. The next article, however, is purely 
 Cobdenic : No State shall interfere violently with the 
 constitution and government of another. This is, so 
 far as I know, the earliest complete statement of 
 the doctrine of non-intervention, a rule the breach 
 of which turned the pacific French Republic into 
 the most formidable and aggressive of military 
 empires. 
 
 In the sixth and last of the preliminary articles 
 Kant forbids States at war with one another to 
 employ assassination, poisoning, perfidy, or any other 
 mode of hostility which would make mutual respect 
 and confidence impossible after the war is over. All 
 perfidy, treachery, and dishonourable stratagems, such 
 as the use of spies, should be avoided, though in 
 using spies you may only be employing a traitor.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 331 
 
 Case. To bribe or intimidate another to do a 
 treacherous act is equivalent to doing it oneself. 
 
 Seymour. And it is a dangerous thing to rely on 
 the dishonesty of others even in war, where all 
 things are proverbially fair. For my own part, I 
 never thought well of " the National Scouts." The 
 energy Lord Kitchener put into organising those 
 traitors might have been directed into more useful 
 channels. 
 
 Arbiter. The National Scouts I take it (whatever 
 their military merits) are a very good example of 
 the short-sighted kind of hostility which poisons the 
 social atmosphere after the war is over, and makes 
 it more difficult to heal the wounds. 
 
 Admiral. It was a despicable performance. To 
 think that a great nation like ours should have 
 bribed men to fight against their countrymen. But 
 we are getting out of our course 
 
 Arbiter. And it is growing late ! 
 
 Clarke. Shall we adjourn ? My longitude is 
 immense ! 
 
 Admiral. No, no. 'Tis a good cargo, and we 
 must see it safe in port. 
 
 Arbiter. You shall finish your paper, and we will 
 try not to interrupt. 
 
 Clarke (continuing). The object of Kant's preliminary 
 articles is to show that an improvement of moral con- 
 ditions, as well as of political contrivances, is necessary 
 to prepare the world for peace. The standard of inter- 
 national law, custom, and morality had been sensibly 
 raised in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. Grotius and his successors had not written 
 in vain. But Kant saw that the standard was still far
 
 332 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 too low to promise success to any federal plan 
 for the abolition of war. Accordingly, before putting 
 forward his political scheme in " definitive articles," 
 he embodied in the preliminary articles I have 
 mentioned those changes for the better which time 
 and reason might be expected to effect in national 
 conduct. And his optimism has been so far justified 
 that we can read Kant's " three definitive articles 
 for the establishment of peace between States " with- 
 out the contemptuous smile or the despairing groan 
 which they extorted from his contemporaries. 
 
 Were Kant now alive he would probably hold 
 that the conditions sketched out in his preliminaries 
 have been sufficiently fulfilled to justify a convention 
 of civilised nations for the establishment of permanent 
 peace. That the state of peace is not natural, but 
 must be established by artificial means, he takes for 
 granted. It is with nations as with individuals and 
 small communities ; the mere cessation of a public war, 
 like the end of a duel or a private war, is no guarantee 
 that peace will continue. Individuals and cities within 
 the same State have obtained for themselves a perma- 
 nent and perpetual guarantee against duels and private 
 war by creating a comparatively large society ruled 
 by law and regulated by police. As Kant expresses it 
 elsewhere in his Rechtslehre, " the natural state of nations, 
 like that of individuals, is a condition that must be 
 abandoned in order that they may enter a state 
 regulated by law." But neither in the case of the 
 individual nor of the nation does abandonment mean 
 complete surrender. May we not say, the better the 
 State the less of personal liberty are its subjects required 
 to surrender ? In a police State like Russia the subject
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 333 
 
 (he can hardly be called a citizen) surrenders much 
 liberty, and gets little security in return. In England, 
 or in the states of New England, the surrender is 
 infinitely less and the return infinitely greater. Here 
 indeed I am going beyond my author, though on 
 lines suggested by him. But let us turn our atten- 
 tion to his first " Definitivartikel " : The Civic constitu- 
 tion of each State shall be republican. 
 
 A republic is the only constitution founded upon 
 the freedom and equality of citizens, and upon their 
 dependence on a common legislature. The two prin- 
 cipal features of a republican constitution as defined 
 by Kant are that it is a representative form of govern- 
 ment, and that it observes the political principle of 
 severing the executive from the legislature. That 
 Kant, in common with most of his predecessors, 
 should have exalted this second principle so high is 
 a curious testimony to the influence of mere authority 
 over the most profound and original intellects. It 
 may be contrasted with his pungent exposure of 
 Pope's couplet : 
 
 " For forms of government let fools contest : 
 Whate'er is best administered is best." 
 
 " If this only means that the best administered 
 government is the best administered, then, in Swift's 
 phrase, he has cracked a nut to find a worm. But 
 if it means that the best administered government is 
 also the best kind of political constitution, then the 
 saying is fundamentally false ; for the example of a 
 good reign is no proof that the State is well consti- 
 tuted." Some of the Roman Emperors, like Titus, 
 were good ; others, like his successor Domitian, were 
 absolutely bad and unfit to rule. And as Domitian's
 
 334 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 unfitness was well known beforehand, a good constitu- 
 tion would have rejected him. It follows that the 
 Roman Empire, though it was well administered at 
 times, was not well constituted. It was a good 
 government under Titus, a bad government under 
 Domitian, but a bad form of government under both. 
 
 Kant, therefore, had come to see how important 
 it is that States, if they are to join in a League of 
 perpetual peace, should have good constitutions ; and 
 he held it to be a sacred duty of the inhabitants of 
 all States to work steadily by peaceful means for the 
 improvement of their constitutions. He deprecates 
 revolutionary proceedings. " It would be absurd to 
 demand that every imperfection should be violently 
 altered on the spot." 
 
 A republican or representative system of govern- 
 ment is not only desirable in itself, springing as it 
 does from the pure fountain of justice ; it also offers 
 the best prospect for the attainment of perpetual 
 peace. For under this constitution the consent of 
 the citizens must be gained before war can be entered 
 upon, the right to declare war being vested in the 
 legislature, not in the executive, so that in this vital 
 matter the executive would be controlled by the 
 representative legislative assembly. And this being 
 so, " nothing is more certain than that they would 
 think very seriously before setting out on so bad a 
 business." For a people to declare war would be 
 to declare miseries against themselves themselves 
 to fight, themselves to pay, themselves to repair 
 the devastation left by the war, and, to crown all, 
 themselves to shoulder the burden of the debts con- 
 tracted during the war. In States where the citizens
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 335 
 
 have no votes war may be undertaken with a light 
 heart by a ruler who is the proprietor of the State, 
 and not a citizen. A war will not interfere in the 
 least with his feasts, his hunts, and his other amuse- 
 ments. On the contrary, he will regard it as a kind 
 of picnic ; and if for the sake of appearances some 
 justification is deemed necessary, the tyrant may 
 trust his diplomatic corps, always zealous and well 
 furnished with suitable pretexts for such occasions. 
 Thus Kant in prose declared as plainly as Cowper 
 in verse against kingly war. It is not fit nor can 
 it bear the shock of rational discussion that one 
 man 
 
 " Should when he pleases, and on whom he will, 
 Wage war, with any or with no pretence 
 Of provocation given or wrong sustained." 
 
 You will now have anticipated the second Definitive 
 Article of Kant's perpetual peace, the peace of 
 Konigsberg as contrasted with the peace of Basle. 
 The law of Nations shall be grounded in a federation 
 of free States. 1 
 
 As among masterless men, wrote Hobbes, more 
 than a century earlier, in his famous book the 
 Leviathan, there is perpetual war of every man 
 against his neighbour, so it is with States and 
 Commonwealths : " they live in the condition of a 
 perpetual war, and upon the confines of battle, with 
 their frontiers armed and cannons planted against 
 their neighbours round about." This melancholy 
 
 1 " Das Volkerrecht soil auf einen Foderalismus freier Staaten 
 gegriindet sein." Such a constitution, as he has already explained, 
 would be a " rechtliche Verfassung, nach dem Volkerrecht der 
 Staaten in Verhaltniss gegen einander."
 
 336 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 truth was the starting point of Kant's proposal. As 
 lawless neighbours injure one another so do lawless 
 States. As lawless men for the sake of security 
 enter society and submit themselves to municipal 
 law, so should States enter an international society 
 and submit themselves to an international law. This 
 would give rise, not to a new nation, but to a 
 federation of nations, not to a new State, but to 
 a federation of States. 1 A loose confederacy of 
 civilised States, which is the uttermost degree of 
 political union that wise men can hope for (perhaps 
 the most they can desire) in the near future, would 
 not be an absolute guarantee against war the most 
 perfect municipal system of justice and police does 
 not absolutely secure the individual members of a 
 State from being murdered but it would be at least 
 a mighty breakwater against national ambitions and 
 passions, and would form an invaluable haven of 
 refuge for small nations. But will Sovereign States 
 consent to bate a jot of their sovereignty, however 
 great and preponderant the advantages ? Certainly 
 some of them will be reluctant to enter the empire 
 of law and peace. For a sovereign to acknowledge 
 a superior is to consent to a diminution of his title. 
 It is a loss of "majesty." Kant compares this attitude 
 of States, the assertion of their right to do wrong, 
 whatever suffering it entails on them and their neigh- 
 bours, with the attachment of the savage to lawless 
 liberty. That attachment we civilised men regard 
 with cultivated horror and contempt. It is a sign, 
 we think, of brutal ignorance the hall mark of 
 
 1 " Dies ware ein Volkerbund, der aber gleichvohl kein Volkerstaat 
 sein miisste."
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 337 
 
 barbarism. But are not we also savages when we 
 pass from judging the relations of individuals to 
 judge the relations of States, from domestic to foreign 
 policy ? Every civilised State, like every uncivilised 
 savage, thinks its " majesty " postulates independ- 
 ence of all external authority, freedom from all 
 external law ; and civilised rulers make it their proud 
 boast that without exposing their own persons they 
 can nod thousands of men to death for causes 
 in which those thousands are totally unconcerned. 
 The principal difference, Kant concludes grimly, 
 between the European and American savages, is 
 that whereas whole tribes of the latter are eaten up 
 by their enemies, the former find a better way with 
 their foes than serving them up at table : a European 
 State prefers to make its conquered foes into " loyal " 
 subjects, and so by increasing the military material 
 at its command to enlarge the scope and scale of 
 its wars. Yet the word " right " was still applied to 
 wars and foreign policy. Unctuous quotations from 
 Grotius and PuffendorfF and Vattel were the homage 
 
 o 
 
 paid by unjust aggression and ignorant passion to 
 wisdom, moderation, and morality. Though justice 
 slumbered, it commanded already the lip-service of 
 mankind, and would in time be mistress of their 
 conduct as well as their tongues. 
 
 A cloud of witnesses might be gathered to justify 
 Kant's sublime confidence in the future. But no 
 more cogent evidence could be required than the 
 fact that the third and last definitive article of his 
 imaginary convention has already been carried out 
 by the universal consent of the civilised world. That 
 article declares the right of all men as citizens of the
 
 338 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 world to universal hospitality. Kant thought a treaty- 
 would be required in order to enable travellers to visit 
 foreign countries without incurring the risk of imprison- 
 ment or persecution. We can hardly believe that a 
 century ago a right we now all treat as a matter of 
 course still required to be established. It is interest- 
 ing, in conclusion, to note the philosopher's opinion 
 about the way in which this international confederacy, 
 so plainly prescribed by reason and morality, was likely 
 to come about. " If fortune so orders it that a mighty 
 and enlightened people can form a republic (which by 
 its nature is inclined to perpetual peace), this would 
 serve as the centre of a federal union which other 
 States might join, and so a system of freedom based 
 upon international law would be built up among 
 States, and would gradually be extended, as more 
 and more unions of a similar kind came into exist- 
 ence." 
 
 From a sketch, necessarily short and defective, 
 of projects for the federation of civilised powers it 
 may be useful to turn in conclusion once more to 
 the practical question, whether by such means we 
 can ever hope to see permanent peace established. 
 Thirty years before the perfection of the Federal 
 Union of the United States, and fifteen years before 
 the Declaration of Independence, Rousseau declared 
 that if ever mankind is to be relieved from the 
 evils of war it will most likely be by some form 
 of confederative government which, uniting peoples 
 as a State unites individual citizens, will place 
 States and governments under the rule of law. At 
 a time when Europe looked largely to antiquity for 
 its models, the federal form seemed to be inadequately
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 339 
 
 supported by the Amphictyonic Council and the 
 Leagues of Lycia, Achaea, and Etruria. 
 
 On the other hand, the authority of the Esprit 
 des Lois could be cited with effect. It is very 
 probable, wrote Montesquieu, that all mankind 
 would in the end have been obliged to live under 
 the rule of a single person, had they not contrived 
 a kind of constitution which unites all the internal 
 advantages of a republic with the external force of 
 a monarchy. A confederate republic, according to 
 the definition of Montesquieu, is a convention by 
 which several smaller States agree to become members 
 of a larger one. It is a kind of assemblage of 
 societies that constitute a new one capable of 
 increasing by means of new associations, till they 
 arrive at such a degree of power as will provide 
 for the security of the united body. Such a 
 republic may support itself without internal corruption, 
 and its form prevents all manner of inconveniences. 
 For example, if one of its officers attempted to 
 usurp authority and make himself tyrant, he could 
 hardly have equal authority and credit in all the 
 confederate States. Were he to gain predominance 
 in one the rest would be alarmed. Were he to 
 subdue a part, the States which remained free could 
 subdue him with independent forces before he was 
 settled in his usurpation. Should an insurrection 
 occur in one State the rest can quell it. Should 
 abuses creep into one part, they can be reformed 
 by those that remain sound. The State may be 
 destroyed on one side and not on the other ; 
 the confederacy may be dissolved and the con- 
 federates preserve their sovereignty. In fine, " as this
 
 340 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 government is composed of small republics, it enjoys 
 the internal happiness of each, and with respect to its 
 external situation it is possessed, by means of the 
 association, of all the advantages of large monarchies." 
 It is not surprising that Alexander Hamilton, the 
 father of the American Union, should have appealed 
 in The Federalist to this striking passage as a luminous 
 abridgment of the principal arguments in favour of 
 the constitution for which he and his friends were 
 then pleading with so much craft, learning, and 
 eloquence. 
 
 In other parts of his work, it is true, Montes- 
 quieu, with his eye on Switzerland and Holland, 
 expressed the opinion that a confederate republic 
 could only govern a small extent of territory with 
 success. But in the passage I have cited from the 
 first chapter of his ninth book no such restriction 
 is indicated, and the example of America abundantly 
 proves that there are no territorial limits to the 
 application of the federal scheme, which indeed upon 
 the principles enunciated by Montesquieu is specially 
 adapted for the largest areas, inasmuch as it enables 
 each of its members, however small, to enjoy the 
 advantages of greatness without relinquishing indi- 
 vidual existence and autonomy. If any further 
 objection could be urged on this head to a project 
 like that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre it would 
 be disposed of by the following very obvious 
 consideration. 
 
 Travelling is now at least five or six times as 
 cheap and rapid both by sea and by land as it was 
 in the eighteenth century, and the telegraph positively 
 annihilates distance. Is it too much to say that the
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 341 
 
 mechanical power of administration has been multi- 
 plied by ten ; that it is as easy to govern ten square 
 miles now as it was to govern one square mile in 
 the days of Montesquieu ? 
 
 A more serious objection to the confederation of 
 Europe is undoubtedly the diversity of its systems 
 of government. It was the existence of so many 
 oppressive tyrannies and the fear that Saint-Pierre's 
 project would have made them secure against revolu- 
 tion that induced Rousseau finally to condemn the 
 project as perhaps on the whole at that time unde- 
 sirable. Liberty is even more necessary than peace, 
 and a union which should guarantee tyrants in their 
 odious authority, and perhaps reconcile their peoples 
 to slavery by improving their material prospects, 
 might be premature and productive of more evil 
 than good. The same reflection evidently weighed 
 with Kant. And it is the peculiar excellence of 
 Kant's great essay that it recognises the necessity for 
 true republics and representative institutions as the 
 basis for a confederate union of Europe. No one 
 who studies the origin of the American Constitution 
 in the pages of The Federalist, or compares the con- 
 stitutions of the older States with that of the Union, 
 can fail to see how carefully the authors of the 
 Union based their articles upon institutions which 
 had already been tried and proved. All the features 
 of the American Constitution may be said to have 
 been borrowed, as they were defended, from State 
 analogies. The Union was intended to be an assem- 
 blage and fusion of the excellences of its members. 
 And this would have been impossible had they not 
 all been of a more or less democratic type.
 
 342 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 From this point of view no one can deny that 
 Europe to-day presents a far more favourable theatre 
 for the operation of republican or representative 
 principles of government than it did in Rousseau's 
 life time or indeed in any previous period of history. 
 When Rousseau wrote, the peoples of France, Italy, 
 Austria, Spain, and Germany were all governed on 
 absolutist principles by great kings or petty despots. In 
 all these countries representative assemblies are estab- 
 lished, exerting in the last three an important influence 
 and in the two first a controlling force. Moreover, 
 parliamentary government is now firmly established 
 in Hungary, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. More 
 than half of the European territory then under the 
 cruel tyranny of Turkey is now divided among the 
 Greeks, the Roumanians, the Servians and the Bul- 
 garians, who all enjoy under their constitutions a degree 
 of liberty, order, and prosperity that could hardly 
 have been dreamed of a century ago. The case of 
 Poland is perhaps the least favourable. Its partition 
 was the great crime of the eighteenth century. But 
 we must remember that the ancient government of 
 Poland by the Polish aristocracy was most oppres- 
 sive ; and if we look at the masses of the Polish and 
 Ruthenian population in Austria and Prussia, we shall 
 probably conclude that there is more both of economic 
 and political liberty than existed in the old kingdom 
 of Poland before its dismemberment. But what of 
 Russia ? It cannot be pretended that Russia has 
 fulfilled the promise of the reigns of Peter the Great 
 and Catherine. But, after all, the serfs have been 
 emancipated, and in the Zemstvos (the county or 
 provincial councils of Russia) the upper and middle
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 343 
 
 classes are learning the use of representative institu- 
 tions and the practice of local self-government. Is 
 it fanciful to look forward to the establishment within 
 the next few years of a parliamentary, or possibly 
 of a federal, constitution for European Russia at least 
 as popular in form and spirit as that of the modern 
 German Empire ? When that great day of enfranchise- 
 ment arrives the most serious of existing obstacles to 
 the project of a permanent peace in Europe will 
 have been removed. For all the people of Europe 
 will then be able to send real representatives to 
 a European diet and congress, and it would be 
 possible though it might not be deemed necessary or 
 desirable for popular elections to be held all over 
 Europe in order to elect the members of a European 
 parliament to discuss common interests, to arrange 
 compromises, to settle controversies, to improve com- 
 mercial relations, and to regulate the foreign policy 
 of the union. 
 
 Arbiter. You have cleared away several difficulties. 
 The objection that Europe is too large for federation 
 is disposed of by the case of the United States, as 
 well as by the modern constitutions of Canada and 
 Australia. The example of Switzerland proves that 
 diversity of language is no bar to political union. 
 The advantages of common action are more and more 
 evident, and I think we may say they are more and 
 more recognised, as the cost of armaments becomes 
 more burdensome, as the distaste for conscription 
 grows, and as the demand for social and reproductive 
 expenditure becomes more and more pressing. But do 
 you think that Europe is sufficiently homogeneous 
 as yet for the adoption of even the loosest imaginable
 
 344 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 form of federal government ? Pray, give us your 
 opinion on this point before you perorate. 
 
 Clarke. My peroration, as you call it, is directed 
 to that very question ; but I do not feel competent 
 to express a strong opinion. Political prophecy is the 
 most gratuitous form of error ; but the friends of peace 
 who have seen the rapid drawing together of nations 
 during the last half century may confidently expect 
 the process to continue at an accelerated speed. A 
 federation of Europe, and ultimately of the world, are 
 possibilities ; but who can predict the precise means 
 by which commerce will secure itself against war, and 
 liberty against armed violence ? Apart from open 
 and public confederations ties less apparent but not 
 less real are everywhere forming between individuals 
 in all parts of the world. Nothing is more astonishing 
 than the extent to which its different parts already 
 depend upon one another for the comforts and neces- 
 saries of life. The poorest and most backward nations 
 are in an economic sense the most independent, but 
 almost every country is rising in the scale and signing 
 fresh pledges of a peaceful disposition. Every philo- 
 sophic student of history must be struck by the ever- 
 growing resemblance in manners, morals, laws, dress, 
 diet, and customs. Thousands of well-to-do people 
 of all races and languages are continually travelling in 
 all parts of the world for pleasure and profit, studying 
 and exchanging ideas, buying and selling. Every 
 great city has its great hotel filled with tourists and 
 commercial travellers a sort of international club 
 house. It is surely true that the civilised powers of 
 the world, including the United States, Canada, and 
 some of the South American Republics, Japan, South
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 345 
 
 Africa, and Australia are far more closely united by 
 the ties of commerce, science, art, and law than was 
 Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century. I 
 feel sure this is so, and that there is more community 
 of political ideas between them, and therefore more 
 capacity for common action, than there was between 
 the powers of Europe in the eighteenth century. If 
 you doubt this compare what was done by international 
 conventions and international action in the nineteenth 
 century with what was effected by the common action 
 of Europe in the eighteenth. Yet political writers 
 at that time recognised the existence of a European 
 society. The powers of Europe were held to form 
 a sort of system ; united by the same international 
 law, by commerce, manners, and customs they were 
 supposed to have a common interest in repelling the 
 Turk, and in preserving what was called the balance 
 of power. If there was already enough of common 
 sentiment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 to authorise utilitarian projects of confederacy, how 
 infinitely more promising is the political material that 
 awaits the Sully, the Penn, or the Saint-Pierre of the 
 twentieth century. 
 
 We all thanked Clarke very earnestly for a discourse 
 which had put us on more intimate terms with so many 
 great projectors of enlightenment and progress. Presently 
 Case said : 
 
 I quite understand why you ended with Kant. 
 It would have been invidious and almost impossible 
 to select from the names of latter-day projectors. 
 But that last sentence of his reminds me of the 
 concluding words in a volume of lectures by the late 
 Henry Sidgwick. He had been speaking of federal
 
 346 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 politics ; and it struck me as remarkable that so 
 cautious a thinker should have committed himself to 
 a prediction regarding future political developments. 
 " We have seen," he said, " a tendency in recent times 
 to the formation of larger political aggregates in 
 Europe ; and we have in North America an impressive 
 example of a political union maintaining internal peace 
 over a region larger than Western Europe. I there- 
 fore think it not beyond the limits of a sober forecast 
 to conjecture that some further integration may take 
 place in the West European states : and if it should 
 take place, it seems probable that the example of 
 America will be followed, and that the new political 
 aggregate will be formed on the basis of a federal 
 polity. When we turn our gaze from the past to the 
 future an extension of federalism seems to me the 
 most probable of the political prophecies relative to 
 the form of government." 1 
 
 Meyer. Is there any other Englishman besides Penn 
 to whom the project of federating Europe has seemed 
 desirable or feasible ? A political undertaking such 
 as this is something like an Atlantic combine. The 
 city would not look at a prospectus signed by Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, even if it 
 were backed by Benjamin Franklin. Penn's name 
 would be good : but there would be an uneasy feeling 
 that in such a matter a Quaker might possibly be 
 subordinating business to philanthropy. 
 
 Arbiter. You are queer people in the city. But 
 
 Jean de Bloch and Nobel were good business men, 
 
 and they say Andrew Carnegie has a fair balance at 
 
 the bank. It is no use mentioning Cobden and 
 
 1 See the Development of European Polity, by H. Sidgwick, last page.
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 347 
 
 Gladstone, two of the finest heads for finance that 
 England has produced. They stand with Turgot far 
 above the bustle and smoke of the city. 
 
 Meyer. We have not quite forgotten them ; but 
 we associate them with Free Trade, low taxes, and 
 arbitration, not with this project of union. 
 
 Clarke. Then I am rather glad I have kept my best 
 name to the last. It is the name of the boldest, the 
 most practical, and the most successful of all political 
 projectors, and of an Englishman to boot. I speak 
 of the man to whom we owe more than to any other 
 the reform of our franchise, of our poor law, of our 
 municipalities, of our civil service, of our law courts, 
 of our criminal code and legal procedure. 
 
 Case. Jeremy Bentham. 
 
 Clarke. Yes, the great Jeremy Bentham, of whom 
 perhaps you will tell us more to-morrow. Nearly a 
 century after Penn, Bentham proposed " a plan for a 
 universal and perpetual peace." This plan rested, in 
 the first place, upon a rational reform of foreign and 
 colonial policy and a great reduction in military 
 and naval armaments, to be effected by treaties with 
 other Powers, and especially France. With these new 
 principles he associated a project for the establishment 
 of an international tribunal of arbitration, and also 
 (this is what concerns us to-day) a convention 
 setting up a congress or diet, which " might be con- 
 stituted by each Power sending two deputies to the 
 place of meeting ; one of these to be the principal, 
 the other to act as an occasional substitute." This 
 suggestion was written in the year 1789 -, 1 but it was not 
 
 1 As appears from an editorial note by Bowring and a reference 
 to a debate in the House of Lords.
 
 348 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 published until 1843. Yet Bentham's proposals seem 
 likely to be fulfilled almost to the letter. The Hague 
 Convention has created the non-coercive arbitral tri- 
 bunal, which was all that he asked for, and the Hague 
 Congress, if it can be summoned at regular intervals, 
 the creature of a convention and the creator of a 
 tribunal, will closely resemble the congress or diet 
 projected by Bentham. Bentham was as little con- 
 cerned as Kant with the elaboration of machinery; he 
 knew that, if the convention or treaty were once made, 
 the assembly of delegates would be able to regulate 
 its own proceedings. The only rule he thought it 
 necessary to lay down in advance was that the pro- 
 ceedings should be public a salutary principle very 
 favourable to international democracy ; for without it 
 how can the constituent bodies criticise and control the 
 action of their representatives ? Bentham enumerates 
 three powers with which his European diet should be 
 invested. The first would be the right to express 
 opinions. The congress would pass resolutions, report 
 them, and cause them to be circulated in the dominions 
 of each State. It may be said that the right of 
 expressing a pious opinion is a very meagre power. 
 Bentham thought otherwise. He maintained that it 
 would be the duty of such a congress to express its 
 opinion upon international controversies ; and such 
 opinions, he felt sure, coming from a recognised and 
 respected tribunal, would have great weight and 
 authority in guiding and fixing popular judgments. 
 
 To this power of reporting and circulating its 
 opinions and judgments, Bentham would add that of 
 putting the refractory State under the ban of Europe. 
 His idea evidently was that, if once the diet were
 
 FEDERATION OF THE WORLD 349 
 
 established, its powers would grow. It would be far 
 better that such an institution should derive its 
 authority, not merely from the treaties or conventions 
 which established it, but from the proof and acknow- 
 ledgment of its utility. By wise decrees and just 
 judgments it would establish a moral supremacy 
 which no Power would care to question. A delinquent 
 or recalcitrant State would probably submit, if it 
 were threatened with the ban of Europe. " There 
 might, perhaps," adds the philosopher with sagacious 
 hesitancy, " be no harm in regulating, as a last resource, 
 the contingent to be furnished by the several States 
 for enforcing the decrees of the court." But he thinks 
 the necessity would be obviated by the simpler and 
 less burdensome expedient of introducing a clause 
 guaranteeing liberty of the press throughout Europe, 
 so that the Diet might easily give its reports 
 and decrees unlimited publicity. As a proof of the 
 force of opinion, Bentham mentions that when the 
 King of Sweden commenced war against Russia he 
 was forced to abandon it in consequence of the 
 antipathy excited against it by a manifesto circulated 
 among his subjects by the Russian government. 
 The war appeared to the Swedes to be unjustifiable. 
 " A considerable part of the army either threw up 
 their commissions or refused to act ; and the 
 consequence was, the King was obliged to retreat 
 from the Russian frontier and call a Diet." 
 
 " That" added Clarke^ " is really the end of my paper" 
 We all laughed and adjourned to dinner^ to find the soup 
 cold. Case said it ought to have appeared on the " Menu" 
 as "jus foedatum" a vile Latin />##, which the editor 
 refuses to translate.
 
 THE FIFTH DAT. FRIDAY. 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION. 
 
 As soon as we met together on Friday morning Case, 
 assuming an almost judicial air, produced some formidable 
 folio sheets, and began to read as follows : 
 
 Yesterday, throughout his discourse Austin assumed, 
 rightly I think, that a certain amount of common 
 feeling, of political and social harmony, is, if not a 
 condition precedent to federation, at least a powerful 
 force and impulse to an international concert. Similar 
 considerations apply to international arbitration ; but 
 you can readily understand why it has been easier 
 to establish a permanent international tribunal than 
 a permanent international legislature. In the first 
 place, resort to the tribunal may be, and in fact is, 
 optional. In the second place, two nations are natur- 
 ally more inclined to submit a particular difference to 
 the adjudication of a third party, than to agree to 
 federate, and to combine politically for a number of 
 purposes. To my mind, the success of the Czar in 
 convening a representative congress of the world is 
 far more wonderful than the establishment by that 
 congress of the Hague Tribunal. The spread of 
 international arbitration depends, after the progress of
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 351 
 
 common-sense, more upon the ever-expanding empire 
 of law, order, and commerce, than upon anything else ; 
 and undoubtedly, since the days of Montesquieu, not 
 only have divergent systems of justice and law in all 
 civilised countries been brought nearer, and many 
 imperfections removed, but the principles of public 
 and private jurisprudence have been sufficiently ascer- 
 tained and agreed, to warrant us in expecting rapid 
 and fruitful developments of international justice. 
 Without attempting to carry further, my dear 
 Austin, your analysis of the spiritual and commercial 
 union of Europe, I should like to say a word or two 
 about its history. Western civilisation, or if you 
 prefer Rousseau's phrase, " the society of the peoples 
 of Europe," has not always existed, though it has for a 
 long time been increasing in intensity, and conquering 
 fresh territories both in the East and in the West. 
 Humanly speaking, there is no reason to apprehend 
 its decline or disruption ; for the causes which gave 
 birth to it serve to maintain and strengthen it. Before 
 the Roman conquests the tribes inhabiting Central 
 and Northern Europe had nothing in common except 
 savagery and barbarism. To a Greek of the age of 
 Pericles a native of France or Germany or Russia 
 was merely a barbarian, fit only for slavery, not to be 
 distinguished morally and intellectually from an Indian 
 or a Negro. But when Greece, falling before the might 
 of Rome, civilised its conquerors, and the Romans 
 subdued all Europe west of the Danube and the Elbe, 
 a knowledge of the Latin language and of the Roman 
 law was spread from Rome to Northumberland, and 
 from Gibraltar to Vienna. Though all the executive 
 and legislative power of the central government
 
 352 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 remained concentrated in the person of the Roman 
 Emperor, it was the policy of conquering Rome to 
 communicate all civil rights to the conquered ; and in 
 the third century A.D. the citizen of York, or Paris, 
 or Cologne was pleased to call himself a Roman citizen. 
 That is why, in the thirteenth century, the scholar or 
 man of letters in York, Paris, or Cologne, wrote and 
 spoke the same Latin language. The code of Theo- 
 dosius and the Institutes of Justinian, like the poems 
 of Virgil, and the patriotic verses of Claudian, helped 
 to retard the dissolution of the empire and, with the 
 aid of the Latin Church, retained for it a certain 
 authority through the dark ages. Some think that 
 the Christianisation of the Empire contributed to its 
 fall. However that may be, it is certain that the 
 Church in a sense perpetuated the empire, and took 
 her place as the outward and visible token of European 
 unity. 
 
 Truelove. Roman missionaries repaired the faults 
 of Roman generals, and Rome triumphed by her 
 priests when her troops had been beaten. Thus the 
 Franks and the Goths, the Burgundians, the Avars, 
 and the Lombards, recognised by degrees the 
 authority of the Empire they had subjugated, and 
 paid at least a show of homage to the law as well 
 as to the gospel that came from Rome. 
 
 Case. Well ; I will allow that the church helped 
 to keep alive the embers of civilisation until Charle- 
 magne by his conquests, his laws, and his admini- 
 stration restored some of the faded glories of 
 Imperial Rome. The Holy Roman Empire was 
 only a half reality, but it saved the kingdoms of 
 Europe from falling quite asunder. The possibility of
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 353 
 
 European reunion was never lost sight of, because the 
 memory of Roman Europe was preserved by Church 
 and Empire until commerce, art, and literature could 
 forge stronger and less artificial links between the 
 nations. Not only political dreamers like Dante, but 
 subtle lawyers like Bartolus (who helped to draft the 
 Golden Bull), gravely maintained that the Emperor was 
 natural sovereign of the world and rightful suzerain of 
 all the princes of Europe. 1 And from time to time 
 this claim, like the rival claim of the Popes, was 
 allowed by independent monarchs. As a matter of 
 ceremony the right of the Emperor to precedence 
 was unquestioned. The Pope never regained the 
 authority he lost at the Reformation, and the Empire 
 steadily dwindled in influence and renown from the time 
 of Charles V. until it was extinguished by Napoleon. 
 But law and commerce made good these breaches in 
 European unity. With the aid of Greek philosophy 
 and Roman jurisprudence the genius of Grotius 
 formed out of the conflicting usages of European 
 diplomacy and the better practices of the ancients a 
 new code of international law; and "Rights of War 
 and Peace " soon gained an authority which con- 
 tributed vastly to improve the relations of States in 
 time of peace as well as to mitigate the barbarities 
 that were once regarded as the proper and regular 
 
 1 Compare the following passage from Rousseau's Extrait du projet 
 de Paix perpetuelle (1760), " Le respect pour 1'Empire Romain a 
 tellement survecu a sa puissance, que bien des jurisconsultes ont 
 mis en question si 1'empereur d'Allemagne n'etoit pas le souverain 
 naturel du monde, et Bartole a pousse les choses jusqu'a trailer 
 d'heretique quiconque osoit en douter. Les livres des canonistes 
 sont pleins de decisions semblables sur 1'autorite temporelles de 
 1'liglise Romaine."
 
 354 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 incidents of war. A century passed by. Then 
 another philosopher, Adam Smith, by unfolding the 
 true nature of commerce, placed the evils of war and 
 the advantages of peace in a new light, and again the 
 natural course of progress was powerfully promoted. 
 I do not hesitate to say that the books of Grotius 
 and Adam Smith have done more to quicken a 
 sense of the solidarity of civilisation, and to open 
 men's eyes to the wisdom of justice and the 
 advantages of peace among nations than all the 
 Popes and Emperors put together. 
 
 Seymour. Yet what could they have done but for 
 the invention of printing ? 
 
 Case. Ah, Captain, I see that you are still of the 
 mechanical school. But you will have to come back 
 to mind in the end. 
 
 Clarke. May it not be objected that you have 
 painted the real unity of Europe in too bright 
 colours, that national connections are not wholly 
 advantageous, that there is another side to the 
 picture ? The ancient union of Europe, it may be 
 argued, left so many points of contact and so many 
 intricate and intimate relationships that in the course 
 of nature quarrels and dissensions were certain to 
 abound in the absence of a common chief and a 
 recognised superior. A French wit once remarked 
 that financial relations between relatives begin by being 
 delicate and end by being indelicate. So, in the very 
 intimacy of their associations, the members of the 
 European brotherhood have found causes of dissen- 
 sion, and their frequent quarrels have often, by their 
 bitterness and ferocity, challenged comparison with 
 civil wars.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 355 
 
 Case. But that train of thought would soon lead 
 us along the pathway of unreality into the fogs of 
 Hegelianism. Understanding provokes misunderstand- 
 ing. The better a nation knows another, the worse 
 they get on, and so forth. Let us beware of this 
 false philosophy. I think the doubts you suggest 
 have been prompted by Rousseau. 
 
 Clarke. Yes ; and let me refer to the actual state 
 of Europe as he found it in his day. Look, he 
 cries, at our perpetual disputes, at the robberies, 
 usurpations, rebellions, wars, and murders that daily 
 desolate this noble habitation of wisdom, this splendid 
 asylum of sciences and arts ; think of our fine 
 sermons and our ghastly proceedings ; think how 
 humanity pervades our maxims and cruelty our 
 actions ; think of the sweetness of our religion and 
 the bitterness of our intolerance ; think of our politics 
 so reasonable on paper and so harsh in practice, of 
 our rulers so merciful and our peoples so miserable, 
 of the moderation of governments and the unre- 
 strained cruelty of wars meditate on all these things, 
 and you will hardly be able to reconcile the sharp- 
 ness of these contrasts ; you will be tempted to 
 conclude that this pretended fraternity of the nations 
 of Europe is an ironical expression for their mutual 
 animosity. 
 
 Case. Undoubtedly at that time, in the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, the normal relationship 
 between the Powers of Europe was still one of war. 
 To provide men and money for war was still the 
 principal occupation of statesmen ; when the com- 
 batants were exhausted a treaty was made, which bore 
 the character rather of a temporary truce than of a
 
 356 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 lasting peace. The period following a treaty was the 
 breathing space during which the happy family of 
 Europe renewed its strength for a fresh broil. 
 
 We have fortunately passed from the stage in which 
 peace is occasional to the stage in which war is 
 occasional. But the fear of war with our European 
 brothers, and the preparations for such a contingency, 
 still plague our politics and drain our resources. 
 With sentiment and reason so strongly on our 
 side, it is obvious that something must be wanting. 
 Dissensions and quarrels there always will be ; but why 
 should dissensions end in war? There are dissensions 
 in Parliament, but there is no reason why debates 
 should degenerate into free fights. And yet we know 
 quite well that, without rules of procedure, no 
 Parliament in the world would be able to do business. 
 The difficulty of transacting national affairs in a 
 Parliament of several hundred members, who have 
 been sent there by their different constituencies often 
 for the express purpose of opposing and thwarting 
 one another, and are all eager to win glory and 
 popularity in party warfare, has been overcome by 
 the ingenuity of a long succession of Speakers and 
 Parliamentary leaders. Equal ingenuity must be 
 applied to the solution of international quarrels. 
 Disagreement cannot be prevented ; fighting can. The 
 project of federation with a view to the establishment 
 of a standing council on international affairs is one of 
 the methods by which art may overcome nature. That 
 was yesterday's theme. Another is arbitration, and 
 that is the proper subject of my discourse to-day. 
 
 In my humble opinion, the mistake that writers 
 on international arbitration most commonly make is
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 357 
 
 that of treating arbitration between States as an isolated 
 fact, a subject to itself, whereas it is really a branch 
 of a subject. To understand international arbitration 
 you ought, first of all, to examine arbitration as it 
 has been practised in civilised countries, investigate 
 its origin, and discover its meaning and the purposes 
 to which it has been put. But if I come before you 
 as an innovator I hope to appease you as an anti- 
 quarian. You may shudder at my revolutionary 
 methods, but you will be reassured when you find 
 that they spring from a conservative reverence for 
 neglected traditions. 
 
 The first system of arbitration deserving of notice 
 is that of the ancient Greeks. Thanks to the speeches 
 of Demosthenes and other Attic pleaders we know 
 most of the systems in vogue at Athens, where 
 there flourished what modern jurisprudence would call 
 a Court of Reconcilement. Aristotle in his Rhetoric^ 
 as an example of a metaphor that is appropriate without 
 being obvious, cites a passage from Archytas in which 
 the poet compares an arbitrator to an altar, meaning 
 that he is a refuge for the injured. The functions of 
 an arbitrator as conceived by the Greeks were dis- 
 tinguished from those of a judge in various ways, 
 but principally in this, that whereas the judge was 
 required to interpret the law strictly, an arbitrator 
 might decide individual cases on their merits. Again, 
 a judge was appointed by law, an arbitrator by agree- 
 ment between the parties. 2 Further, to mark another 
 
 1 Book ii., c. 2. Cp. I. 14. 
 
 2 Cp. Aristotle's neat distinction, SiKacrrTJs KCU 
 AIKCUTTT/S fJ-fv yap ecrriv o Kara. VO/JLOV cupe#eis 
 St o Kara <rvfj.(f)(Dviav aipfOels (7iyi/3i/3a<rea)s \dpiv
 
 358 
 
 advantage of this early substitute for litigation, there 
 was no appeal from an arbitral award. The submis- 
 sion was generally a written agreement, to which was 
 annexed an engagement by third parties to be sureties 
 for performance. 
 
 The Greek name for arbitrator was SiaiTqrris from 
 Slaira, a word that had two senses, first " mode of life," 
 whence our English diet, secondly " arbitration." Is 
 there any connection between the two meanings ? 
 Varro, the Roman antiquarian, said that Sluira was 
 connected with the Latin dies, our " day." 
 
 Stephanus, in his Thesaurus of the Greek language, 
 explains the use of Slaira for arbitration rather quaintly, 
 after premising that nobody has yet been able to 
 explain it : " If I may be allowed to break silence 
 in a question of such uncertainty, I should venture 
 upon the guess that Siaira came to be used for 
 arbitration by a metaphor. Just as medical men 
 prescribe a fixed diaeta [i.e. regimen or diet] to their sick 
 patients, so arbitrators prescribe a fixed line of conduct, 
 a diet of rules and conditions, to those who quarrel, 
 by following which they are restored to peace and 
 concord." This derivation is grotesque ; but if we 
 follow out Varro's hint we shall find the real con- 
 nection. Both uses of <Wra have to do with " day," 
 and can be amply illustrated in the English tongue. 
 For diet also signifies a federal council or representative 
 body, and was the original word used both by our 
 ancestors and by their French neighbours for the 
 old assemblies of Germanic princes. Now one of the 
 chief functions of the Germanic diet undoubtedly was, 
 by arbitration and other means, to preserve peace in 
 Germany. Diet is the English, French, and Italian
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 359 
 
 equivalent for the German " Tag " as in Reichstag, 
 Landtag, etc. As " Tag " is the German for day, 
 " imperial diet " is an exact rendering of the old 
 Reichstag, which was succeeded by the Bundestag of 
 the German federation. 
 
 The explanation of the double meaning, which by 
 more than a coincidence attaches to Greek <Wra, 
 French and English diet, German Tag and English 
 day, is no doubt that councils and arbitrations had daily 
 sittings and that councillors and arbitrators were often 
 paid by the day. The best English philologists agree 
 that a daysman," the old English word for arbitrator 
 or umpire, is the man who names a day for his 
 decision. The word still lingers in the north of 
 England. 
 
 Browne. How far back can the word be traced ? 
 
 Case. To the Dooms^jy Book I suppose ; Dr. John 
 Co well at least held that to be a judicial use of 
 " day." But the earliest instance I have is from the 
 Churchwarden's accounts of St. Dunstan's, Canterbury, 
 for the year 1484. "Spent at the dayng betwene 
 Baker and the paryshe." The verb to " day " is quite 
 common in sixteenth century English, though you 
 seldom come across it in the law books, which pre- 
 ferred French words. It was used by Lady Nicolas 
 Bacon in her authorised English version of Bishop 
 Jewel's famous Latin Apology for the Church of 
 England (I562); 1 and the translators of the Bible, 
 with their usual happy choice of the vernacular, make 
 Job thus confess the impossibility of a controversy with 
 God : " He is not a man, as I am, that I should 
 
 1 " Our doctrine hath been approved too long to be put a daying in 
 these daies." The pun recognises the double meaning.
 
 360 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 answer him, and we should come together in judg- 
 ment. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us that 
 should lay his hand upon us both." 
 
 From this little digression, which I trust you will 
 pardon for some indulgence is always extended to 
 the discoverer I return to arbitration. I left it in 
 Greece, and I wish I could tell you how it found its 
 way to Rome. Was it indigenous, or was it like 
 so many other Roman institutions a loan from the 
 Greeks ? Probably some rude form of arbitration 
 was indigenous. The word arbiter is a very old Latin 
 word. It probably means a man " who goes about " 
 or a man "who is approached." 1 In either case it 
 implies proximity to the litigants or to the matter in 
 dispute. In popular Latin arbiter often means " wit- 
 ness." He is the primitive type of juryman neighbour 
 " de visneto," who has viewed the scene, knows the 
 circumstances and the parties, and will take account 
 of all the surroundings of the case, whereas the judge 
 is led by instructions and pleadings into a judgment 
 in strict law (jus strictum)? Thus arbitration from the 
 first was a discretionary as distinct from a strictly legal 
 judgment (Judicium). And pray note that it began 
 with the very class of disputes for the solution of which 
 international arbitration in its early stages has been 
 most commonly and fruitfully employed. I mean 
 boundary disputes. In the Twelve Tables three 
 arbiters were appointed to settle disputes about land- 
 marks and the boundaries of property. Generally 
 speaking, it is clear that the more indefinite a claim 
 
 1 From ad and betere or bitere. 
 
 2 See Greenidge's Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time : Oxford, Claren- 
 don Press, 1901.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 361 
 
 was in Cicero's time, the more suitable it was felt to 
 be for compromise and adjustment by arbiters. 
 
 " The arbitration of a good man " came to be a 
 regular expression in Roman law. To act as a good 
 arbitrator would tell you to act was to act " reason- 
 ably," like Aristotle's > ai> 6 <pp6vi/mo$ opia-eiev. The 
 boni viri arbitrates was the standard of proper conduct 
 or fair judgment, and the Roman law often applied 
 the standard literally by referring a claim for damages 
 or compensation to the arbitration of a good 
 man. 
 
 Upon the whole, then, we may say that the Roman 
 idea of arbitration, though indigenous, was developed 
 with an eye upon the Athenian system ; in this, as in 
 so much else, Greek ideas have been spread over 
 Western Europe under Roman names and forms. For 
 a full account of it in its final form you must read 
 Justinian's Digest. 1 
 
 The Roman jurists set forth almost all the advan- 
 tages and defects of arbitral procedure. Its chief 
 superiority over legal proceedings they reckoned to be 
 the exclusion of appeals. Its disadvantages were excess 
 of authority, the neglect of form, and the danger of 
 partiality. Also they complained that it fostered two 
 systems of judicature where one should be sufficient. 
 This last objection, whatever "it may be worth, does 
 not apply to international arbitration, which is a 
 substitute, not for legal proceedings, but for war. 
 
 One other point I must mention before leaving 
 ancient Rome. In good Latin arbiter is the only word 
 for arbitrator. Their awards (sententiae\ said Cicero, 
 
 1 Dig. iv. Tit. 8, with 52 extracts. There is an elaborate com- 
 ment upon it by Gerard Noodt, Opera, ii. p. 135.
 
 362 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 proceed not from strict law, but from considerations of 
 equity. Seneca says that an arbiter is not swayed by 
 law and justice, but by the promptings of humanity 
 and pity. In mediaeval times we find that the word 
 arbitrator has come into use, and that two distinct 
 types of arbitration are recognised. The arbiter (French 
 arbitre] was supposed to decide according to law, and 
 even to follow legal rules of evidence and procedure. 
 The arbitrator (French arbitrateur) was to follow the 
 dictates of his own judgment and conscience without 
 any regard to law. A French authority of the fifteenth 
 century, Bouteiller, even mentions a third type between 
 the two the appaiseur or aimable compositeur, who was 
 bound by the agreement between the parties, that is 
 by the terms of the compromise. 
 
 Clarke. Is the triple distinction found in other 
 countries ? 
 
 Case. No, I think not. Du Cange defines "arbi- 
 trator " simply as " amicabilis compositor." He adds 
 that in France arbitrateur and in Spain arbitrador have 
 the same signification, and quotes chartularies of the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth century in which you get 
 " arbitrateurs ou aimables apaisenteurs " and " arbi- 
 trateurs ou aimables appaiseurs." But Du Cange 
 distinguishes quite clearly between arbiter and arbitrator. 
 The first, he says, is a judge's substitute, and must 
 decide by legal rules. The difference between an 
 arbiter and a judge is that there is no appeal from the 
 arbiter's decision, and that his decision is called an 
 arbitrium, whereas a judge's decision is njudicium. On 
 the other hand, "Arbitrator est (I quote Du Cange's 
 -definition) qui non servato juris ordine cognoscit et definit 
 amicabiliter inter partes : et pronuntiatio ejus dicitur
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 363 
 
 laudum l (not arbitrium) : et ab hoc potest appellari, et 
 illud peti re dud ad arbitrium boni viri" 2 Aimable com- 
 positeur is still a term in French law, or was, apparently, 
 in 1884, when Du Cange was last brought out. 
 
 Ego. Pray who, or what, is Du Cange ? 
 
 Case. Both ; a person and a thing. The person 
 was an incredibly industrious French antiquary of the 
 seventeenth century. The thing (from which I quote) 
 is his wonderful glossary of middle and low Latin. 
 You will find there that a common form of reference 
 in the middle ages was to refer a matter in controversy 
 to an arbitrator chosen by the parties who might 
 decide either by strict justice or equitably by way of 
 compromise, " tanquam in arbitrum, arbitratorem, seu 
 amicabilem compositorem." 3 
 
 Arbiter. You have not told us anything about 
 arbitration in Germany. 
 
 Case. No ; I am coming to it by way of the language, 
 which is the best clue to the history of an institution 
 so elastic and evasive as arbitration. Following out 
 the history of such words as Schiedsleute, Schiedsmann, 
 and Schiedsrichter, the man or judge who terminates 
 a strife (Schied is an old word for Grenze or boundary), 
 one is led to suppose that the forms of arbitration came 
 
 1 Du Cange gives examples of laudare = to award, laudator = arbiter, 
 and laudum sententia arbitri. This curious word "laudum" ii 
 therefore a low Latin derivative from laus, meaning a decision 
 agreeable to and therefore praised by both parties, or more probably 
 a decision to which both parties have assented. 
 
 2 " An arbitrator is not bound by legal rules of procedure ; he 
 makes a friendly award between the parties ; it is called Liudum, and 
 you may appeal from it to have it corrected to the award of a good 
 man." 
 
 3 Cp. a reference A.D. 1323 to John, King of Bohemia and Poland.
 
 364 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 into Germany as into England with the Christian, or 
 rather, as one should say in this connection, with the 
 Roman Church. Two early uses of Schiedsleute, 
 quoted in Grimm's Worterbuch, refer to arbitrations to 
 which Bishops were parties. In one " Schiedleute " 
 settled a quarrel between the Bishop and the Town 
 Council of Strassburg ; in the other they ended a war 
 between the Count of Pfirt and Bishop Otho. Clearly 
 a Schiedsman, sometimes called a Friedensmann, was 
 a peacemaker. His business, like that of the French 
 aimable compositeur, was to compromise a dispute 
 and leave the parties friendly. 
 
 Arbiter. Now, Meyer. 
 
 Meyer. I'm afraid I can't contribute. I have for- 
 gotten the little German literature I knew. I only 
 remember a proverbial saying : 
 
 " Wer sich als Schiedsmann zwischen Zanker 1 stellt 
 Verliert die guten Worte und sein Gelt." 
 
 True/ove. I can cap your quotation with a couplet 
 from Herder about Catherine : 
 
 " Monarchinn, Mutter, Kaiserinn 
 Europa's Schiedesrichterinn." 
 
 Case. That reminds me of one little proof, or 
 indication rather, that arbitration was introduced into 
 Germany by the Church. The word " Schiedmannin " 
 (sic) occurs in Maater ; i.e. arbitratrix is almost as old 
 as arbitrator. It was the Church, you will remember, 
 that allowed women to be arbitrators. The intention 
 of German arbitration is given in Teretentius deutsch 
 (1499), 79; " ein mitler ist ein Schidman, der 
 zwilschen zwegen sp^nen oder zwytrachten fryden 
 
 1 Wranglers or brawlers.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 365 
 
 findt, und dadurch frttndtschaft macht, darumb das er 
 beden partyen gn^m ist." 
 
 Now, having gone thus far in Germany, I must say 
 another word or two about popular arbitration in 
 England. The English people were always fond of 
 fighting and litigation ; but they seem to have felt the 
 evils of both more keenly than other European nations. 
 Anyhow there were two real English words for arbi- 
 trator. The first was " stickler," so-called because it 
 was his duty to put his stick between two combatants 
 and stop the fight. The modern etymologists, I believe, 
 prefer to derive it from Middle English " stighten," 
 which meant to dispose or order. A stickler seems 
 to have been a regular attendant at a duel, or at any 
 country bout. Ben Jonson talks about " the liberty 
 to choose his stickler " as a guarantee of fair play. 
 The stickler was a sort of umpire to see fair play, and 
 to part the combatants when they had had enough. 
 Here is an old sentence to illustrate the true meaning 
 of the word : " I stickyll betwene wrastellers or I 
 parte folkes that be redy to fyght." But it gradually 
 acquired a general meaning, and Cotgrave, in 1650, 
 gave arbitre as the French equivalent for stickler, 
 just as in another place he gave arbitres for dayes- 
 men}- 
 
 Of dayesman^ the other word, I have already spoken. 
 " Daying " was a substitute for litigation, as " stickling " 
 was a substitute for fighting. The dayesman parted 
 litigants, while the stickler parted combatants. In an 
 old play you may read : 
 
 " If neighbours were at variance they ran not streight to law ; 
 Dayesmen took up the matter, and cost them not a straw." 
 
 1 Cotgrave's English-Trench Dictionary, ed. of 1650.
 
 366 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 From this it would seem that the dayesman, as 
 well as the stickler, could take the initiative. This 
 distinguishes him from Greek Siair^s and Roman 
 arbitrator. Altogether, I incline to believe in primitive 
 and indigenous forms of arbitration all over Northern 
 Europe, the more so that in the Welsh tongue words 
 for arbitration appear to abound. 
 
 The next question is how, on the fall of the Roman 
 Empire in the West, it came to pass that the Roman 
 rules and forms of arbitration were not finally swept 
 away. Martin would be able to tell us how strongly 
 the practice of arbitration flourished among the early 
 Christians. It was one of St. Paul's complaints against 
 the Corinthians that they preferred to go to law before 
 the unjust and not before the Saints. Brother went 
 to law with brother in the courts of the unbelievers. 
 Was there not a wise man among them who could 
 have judged between them? At first the customs 
 of the early Christians to settle disputes in this way 
 did not involve any formal procedure ; but long before 
 Constantine's conversion the Bishop's Court had 
 become an institution, 1 which the authorities of the 
 Church refused to give up, even when their original 
 objection to the civil jurisdiction had been removed. 
 The clergy therefore continued to be governed by the 
 discipline and law of the Church, and thus there were 
 in most countries two laws and two jurisdictions. 
 Accordingly when there was a dispute between clerics 
 and laymen, a conflict arose between canon and 
 
 1 Cp. the Didascalia Apostolorum, a Syriac work of the third 
 century, recently discovered and translated by Mrs. Gibson. 
 Chapter xi. treats of the jurisdiction of Bishops and the duty of 
 Christians not to go to law.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 367 
 
 common law which could not well be decided either by 
 a civil court or by a bishop. Arbitration therefore was 
 a common and convenient resort. If discipline failed 
 to heal a difference between ecclesiastics the Pope 
 might be appealed to, but arbitration was also a 
 frequent remedy ; and when a quarrel arose between 
 a clergyman and a layman arbitration, being a ready 
 means of adjudication, alike recognised and practically 
 identical in Roman and canon law, was obviously a 
 good way out of the difficulty. For neither party 
 would care to submit to the law of the other. By 
 referring a dispute to arbitration the clergy avoided 
 the danger of submitting to the State, while the citizen 
 escaped the evils of clerical jurisdiction. But although, 
 generally speaking, the Vatican smiled upon arbitra- 
 tion, it is noteworthy that Innocent the Third, in a 
 General Council, prohibited the reference of spiritual 
 disputes to the arbitration of a layman. 1 With the 
 advent of barbarism and the temporary disappearance 
 of law, arbitration came more and more into favour. 
 The canon law had practically adopted the civil rules, 
 and the canonist, as Maitland says, was always ready 
 to eke out Gratian with Justinian. What an im- 
 portant part arbitration played in the development of 
 law and order in the W T estern Church in times when 
 the civil laws of Rome were almost forgotten in Western 
 Europe, appears clearly in the Decretals of Gregory IX., 
 a great codification of the canon law, which was published 
 in 1234 A.D. " De Arbitris " is Title 43 of the First 
 Book of the Decretals. Of the fourteen chapters in this 
 Title the first is general and declaratory, setting forth 
 
 1 Quia non decet ut laicus in talibus arbitretur. From the Fourth 
 Lateran Council, A.D. 1215.
 
 368 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the ancient decision of the African Council that when 
 bishops determine to settle a dispute by arbitration 
 either one arbitrator or three may be appointed, and 
 that in the latter case it shall be arranged beforehand 
 whether the award may be given by two (i.e. by a 
 majority), or whether all three must agree. 1 When 
 three arbitrators were appointed two were generally 
 selected by the parties, and the third in some other 
 way, so that he might be impartial. The third came 
 to be called the umpire, or odd man (impar), whose 
 decision was final. The second " chapter " is from a 
 letter addressed by Pope Alexander the Third (1159- 
 1 181 A.D.) to the Archbishop of York. It is a decision 
 pronounced, as we might say, by the Supreme Court 
 of Appeal in Rome upon an unjust judgment given 
 in a dispute about an English Church. And the 
 Pope rules that an incorrect and sinful award cannot 
 be valid. 
 
 Innocent III. (1198-1216) gave some important 
 decisions on our subject. One, addressed to the 
 Chancellor of Paris, declares that, in spite of the civil 
 rule which prohibits a woman acting as arbitrator, never- 
 theless in countries where the custom is different, as 
 in parts of France, and women of high rank exercise 
 jurisdiction, no objection should be made to a royal 
 arbitress 2 (arbitratrix) even on a question touching the 
 
 1 " Si autem ex communi placito episcoporum, inter quos causa 
 versatur, arbitros elegerint, aut unus eligatur aut tres, ut si tres 
 elegerint aut omnium sequantur sententiam aut duorum." This 
 concilium Africanum was held in Carthage, apparently in the fifth 
 century ; the decretal was taken from the collection of Dionysius, 
 and is, so far as I know, the most ancient pronouncement of the 
 Church on arbitration. 
 
 2 Regina Francorum. See Decretals, i. 43, c. 4.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 369 
 
 temporalities of the church, especially when her award 
 is delivered in the presence and strengthened by the 
 advice of bishops. This was in the year 1202. 
 Here the canon law overrules the civil law, and our 
 English judges have followed suit. It was decided 
 in an early and interesting case in our courts that a 
 woman at least an unmarried woman might be 
 arbitrator, and that her award is as good as a man's. 1 
 
 Truelove. See what the church has done for the 
 emancipation of women ! 
 
 Case. I may note in passing one of the curious 
 results of the feudal system, with the restraints it 
 imposed on the alienation of real property. Here in 
 England for a long time, even down to the time of 
 William and Mary, freehold was held not to be 
 arbitrable. In that reign the Chief Justice arrived 
 at the preposterous conclusion " that things in the 
 realty may be submitted as well as things in the 
 personalty ; but that they cannot be recovered on 
 the award." In Roman law the right to refer 
 questions of property in land was never questioned ; 
 and boundary disputes were thought a very proper 
 subject of arbitration. 
 
 Let us now turn from the ecclesiastical use of 
 arbitration by the church to her influence in inter- 
 national affairs. Upon this subject I shall make free 
 use of Ward's excellent work upon the law and 
 diplomatic usages of nations. He finds a strong 
 proof of the homogeneity of Christian Europe in 
 the custom, which began to be pretty general in the 
 twelfth century, of appealing to the Pope or to a 
 neutral power when differences broke out between 
 1 Duchess of Suffolk's case, Y ear-Book, 8 E. iv. I . 
 
 2 A
 
 370 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 western potentates ; and this not only with a view 
 to engage their assistance or mediation, but also from 
 the idea that their connections were sufficiently close 
 and their governing principles sufficiently similar to 
 justify such a course. Thus in 1162 Pope Alexander 
 recommended peace between the kings of France and 
 England. 1 
 
 In 1176 we have a remarkable instance of appeal 
 and mediation in the course of a contest between 
 the kings of Castile and Navarre. By the deed of 
 compromise made between them, each party deposited 
 four castles as a pledge that they would abide by 
 the determination of Henry II., King of England. 
 Each party was to send ambassadors to receive his 
 judgment by a certain day ; in the case of sickness, 
 captivity, or death, either was to await the other's 
 arrival for thirty days beyond the time appointed ; 
 and then, in default of appearance, the castles of the 
 party responsible for the delay were to be forfeited 
 to the other ; but in the case of the death of Henry 
 the ambassadors were to proceed (subject to the same 
 agreement) to receive the judgment of the King of 
 France. 2 
 
 In the middle of the next century King Louis the 
 Ninth of France became renowned throughout Europe 
 as a fountain of impartial justice. His friend and 
 biographer, the Sire de Joinville, gives a picture of 
 the royal saint as arbiter. " The Burgundians and 
 Lorrainers, perceiving the king's goodness and justice, 
 were so loving and observant of him that they referred 
 their differences to his arbitration. I have often seen 
 
 1 See letter in Rymer, i. 21. 
 
 z Rymer t i. 43, and Gesta Henrici (Rolls Series), i. 138-154.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 371 
 
 them come to him for that purpose to Paris and other 
 places where the king was resident." 
 
 Browne. It is unfortunate that the saint's peaceful 
 instincts were confined to the limits of Christendom. 
 His crusade almost ruined France, and quite im- 
 poverished the Sire de Joinville. Nor did he repent 
 of the folly, but continued an obstinate Crusader ; 
 only on his death -bed he charged his son: "Wage 
 no war against any Christian, but by the counsel of 
 many, and when war is unavoidable." 
 
 Case. I am not a whole-hearted admirer of Louis. 
 His code of punishment was singularly ferocious. His 
 superstition was abject. Nor is his most famous award 
 remarkable for impartial wisdom. You will remember 
 that in 1264 he sat in judgment on the differences 
 in question between Henry III. of England and his 
 barons. He had been chosen their umpire in form, 
 and each party, the King and Queen in person, 
 attended him in all due solemnity at Amiens. In his 
 award Louis took a very high view of his authority 
 as arbitrator, as well as of the kingly power ; in the 
 name of the Holy Trinity he annulled the famous 
 constitutions of Oxford ; decreed the restoration of 
 the fortresses which had been put into the hands of 
 the twenty-four barons, or rather regents, of the 
 kingdom ; and finally ordained that the King should 
 be restored to all his legitimate rights. 1 
 
 In the same century other forms of mediation and 
 diplomacy were growing up. The famous quarrel 
 between the Emperor Frederick II. and the See of 
 Rome was discussed in appeals and letters to the chief 
 potentates of Christendom, as well as by arms. The 
 
 1 See these and a number of other articles in Mat. Par. 668.
 
 372 
 
 letters of the Emperor, particularly those to the King 
 of England, were very like the modern manifesto or 
 State note. In 1334 a treaty having been entered 
 into by the King of Bohemia and other princes of 
 Germany with the Duke of Brabant, under the 
 mediation of Philip of Valois, the latter styled himself 
 at the head of the deed: "Nomme et eleu juge, 
 tracteur, et aimable compositeur, entre hauts hommes 
 nos chiers amis," etc. 
 
 Of early appeals to international justice and public 
 opinion the most striking and remarkable, perhaps, 
 is that published at Westminster by Edward III. 
 against John of France in 1356. It is addressed to 
 the Pope, to the Emperor, and to all the princes, 
 lords, and people of Christendom in general. He 
 complains that people of that age wish to palliate 
 their own faults by blasting the innocence of others ; 
 and he therefore believes it a duty he owes to God 
 and to humanity to paint the King of France in his 
 proper colours. He also justifies the King of Navarre 
 from the infamy imputed to him in making a treaty 
 to deliver up Normandy, by declaring before God 
 and on the word of a king that no such treaty had 
 been made. 1 This, it is added, was preparatory to 
 the war he afterwards declared against France, and no 
 transaction or manifesto of the most regular modern 
 State can be more orderly or legitimate. 
 
 The next century saw the same sort of custom in 
 the appeal made by the kings of Castile and Aragon 
 to the arbitration of Louis XI. of France, in 1463 ; 
 and from that time onwards the intercourse of 
 European States gave rise to more and more treaties, 
 
 1 Rymer, v. 852.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 373 
 
 laws, customs, and usages, which prepared the way 
 very slowly, but very surely, for the mutual con- 
 fidence which has made international arbitration so 
 successful in our own times. 
 
 The mediaeval instances of international appeals and 
 mediations which I have quoted might be greatly 
 multiplied. They arose, no doubt, as Ward remarks, 
 in some measure from the tendency towards a certain 
 order in affairs, which the institutions and political 
 connections of Charlemagne had begun to generate, 
 and also to the influence of the Pope in the Christian 
 Republic. The authority of the Pope as the head of 
 the Western Church was naturally great in very 
 early times, for until Charlemagne established his 
 empire the Pope was the only prince who could lay 
 claim to any suzerainty over the other rulers of 
 Europe. It may be said, therefore, that it was from 
 the habit of appeal to the Pope that the custom arose 
 of laying grievances before the Emperor and other 
 potentates. 
 
 Truelove. When did the jurisdiction of the Pope 
 begin to decline ? 
 
 Case. I should say it was at its height in the twelfth 
 century. It is of this period that Pollock and Mait- 
 land are speaking in their History of English Law 
 when they say : " The whole of Western Europe 
 was subject to the jurisdiction of one tribunal of last 
 resort, the Roman Curia. Appeals to it were en- 
 couraged by all manner of means, appeals at almost 
 every stage of almost every proceeding." Our English 
 Bracton, they add, treats the Pope as the ordinary 
 judge of every Englishman, and the only ordinary 
 judge whose powers are unlimited.
 
 374 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Truelove. Yet only five centuries earlier a King of 
 Northumbria threw a Papal Bull contemptuously into 
 the sea. 
 
 Browne. And four centuries later our king became 
 our pope. 
 
 Case (continuing). The habit of arbitration was fostered 
 by the Holy Roman Empire as well as by the Church. 
 Charlemagne had revived the awful name of Rome, 
 and he had made the barbarous nations of Europe 
 tremble once more before an imperial authority. In 
 mediaeval Europe the secular authority of the 
 Emperor was associated with the spiritual authority of 
 the Pope. With the idea of a universal Empire 
 there grew up the idea of a universal law, or of 
 a law which, if not universally binding, was at any 
 rate obligatory on all nations professing Christianity. 
 Here again the tie between Rome and Germany, 
 between Pope and Emperor, was apparent. The 
 canon law, the distinctive law of the Church, was 
 founded on the Roman law, and could only be 
 understood by reference to the civil code. But 
 where they differed, and a contradiction appeared, 
 the authority of the canon law was for a long time 
 deemed superior, especially in the period after Gratian's 
 collection, which gave an improved form to the mass 
 of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, and prepared the way 
 for a papal code. As the learning of Europe was 
 monopolised by the Church, and as a knowledge of 
 Latin was necessary to the understanding of both 
 the civil and the canon law the Church was easily 
 able to strengthen her influence over the laws and 
 institutions of Europe. Even in England, where 
 the common law maintained itself, a concurrent
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 375 
 
 jurisdiction of equity based upon the civil and canon 
 law 1 grew up and was administered by the Lord 
 Chancellor, who was for a long time a dignitary of the 
 Roman Church the Keeper of the King's conscience. 
 But general ignorance, the very cause which ex- 
 tended the civil jurisdiction of the Church, enfeebled 
 that of the Crown. From the death of Charle- 
 magne till the fifteenth century, when law and order 
 began to be in a measure restored, the Courts of 
 Judicature in almost every kingdom of Europe were 
 ill constituted, disorderly, weak, and ineffective. Of 
 the Courts of Germany in the twelfth century Patter 
 writes : " They were already reduced to such a state 
 of disorder through the predominating practice of 
 private wars and self defence, which during several 
 centuries had been taking deeper root, that disputes 
 were now much more frequently decided by private 
 combat or at least by the intervention of Aus- 
 ttegues or Arbitrators than by the legal decisions of 
 a Court of Justice." Thus disorder itself, destroying 
 the authority of justice, forced peaceful men to take 
 refuge in private arbitration for the determination of 
 their controversies. But in Germany arbitration be- 
 came a constitutional device as well as a substitute 
 for legal proceedings between individuals. In the 
 tenth and eleventh centuries the authority exercised 
 by the Emperors in Germany was greater than that 
 of the French Kings in France, or even (in Free- 
 man's judgment) than that of the Norman Kings in 
 England. But from the twelfth century onwards 
 
 1 This is the view commonly held. But the first authority living 
 disagrees. According to him all, or nearly all, that the medieval 
 chancery borrowed was a summary procedure.
 
 376 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 causes, which it is impossible here to explore, led to 
 the consolidation of France and England, whereas in 
 Germany the centrifugal forces gradually prevailed 
 over the central authority. At the end of the 
 eighteenth century, when John Stephen Putter pub- 
 lished his learned treatise on the historical develop- 
 ment of the German constitution, although the Holy 
 Roman Empire still existed in name and form, 
 Germany was no more than a compound body of 
 States very loosely associated by certain imperial and 
 federal ties. In 1863, when Freeman wrote his 
 book on Federation, the Bund had been substituted 
 for the Empire ; the contest for leadership between 
 Prussia and Austria had not been settled ; Germany 
 was in no real sense a State ; it was only a very 
 loose confederation of States, which but rarely acted 
 in common. 
 
 Clarke. The Germans express the difference very 
 neatly. Before 1866 'they say Germany was a Staaten- 
 bund, now it is a Bundesstaat. 
 
 Case. The Greeks could hardly have improved on 
 that. What a wonderful language German is, if only 
 their learned men would use it reasonably. Well, 
 just as the absence of law and order and the general 
 failure of justice forced individuals to fly to arms or 
 arbitration, so it happened in the case of the princes 
 and free towns of Germany. It was indeed a special 
 function of the Emperor and of the Imperial Courts 
 to settle disputes between the different States and 
 cities of Germany. But the pettiest German potentate 
 valued the right of " diffidation " and private war, 
 and was reluctant to surrender any fraction of 
 his power to the Emperor. When the imperial
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 377 
 
 authority was strong, especially in its earlier days, the 
 smaller princes might be overawed ; but the inter- 
 vention of a third prince as mediator was generally 
 less unwelcome than that of the Emperor as judge 
 and overlord. It was not uncommon for the con- 
 tending parties, when they were weary of hostilities, 
 to submit to the arbitration of some outsider, which 
 in general succeeded better than if they left their 
 cause to the uncertain decision of the Court of 
 Princes or of the Aulic judge. And this sort of 
 arbitration had come so much into vogue that by the 
 beginning of the thirteenth century such arbitral 
 awards were far more frequent than judgments pro- 
 nounced by the Emperor or the regular imperial 
 tribunal. 
 
 Moreover, many of the Imperial States made com- 
 pacts with one another that if any dispute should 
 arise between them it should be settled neither by 
 war nor by complaint to the Emperor or his court, 
 but by appeal to the intervention of a third State 
 or by " vassals " nominated by both parties. This was 
 termed " gewillkiihrte Austrage " or optional arbitra- 
 tion; 1 and this custom of optional arbitration between 
 States grew so common that it was frequently resorted 
 to even without any prior agreement. It came to 
 be considered almost a breach of decorum for one 
 German prince to cite another before the Emperor 
 unless the defendant had refused to submit to the 
 arbitration of a neutral, and still worse if a prince 
 refused to agree to a reference to arbitration. It 
 
 1 See the Statutes of the Imperial Chamber, 1495, title 24, and 
 Putter's German Constitution, translated by Dorndorf, Book 2, 
 ch. xii.
 
 378 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 was also considered highly dishonourable to refuse to 
 comply with an award. " Hence," writes Patter, 
 " arose a privilege which has been esteemed down to 
 the present time (1790) as a jewel of great price by 
 the princes and those among whom the custom is 
 established that such a person, when he is com- 
 plained against, cannot be accused in the constitutional 
 manner before the supreme tribunals of the Empire ; 
 but the accuser must first offer to compromise the 
 matter by the intervention of a third prince, to be 
 agreed upon by both the parties, or else by some 
 other mediator. This is still termed "das Recht der 
 Auslrage or Austrdgalinstanz ; i.e. the right of the 
 Germanic princes to resort to arbitration." 
 
 On my way from Germany to England, I am 
 glad to pause for a moment in the land of Hugo 
 Grotius. Oliver Goldsmith, who wasted some of his 
 student days at Leyden, has described a Dutch insti- 
 tution with such enthusiasm in an essay on Political 
 Frugality 1 that one feels sure it must have saved 
 him a night in gaol. 
 
 The best and most useful laws I have ever seen, he 
 says, are generally practised in Holland. When two 
 men are determined to go to law with each other, they 
 are first obliged to go before the reconciling judges, 
 called the peace-makers. If the parties come attended 
 with an advocate or a solicitor, they are obliged to 
 retire, as we take fuel from the fire we are desirous 
 of extinguishing. The peace-makers then begin advis- 
 ing the parties, by assuring them, that it is the height 
 of folly to waste their substance, and make themselves 
 mutually miserable, by having recourse to the tribunals 
 1 In the Bfe, No. v. 1757.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 379 
 
 of justice : " Follow but our direction, and we will 
 accommodate matters without any expense to either." 
 If the rage of debate is too strong upon either party 
 they are remitted back for another day, in order that 
 time may soften their tempers, and produce a recon- 
 ciliation. They are thus sent for twice or thrice ; 
 if their folly happens to be incurable, they are per- 
 mitted to go to law ; and as we give up to amputation 
 such members as cannot be cured by art, justice is 
 permitted to take its course. 
 
 Arbiter. You remind me of a description of his 
 Province of Pennsylvania, which William Penn wrote 
 in 1683 to attract emigrants. The "planted part of the 
 Province," he said, had been divided into six counties, 
 and Courts of Justice had been established in each. 
 " But to prevent law-suits there are three peace- 
 makers chosen by every county court in the nature 
 of common arbitrators, to hear and end differences 
 betwixt man and man." 
 
 Browne. I can cap your quotations from Goldsmith 
 and Penn by a Scandinavian plan which another English 
 traveller found established in Norway. I stumbled on 
 it the other day in Mary Wollstonecraft's letters. 
 
 Case. Good. I have been told that there is some- 
 thing of the kind in Iceland ; but I could not find it 
 in the books. 
 
 Browne (turning over the pages of a book}. I'm 
 afraid the introductory sentences may jar on your 
 nerves. They are not complimentary to your noble 
 profession. 
 
 Case. Never mind. I'll try to bear abuse of the 
 law for the sake of arbitration. We Good Templars 
 find them equally lucrative.
 
 380 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Browne. When our heroine reached Laurvig after 
 a glorious journey from Tonsberg through forests of 
 beech, she was immediately disenchanted and bade 
 farewell " to all the sentiments which ennoble our 
 nature." For on her arrival at Laurvig she found 
 herself in a group of lawyers, and thus described her 
 sensations : " My head turned round, my heart grew 
 sick, as I regarded visages deformed by vice, and 
 listened to accounts of chicanery that was continually 
 embroiling the ignorant. These locusts will probably 
 diminish as the people become more enlightened . . . 
 The profession of the law renders a set of men 
 shrewder and more selfish than the rest ; and it is 
 these men, whose wits have been sharpened by 
 knavery, who here undermine morality, confounding 
 right and wrong." 
 
 Case. I'm not thin-skinned, but I confess to feeling 
 a little hurt. " Confounding right and wrong " for- 
 sooth ! But pray go on. 
 
 Browne (reads) : " The Count of Bernstorff, who 
 really appears to me, from all I can gather, to have the 
 good of the people at heart, has lately sent to the mayor 
 of each district to name, according to the size of the 
 place, four or six of the best informed inhabitants, 
 not men of the law, out of which the citizens are to 
 elect two, who are to be termed mediators. Their 
 office is to endeavour to prevent litigious suits, and 
 conciliate differences. And no suit is to commence 
 before the parties have discussed the dispute at their 
 weekly meeting. If a reconciliation should, in conse- 
 quence, take place, it is to be registered, and the 
 parties are not allowed to retract. By these means 
 ignorant people will be prevented from applying for
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 381 
 
 advice to men who may justly be termed stirrers-up 
 of strife." l 
 
 Clarke. Let me add from a favourite book of mine 
 a much earlier example of the same sort of thing. 
 In the long address of Democritus to the Reader with 
 which Burton introduces his Anatomy of Melancholy, 
 I read : " In Switzerland (as we are informed by 
 Simlerus) they had some common arbitrators, or 
 daysmen, in every town, that made a friendly com- 
 position betwixt man and man, and he much wonders 
 at their honest simplicity that could keep peace and 
 end such great causes by that means." 2 
 
 II. 
 
 Case. 1 come to the second part of my paper, which 
 perhaps requires a little preface of apology ; for you 
 may think it tiresome and technical. To my mind 
 the establishment of the Hague Tribunal is the 
 healthiest symptom of modern international law I 
 have heard a great lawyer call it " the one hope of 
 mankind." But just because it is a comparatively new 
 arrival arbitration has been neglected in the standard 
 text-books of international law. Your Hallecks and 
 Halls, your Vattels, your Burmalaquis, your Martens 
 and your Heffters seem to entertain a sort of pro- 
 fessional disdain for arbitration, just as modern 
 
 1 Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters on Sweden, Norway and Denmark 
 Letter x. 
 
 2 Burton's reference is to Simlerus, de Helvet. Rep. lib. 2. Josias 
 Simler (1530-1576) was a learned Swiss Protestant, one of Peter 
 Martyr's colleagues at Zurich. He was a considerable historian 
 and antiquarian, and his little book on the Swiss Republic was 
 often reprinted.
 
 382 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 professors of economics have a distaste for the finance 
 of war. Still more striking is the lack of any historical 
 study of arbitration as a substitute for litigation, and 
 this led me to hope by research in some of our old 
 English law books at once to gratify a favourite 
 hobby, and possibly, to gather fruit which had 
 ripened in unseen or neglected corners of the legal 
 orchard. Thus pondering, I found my way one 
 afternoon to my favourite second-hand book shop, 
 and, as luck would have it, the very first volume I 
 took up was West's Symb oleography. It was a book 
 of note, and highly esteemed by practitioners in the 
 first half of the seventeenth century. The contents 
 of the First Part did not attract me ; but in the 
 Second Part, dated London, 1611, I noticed a 
 special section on Compromise and Arbltrements , Turn- 
 ing at once to this I found Compromise defined as 
 follows : " A compromise or submission, arbitrium, 
 compromissum, submissio, is the facultie or power of 
 pronouncing sentence between persons at controversie, 
 given to arbitrators by the parties mutuall private 
 consent, without publike authoritie." 1 If one sub- 
 stitutes international for public this definition will do 
 equally well for the agreement or submission of an 
 international arbitration. 
 
 After definition conies division. West continues : 
 " Everie compromise is generall or speciall. 2 
 Compromise generall. A generall compromise is of 
 all quarrells, actions, executions, and demaunds, etc." 
 A few years ago one would have had to say that 
 there was no example of a general agreement between 
 nations to submit all disputes to arbitration, or even 
 l Cp. Year Book, 8 Ed. iv. 2. 2 Dyer, 217, placit 6, 4 Eliz.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 383 
 
 all disputes of a certain class. Now happily there 
 are in existence many " compromises generall " between 
 nations. Of the perfect and complete kind an example 
 may be found in the treaties between Holland and 
 Denmark, Chili and Argentina, Italy and Argentina, 
 or that projected between Great Britain and the United 
 States, but unfortunately wrecked by the Senate. 1 
 
 Compromise Special!. " A speciall compromise is 
 every submission to order, which is not so generall, 
 as when it is of certaine matters, factes, or thinges 
 only, as of a trepasse, or of all actions of trepasse, or 
 of a plaint or debt, or detinue, etc." ... In 
 international affairs a famous example of the " com- 
 promise speciall " was the submission of the Alabama 
 claims. West then passes from the compromise or 
 submission to the Arbitrator. 
 
 ARBITRATORS DEFINED. 
 
 "An arbitrator is an extraordinary judge which is 
 chosen, and hath power to judge given to him, by 
 the mutual consent, will, compromise and election of 
 privat persons striving, to the end they may decide 
 their controversies, 2 who because the controversie is 
 committed to his pleasure and arbitrament is termed 
 an arbitrator, and for that it is done by the mutual 
 promise or compromise of the parties he is called 
 compromissarius judex? or a judge having cognisance 
 by the compromise of the parties ; his power is larger 
 than any ordinary or extraordinary judge appointed by 
 
 1 The late agreement between Norway and Sweden is another good 
 example of a general compromise. 
 
 2 19 H. 6, 36. 3 See Dyer, 36, 19 El. 39.
 
 384 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 a magistrate, for an arbitrator hath power to judge 
 according to the compromise after his own mind, as 
 wel of the fact as of the law, not observing the 
 forme of law ; but the other judges are tyed to a pre- 
 script forme limitted to them by the law or magistrat, 
 of which they be only executors, for which cause Tully 
 saith well : aliud est judicium aliud arbitrium ; nam 
 judicium est pecuniae certae, arbitrium incertae ; ad 
 judicium hoc modo venimus, ut totam litem aut 
 obtineamus aut amittamus ; ad arbitrium hoc animo 
 adimus ut neque nihil neque tantum quantum postu- 
 lavimus consequamur : whence springeth this old 
 saying, He that putteth his coat to daying is 
 like to lose a quarter." The whole passage shows 
 that Cicero does not make the distinction between 
 arbitration and law depend solely upon the question 
 whether the claim is for liquidated or unliquidated 
 damages. 
 
 Of course the Roman Law was quite clear about 
 this. It was not the duty of an arbiter to decide 
 by strict law : 
 
 " dicuntur arbitri, quia dabantur fere in causis bonae fidei, hoc 
 est quae arbitratu boni viri, et ex aequo et bono aestimandae ac 
 definiendae sunt ; et in suis sententiis (quae ob id arbitria appellantur) 
 adscribebant formulas ex fide bona vel quantum aequius melius sit 
 dari, . . . quibus significatur sententias eas non ex stricto jure, sed ex 
 aequitatis ratione proficisci." 1 
 
 We now come to the choice of arbitrators. Again 
 I follow the Symboleography. Their power is such, 
 
 1 Proculum. Dig., lib. 17, tit. 2, leg. 76. 
 
 Cp. Justinian, /////., lib. 4, tit. 6, " Dicitur etiam arbitraria actio 
 cum in ea non restricte certum quid postulatur, sed id tantum quod 
 aequius melius judici videtur."
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 385 
 
 and so great and uncontrollable, that wariness must 
 be used in the choice of them ; " in which two things 
 seeme necessary to be regarded, namely, that the 
 arbitrators be sufficient and indifferent." First as to 
 sufficiency : " such persons are to be elected as have 
 sufficient skil of the matter compromitted, and have 
 neither legal nor natural impediments to give an 
 upright sentence." West's two examples, to show that 
 a fool or simpleton may by chance give an excellent 
 award, are amusing enough, but I am afraid you will 
 say they are a little below the level of this 
 subject. 
 
 We all begged him not to spare our dignity; and he 
 then read) to our infinite amusement^ the two following 
 tales : 
 
 A FOOLES ARBITREMENT. 
 
 "An hungry beggar, espying dainty cheare in a cookes shop, hasted 
 thither, and being sit doune did eat a small piece of his owne bread, 
 and incontinently received such wonderful comfort by the sweet smel 
 of the cook's cates and sauces, whereof he tasted no bit, that he con- 
 fessed his eager stomack was as well satisfied therwith, and had as 
 good a repast as if he had indeed stuffed his paunch with the best 
 cheere there ; which the cook hearing straightways with a stern 
 countenance bids the poor caitife pay for the breakfast, whereat the 
 simple guest was mightily amased, and the crafty cooke so much the 
 more earnest ; in so much as this poore man and the cooke were con- 
 tent therein to abide the ward of him that should next passe by : no 
 sooner was the submission made, but thither commeth a most notori- 
 ous naturall foole, to whom as their judge they rehearsed the matter, 
 which being heard the idiot caused the poore man to put so much 
 monie between two basons as the covetous cooke exacted, and to 
 shake them in the cookes hearing ; which done this arbitrator 
 awarded, that as the cooke had fed the poore man with the only 
 smell of his cates, so the poore man should pay him therefore with 
 the only sound of his coine, which sentence was highly approved of 
 the hearers." 
 
 2 B
 
 386 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 The second illustration is called 
 
 A SIMPLE MAGISTRATES ARBITRAMENT, 
 
 and is designed to show that even a borough magis- 
 trate may give the right decision. 
 
 " There was a certain covetous churle who sorrowed extremely at 
 losing a purse with one and twenty Angels in it. But an honest 
 man having found the same of mere conscience delivered it to the 
 same churle who not once thanking him that was the bringer, fel to 
 count his coin, and finding only twenty Angels in the purse with 
 great rigour exacted the odde Angel ; and because the honest man 
 denied the finding thereof he convented him before the Magistrate of 
 a Corporation, whose wealth and authority far exceeded his wit (as in 
 such places commonly happeneth, for that affection and simplicity be 
 their ordinary electors). The Plaintife sweareth, there were one and 
 twenty Angels in the purse which he lost; the defendant that there 
 were only twenty in that which he found. Whereupon the Magis- 
 trate pronounced that the purse found was not the plaintifes, and 
 therefore adjudged him to restore unto the defendant the purse with 
 twentie Angels, leaving the plaintife to good fortune for the finding 
 again of his purse with one and twentie Angels." 
 
 " 1 think," adds West, "a man may trie a thousand 
 fooles in the like case before he receive the like 
 sentence." 
 
 The question next considered by West is perhaps 
 the most important and difficult of all. An Arbitrator 
 must be indifferent in the old and good sense of the 
 word indifference or impartiality is the key to 
 success in international arbitration. Too much care 
 cannot be taken to obtain a good tribunal, though in 
 this imperfect world we can hardly hope for a tribunal 
 composed entirely of absolutely impartial persons. 
 West's answer to the question, Who are indifferent 
 arbitrators? is worth citing. "And for indifferency it is 
 good that the arbitrators be void of malice and favour
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 387 
 
 to either of the parties . . . ; for albeit, as it is said, 
 an arbitrator hath herein absolute power, yet ought his 
 judgment or censure to be sincere and incorrupt, 
 according to right and equity, without malice, flattery, 
 and every other vicious affection or pertubation which 
 may in any sort lead him away from the right of 
 justice and equity." 
 
 Modern lawyers in a very inferior idiom have 
 expressed very similar views. The following, to take 
 a single example, is the dictum of Sir George Jessel 
 in a Chancery case. " It is a settled principle that no 
 inferior tribunal, whether it be a judge, or arbitrator, 
 or other judicial or quasi-judicial person, ought to be 
 allowed to proceed in the hearing of a case which such 
 judge or arbitrator is for any special reason unfit or 
 incompetent to hear." A supreme international court 
 would probably have set aside the Alaskan Award on 
 the ground that the Government of the United States 
 did not appoint suitable Commissioners. In English 
 law, however, a distinction of some importance is for 
 good reason drawn between named and unnamed 
 arbitrators. If the arbitrator is named in the agree- 
 ment, probability of bias, even if strong, is not ground 
 for interfering with the execution of the award. To 
 disturb the award actual bias must be proved. 
 
 THE QUESTION. 
 
 So much for the persons, now for the question 
 or subject matter : 
 
 " The question is a thing in controversie declared 
 to the judge or arbitrator to the end it may by him be 
 decided." 
 
 " Every question is either about the fact or about
 
 388 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 right," or about both ; for it may be, and often is, 
 what we call a mixed question of fact and law. 
 
 The question of the fact is when such a fact is enquired 
 of as is doubtful. 
 
 The question of right is when, the fact being known, it 
 is yet doubtful how much is thereby grown right and 
 due to each party by law. West then asks, What 
 things are arbitrable and what not in English Law ? At 
 that time *' things certain," crimes, and freeholds were 
 held not to be arbitrable. Finally an arbitrement or 
 award is defined as " nothing else but the very doome 
 order and decree pronounced by arbitrators upon the 
 controversie for the ending whereof they were chosen 
 by the striving parties." Of the five terms in the 
 Symboleography arbitrement, award, arbitramentum, 
 laudum, arbitratus award is the regular English word 
 now for the judgment of an arbitrator. It comes from 
 the old French. The Latin term arbitrium was used, 
 if I am not mistaken, in a rather striking metaphor by 
 Pliny the Elder, who called the Taurus mountain 
 " innumerarum gentium arbitrium " because it divided 
 so many realms and jurisdictions, and kept the peace 
 like a boundary award between innumerable warlike 
 tribes. 
 
 A century and a half after the appearance of the 
 Symboleography^ Sir John Comyns in his Digest (written 
 in the reign of George II.) treats at length of arbitra- 
 tion under the title of Arbitrament^ which he defines 
 as " the judgment or decree of persons elected by the 
 parties to arbitrate of the things submitted to them." 
 In considering what persons are disqualified to act as 
 arbitrators he follows West, enumerating the insane, 
 persons who by nature or accident lack discretion,
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 389 
 
 infants, persons not sui juris (as villeins or married 
 women), persons dead in law, as monks, men attainted of 
 treason or felony ; and adds, first, that a party cannot 
 be arbitrator in his own cause, and second, that as an 
 arbitrator ought to be indifferent, an award made by 
 corruption or undue means is avoided in equity. By 
 this time it was customary to make the submission a 
 rule of court under 9 and 10 William III. c. 15, so 
 that a process of contempt might issue against the 
 party disobeying the award " unless on oath it appeared 
 that the arbitrators misbehaved themselves." 
 
 Another important development of arbitration 
 though it is true early instances of this might be found 
 is the appearance of the Umpire, who is not mentioned 
 in the Symboleography. If there be a submission to 
 arbitrament, it may, says Comyns, contain a provision 
 that if the arbitrators do not agree they shall stand to 
 the umpirage of such an one, or if they do not agree for 
 all the matters they shall stand to an umpirage for the 
 residue. 
 
 Next, I think, it will be useful to say something 
 about the English rules as to award. Some you will 
 regard as commonplace, others as disputable ; and all 
 of them need careful interpretation. But they are of 
 interest, because they indicate the sort of rules which 
 a supreme court of appeal composed of the most 
 distinguished jurists in the world may be expected to 
 lay down for the conduct of international arbitrations 
 in one particular branch of the subject. Most of 
 them, moreover, have their counterpart in the 
 Roman law, from which, as we have seen, the 
 rules and forms of English arbitration were mainly 
 derived. In answer, then, to the question, " What
 
 390 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 is a good award ? " I find the following rules laid 
 down by Comyns : 
 
 i. An award must be -pursuant to a submission and 
 therefore shall be void, (a) as to the things not submitted; 
 (fr) as to a stranger. This rule is fundamental to the 
 theory and practice of arbitration both in Roman and 
 English law. An award must be consistent with the 
 terms of the submission and must not go beyond them, 
 for upon the submission (a voluntary act of the striving 
 parties) depends the whole authority and office of 
 an arbitrator. This rule is very plainly stated in the 
 Pandects : "de officio arbitri tractantibus sciendum est 
 omnem tractatum ex ipso compromisso sumendum." 
 Hence also the great distinction drawn by the Roman, 
 and followed by the English, law between a full and 
 an incomplete submission. 
 
 The second half of this rule reminds one of the 
 clause inserted in our recent arbitration treaties with 
 France and other countries providing that arbitration 
 shall not be resorted to in disputes affecting a Third 
 Power. There, I venture to think, diplomatic caution 
 went too far. It would have been better to provide 
 that the award should be void in so far as it affected 
 a Third Power unless that Power assented to the 
 award. The utility of the English rule is obvious. 
 The curious thing is that our judges should often have 
 preferred to found it upon a general principle which 
 they have held to underlie submissions to arbitration, 
 namely advantage. There is an old case for example, 
 which decides that an award to pay money to a 
 stranger is void ; for it does not appear to be any 
 advantage to the parties. 
 
 This brings us to the second rule : An award ought
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 391 
 
 to be advantageous, i.e. it ought to give a benefit or 
 satisfaction. And therefore an award that orders 
 nothing to be paid or done is not good. A quaint 
 example of this is afforded by an old decision that an 
 award that both parties shall intermarry is not good ; 
 for it does not appear to be any advantage ! The 
 third rule derives from the principle laid down in the 
 first, that the award must be pursuant to the submission. 
 Hence : An award must not go to a time beyond the 
 submission ; e.g. it cannot touch disputes of a later date 
 than the submission. 
 
 The remaining conditions of a good award are six 
 and may be given in six words. An award must be 
 certain, possible, reasonable^ mutual, final, and entire. I 
 may give precision to these terms by a few illustrations. 
 Thus an award that A shall give security to pay an 
 annuity is doubly uncertain (therefore bad) because 
 neither the security nor the amount of the annuity 
 is specified. That A shall serve B for two years is 
 an example of an unreasonable award which the courts 
 would not enforce. An award that A shall pay los. 
 to B used to be held bad on the ground that it is 
 not mutual, the idea being, I think, that an award 
 should leave the two parties friends. 1 An award 
 " that each shall be nonsuited or discontinue his action 
 against the other" is bad because it is not final; for 
 
 a A good example of this was the Dogger Bank finding, which 
 though not an arbitral award was an arbitral finding of the facts, 
 carefully framed so as to leave the nation whose fleet had done the 
 wrong and the nation whose fishermen had suffered it on friendly 
 terms. The finding was mutual in form rather than in substance. 
 But it had the desired effect. It was mutual because it was 
 conciliatory ; it pacified one nation without exasperating the 
 other.
 
 392 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 they may sue de novo. An award fails because it is 
 not entire, if it is made in bits at different times. 
 
 In legal circles it is now the fashion to speak 
 slightingly of arbitration as often a cumbrous, costly, 
 and inefficient substitute for law, and one that is apt 
 to terminate not in justice but in slipshod compromises 
 of conflicting claims. I quite admit that lazy pro- 
 crastinating judges are too fond of referring questions 
 to arbitration and that many proceedings under the 
 Arbitration Act, at which rival counsel fight a legal 
 battle before a person totally ignorant of legal rules 
 of evidence and procedure, are consequently open to 
 unfavourable criticism. Such proceedings are often 
 more dilatory and costly than they would have been 
 had they been concluded before an ordinary court of 
 law ; for the arbitrators as well as the lawyers and 
 expert witnesses are interested in protracting them to 
 the utmost extent. On the other hand, where the 
 arbitrator is himself an expert in some technical dis- 
 pute, expert witnesses can be dispensed with, and much 
 time and money saved. Thus, if the question is 
 whether a consignment of flour or wool is up to sample, 
 an expert arbitrator can examine the sample and decide 
 the dispute at once. What could be more satisfactory ? 
 But I want to insist that arbitration in the true and 
 original sense of the term was a means of preventing 
 litigation, just as international arbitration is, broadly 
 speaking, a means of preventing war. In Jacob's 
 dictionary of law 1 I find this very clearly set forth. 
 Arbitrators, it is said, are generally appointed where 
 the parties think it more safe to refer the matters at 
 variance to the determination of friends, than to venture 
 1 Fifth Edition, 1 744.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 393 
 
 a trial at law. So the civilians make a difference 
 between arbiter and arbitrator ; "an arbiter is tied to 
 proceed and judge accordingly to law mingled with 
 equity ; but an arbitrator is wholly at his own discretion, 
 without solemnity of process or course of judgement 
 to hear and determine the controversy referred to him ; 
 so as to be juxta arbitrium boni viri" English lawyers 
 and judges have failed to make this distinction, 
 though it was admitted by the learned Dr. Cowel 1 
 early in the lyth century. 
 
 In the same work stress is laid upon the finality of 
 awards. The award of arbitrators is definitive. Being 
 
 o 
 
 chosen by the parties they are not tied to formalities 
 of law like ordinary judges. Yet they have greater 
 power than other judges to determine the matters at 
 variance ; if they observe the submission, and keep 
 within it, and avoid corruption, no appeal lies from 
 their decision. " The chancery will not give relief 
 against the award of the arbitrators unless it be for 
 corruption." An umpirage may be regarded as a sort 
 of double arbitration, or arbitration with an appeal. 
 It occurs where there are two arbitrators appointed, 
 and it is provided that if they cannot agree they must 
 submit it to a third umpire, whose decision is final. 
 
 I venture to think that a limited appeal from inter- 
 national awards might be permitted to a permanent 
 court, whose duty should be to decide merely whether 
 there had been corruption or excess of jurisdiction. 
 
 An interesting later glimpse of English arbitration 
 
 is afforded by a controversy between Brougham and 
 
 Bentham. In a bill for the reform of our judicial 
 
 system, which he proposed in 1830, Brougham had 
 
 1 Coke's " Dr. Cowheel."
 
 394 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 inserted some clauses for the establishment of judge 
 arbitrators to preside over " Reconcilement Courts " 
 to hear reconcilement causes. These clauses excited 
 Bentham to fury. What, he cried, is the true charac- 
 teristic of an arbitrator ? What but not being an 
 official judge ? For what do men of their own accord 
 fly into the arms of arbitrators ? " Solely to escape 
 from being plundered by judges judges a la mode 
 tT Angle terre" To say " I am an arbitrator," what is it 
 but to say "I am not a judge?" If for relief from 
 judges hackneyed in iniquity men were to cast them- 
 selves into the arms of this newly invented devourer, 
 the judge arbitrator, " what would they do but 
 what the fish would do if for relief from the 
 frying-pan he were to leap into a hotter part?" 
 Bentham saw in the proposed reconcilement court a 
 money trap, or u fee-trap," and nothing else, a mere 
 manufactory of delays and costs. The misfortune of 
 turning a judge into an arbitrator was that he would 
 never put an end to the suit. If the judge thought 
 fit under one of Brougham's clauses he might, upon 
 a question raised, send the local suit on its travels 
 from Durham or Northumberland to Westminster 
 Hall. " To Westminster Hall ? Good. But to 
 which of the shops ? To which of them ? Why, to 
 the common law shop, or to the equity shop, which- 
 ever possess the highest place in the good graces of 
 this their learned customer. No such journey would a 
 suit ever be sent by a pair of unlearned arbitrators. Here 
 may be seen one use of our learned one." Bentham then 
 is strongly on our side, if we take the view that the 
 genius of arbitration is different from the genius of 
 judicial procedure. In this dispute history as well
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 395 
 
 as common-sense and utility are with Bentham, when 
 he asserts that arbitration is a substitute for a law 
 suit, whereas Brougham would have made it but an 
 introduction to judicial torment. True it is, he adds, 
 that " by misconception or misconduct on the part 
 of referees or parties an arbitration is but too often 
 sent up to Westminster Hall." But a common law 
 judgement was the worst evil the parties could suffer. 
 It had been reserved for Brougham to propose in 
 addition to the arbitration and the common law suit 
 the still more intolerable expense of a Chancery suit, 
 keeping all hearts for years and years drenched in 
 anxiety and impoverishment. 1 
 
 I should be untrue to my Scottish descent if I 
 were to omit to notice that in the northern as well 
 as in the southern half of Great Britain arbitration has 
 been for a long time established. It is mentioned 
 in the Regiam Majestatem, one of the fountains of 
 Scottish jurisprudence. When Latin went out of vogue 
 arbitration was defined as " a solemn transaction by 
 interposition of friends authorised by the parties for 
 that purpose." This definition was adopted by 
 M'Douall, a follower of Lord Stair, in his Institute 
 of the Laws of Scotland. He describes a submission 
 or compromise as an agreement between two or more 
 persons to stand to the determination of arbiters 
 chosen by them in the matter submitted. It was 
 usual at that time (1750) for each side to appoint 
 an equal number of arbiters. If they disagreed they 
 might choose an oversman : 2 or, again, an oversman 
 
 1 See Westminster Review (1830), vol. xiii., p. 420 sqq t , "Mr. 
 Brougham and Local Judicatories." 
 
 2 Umpire.
 
 396 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 might be appointed in the submission itself. When 
 the submission did not empower a majority to 
 decide, they must all join in the decree, although 
 both by the Roman law and the Regiam Majestatem 
 (lib. 2, c. 4) a majority might determine, provided 
 they were all present. This difference between the 
 Scottish and the civil law was explained by the 
 statement that, " with the Romans, the proceedings 
 before arbiters were considered in a great measure 
 as judicial, which does not hold with us " ; and the 
 superior reasonableness of the Scotch rule was also 
 deduced from the nature of a submission, it being 
 " an irrevocable commission to certain friends to decide 
 the controversies between the parties." Arbiters, it is 
 added by the same authority, are not tied by the strict 
 rules of law, but may and ought to proceed according 
 to equity and good conscience. 
 
 Generally speaking, the view of arbitration taken by 
 the Scotch law is founded upon the rules of the civil 
 law, and in the old law books of Scotland the Roman 
 distinction between arbiters and arbitrators sometimes 
 appeared. Thus it was held that questions of matri- 
 mony, liberty, or crime, though they could not be 
 submitted to arbiters, might yet be referred to 
 arbitrators. Upon this M'Douall says : " I can under- 
 stand this in no other sense than that, tho' these 
 questions could not be finally decided in way of 
 arbitration, so as to have a legal effect, yet they might 
 be hushed by an amicable composition among friends, 
 to prevent a legal discussion of them, as no doubt is 
 frequently done at this day." " Now," he adds, " the 
 terms (arbiter and arbitrator) are promiscuously used." 
 
 So much for arbitration in Scotland.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 397 
 
 I need not say much about modern developments 
 of arbitration in English law. The Arbitration Act 
 of 1889 (52 and 53 Viet., c. 49) has been correctly 
 described as " a statute of practice," which does not 
 affect the principles previously established. It is to 
 be observed that, in the course of an arbitration 
 under this Act, the arbitrator may at any time be 
 compelled to state a point of law for the decision of 
 the High Court. Further, he may at his discretion 
 state his award in the form of a case for the High 
 Court. Its object was to provide a simple and 
 uniform code of procedure that should be applicable 
 as far as possible to all arbitrations, or, rather, to all 
 written submissions. Our principal modern text-book, 
 Russell on Arbitration, asks the important question, 
 "According to what principles is the arbiter to act?" 
 and lays down, by way of partial answer, the following 
 as the safest general rule that can be drawn from a 
 consideration of the cases : 
 
 " An arbiter should endeavour to arrive at his 
 conclusions upon the same rules and principles which 
 would have actuated the tribunal or tribunals for 
 which he is substituted in coming to a decision." 
 Not a very beautiful or lucid sentence, you will 
 say; I agree. But writers of legal text-books don't 
 study Cobbett's English grammar. It is as bad as a 
 Bishop's charge or a King's speech ; but it is open 
 to two other objections. The first is that, if this 
 doctrine were true, the substitution of one tribunal 
 for another would be purposeless. This objection I 
 admit is partly answered by the privacy of arbitration 
 proceedings, which is an advantage much valued by 
 some parties insurance companies, for example.
 
 398 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Further, it may be answered, an arbitrator may be an 
 expert; a judge cannot be one. Therefore, arbitration 
 may save the fees of two experts, besides the 
 paraphernalia and expense of an action. The second 
 objection is, that in many cases arbitration is the natural 
 and first resort, not a substitution at all ; x or, again, 
 if it is a substitution, it takes the place of an open 
 quarrel, or, possibly, a contest of brute force. Our 
 author is mistaken if he thinks that what affords 
 ground for arbitration necessarily affords ground for 
 litigation. Nor am I at all satisfied with his elucida- 
 tion of principles. He goes on to say that an 
 arbitrator (generally speaking) is bound by the prin- 
 ciples of the Common Law and Equity, " although 
 a mere mistake in law is rarely fatal to the award." 5 
 On the other hand judges of great celebrity have 
 declared that, under a general reference of all matters 
 in difference, the arbitrator is not confined within 
 the rules of law and equity, but has greater latitude, 
 and may be guided by morality and good sense. He 
 may relieve against a legal right which lies hard 
 upon one party, though it could not be resisted in 
 a court of justice. 3 
 
 There is a colonial appeal case, Rolland v. Cassidyf 
 
 1 An arbitration claim does not exclude law. You can't exclude 
 law ; for one party may issue a writ. But the other side take out 
 a summons to stay and to refer, and unless there is good reason 
 to the contrary the court will comply. 
 
 2 See Blennerhasiet v. Day, ^ Ball and Beatty 104. 
 8 Cp. I Taunt 48, .and 3 C.B. 705. 
 
 4 1 3 App. Cas. 770. Lord Selborne remarked in his judgment 
 that " in this, as in many other cases of arbitration, there was some 
 appearance of a greater degree of zeal on the part of the arbitrators 
 nominated by the parties for those who nominated them than in 
 the abstract might be desired."
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 399 
 
 where Lord Selborne considers and doubts whether 
 Canadians, appointed under the law of Lower Canada 
 as "arbitrators and aimables compositeurs" can disregard 
 all law and equity in " amiably composing " differ- 
 ences between the parties. All this suggests a 
 conundrum which I do not propose to answer, Should 
 international arbitrators be allowed to disregard estab- 
 lished principles of international law ? I hope you will 
 forgive me for having dipped into the old English 
 views of Arbitration. I have done so partly because 
 I think the English history of arbitration has been 
 undeservedly neglected, 1 partly because it seemed to 
 me the most rapid and effective means of giving you 
 a real insight into the subject of international arbi- 
 tration. Arbitral procedure grew up side by side 
 with legal procedure ; the English rules of arbitration 
 are drawn for the most part from the Roman ; 
 awards are almost as ancient as judgments ; and 
 certainly the lights thrown upon arbitration by our 
 old lawyers and judges give a very distinct picture 
 of its practical advantages as well as of the rules 
 which ought to be observed. I have purposely 
 abstained from considering at all the modern legisla- 
 tion upon the subject. Our own system of arbitration 
 is in its maturity (possibly, as some think, in its old 
 age), and, if we want fruitful analogies, we must 
 examine not the later but the earlier stages of 
 domestic arbitration. 
 
 Now the most marked characteristic of early arbitra- 
 tion was the elasticity, perhaps I may almost say the 
 absence, of procedure and of definition. Except in 
 regard to land, where transfers not made under due 
 
 1 Kyd on Awards is the best of the old books.
 
 400 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 legal forms and livery would have endangered the 
 feudal system and the military authority of the Crown, 
 disputes of almost any kind might be settled by arbitra- 
 tion. This is the first lesson which the International 
 Lawyer (who has hitherto paid scarcely any serious 
 attention to the history of arbitration) may learn from 
 the study of arbitration in England. It is absurd 
 to say to two nations who are disputing : u This 
 is a political question, or a question of honour, or of 
 vital interests ; you must not dream of appointing 
 arbitrators to settle such a controversy." 
 
 The common-sense of private arbitration is this. 
 If you have a quarrel with somebody you can agree 
 to refer it to somebody else and so avoid the 
 unpleasantness of coming to blows or going to law. 
 
 There are of course numbers of these informal 
 arbitrations between friends and neighbours, and many 
 disputes are got over in this way. Compromise is 
 a rough but often a very satisfactory form of justice. 
 The question as to whether the award can be enforced 
 rarely arises. Both parties either are honourable or 
 don't wish to be regarded as dishonourable. So far 
 then as the sanction is concerned the psychology of 
 this kind of private award is exactly like that of an 
 international award, except that the result of refusing 
 to carry out one may be litigation, of the other war. 
 Austin thought that international law is no law because 
 it has no sanction, and he would probably have said, 
 that an International Court like the Hague Tribunal 
 had no real jurisdiction because it could not enforce 
 its awards. A contention that only proves a narrow 
 outlook, and would lead us, if we followed, into the 
 cul de sac of a verbal controversy.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 40 1 
 
 Clarke. I wish you would give us your answer to 
 Austin a little more fully. Surely it is something 
 more than a verbal controversy. Austin says that 
 the relationship between States cannot be subject 
 matter of law, because law, to be law, must have a 
 physical sanction. There must be a sovereign Power, 
 with policeman, executioner, gaoler, and, if need be, 
 soldier, to support the judge. But there is no 
 international executive, no international police, no 
 international army. Therefore there is no inter- 
 national law. Is that correct ? 
 
 Case. I don't think Austin would have demurred 
 to your statement of his argument. What I meant 
 was that his contention really gains its force from a 
 double use of the word sanction. Most of us would 
 agree that law involves a sanction. Austin regards 
 the policeman as the embodiment of legal sanction, 
 and defines a sanction so as to fit law in a police 
 State. But surely a sanction need not be physical ; 
 and indeed physical sanctions may be very imperfect. 
 Even in the most law-abiding country many laws 
 are more honoured in the breach than in the 
 observance. The question surely is not whether a 
 sanction is terrible, nor whether it is backed by 
 irresistible force, but whether it is effective. Now 
 the fallacy, if I may be permitted to say so, in this 
 Austinian theory lies not so much in the argument 
 as in the assumption on which the argument rests. 
 Looking back over the history of law Austin sees 
 a gradual strengthening of the executive power. The 
 arm of the law becomes stronger. The punishment 
 of lawlessness becomes more certain, and apparently 
 the most law-abiding countries are those in which 
 
 2 C
 
 402 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 punishment attends most surely upon crimes and 
 delicts. I say apparently, because a most efficient 
 police may coincide with legal anarchy, as in Russia. 
 
 From that case I think it is clear that you may 
 have the physical sanction, police, without law. In 
 the same way I submit you may have law without 
 the physical sanction. 
 
 Browne. Yet if we trace the history of Europe 
 since the break up of the Roman Empire, surely one 
 of the great lessons we carry away is the gradual 
 restoration and extension of the reign of law through 
 the development of independent sovereign States. 
 And that has meant in every case the constitution 
 of a strong central authority with power to enforce 
 laws as well as to make them. 
 
 Arbiter. But why should the historian suppose that 
 the world will stand still ? John Austin's mistake to 
 my mind was this. He assumed, as a lawyer is apt 
 to assume, that the society in which he lived had 
 arrived at perfection, that the acme of civilisation 
 was reached when a good system of law was backed 
 by a good system of police, when law-breakers were 
 promptly punished, when laws were kept through 
 fear of damages, fines, imprisonment, gallows. Is 
 it not far more probable that such a system is only 
 a stage in the transition from a lower to a higher 
 civilisation ? Are we not even now progressing to 
 the point at which most people obey the law rather 
 because it is the thing to do ? What is a " passive 
 resister " but a person who makes a strictly legal 
 protest against a law which he desires to alter? He 
 refuses to pay his rate in money and leaves the law 
 to recover it by distraint upon his goods. Yet even
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 403 
 
 this law-abiding protest has caused much offence, and 
 is regarded with astonishment and grave misgiving 
 by many moderate people. 
 
 Case. Yes, and in ordinary private law, the " argu- 
 ment to the police " is seldom necessary. When 
 judgment is found against a party that party pays. 
 He does not wait for the bailiffs to be put in. He 
 may be as indignant as Mr. Pickwick, who preferred 
 on a famous occasion to go to the Fleet. But 
 nowadays we take our beatings like men, not like 
 the Gothic man of honour, nor like the ill-conditioned 
 chess player who won't resign till he is actually 
 mated. 
 
 Clarke. I'm not sure that you are quite fair to 
 John Austin. After all, he had to find some limit 
 to the signification of " law " as a term of juris- 
 prudence. His distinctions are too sharp and con- 
 ventional, but they have their uses. I find much that 
 is suggestive in some of the illustrations which lead 
 up to his verdict on international law as it was 
 conceived in his own day. One of Austin's examples 
 is the law of honour, i.e. the laws or rules imposed 
 upon gentlemen by opinions current among gentlemen. 
 Another is fashion the laws or rules imposed on 
 people of fashion by opinions current in the fashionable 
 world. Now most of us, I suppose, would not wish 
 for any law more binding upon nations than the 
 laws of fashion are upon fashionable women. Yet 
 Austin quite fairly and truly declares that law in 
 this sense is used metaphorically. 
 
 "When we speak of a law set by general opinion we denote by 
 that expression the following fact. Some indeterminate body or 
 uncertain aggregate of persons regard a kind of conduct with a
 
 4 o 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 sentiment of aversion or liking : or (changing the expression) that 
 indeterminate body opines unfavourably or favourably of a given 
 kind of conduct. In consequence of that sentiment, or in conse- 
 quence of that opinion, it is likely that they or some of them will 
 be displeased with a party who shall pursue or not pursue conduct 
 of that kind. And in consequence of that displeasure it is likely 
 that some party (what party being undetermined) will visit the party 
 provoking it with some evil or another." 
 
 But, he goes on, a positive law, or a law properly 
 so called, is a law which will be enforced and executed 
 by a known and determinate authority. But the 
 " so-called law of nations " consists of opinions or 
 sentiments current among nations generally. One 
 supreme government may command another to obey 
 an international law, but unless the government 
 receiving the command were in a state of subjection 
 to the other the command would not convert the 
 international law into positive law. 1 I won't tire you 
 with more, for Austin's language is as stiff and starched 
 as a drill sergeant's ; but is there not some sound 
 thinking and good sense confined and pestered in 
 these juristic penfolds ? 
 
 Case. Yes, one must own that there are some quite 
 good cattle, though lean, browsing on the bleak 
 Austinian prairies, and if you put them into better 
 pasturage they might prove fat and marketable beasts. 
 But pray complete your exposition. I did not treat 
 him quite fairly. 
 
 Clarke. In another lecture (vi.) he continues his 
 proof that international law is not positive law. " The 
 duties which it imposes are enforced by moral 
 sanctions ; by fear on the part of nations, or by 
 fear on the part of sovereigns, of provoking general 
 1 See Austin's Province of Jurisprudence Determined^ Lecture v.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 405 
 
 hostility and incurring its probable evils, in case they 
 shall violate maxims generally received and respected." 
 It is from this carefully defined standpoint that he 
 surveys the term international law. All the older 
 writers, he complains, incessantly blend and confound 
 international law as it is with international law as it 
 ought to be, " with that undeterminate something 
 which they suppose it would be if it conformed to 
 the indeterminate something which they style the law 
 of nature." Obviously here Austin is dwelling on an 
 important distinction ; for scientific writers ought 
 surely to distinguish the actual state of international 
 morality from the ideal standard to which they desire 
 nations to conform. Austin therefore praises Von 
 Martens of Gottingen, who drew this distinction, and 
 endeavoured to collect from the customary conduct 
 of nations the morality which they habitually observe. 
 To the code of rules collected by this induction he 
 gave the name of " positive " or " practical " inter- 
 national law. 
 
 Case. I am very much obliged to you for correcting 
 my criticism of Austin, which (I frankly admit) should 
 have been more carefully worded to avoid doing an 
 injustice to a distinguished jurist. 
 
 To return, however, to one at least of the lessons 
 which we may derive, I think, from a general and 
 particular study of arbitration, and especially from its 
 history as a substitute for private litigation. Let 
 international arbitration be given full freedom of 
 development. To argue from the individual to the 
 State is to draw a conclusion favourable to the most 
 unrestricted use of it as between States ; and I 
 would place no limitation upon the competence of an
 
 406 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 international tribunal. If two nations quarrel and wish 
 to submit their controversy to an arbitrator, why in 
 the world should anybody, least of all an international 
 jurist, cavil ? Soldiers never complain that a cause 
 is too trivial for war ; barristers never complain that 
 a grievance is too trivial for a law-suit ; why should 
 a modern Grotius object that some controversies are 
 not too trivial but too important for the Hague 
 Tribunal ! Does he really mean to suggest that a 
 juster result can be gained by war ? Is it to be said 
 that vital interests can only be settled by battle, 
 murder, and sudden death ? One would suppose 
 that the more important the dispute the more im- 
 portant would it be to get it settled by the fairest 
 tribunal. 
 
 Arbiter. A similar mistake, arising from the laudable 
 anxiety of modern international lawyers to assimilate 
 their subject to municipal law instead of to municipal 
 arbitration, is the error of supposing that international 
 arbitration ought to be confined to disputes of a legal 
 or juristic character. The work, use, meaning, and 
 history of arbitration as you have described it are 
 surely dead against this most arbitrary and unfounded 
 theory. 
 
 Clarke. You remind me of a passage in De Tocque- 
 ville's Democracy in America which bears directly upon 
 this topic. He remarks that whereas in Europe the 
 Courts of Justice only try the controversies of private 
 individuals, the Supreme Court of the United States 
 summons sovereign Powers to its Bar. When the 
 Clerk of the Court advanced to the steps of the 
 Tribunal and called out " The State of New York 
 versus the State of Ohio," De Tocqueville felt that a
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 407 
 
 court with such a jurisdiction was no ordinary body ; 
 and when he recollected that one of the parties re- 
 presented a million and the other two millions of men, 
 he was still more struck by the responsibility of the 
 seven judges whose award was about to satisfy or 
 disappoint so large a number of their fellow citizens. 
 The Frenchman's estimate of the power of this court 
 still holds good ; nay, it has mightily increased with 
 the increase of the number, population, and territory 
 of the States. If population and wealth are the criterion, 
 then the supreme court of the United States is at 
 least as important a body as a supreme tribunal of 
 Europe would have been a century ago. In De 
 Tocqueville's words, the peace, the prosperity and the 
 very existence of the Union are vested in the hands 
 of the seven judges. Without their active co-operation 
 the constitution would be a dead letter ; the executive 
 appeals to them for protection from the encroachment 
 of the legislature and the legislature from the designs 
 of the executive ; they compel the States to submit 
 to the lawful authority of the Union while defending 
 them against its exaggerated claims ; they guard the 
 public interest from the greed or ambition of private 
 corporations, and the conservative spirit of order against 
 the fleeting innovations of democracy. But if their 
 power is enormous it is clothed in the authority of 
 public opinion. As guardians of a law-abiding people 
 they are all powerful ; but they would be impotent 
 if they paid no heed to public opinion. What then, 
 asks De Tocqueville, should be the qualifications ot 
 members of this interstate tribunal ? I give the answer 
 in his own words as a practical contribution to the 
 problem you have raised :
 
 4 o8 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 "The federal judges must not only be good citizens, 
 and men possessed of the information and integrity 
 which are indispensable to magistrates ; but they must 
 also be statesmen, politicians, not unread in the science 
 of the times, not afraid to brave the obstacles which 
 can be subdued, nor slow to turn aside such encroach- 
 ing elements as may threaten the supremacy of the 
 Union and the obedience that is due to the law." 
 
 Case. Your analogy is highly instructive ; but pray 
 observe De Tocqueville does not suggest that the 
 Tribunal could get on without a knowledge of the law. 
 What he means is that its members should be lawyers, 
 and something more. 
 
 Arbiter. Then what is your own view as to the 
 composition of the Hague Tribunal ? Under Article 
 xxiii. of the First Convention each Signatory Power 
 is authorised to nominate four members " of recognised 
 competence in questions of international law, enjoying 
 the highest moral consideration, and disposed to accept 
 the duties of arbitrators." Do you really think that all 
 the members of the court should be lawyers ? 
 
 Case. That is a difficult question. I incline to 
 answer first that every member ought to be learned 
 in international law, and second, that he should 
 also, if possible, have had a legal training in his own 
 country. 
 
 Arbiter. The stricter view of an arbitrator's quali- 
 fications was put forward in a Russian memorandum 
 circulated among the delegates to the Hague Con- 
 ference, and an attempt to restrict arbitrators to the 
 legal profession almost succeeded ; but the form 
 of words ultimately adopted leaves the qualification 
 less narrow. You know that the Governments gave a
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 409 
 
 rather liberal interpretation to the legal qualification. 
 For instance, the late Lord Pauncefote was one of 
 the British Members. 
 
 Case. I know. But Pauncefote had great legal 
 knowledge and acumen, besides (I think) some ex- 
 perience in the legal branch of the Consular Service. 
 Such a man should certainly not be barred on 
 technical grounds. 
 
 Seymour. Do you object to the inclusion of a military 
 man like Sir John Ardagh, who is conversant with the 
 practice and customs of war ? 
 
 Case. Again I agree, but on the understanding 
 that he shall also be well acquainted with the law of 
 nations. Your example is a good one; for Sir John 
 Ardagh had served in several boundary commissions 
 as well as in several wars. 
 
 Clarke. It seems to me that you are composing your 
 Tribunal upon the assumption that only legal differ- 
 ences will be referred to it. 
 
 Case. Certainly that is my conception of the Hague 
 Court. It is a Supreme Court of Appeal to decide 
 questions of international law whether arising out of 
 Conventions or Treaties or what I may call natural 
 rights. Of course facts also are often in dispute, but 
 facts can only be ascertained by men acquainted with 
 rules of evidence. 
 
 Clarke. It seems to me that you are arguing against 
 yourself and your own researches. The moral I drew 
 from your paper by analogy from national to inter- 
 national arbitration was that arbitration is a substitution 
 for law, and that one of its advantages is that arbi- 
 trators need not be lawyers and are not expected to 
 follow the strict rules of law.
 
 410 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Case. I don't complain of your inference. But I 
 draw a distinction between the composition of the 
 permanent and supreme court, to which I hope such 
 appeals upon points of international law as may be 
 permitted from other international awards will be re- 
 ferred, and those temporary ad hoc bodies which are 
 constituted by particular submissions. Do you follow me? 
 
 Clarke. I thought the present court was merely a 
 body from which arbitrators could be picked to 
 decide differences in submissions made under the 
 Hague Convention. 
 
 Case. So it is ; and if the Tribunal is not to 
 develop into a Supreme Court of Appeal there would 
 be good reason for including persons unlearned in 
 the law. But even so there is no necessity for parties 
 to select their tribunal from the Hague Rota. If they 
 want men of affairs, or military and naval experts, they 
 have only to choose them. In the case of International 
 Commissions of Inquiry for the examination of ques- 
 tions of fact as well as in disputes about boundaries, 
 spheres of influence, and political interests generally, 
 it may very possibly be far more suitable to appoint 
 specialists, diplomatists, generals, admirals, business 
 men, or tactful politicians shall I say "artful dodgers," 
 who spend their lives in arranging compromises with- 
 out too much regard for principles. The functions of 
 a Commission may be compared to those of a special 
 jury rather than of a judge. But the Hague Tribunal 
 should in my opinion be the authoritative Supreme 
 Court of the Nations. If international law is to be 
 developed it can only be developed in two ways, 
 by international legislation and by case law, that is 
 to say, by the decisions of an international court.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 411 
 
 The development of international law is a very deli- 
 cate operation, which can only be performed by trained 
 minds. Only a small number of men are acquainted 
 with the work of the great international jurists, from 
 Grotius, Selden, and Puffendorff, to Vattel, Martens, and 
 HefFter. Few men know the history of treaties, and 
 international conventions, and the rules of construction. 
 Fewer still possess at the same time an adequate 
 grasp of the principal systems of law prevailing in 
 different parts of the world at the present day, and 
 of the commercial and maritime customs that serve 
 to connect them. Still fewer combine with this equip- 
 ment knowledge of international precedents contained 
 in arbitral awards, the decisions of prize courts, and 
 so forth. A man who crowns all these qualifications 
 with the supreme gifts of intellectual penetration 
 and honesty is indeed a rara avis in terris nigroque 
 simillima cycno. What we should look for is a Supreme 
 Tribunal of the Nations incorporating all these 
 elements ; we cannot hope that every member will 
 combine them all in his own person. 
 
 Arbiter. Your ideal carries me away. It is so 
 often supposed that the real reason of the jurists for 
 desiring a strict legal qualification is professional. 
 
 Clarke. I'm afraid I must remain unconvinced. 
 I would rather, while enlarging the qualifications for 
 the Tribunal, make your arguments a reason for 
 establishing a small permanent highly paid court of 
 three or perhaps five men, corresponding as nearly 
 as possible with your portrait of the ideal Interna- 
 tional Arbitrator. The members of this court, or at 
 least three of them, should be bound to reside for 
 seven or eight months of the year at the Hague.
 
 4 i2 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Case (enthusiastically]. And they should have the 
 power of a mediaeval pope to hear and determine 
 any reference either as a Court of First Instance, or 
 as a Court of Appeal from awards which it might 
 be sought to set aside upon a point of law, or on the 
 ground of fraud or excess of jurisdiction. 
 
 Arbiter. But pending the constitution of such a 
 Supreme Court of International Justice, is it wise to 
 restrict the present Hague Court to lawyers ? We 
 must remember that the object of the Tribunal is quite 
 as much to prevent war as to develop law. 
 
 Clarke. And if war can be prevented by a com- 
 promise at the expense of law I say that the immediate 
 and certain gain to humanity far outweighs the pro- 
 spective and possible loss. If this reasoning be sound 
 we ought to favour a liberal construction, if not a 
 change in the wording, of the Article in order to 
 give disputants a wide choice. 
 
 Case. Would it not be better that the court should 
 be divided into two, one of lawyers to decide ques- 
 tions of law, and the other of diplomatists, independent 
 politicians, business men, etc., to arrange compromises 
 of political disputes ? Then in the very common case 
 where facts and law, rights and interests, are mixed 
 a submission under the Hague Convention might 
 appoint arbiters from both classes. Thus for legal 
 issues there would be a legal tribunal of arbiters, 
 political disputes would be adjusted by arbitrators, 
 reconcilers, or , aimable compositeurs, and where the 
 matter in difference was mixed you would have a 
 mixed tribunal. 
 
 Clarke. A capital solution. You have satisfied me 
 that even a lawyer is not so tied to principles but
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 413 
 
 that he can make shift, hedge, truck, barter, and 
 compromise. 
 
 Arbiter. Another question. Would it be wise to 
 allow one State to sue another before this permanent 
 court ? 
 
 Browne. It would seem to be the natural develop- 
 ment. Wars are the duels of nations, and can only 
 be got rid of by providing an efficient substitute. 
 
 Seymour. You evidently mean to deprive me of 
 my profession. But is it not possible that international 
 litigation might cause more fighting than it would 
 prevent ? 
 
 Case. I confess that I should view the establish- 
 ment of such a principle at present with some 
 suspicion. A litigious nation might be encouraged 
 to issue writs where diplomatic communications would 
 have removed all troubles. I agree that we may 
 expect such a development, but it should not be 
 forced. When war has fallen into disuse and dis- 
 repute, like the duel, the objection that litigation 
 might cause friction will be of less weight. But just 
 now I feel that, whereas voluntary submissions pre- 
 vent war, suits might bring it about. My argu- 
 ment, or rather ours, leads me to conclude that 
 an international tribunal should not be debarred 
 from entertaining the idea of compromise, though 
 that to a hardened lawyer appears to be a shock- 
 ing outrage on justice. Yet the desire for a 
 compromise "to save one's face" is not confined to 
 the yellow races. In the Venezuelan agreement a 
 clause was introduced to enable the arbitrator to 
 determine the boundary as he thought best, when 
 the evidence was insufficient to prove on which side
 
 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 right lay. I believe the main reason why English- 
 men often prefer a costly and tedious arbitration to 
 a shorter and cheaper lawsuit is that an arbitrator is 
 supposed to compromise. Arbitration has another 
 advantage much regarded by suitors there is no 
 appeal from an award ; and that leads me to another 
 proposition. I think, subject to one or two limita- 
 tions, that the award of an international court should 
 be final, unless the submission gives the parties a 
 right of appeal, or unless it can be shown that the 
 arbitrators acted corruptly, or with manifest bias, or 
 went outside the province marked out for them in 
 the submission. 
 
 Truelove. Do you think then that all international 
 quarrels might be settled satisfactorily by litigation ? 
 
 Case. In my view it is certainly possible and desir- 
 able that whatever cannot be arranged by diplomacy 
 should be submitted, if it be a question of fact, to 
 an impartial commission of inquiry, if it be a ques- 
 tion of right, to an impartial court of arbitrators. 
 
 Truelove. And you would say that we have safely 
 passed the experimental stage. 
 
 Case. Certainly we have. Why, international arbi- 
 tration, in the modern sense, has been on its trial 
 for just eleven decades. Franklin wrote to Price in 
 1780: "We make great improvements in natural, 
 there is one I wish to see in moral, philosophy, the 
 discovery of a plan which would induce and oblige 
 nations to settle their disputes without first cutting 
 one another's throats. When will human reason be 
 sufficiently improved to see the advantage of this ?" 
 Fourteen years later came the Jay Treaty between 
 the United States and England, under which the
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 415 
 
 disputed boundary line between Maine and Nova 
 Scotia was drawn and settled by a mixed Commission. 
 
 Meyer. But surely every nation must be the 
 guardian of its own honour. We cannot allow 
 British honour to be submitted to the decision of 
 a foreigner. 
 
 Clarke. In 1794 there was a jingo party in America, 
 who thought themselves better patriots than Wash- 
 ington or Hamilton, and declaimed against any plan 
 for submitting * American soil ' to the hazard of a 
 judicial award. What is the use of war, they 
 cried, if not in such a cause ! To submit to justice 
 would be equivalent to " a dismemberment of our 
 country." But Hamilton prevailed. It would be " a 
 horrid and destructive principle," he urged, if they 
 were to admit that no dispute between nations about 
 the title to a bit of land could be settled except by 
 reference to the pitiful and exhausting arbitrament of 
 arms. The Jay Treaty was a great moment in 
 history. A precedent was established and an example 
 furnished. 
 
 Case. Yes, and we may be proud to think that 
 Great Britain and America have continued to lead the 
 way in this. 1 Meyer was talking exactly as one of 
 our Crown lawyers did the other day ; and a Crown 
 lawyer is so well paid that he ought to be able to 
 choose his words with nicety, and weigh out his 
 adjectives with precision. But he went a good deal 
 further. Besides guarding its own honour every 
 
 1 A French author, who enumerates 1 77 cases of international 
 arbitration between 1794 and 1900, finds that Great Britain took 
 part in seventy, the United States in fifty, France in twenty-six, 
 and Germany in none at all.
 
 416 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 nation, he said, " must decide for itself [that is 
 by war] questions vitally affecting its independence or 
 its essential interests." Some stakes, he affirmed, 
 were too big for arbitration ; some crises were too 
 tremendous to be submitted to any but the dread 
 ordeal of battle. 
 
 Clarke. What violent, what unprofessional language ! 
 It sounds like an extract from the Daily Menace. 
 
 Case. Ah, that is the mischief. Just because he 
 is on the boundary of his subject a lawyer turned 
 politician thinks he can let fly in all directions. He 
 loses control of his words and thoughts. Let me 
 take his propositions one by one. 
 
 1. " Every nation must be the guardian of its 
 own honour." Define honour and define the duties 
 of a guardian. Is a guardian precluded from having 
 recourse to an arbitrator or a judge in a question 
 which he conceives affects his own honour or that 
 of his ward ? Or, does the Attorney-General mean 
 that national honour can only be satisfied by war 
 because individual honour can only be satisfied by a 
 duel ? This, I think, must be the idea at the back 
 of his mind, for he talks afterwards of the dread 
 ordeal of battle as the only proper arbiter of " some 
 tremendous issues." In this view there are no 
 honourable men in England or in any country where 
 the duel is not a reality and the recognised mode of 
 deciding disputes of honour. 
 
 2. Secondly, says our Attorney-General, " every 
 nation must decide for itself [i.e. fight about] " ques- 
 tions vitally affecting its independence, or its essential 
 interests." 
 
 This is most peculiar. I myself never contemplated
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 417 
 
 the independence of a State being called in question 
 or made the subject of an arbitration ; but cases in 
 which a large State claims suzerainty over a small 
 one, and the extent of that suzerainty is in dispute, 
 seem to me to be eminently suitable for arbitration. 
 And where (as will always be the case) the State 
 against which such a claim is made is the weaker 
 one, we may be sure that it will prefer arbitration 
 to the Attorney-General's " dread ordeal of battle," 
 i.e. it will prefer the award of an impartial tribunal 
 to brute force and the right of the stronger. 
 
 Clarke. That is precisely what has happened in the 
 case of the Transvaal. Chamberlain and Milner kept 
 advancing aggressive claims to intervene and dictate 
 to President Kruger and his Volks Raad. They 
 founded their claims upon a convention. Thereupon 
 the small State proposed arbitration as the best 
 safeguard for its autonomy; the big State, the 
 aggressor, refused and raised its demands. That is 
 why the Attorney-General adds the expression 
 "essential interests." He remembers that he was 
 jointly responsible for vitally affecting the independence 
 of a small Republic and for refusing that resort to 
 arbitration which the Boers most justly demanded. 
 So he obscures his own past sins with the vague 
 expression " essential interests." 
 
 Meyer. But the Boers were arming. There was a 
 great conspiracy. 
 
 Arbiter. So it used to be alleged, but proofs were 
 not forthcoming. Those were subjects that might 
 have been investigated by a mixed commission. 
 
 Case. Yes. We made war on another nation's 
 independence, and refused to arbitrate upon questions 
 
 2 D
 
 4 i 8 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 of law and right, because we knew that if the law 
 were legally interpreted, and if right were righteously 
 enforced, then what we thought our " essential 
 interests " might be " vitally affected." A man's 
 language is very often dictated by the necessity of 
 covering up his own tracks. Otherwise, I am quite 
 sure that so sincere a champion of arbitration would 
 not have lauded as "sublime" Bacon's famous dictum 
 that " wars are suits of appeal to the tribunal of 
 God's justice." 
 
 Meyer. But there are some greater evils than 
 war. 
 
 Arbiter. No doubt, but what ? 
 
 Meyer. Loss of independence. 
 
 Arbiter. Exactly, but it is by war that independence 
 has been lost. What nation ever lost independence 
 by a peaceful policy ? 
 
 Meyer. Well, there is loss of prestige or territory. 
 
 Case. Justice and moderation are the bulwarks of 
 a state. 
 
 Browne. As St. Bernard said to the Doge Moro : 
 the Venetian Republic would last as long as it continued 
 the custom of doing justice. 
 
 Meyer. Then, are there no just wars ? 
 
 Arbiter. None, my friend ; at least, none in which 
 justice is on both sides. That there have been just 
 wars of defence against aggression, I know; but I 
 hold that the standard of the world's common-sense 
 and morality has risen high enough to enable a 
 country that is wisely governed to remain in undis- 
 turbed independence and peace. For instance, if the 
 Boers had kept cool, they could have thwarted 
 Milner's designs. But, whether you agree with me
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 419 
 
 there or not, you will agree that in our time there has 
 not been a single good war or a single bad peace. 
 
 Meyer. That I must admit, unless I except the 
 war of 1866. It may not have been a just war. 
 But it was real Politik. It was useful. It was 
 justified by its results. 
 
 Browne. That was a very exceptional case. It was 
 almost a war of defence to repel a Catholic and 
 half Slavonic power from Protestant Germany. 
 
 Arbiter. And it was concluded very rapidly. It 
 was certainly an instance of a good peace. When 
 the victory was won Bismarck displayed an extra- 
 ordinary restraint, and the proof of his wisdom is 
 that ever since that act of magnanimity Austria has 
 been the firm friend and ally of Germany. 
 
 Admiral. There was much to be said surely for 
 the American Civil War. It abolished slavery. 
 
 Arbiter. Yes, but then slavery, as Clarke showed 
 us, might have been abolished without war ; and if 
 that had been done, the state of society in the 
 Southern States might have been very different. 
 Besides, the country might have been spared all the 
 corruption and other evils engendered by extreme 
 Protection. No, on the whole I think that war 
 ought to have been avoided, though the cause of the 
 North was of course overwhelmingly just. 
 
 Clarke. Still that war, like our own civil war, does 
 prove the difficulty of keeping at peace when great 
 principles are at stake. There you had a Federation 
 of States, with a common Congress and a Supreme Court 
 almost worthy of the epithet "international," which 
 Mill conferred upon it. Yet neither the political 
 unity nor the legal unity of the States could prevent
 
 42O 
 
 the outbreak of a frightful conflagration. The double 
 question of the right of the Union to abolish slavery 
 and the right of a State to secede had to be 
 decided by brute force. 
 
 Clarke. Does the Attorney-General object to "vital" 
 questions being submitted to arbitration because one or 
 other party would refuse to carry out the award ? 
 
 Case. On the contrary, he declares that the enforce- 
 ment of awards " may safely be left to the good faith 
 of the parties, and the honour of the nations." 
 
 Clarke. So that if honour does not shrink from the 
 submission it may be trusted on the award ! 
 
 Case. Precisely. There is no necessity, he adds, 
 for any international sheriff's office. But I hear the 
 
 g n g- 
 
 Arbiter. Yes ; but before you conclude I want to 
 
 hear your own opinion as well as that of Mr. 
 Attorney-General. 
 
 Case. Mine is just the same as his, and for the 
 same reason. Let me give it in his words. " No 
 international authority with power to enforce the 
 decrees of the tribunal of arbitration is either necessary 
 or desirable. The list of international arbitrations during 
 the nineteenth century is a very long one ; and yet 
 there is hardly a single case 1 in which there has been 
 any difficulty as to compliance with the award." From 
 this point of view it is rather encouraging to compare 
 the long list of the nineteenth century with the short 
 list of all previous centuries and almost all the inter- 
 national arbitrations in the short list, if we except the 
 instances in Greek history, were abortive. Nor should 
 
 1 Only one was not carried out, and in that case the arbitrator 
 had transgressed by exceeding the submission.
 
 A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 421 
 
 we forget that the forms and usages of international 
 arbitration are becoming better known and understood. 
 A good system of procedure has been developed and 
 embodied in the Hague Convention. Fortunately 
 there is no fear of the development being prema- 
 turely arrested. So long as international arbitration 
 depends upon special treaties and is applied to an 
 ever-varying subject-matter there is little fear that 
 its forms will become stereotyped. That must never 
 be allowed. The vitality and growth of an institution 
 like this depend upon its elasticity. General treaties, 
 general conventions, general schemes of procedure, are 
 coming into force. General usages are growing up 
 with regard to preliminary proceedings and evidence, 
 and as to the delivery of case and counter-case, or 
 of memorandum and counter-memorandum. I rejoice 
 at all these things. But special treaties of arbitration 
 will always have their special use and value. They 
 will provide the diplomats with plenty of work. 
 Arbitration will no more supersede diplomacy than 
 railways superseded horses. The line between diplo- 
 macy and arbitration is hard to draw because no 
 sharp partition exists between them. Conferences 
 and compromises, negotiations and conventions, adjust- 
 ments and awards, will always be connected with one 
 another. The work of the diplomat and of the 
 natural lawyer are distinguishable, but not distinct.
 
 THE SIXTH DAT. SATURDAT. 
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR. 
 I. 
 
 On Saturday morning we came together rather earlier 
 than usual, determined to observe, if possible, the Lanca- 
 shire custom of a long half -holiday . The Arbiter at once 
 called upon me to read the paper, which follows: 
 
 The natural history of society presents a panorama 
 of contrary passions the love of freedom, the love 
 of power, the desire for wealth and comfort, the love 
 of fighting either for its own sake, or for glory and 
 phlnder. In the infancy of civilisation men were 
 governed by physical strength and brute force. The 
 stronger got what he wanted, and the weaker went to 
 the wall. Long after societies were formed private 
 wars continued, and the duel lingers to remind us of 
 days when trial by battle was the alternative to a law- 
 suit. When two men differ, or two tribes, or two 
 cities, or two nations, the primitive instinct, our first 
 instinct, as we say, is to fight, and for incredible ages 
 this was the ordinary solution of a quarrel. How the 
 establishment of order and law gradually freed men of 
 the same State from this curse has been described over 
 and over again by the pen of the philosophic historian. 
 But the great part played by the commercial instinct
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 423 
 
 in subduing private combats and curbing public wars 
 is not always realised. When once the beginnings of 
 order and justice have been established in a given 
 community, a great majority of its members becomes 
 deeply interested in their maintenance and extension. 
 Released from the fear of being attacked by his fellows, 
 the tribesman or citizen can give his whole energies 
 and thought to agriculture, industry, or commerce, 
 except in times when a public war is being undertaken 
 by his government. Under such conditions consider- 
 able progress can usually be made in wealth. Society 
 is already susceptible of the advantages to be derived 
 from the division of labour. Neighbours begin to 
 exchange their products. Instead of trying to com- 
 bine, let us say, agriculture, tailoring, bootmaking, and 
 housebuilding, one man farms, another makes clothes, 
 another boots, and another builds houses. The total 
 product is far greater than before, because by this 
 division of labour each man has become a specialist, 
 and is able to perfect his particular trade. 
 
 Roads are invented, and waggons and money ; and 
 by degrees the distribution of goods, and their exchange 
 by these means, give rise to special trades. A class 
 of merchants and shopkeepers springs up ; farmers 
 and manufacturers find that instead of exchanging their 
 products by direct barter they can do better by selling 
 them to retailers, who will dispose of them to home 
 consumers or to foreign merchants. From time to 
 time exchange is made easier and cheaper by 
 further inventions, such as banks and cheques, 
 and by every improvement in communication, from 
 wheeled vehicles and row-boats to railways and 
 steamers.
 
 4 2 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 It requires no effort of the imagination to see how 
 the growth of industry and trade, and the discovery 
 by experience of the benefits and comforts that come 
 in their train, would affect the practice of war and the 
 attractiveness of the military trade. The steady rewards 
 of industry and commercial enterprise came to be pre- 
 ferred to the precarious profits of military adventure ; 
 honour, indeed, for a long time remained a monopoly 
 of the soldier, though other professions, and especially 
 that of the law, began also to acquire a certain reputa- 
 tion as pursuits fit for gentlemen. Moreover, as the 
 principle of the division of labour operated, a complete 
 revolution was brought about in the relations of society 
 to war. War, from being an universal habit, became a 
 profession or art an art designed to produce not beauty 
 or utility, but security to ensure the State against 
 foreign enemies by destroying them whenever necessary. 
 Originally the methods and instruments of destruction 
 were very simple. Victory was decided by the strength 
 and prowess of the individual combatants. Presently 
 intelligence intervened. Arms and armour were per- 
 fected ; new weapons were invented. Bows and arrows 
 and catapults were superseded by gunpowder. Armies 
 were organised. Success came to depend more and 
 more upon drill, training, engineering, and mechanical 
 skill, equipment, and strategy. 
 
 The division of labour produced the professional 
 soldier ; every advance in the military art and every 
 invention gave a new advantage to the nations which, 
 being the most proficient in agriculture and manufac- 
 tures and commerce, were therefore the wealthiest and 
 the best able to equip and support costly armies and 
 navies.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 425 
 
 From an economic point of view the contrast 
 between war and peace is more acute than ever. 
 Civilisation, with all its wealth and luxury, all its 
 delicate machinery and complicated organisation, 
 shrinks and shudders at the mere thought of violence ; 
 for war, though shorn of some of its barbarities, works 
 more havoc than ever, not only because the weapons of 
 destruction are infinitely more powerful but also because 
 there is so much more to destroy. For a statement 
 of the economic evils of war you need not go to the 
 professional economists. William Penn more than two 
 centuries ago 1 put them in a nutshell. He was arguing 
 that the only reason why God chastises us with war 
 is to acquaint us with the blessings of peace ; for there 
 is one thing and only one better than peace, and that is 
 the grace to use it. What do peace and war respec- 
 tively bring to mankind ? Here is Penn's answer : 
 " Peace preserves our possessions ; we are in no 
 danger of invasions ; our trade is free and safe, and 
 we rise and lye down without anxiety. The rich 
 bring out their hoards, and employ the poor manu- 
 facturers; 2 buildings and divers projections for profit 
 and pleasure go on. Peace excites industry, which 
 brings wealth, as wealth again provides the means of 
 charity and hospitality, not the lowest ornaments of 
 a kingdom or commonwealth." But what of war ? 
 " War, like the frost of '83, seizes all these comforts 
 at once, and stops the civil channel of society. The 
 rich draw in their stock, 3 the poor turn soldiers, or 
 thieves, or starve : no industry, no building, no manu- 
 factory, little hospitality or charity : but what the 
 peace gave war devours." 
 
 1 In 1695. *i.t. work-people. 3 i.e. their capital.
 
 426 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 But in Perm's day political economy was hardly 
 an art, much less a science. All that he said sounded 
 of Quakerism and heterodoxy to the wiseacres of his 
 generation, who were quite convinced that trade could 
 be made to flourish by war. Davenant, indeed, and 
 Swift had better ideas ; but it was not until the second 
 half of the eighteenth century that the economic folly 
 of war was finally exposed in Scotland by Adam 
 Smith, in France by Turgot and Necker. 
 
 When the founder of political economy lectured 
 at Glasgow sixty years after the publication of Penn's 
 pamphlet, he laid down some elementary propositions 
 which are rather implied than expressed in his Wealth 
 of Nations. One of them is that war impoverishes a 
 nation. Rather an obvious proposition, but nevertheless 
 one which had to be proved. This he did by the 
 analogy of the individuals who make up a nation. "The 
 poverty of a nation proceeds from much the same causes 
 with those which render an individual poor. When a 
 man consumes more than he gains by his industry, he 
 must impoverish himself unless he has some other 
 way of subsistence. In the same manner, if a nation 
 consume more than it produces, poverty is inevitable ; 
 if its annual produce be ninety millions and its annual 
 consumption an hundred, then it spends, eats and 
 drinks, tears, wears ten millions more than it produces, 
 and its stock of opulence must gradually go to nothing." 
 Most people at that time I fear there are plenty still 
 who entertain the opinion imagined that no expenditure 
 at home can be injurious to public opulence ; it was a 
 fallacy nearly related to the extraordinary delusion that 
 the national debt is a national blessing so long as it 
 is entirely held by the people of Great Britain.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 427 
 
 Arbiter. I well remember Dizzy telling his con- 
 stituents at Aylesbury that " the national debt is a 
 mere flea-bite so long as it is earned by a free and 
 industrious people." 
 
 Ego. A fine flashy conceit worthy of the South Sea 
 Bubblers. But I must call up a serious witness to 
 refute the contention that there is no harm in 
 wasting public money so long as you waste it 
 at home. Suppose, said Adam Smith, my father 
 leaves a thousand pounds' worth of the necessaries 
 and conveniences of life. I get a number of idle 
 folk around me, and eat, drink, tear and wear till 
 the whole is consumed. By this I not only reduce 
 myself to want, but certainly rob the public stock 
 of a thousand pounds, as it is spent and nothing 
 produced for it. In the same way money spent on 
 war is wasted wherever the war is waged and where- 
 ever the money employed in preparations is laid out. 
 This last proposition ought to be translated into every 
 language and written up in gold over the door of 
 every spending authority in the world ; for there is 
 no more insidious fallacy than the fallacy that waste 
 is profitable if it provides employment at home. We 
 must never be tired of explaining that the national 
 loss is equally great whether a superfluous battle- 
 ship, or fort, or barrack is built at home or abroad, 
 by British or foreign labour. Another thing that 
 taxpayers are apt to forget is that every man who 
 is tempted from the ranks of productive labour into 
 the army or navy constitutes a double loss. There 
 is first the direct payment of ^75, or so, which is 
 added to the army or navy estimates, and second, 
 there is the loss of all the wealth he produces in the
 
 428 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 year, part of which goes into his own pocket as wages 
 (say 50), and part of it into his employer's pockets 
 as profit (say 25); so that by the enlistment of a 
 young man the nation stands to lose 150 a year as 
 long as he remains in the service. 
 
 In the fifth book of the Wealth of Nations Smith 
 treats of what I call the political economy of war. 
 In the first chapter he traces the growth of standing 
 armies. A well regulated standing army was already 
 in his view necessary to defend opulent and civilised 
 nations against the invasion of poor and barbarous 
 neighbours, and this method of defence accorded 
 with his principle of division of labour. He saw 
 that the task of defending an independent nation 
 from the violence and injustice of other independent 
 nations grows gradually more and more expensive as 
 the society advances in civilisation. The military force 
 "which originally cost the sovereign no expence either 
 in time of peace or war," must in the progress of im- 
 provement be paid first in time of war and afterwards 
 even in time of peace as well, though of course the 
 peace footing is less costly. To this natural increase 
 of cost, which would in any case have accompanied 
 progress in the arts and crafts, the invention of 
 gunpowder and firearms contributed enormously. 
 Armour indeed was superseded ; but both arms and 
 ammunition became far more expensive, if not more 
 burdensome in proportion to national incomes. 
 
 " A musquet is a more expensive machine than a javelin or a bow 
 and arrows. . . . The powder, which is spent in a modern review, 
 is lost irrecoverably, and occasions a very considerable expense. The 
 javelins or arrows, which were shot in an ancient one, could easily 
 be picked up again and were besides of little value. The cannon
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 429 
 
 and the mortar are not only much dearer but much heavier machines 
 than the balista or catapulta, and require a greater expense not only 
 to prepare them for the field but to carry them to it." 
 
 To this Adam Smith adds the much greater cost 
 of the fortifications required to enable a town to resist 
 artillery. He agreed with Hume that this revolution 
 in military warfare was on the whole beneficial to 
 mankind. " In ancient times the opulent and civilised 
 found it difficult to defend themselves against the poor 
 and barbarous nations. In modern times the poor and 
 barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against 
 the opulent and civilised. The invention of firearms, 
 an invention which at first sight appears to be so 
 pernicious, is certainly favourable both to the per- 
 manency and to the extension of civilisation." 
 
 Hume had said in his history, in reference to the 
 use of cannon at the battle of Crecy, that artillery, 
 " though it seemed contrived for the destruction of 
 mankind and the overthrow of Empires, has in the 
 issue rendered battles less bloody and has given greater 
 stability to civil societies." It had, he thought, 
 brought nations more to a level, conquests had become 
 less frequent and rapid, and success in war had been 
 reduced nearly to a matter of calculation. 
 
 In his chapter on Public Debts, Adam Smith drew 
 attention to what was then a comparative novelty 
 the dependence of war makers on loan mongers. 
 Unless a government has accumulated treasure by 
 parsimony in time of peace it is compelled to contract 
 debt the moment war begins, " or rather at the 
 moment it appears likely to begin." The army must 
 be augmented, the fleet fitted out, the garrisoned towns 
 put into a posture of defence ; arms, ammunition,
 
 430 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 and provisions must be served out and concentrated 
 at proper depots. A great and immediate expense 
 must be incurred at the moment of danger ; and as 
 there is seldom a large surplus in the Treasury beyond 
 what is necessary for defraying the ordinary expenses 
 of government, recourse must be had to borrowing. 
 To the objection that in lieu of loans new taxes might 
 be imposed, Smith replies that in war the revenue 
 required is three or four times greater than the revenue 
 required in time of peace, and even if a government 
 had (as it hardly ever has) the power of quadrupling 
 the revenue by increased taxation "yet still the produce 
 of the taxes, from which this increase of revenue must 
 be drawn, will not begin to come into the Treasury till 
 perhaps ten or twelve months after they are imposed." 
 In this exigency, therefore, borrowing is the only 
 resource. I need not follow Smith into the details 
 of the early history of public loans. Even in his 
 day it was already only too easy for the Government 
 of an opulent commercial kingdom to obtain accommo- 
 dation at a price. His general remark, however, 
 deserves to be repeated, as it is still illustrated by 
 experience whenever a poor or heavily indebted nation 
 gets entangled in war : 
 
 " The progress of the enormous debts, which at present 
 oppress and will in the long run probably ruin all 
 the great nations of Europe, has been pretty uniform. 
 Nations, like private men, have generally begun to 
 borrow upon what may be called personal credit ; 
 without assigning or mortgaging any particular fund 
 for the payment of the debt ; and when this resource 
 has failed them they have gone on to borrow upon 
 assignments or mortgages of particular funds." It is
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 431 
 
 a curious proof of the low condition of Japanese credit, 
 that her statesmen were unable to secure their first 
 small war loan without mortgaging the Customs 
 Revenue. 
 
 In Smith's day the land and malt taxes were the 
 only considerable branches of British revenue that 
 remained unmortgaged and even these were regularly 
 anticipated, i.e. spent before they came in. The 
 philosopher compared the governments of his time to 
 improvident spendthrifts, whose pressing occasions would 
 not allow them to wait for their income. The evils 
 that attended the new method of financing war were 
 obvious ; but statesmen gave little thought to them. 
 " To relieve the present exigency is always the object 
 which principally interests those immediately concerned 
 in the administration of public affairs. The future 
 liberation of the public revenue they leave to the care 
 of posterity." Twenty-three years later, after five 
 years of disastrous borrowing, Pitt adopted his master's 
 advice and appealed to the House of Commons to 
 raise the necessary supplies by taxation. 1 
 
 It may then be asked, granted that a loan is the only 
 means by which a modern government can raise the 
 ready money that must be expended at the outbreak 
 of hostilities, why should not taxes be laid on at 
 the commencement of a war sufficient to cover its 
 whole annual cost, after, say, the first six months, 
 and be continued for six months after its cessation, so 
 as to leave the country with no larger debt than it 
 laboured under at the outset ? 
 
 The answer to this question is, I am afraid, that 
 the simple ought is applied to public finance even less 
 
 1 See speech of Dec. 3, 1798 ; Pitt's Speeches, vol. ii. pp. 454-5.
 
 432 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 commonly than to other branches of politics. But it 
 can nevertheless be inferred from the object lessons 
 of our own history, and from the example set by our 
 two greatest financiers, that the extraordinary expenses 
 of war should be raised and paid for as far as possible 
 by additions to taxation. Upon the strong moral 
 and political arguments for this course I will touch 
 later. But let me first set forth the economic argument 
 as derived by experience from the practice of Pitt 
 and Gladstone, and Sir Michael Hicks Beach. The 
 fearful burden laid by the Napoleonic War upon the 
 nation's back is due to the ruinous mistake Pitt made 
 at its beginning, to the feeble incompetence of Adding- 
 ton in 1804, and to the base surrender of Lord 
 Liverpool's government to a selfish parliament of rich 
 men in 1816 on the conclusion of Peace. 1 
 
 Mr. Gladstone in one of his famous budget speeches 
 classified the Napoleonic War into three periods 
 according to the mode in which its financial burdens 
 were discharged. During the first period, from 1793 
 to 1798, borrowing was the principal resort. In 1792 
 British three per cents, had touched 97. In 1797 they 
 touched 47. This was the result of relying upon loans, 
 and of making no grand effort to enlarge the revenue. 
 The land tax was left untouched. In 1798 Pitt made 
 and carried a proposal for an income or property tax. 
 In the second period, from 1799 to 1802, there was 
 an income tax ; but owing to serious flaws in its 
 legal frame-work, general evasions were practised, and 
 
 1 March 18. Vansittart, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, moved 
 that the Income Tax be continued. He met with great opposition, 
 and was beaten by 238 201. The government accepted the 
 decision, continued in office, and met the deficit by borrowing.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 433 
 
 it was far from effective. Finally, in the third 
 period from 1806 to 1815, the income tax was in 
 full force and efficiency. I need not remind you 
 that the whole war added a sum of no less than 613 
 millions to the National Debt. But the extraordinary 
 thing is that, as Mr. Gladstone said in 1853, "our 
 debt need not at this moment have existed if there 
 had been resolution enough to submit to the Income 
 Tax at an earlier period." l 
 
 This appears from a comparison in which I follow 
 Mr. Gladstone closely of the financial results achieved 
 during the first, second, and third periods of the French 
 War results all the more remarkable when we re- 
 member that, as this unprecedentedly costly war dragged 
 on, the financial exhaustion of the country steadily 
 increased. In the first period, 1793-8, the charge for 
 government and war together, with the interest on 
 debt incurred before 1793 (9lr millions), amounted on 
 an average to 36 millions a year, and the average 
 revenue was about 20^ millions, including all the 
 additional war taxes. The annual excess of charge 
 over revenue, excluding interest on debt contracted 
 after 1793, averaged 15,400,000. In 1798, as we 
 have said, the income tax was introduced, and the new 
 policy of endeavouring to pay for the war out of 
 current revenue began. In the second period, 1799- 
 1 802, the charge for government, war, and war debt, 
 plus interest on the old debt, rose to an annual 
 average of 47,400,000 ; but the average annual 
 revenue rose concurrently from 20,500,000 to over 
 33,500,000, so that the excess of charge over tax 
 revenue was reduced by nearly 2 millions a year. 
 
 1 See Gladstones Financial Speeches, p. 1 6. 
 
 2 E
 
 434 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 But the most remarkable results are seen when we 
 come to the third period, the ten years from 1806 to 
 1815, a period of desperate difficulty and danger, which 
 called for the utmost exertions and entailed the heaviest 
 charges. The average annual expenses of war and 
 government during this decade, together with the 
 interest on the debt contracted before 1793, were 
 nearly 66 millions ; but the average annual revenue 
 from taxes reached nearly 64 millions, so that the 
 annual deficiency, which had fallen from 15^ millions 
 to 13^ millions in the second period, had now sunk to 
 the almost insignificant sum of two millions a year. 
 Now the interest on the debt contracted before 1793 
 was, as I have said, 9^ millions, so that in the last 
 decade, with the aid of Pitt's income tax, Great 
 Britain for ten years actually raised 7 millions a year 
 more than the combined cost of administration and 
 war. Such was the result of supplementing a bad 
 fiscal system by a ten per cent, income tax, and that 
 result justifies us in drawing what I may perhaps be 
 allowed to call an economic moral. Let me do so 
 in Mr. Gladstone's words : 
 
 "Much as may be said of the importance of an army reserve 
 and a navy reserve, and of having your armouries and your arsenals 
 well stored, this fiscal reserve is not one whit less important ; for 
 if it be used aright it is an engine to which you may again resort ; 
 and with this engine judiciously employed, if unhappily this necessity 
 should arise which may God in His mercy avert with it, judi- 
 ciously employed, you may again, if need be, defy the world." 
 
 By fiscal reserve Mr. Gladstone meant generally low 
 taxation, but especially an income tax, which is either 
 at a low rate, or better still, disused but in readiness for 
 use ; and in this connection I am reminded of an
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 435 
 
 opinion Sir William Harcourt once expressed to a 
 friend of mine in conversation a few months before 
 his death. He said that in his judgment the income 
 tax in time of peace ought not to be higher than 
 sixpence in the pound. Another fiscal reserve is, of 
 course, good national credit, i.e. the power of borrow- 
 ing money cheaply ; and this again can only be secured 
 by due economy, systematic repayment of debt, and a 
 fiscal system which does not oppress industry or labour 
 in time of peace. Remember it is our superiority in 
 credit, as well as our system of free trade, that makes 
 London the greatest money market in the world. 
 
 It is, I must confess, a melancholy reflection that the 
 financial courage of our modern democracy, or rather I 
 would say of its leaders, compares so unfavourably with 
 that of the oligarchy in the struggle with Napoleon, or 
 of the middle classes who governed England at the 
 time of the Crimean War. I have already recounted 
 the tremendous exertions and sacrifices put forth in 
 the last decade of the conflict that terminated at 
 Waterloo. Allow me now to give, very briefly, the 
 financial history of the only two great and costly 
 wars in which the country has been engaged since 
 that time namely, the Crimean and the Boer wars. 
 
 Arbiter. Excuse me. You have told us what Pitt 
 did but not what he said. I don't suppose there is one 
 of us, except Browne, who has read those speeches of 
 his. Certainly I have not. 
 
 Browne. I have read the summary in the Annual 
 Register, but not the speeches. I have never made a 
 special study of that period. 
 
 Clarke. That is a truly Christian confession : it 
 makes us all proud of our ignorance. [Turning to me]
 
 436 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 How did Pitt argue it out with the House of 
 Commons ? 
 
 Ego. Well, you see, he first frightened the squires by 
 hinting at the propriety of a revaluation of all the land 
 in the country with a view to improving the land tax 
 and restoring it to its old position as the most pro- 
 ductive of our imposts. As a disciple of Adam Smith 
 this was the remedy he would have first adopted on 
 abstract grounds. But as his power depended on the 
 landed interest, and the war could not be continued 
 without their approval, this course was impossible. 
 Had the land of the country been revalued at the 
 beginning of the war, and had the tax of four shillings 
 in the pound on its annual value been raised first to 
 six shillings, then to eight shillings, I cannot but think 
 that peace with France would have been signed long 
 before 1798, when the income tax was introduced. 
 
 Unfortunately, far from taking the course to which 
 our best financial tradition, as well as equity and 
 expediency pointed, he proposed, in the year 1798, a 
 redemption of the existing land tax (his object being to 
 raise money by converting tax into capital) on a plan 
 highly favourable to the landlords. Nevertheless, he 
 did enter into the propriety of increasing the land tax, 
 and admitted that there was much to be said for it ; 
 so that, having first worked upon the fears of the 
 landed gentry, and then preferred their interests to 
 those of the nation, he had strong claims on their 
 support when he came to propose a ten per cent, tax 
 on all incomes. When the favour of the county gentle- 
 men, who controlled parliament, had been secured, he 
 was able to say in reference to the clamour raised by 
 the mercantile classes in the metropolis and other large
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 437 
 
 towns against his income tax : " It does not enter into 
 my ideas of public duty that the legislature should 
 consult the popular opinion at the expense of the 
 public safety." If you ask me, however, what were 
 the principal reasons for the introduction of the income 
 tax I should say though it is not very easy to dis- 
 entangle the real arguments from the sometimes frigid, 
 often turgid, and always prolix rhetoric of his speeches 
 I should be inclined to say, the necessity of restoring 
 the national credit and the impossibility of getting any 
 considerable addition to the national revenue, the land 
 tax apart, by any other device. Almost everything that 
 was taxable had already been taxed, and many of the 
 customs duties did not pay the cost of collection. But 
 what really frightened Pitt was that three per cents., 
 which had reached 106 in 1752, and 97 in 1792, had 
 already fallen in the winter of 1797-8 below 50. So 
 that for every hundred pounds added to the national 
 debt the government received less than half for the 
 purpose of prosecuting the war ! To find a revenue 
 to mortgage was more difficult even than to find a 
 thing to tax. " Does it make no difference," cried 
 the Minister in desperation, when the pudding- 
 heads on both sides asked why he did not go 
 on borrowing and leave taxes alone, " whether 
 money is borrowed for the public at 4, 5, or 6 
 per cent. ? Has the price of stocks no effect 
 on commerce and agriculture ? If further loans are 
 to be made for the public service is it of no 
 consequence whether the funds are at 40 or 48 per 
 cent. ? " 
 
 Meyer. What is the date of that speech ? 
 
 Ego. January the fourth, 1798.
 
 438 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Meyer. Do you know what was the lowest point 
 consols touched during the whole war ? 
 
 Ego. No. But a couple of months later (April 2nd) 
 the three per cents, had risen a little to 5O. 1 
 
 Meyer. Even that is better than Japanese credit ; 
 after three or four months of war with Russia they 
 issued a 6 per cent, loan at 93, and after nine 
 months at 91^-. 
 
 Ego. Yes ; more than a hundred years ago, when 
 our credit had been halved, we were still thought 
 more trustworthy than the Japs are to-day. 
 
 1 1 have since examined the monthly market prices of three per 
 cent, consols from 1791 to 1800. I find that they rose by degrees 
 (with many fluctuations) from 76 in March, 1791, to 97 in March, 
 1792. In the autumn of that year they began to decline seriously, 
 and in the autumn of 1793 they were at 74. In January, 1794., 
 they fell sharply to 68, and were as low as 64 by the end of the 
 year. In 1795 they rallied from 61, the lowest point, in January, 
 to 70, the highest point, in December. In 1796 they sank as 
 steadily and more rapidly, and at the end of the year the quotation 
 was 57-8. Through the first half of 1797 this alarming deprecia- 
 tion went on until in June the lowest point, 47, in the period I 
 have examined, was touched. From this time, thanks to Pitt's 
 energetic financial measures, prices gradually, very gradually, recovered. 
 In December, 1797, the quotation was 48-9 ; in December, 1798, 
 53-5 ; in December, 1799, 61-2 ; in December, 1800, 63-4. 
 After that the highest points reached before the end of the war 
 were 79 in 1802, 73 in 1803, and 71 in 1810; the lowest points 
 were 50^ in 1803, 53! in 1804, and 54^ in 1814. 1804 was 
 one of the worst years for consols, not because it was a year of 
 peace, but because Addington, with characteristic weakness, dropped 
 the income tax. In that year the price of consols varied from 
 59i to 53f- The experience was repeated in 1816. In 1815 
 consols varied from 6i to 72^. In 1816 the income tax having 
 been abandoned they sank as low as 53|- and were never higher 
 than 65^. I have mentioned that consols were at 97 in 1792 ; they 
 did not again reach that point until 1851.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 439 
 
 Arbiter. You must remember that the eighteenth 
 century was the most peaceful England had known 
 since the Conquest. There had never before been 
 such extensive developments in our means of com- 
 munication, our commerce, and our manufactures. 
 
 Clarke. But in those respects it cannot compare 
 with the nineteenth century. 
 
 Ego. No ; and we have seen how after adding one 
 hundred and sixty millions to the debt in conse- 
 quence of the Boer War the Government was able 
 to borrow at three per cent. What do you say to 
 that, Mr. Meyer ? The annual burden on that debt 
 is less than half what it would have been in Pitt's 
 time. 
 
 Meyer. Colossal ! Pyramidal ! No other nation in 
 the world could have done it. Yet consols fell from 
 113 to 85 ; and we can't get them up again beyond 
 90. It was a nasty shock to credit ; and it will be 
 a long time before the city quite recovers. I am no 
 Radical. I hate reform. You can't improve a perfect 
 constitution. But give us peace and retrenchment, 
 and a few years of saving. That is the prescription 
 we need, and a good dose too. There is no capital 
 to invest in commercial flotations. It is all taken up 
 in loans for war and armaments. The worst of it is 
 that we are not paying off debt now. 
 
 Browne. I am not surprised at Pitt's alarm ; for 
 taking 47 as the lowest point touched * it was, I firmly 
 believe, a unique depreciation in the funds. The 
 previous record was 54. 
 
 Ego. In the American War I suppose ? 
 
 1 Consols touched 47 twice, once in 1797, and once again in 
 1798.
 
 440 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Browne. Yes ; for that we have the best authority. 
 May I read you a passage from a living historian, 
 who has combined in an uncommon degree patient 
 and accurate research with brilliant literary gifts ? 
 Here Browne opened a volume of Sir George Tre- 
 velyan's American Revolution and read : 
 
 " The Funds always fell after British defeats and never very 
 visibly recovered themselves in consequence of a British victory. 
 In August, 1774, before the Revolution began, the Three per 
 cent. Consols stood at 89. A month before the news of Long 
 Island arrived in London they were at 84 ; a fortnight after 
 that news they were at 82 ; and that was all the effect pro- 
 duced by a complete rout of the Americans, which was hailed by 
 courtiers at home, and English diplomatists abroad, as a most reassur- 
 ing and almost a conclusive, success. By October 1777 Consols had 
 fallen to 78. The tidings of the capture of Burgoyne brought 
 them down to 70. They fell and fell until the capitulation of 
 Lord Cornwallis reduced them to 54; and they could hardly have 
 gone lower if they were to retain any value at all." x 
 
 Ego. Thank you, indeed. That is a very pertinent 
 contribution to the political economy of war. But, 
 as we have seen, twenty years afterwards Pitt knocked 
 them down to 47. That last sentence reminds 
 me of the remark Adam Smith made to Sinclair after 
 Saratoga. " The nation is ruined," said the young 
 man when he brought the news. " There is a great 
 deal of ruin in a nation," was the cool reply of the 
 philosopher. 
 
 Clarke. The cost of war is a grand deterrent, but 
 by no means an infallible preventive. The poorer 
 the nation the more it has to pay for accommodation. 
 But the poorest nation, if it has the will to fight, will 
 find the means. The Jews will see to that. They 
 
 1 See Trevelyan's American Revolution, Part II., chap, xiv., vol. 2, 
 p. 217.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 44 i 
 
 have had a long and lucrative revenge on their 
 persecutors. 
 
 Browne. I should have added that, when Lord 
 North made way for a ministry pledged to recognise 
 American Independence, Consols " rose six points on 
 the mere prospect of a peaceful settlement with our 
 former colonies," though Lord North had always 
 insisted that the right of taxing them and controlling 
 their trade was indispensable to the prosperity and 
 commerce of Great Britain. 
 
 Arbiter. The Stock Market performs a useful service 
 by anticipating peace and war in terms that can be 
 understood. 
 
 Ego. It is lucky that peace casts an economic shadow 
 as well as war. 
 
 Clarke. But war throws its blackest shadow after, 
 not before. With all deference to Mr. Meyer, the 
 Stock Exchange's forecasts are not very trustworthy. 
 I recall a wise parable of Selden's in the Civil War : 
 " Though we had peace, yet 'twill be a great while 
 e'er things be settled : tho' the wind lye, yet after a 
 storm the sea will work a great while." 
 
 Arbiter. A fine saying and a true one. War is 
 supposed to cut awkward knots and solve difficulties. 
 In reality the sword only severs natural and necessary 
 ties that unite men ; and when a war ends, individuals, 
 families, communities, commercial and political associa- 
 tions have to grow together again a cruel, painful 
 process. War maims, mutilates, disfigures, and divides. 
 Time and peace may, in a generation, heal the wounds, 
 obliterate bitter memories of suffering, and restore a 
 country to the happiness and prosperity which war 
 destroyed in a year.
 
 442 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Ego. So far as finance is concerned, a modern war 
 run on credit illustrates Selden's remark even better 
 than the old-fashioned wars. Now, when a nation 
 wages war abroad, the financial effects are most visible 
 a year or two after it is over, because the full effect 
 of borrowing is not felt till after the borrowed money 
 has been wasted. 
 
 Browne. The last nation to fight without mortgaging 
 her revenue was Prussia in the Seven Years' War, 
 and that was only because she had no credit. But 
 Frederick had to fight for the most part in his 
 own country. The consequences are pourtrayed by 
 Macaulay in the conclusion of his essay on Frederick. 
 Perhaps you will let me read the piece. It is the 
 work of a master historian, who was not at all 
 disposed to exaggerate the evils or to depreciate the 
 glories of war : 
 
 " The war was over. Frederick was safe. His glory was beyond 
 the reach of envy. . . . He entered Berlin in triumph. . . . Yet 
 even in the midst of that gay spectacle he could not but perceive 
 everywhere the traces of destruction and decay. The city had 
 been more than once plundered. The population had consider- 
 ably diminished. Berlin, however, had suffered little when compared 
 with most parts of the Kingdom. The ruin of private fortunes, 
 the distress of all ranks, was such as might appal the firmest mind. 
 Almost every province had been the seat of war, and of war con- 
 ducted with merciless ferocity. Clouds of Croatians had descended 
 on Silesia. Tens of thousands of Cossacks had been let loose on 
 Pomerania and Brandenburg. The mere contributions levied by 
 the invaders amounted, it was said, to more than a hundred 
 millions of dollars ; and the value of what they extorted was pro- 
 bably much less than the value of what they destroyed. The fields 
 lay uncultivated. The very seed-corn had been devoured in the 
 madness of hunger. Famine, and contagious maladies, the effect of 
 famine, had swept away the herds and flocks ; and there was 
 reason to fear that a great pestilence among the human race was^
 
 likely to follow in the train of that tremendous war. Near fifteen 
 thousand houses had been burned to the ground. The popula- 
 tion of the kingdom had in seven years decreased to the frightful 
 extent of ten per cent. A sixth of the males capable of bearing 
 arms had actually perished on the field of battle. In some districts 
 no labourers, except women, were seen in the fields at harvest- 
 time. In others, the traveller passed shuddering through a succes- 
 sion of silent villages, in which not a single inhabitant remained. 
 The currency had been debased ; the authority of law and 
 magistrates had been suspended ; the whole social system was 
 deranged ; for, during that convulsive struggle, everything that was 
 not military violence was anarchy. Even the army was dis- 
 organised. Some great generals, and a crowd of excellent officers, 
 had fallen, and it had been impossible to supply their place. The 
 difficulty of finding recruits had, towards the close of the war, 
 been so great that selection and rejection were impossible. Whole 
 battalions were composed of deserters or of prisoners. It was hardly 
 to be hoped that thirty years of repose and industry would repair 
 the ruin produced by seven years of havoc. One consolatory 
 circumstance, indeed, there was. No debt had been incurred. 
 The burdens of the war had been terrible, almost insupportable ; 
 but no arrear was left to embarrass the finances in the time of 
 peace." 
 
 Ego. It is quite true there was no Prussian debt. 
 But there were the loans raised in England to help 
 Frederick the Great to pay his troops ; and there was 
 Frederick's deliberate debasement of the Prussian coin- 
 age, an operation which demoralised the economy of 
 the State, and embarrassed its citizens far more than 
 any system of borrowing. You may remember the 
 Jew Ephraim who coined for Frederick, and the epigram 
 about the coins : 
 
 " Outside noble, inside schlimm 
 Outside Frederick, inside Ephraim." 
 
 Clarke. Necker in one of his essays on the finances 
 of France gives a reminiscence of the Seven Years'
 
 444 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 War. I cannot, he says, remember without a shudder 
 reading the following estimate: 
 
 Forty thousand men to be embarked for the colonies, - 40,000 
 To be deducted one-third for the first year's mortality, - 13,3 3 3 
 
 Remainder, - 26,667 
 
 How seldom does the Minister in perusing such an 
 entry entertain a thought of the suffering and misery 
 his policy will engender. He hardly troubles about 
 details, but turns coolly to the last page to cast up 
 the totals of men and money. 
 
 Admiral. Just one more question. Was Pitt's 
 income-tax very stiff? I remember how my old 
 father swore at Peel for reviving it. 
 
 Ego. Yes, it was pretty stiff ten per cent, on all 
 incomes above 60. Now I ask your pardon. I 
 promised five minutes ago to leave the eighteenth 
 century. But the Napoleonic war was the legacy it 
 left to the nineteenth century, and I must pause again 
 to point out what were the effects of war upon the 
 condition of the labouring classes at a time when 
 the extraordinary developments of machinery promised 
 to diffuse wealth and comfort to an extent never 
 known before. 
 
 According to Arthur Young, to whose researches 
 we are indebted for much valuable information about 
 the rate of wages at different periods and in different 
 countries, the average wage paid to agricultural 
 labourers in England in 1767, 1768, and 1770, was 
 nearly is. 3d. a day, three or four times what he gets 
 now in Japan or India; in 1801 and 1811, when 
 money wages rose to the highest points they 
 attained during the French War, the average was
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 445 
 
 about 2s. 5<i., being a rise of nearly 100 per cent. 
 But the average price of wheat, according to the 
 account kept at Eton College during the first men- 
 tioned years, was 2 us. a quarter: during 1810 
 and 1811 its price was 5 ios., being a rise of 115 
 per cent. ; and Young estimates that butcher's meat 
 had, during the same period, risen 146, butter 140, 
 and cheese 153 per cent. So that four principal 
 articles of consumption showed an average rise of 
 138^- per cent. In other words real wages, as com- 
 pared with these articles, had declined in the interval 
 38 per cent., or considerably more than one third; 
 and if the increased cost of beer, leather, and some 
 other items of a labourer's expenditure, had been 
 taken into account, the fall in the rate of real wages 
 would have appeared still more striking. It is true 
 that the price of most articles of clothing, particularly 
 cotton, which Young left out of account, fell in money 
 price (despite the paper currency) during the period 
 in question. But these reductions did not by any 
 means compensate for the extraordinary upward move- 
 ment in the prices of the principal articles consumed 
 by the working classes ; so that, notwithstanding what 
 they gained by cheaper clothing, "it is abundantly 
 certain," to follow the words of McCulloch, " that 
 real wages sank considerably during the latter years 
 of the war." 
 
 After the war the gold standard was soon restored ; 
 but it took many years to restore the national credit. 
 The Poor law broke down under the load of pauperism. 
 Parishes went bankrupt, and for more than twenty 
 years the misery of the working classes both in town 
 and country passes description. In the towns there
 
 446 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 were periodical famines through want of employment. 
 In the country in the winter months the best paid 
 agricultural labourer could not hope to provide his 
 family with enough to eat, yet we had a protectionist 
 and preferential tariff, and all the other blessings for 
 which modern tariff reformers work and pray. In the 
 year 1 842 one in every eleven inhabitants of England 
 and Wales was a pauper. Now the proportion is- 
 about one in forty. 
 
 In the history of the political economy of war, the 
 year 1815 seems to be a sort of temporal boundary 
 between an old world, in which war was the normal 
 condition, and a new world, in which peace is the 
 normal condition. There were, in the opinion of close 
 observers who marked an unusual cessation of wars 
 in Europe from 1815 to 1848, two principal causes 
 to account for a tranquillity so unexpected and so 
 gratifying. The first was the exhaustion of Europe, 
 whose nations, worn out by invasions, and conscriptions, 
 and taxes, staggering for the most part under an 
 unprecedented load of debt, had no heart for fighting. 
 " For years," as Channing finely said in 1829, "poverty 
 kept the peace in Europe." But no one would wish 
 that perpetual peace should be founded on per- 
 petual poverty. Besides, peace makes wealth ; so 
 that if poverty were the only preventive of war, the 
 nations, after rest and recuperation, might be expected 
 to renew their pernicious activity. Yet the increasing 
 expensiveness of war and the increasing apprehensive- 
 ness of commerce gave a certain permanence and force 
 to pacific feeling. As somebody once put it: "When 
 the voice of humanity cannot be heard, the hollow 
 sound of an empty treasury is a warning that cannot
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 447 
 
 be slighted." And the sharp contrast between the 
 deterioration of 1794-1815 and the gradual amelioration 
 of 1815-1854 was an object-lesson to the whole 
 civilised world. Peoples began to be accustomed to 
 regard peace as a permanent right and war as an 
 occasional wrong a thing to be prevented, if possible, 
 and, if not, to be concluded at the earliest oppor- 
 tunity. Peace associations sprang up, and socialism, 
 which recognised no national barriers, struck root. 
 
 A second cause, which also impressed contem- 
 porary observers, was the extension of profitable 
 relations between all countries. " Since the pacification 
 of Europe in 1816," wrote Channing in the discourse 
 I have already referred to, 1 " a new impulse has been 
 given to industry. The discoveries of science have 
 been applied with wonderful success to the useful 
 arts. Nations have begun in earnest to develop their 
 resources. Labour has been discovered to be the 
 grand conqueror, enriching and building up nations 
 more surely than the proudest battles." Commerce, 
 indeed, was miraculously enlarged. Its first great 
 expansion followed the adoption of Free Trade by 
 Great Britain ; but soon the development of railways 
 and steamships so quickened and cheapened intercourse 
 that the surplus products of every nation found their 
 way everywhere, over every tariff wall, and ridiculed 
 the utmost efforts of Protectionist policy. Nations 
 began to compete against one another with food and 
 raw material and machinery and manufactures instead 
 of with fleets and armies. A wonderful interchange 
 of products enriched the whole face of the earth, and 
 gave every part a new, lively, and absorbing interest 
 1 Lecture on War.
 
 448 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 in the maintenance of peace and order and security. 
 Such are the arrangements of nature and Providence, 
 so ran a favourite argument of our Corn Law re- 
 pealers, that free intercommunication between different 
 States is good for all, and that the greater the volume 
 of international commerce the stronger are the material 
 guarantees of peace. Every decade makes the military 
 nations of the world more and more commercial. It 
 was in no accidental harmony, but with a true synoptic 
 inspiration, that the three great leaders and orators 
 of our Free Trade movement Richard Cobden, John 
 Bright, and W. J. Fox stood forth also as the 
 heralds and advocates of international peace. Bright, 
 perhaps, is as well known for his views on peace as 
 for his views on freedom of trade. But Cobden, on 
 the eve of his triumph, was met with the accusation 
 that he was accustomed to look too much at material 
 interests ; and he replied in words which I think 
 ought to be repeated and remembered ; for they have 
 a higher truth and a deeper permanence than the 
 ordinary saws of politics: 
 
 " I can say that I have taken as large and great a view of the 
 effects of this mighty principle as ever did any man who dreamt 
 over it in his own study. I believe that the physical gain will 
 be the smallest gain to humanity from the success of this principle. 
 I look further ; I see in the Free Trade principle that which shall 
 act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the 
 universe drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism 
 of race and creed and language, and uniting us in the bonds of 
 eternal peace. I have looked even further ; I have speculated, and 
 probably dreamt, in the dim future, a thousand years hence I 
 have speculated on what the effect of the triumph of this principle 
 may be. I believe that the effect will be to change the face of 
 the world, so as to introduce a system of government entirely distinct 
 from that which now prevails. I believe that the desire and the
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 449 
 
 motive for large and mighty empires, for gigantic armies and 
 great navies for those materials which are used for the destruction 
 of life and the desolation of the rewards of labour will die away ; 
 I believe that such things will cease to be necessary, or to be used, 
 when man becomes one family, and freely exchanges the fruits of 
 his labour with his brother man. I believe that, if we could be 
 allowed to reappear on this sublunary scene, we should see, at a 
 far distant period, the governing system of this world revert to 
 something like the municipal system ; and I believe that the specu- 
 lative philosopher of a thousand years hence will date the greatest 
 revolution that ever happened in the world's history from the 
 triumph of the principle which we are met here to advocate." 
 
 Some years later Fox, in an address on the End and 
 Aim of Politics to his constituents at Oldham, dwelt 
 on the same theme : 
 
 " What is the end of Providence r Look abroad on the world. 
 See how their varied productions are such, that the inhabitants of 
 one region may reasonably be desirous to have possession of those 
 which are produced in another region. See the infinite diversity, 
 see the changes which a single article has to undergo how it has 
 to pass from country to country in order to obtain that final shape 
 and form in which it best ministers to humanity. Look at the 
 silk-worm spinning her cocoons in the trees of Lebanon. Look 
 at the cotton-plants, rich in their white blossoms, in the fair 
 South of America. Why, their products cross the broad Atlantic, 
 they come here ; they are subject to your various industrial 
 operations, and then they go back again, in order to clothe even 
 the natives of the very country from which they came to give 
 them their garments ; and when those garments are worn out these 
 very articles sometimes undergo another change; they take the 
 form of paper, and circulate through the world the lessons of in- 
 telligence and of wisdom. I say that Free Trade is a providential 
 doctrine. It teaches us the wisdom of those arrangements by which 
 nations may ultimately, we trust, be led into one great federation, 
 one brotherhood of communities, rendering and receiving mutual 
 service." 
 
 Commerce is essentially cosmopolitan. 
 
 2 F
 
 450 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Clarke. Yes, and cosmopolitanism, like every other 
 blessing, brings evils in its train. But against them 
 may be set the rise of national spirit and the demands 
 made in every part of the world by all progressive 
 races for a larger and fuller political life. Russia is 
 the only European country where despotism is still 
 absolute. Everywhere else large concessions have been 
 made to the popular theory of government. We 
 set a fine example to the world by granting full 
 self-government to Canada, Australia, and New 
 Zealand ; and by degrees democratic and utilitarian 
 ideas are encroaching upon the most ancient preserves 
 of autocracy. There is no better guarantee of peace 
 than a system of free nations confined to their natural 
 boundaries. 
 
 Arbiter. And happily the rise of nationalism has 
 not on the whole encouraged war. But pray con- 
 tinue your history. 
 
 Ego. For fourteen years after the Battle of Waterloo 
 the country, exhausted and oppressed, had a com- 
 plete respite from foreign war. By severe retrench- 
 ment the Government was able to resist desperate 
 schemes for the repudiation of the National Debt. 
 Considerable sums were paid off. In 1824 the 
 Three Per Cents rose to 96, and by judicious con- 
 versions the debt charge was substantially diminished. 
 In 1826-8 some money was wasted in military opera- 
 tions against Spain, and in 1827 we took an honour- 
 able part and spent some money (which I for one 
 do not regret) in the liberation of Greece. In 1838 
 the troubles in Canada began, and eventually cost two 
 millions sterling. A similar sum was expended on 
 the first China War, which began two years later
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 451 
 
 and was ended by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. 
 Two more millions were frittered away on Kaffir 
 wars, which were hardly over before we began to be 
 involved in the protection of Turkey. 
 
 At the time of the Crimean War, which broke out 
 in February 1854, Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, and he has therefore the main credit 
 for what I must call the best financed of all our great 
 wars. The proposition he started with was that the 
 cost of a war should be defrayed out of current 
 revenue, i.e. by war taxes, and that those taxes should 
 be in the main direct, so that trade should suffer as 
 little interference, and posterity as little injustice, as 
 possible. He therefore took the strong step of asking 
 the House to consent to doubling the income tax 
 by raising it from yd. to is. for the first half year. 
 This was calculated to yield rather more than 
 3^ millions and would convert an estimated deficit 
 of .2,840,000 into a surplus of 467,000. To 
 begin the war by a loan would, he thought, be a 
 confession of financial cowardice and economic weak- 
 ness unworthy of the character of the country. 1 But 
 
 1 Nevertheless in the first year there was enough borrowing to 
 produce a decided effect on public credit. At the beginning of 
 1853 consols yielding 3 per cent, stood at par. In September 
 of the next year, after only six months of war, stock yielding 
 .3. 33. lod. per cent, was at 94. 
 
 The following table may be interesting : it represents the highest 
 and lowest points touched by three per cent, consols from the 
 year before to the year after the Crimean War : 
 
 HIGHEST. LOWEST. HIGHEST. LOWEST. 
 
 1856, 951 8 5 | 
 
 1857, 94 i 86^ 
 
 1858, 98^ 93 
 
 1853, 101 
 
 1854, 95! 851 
 
 1855, 93* 86*
 
 452 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 he was not content like Pitt with economic and 
 political arguments against throwing the cost of the 
 war on posterity. He presented a moral, nay even 
 a religious, argument in some famous sentences that 
 attracted much comment at the time : 
 
 "The expenses of a war are the moral check which it has 
 pleased the Almighty to impose upon the ambition and the lust 
 of conquest that are inherent in so many nations. There is pomp 
 and circumstance, there is glory and excitement, about war, which, 
 notwithstanding the miseries it entails, invests it with charms in 
 the eyes of the community, and tends to blind men to those evils 
 to a fearful and dangerous degree. The necessity of meeting from 
 year to year the expenditure which it entails is a salutary and 
 wholesome check, making them feel what they are about, and 
 making them measure the cost of the benefit upon which they 
 may calculate. It is by these means that they may be led and 
 brought to address themselves to a war policy as rational and in- 
 telligent beings, and may be induced to keep their eye well fixed 
 both upon the necessity of the war into which they are about to 
 enter, and their determination of availing themselves of the first 
 and earliest prospects of concluding an honourable peace." 
 
 Northcote afterwards objected, with justice, that this 
 argument, however sound in itself, and however 
 weighty it would have been in the mouth of an 
 independent member resisting an official proposal to 
 carry on a questionable war by means of loans, came 
 unfortunately from a minister who, with his colleagues, 
 had just drifted into a war, not (as they thought) of, 
 but against, aggression a war, writes Northcote with 
 gentle satire, the speedy close of which was to be 
 hoped for rather from a display of energetic de- 
 termination than from a deliberate and public adoption 
 of the policy of so adjusting the burdens of the people 
 as to impose a " moral check " upon their ardour. 
 Bright might have used that argument. Gladstone
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 453 
 
 should have argued that by paying its way as he 
 recommended the nation would display its resolution 
 to the world. Moreover, a few weeks later the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer had to issue Exchequer 
 Bonds in anticipation of taxes, and next year when 
 Sir G. C. Lewis, his successor, proposed to float a 
 regular loan Mr. Gladstone could not disapprove. 
 
 Nevertheless no one can say that Mr. Gladstone's 
 practice in war finance, in the first year, lagged far 
 behind his preaching. His courage in action matched 
 his valiant words. By the 8th of May it was evident 
 that the country was in for a big war ; new estimates 
 had to be framed, and Mr. Gladstone had to provide 
 for a further sum of ^6,850,000. The whole of this 
 sum he proposed to raise out of taxes by extending 
 the double income tax over the whole year, 1 by pro- 
 viding for its continuance over the year following the 
 conclusion of peace, and by increasing the duties on 
 spirits, malt, and sugar. 
 
 Some time after the Crimean War, Sir Stafford 
 Northcote and Mr. Gladstone corresponded on the 
 subject. Mr. Gladstone, as we learn from the Life, 
 thought that Northcote in comparing the effect of 
 taxes and loans, had looked too much to the effect 
 
 1 Thus providing against what happened in the year 1816 when 
 the income tax was repealed, and the country deprived of any 
 chance of dealing effectively with either debt or customs duties 
 until the advent of Peel. In 1822, however, the criticisms of 
 Ricardo and Hamilton produced some effect, and in 1823 
 Vansittart induced Parliament to pass an Act providing that a real 
 surplus of five millions should be set aside every year for the 
 reduction of debt ; and the National Debt was reduced from 885 
 millions in 1823 to 841 in 1833. It was 851 millions when 
 Peel took the helm in 1841. The effect of the 1823 policy on 
 the price of Consols and on Conversion is worthy of notice.
 
 454 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 on labour at the moment. Capital and labour are in 
 permanent competition for the division of the fruits 
 of production. When war comes and large sums are 
 borrowed, two consequences follow : 
 
 1. An immense factitious stimulus is given to labour 
 at the time and thus much more labour is brought 
 into the market. 
 
 2. When that stimulus is withdrawn an augmented 
 quantity of labour is left to compete in the market 
 with a greatly diminished quantity of capital. 
 
 Here, wrote Mr. Gladstone, is the story of the 
 misery of great masses of the English people after 
 1815, or at least a material part of that story. 
 
 Upon the general question of loans v. faxes for war 
 purposes Mr. Gladstone's considered judgment is of 
 high importance, and the following sentences from his 
 letter to Northcote may be regarded as the locus 
 classicus upon this strangely neglected topic : 
 
 " Assuming as data the established principles of our financial system 
 and by no means denying the necessity of loans, I have not the least 
 doubt that it is for the interest of labour, as opposed to capital, that as 
 large a share as possible of war expenditure should be defrayed from 
 taxes. When war breaks out the wages of labour on the whole have 
 a tendency to rise, and the labour of the country is well able to bear 
 some augmentation of taxes. The sums added to the public 
 expenditure are likely at the outset, and for some time, to be larger 
 than the sums withdrawn from commerce. When war ends, on the 
 contrary, a great mass of persons are dismissed from public employ- 
 ment, and, flooding the labour market, reduce the rate of wages. 
 But again, when war comes it is quite certain that a large share of the 
 war taxes. will be laid upon property ; and that in war, property will 
 bear a larger share of our total taxation than in peace. From this it 
 seems to follow at once that, up to the point at which endurance is 
 practicable, payment by war taxes rather than by taxes in peace is 
 for the interest of the people at large." * 
 
 1 See Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. i. pp. 517, 518.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 455 
 
 The adoption of this bold and resolute policy at 
 the outset of the Crimean War not only had a great 
 effect in checking the fall of national credit that in- 
 variably attends war, it also enabled the country to 
 recover its prosperity after the war so rapidly that in 
 1 86 1, after the emancipating budget of 1860, the 
 taxes on its trade and consumption were less burden- 
 some than in 1854, after the emancipating budget of 
 1853. Further, the depreciation in consols was only 
 slight ; and in the year after they were almost as 
 high as in the year before the war. The net financial 
 result of the Crimean War was that a sum of 42 
 millions, a little more than half its cost, was added 
 to the National Debt. 
 
 Arbiter. How does that compare with other wars ? 
 
 Ego. Very favourably indeed. The American War 
 lasted six years (1776-1782), and when the accounts 
 were finally wound up, some years afterwards, it was 
 found that 1 1 8 millions had been added to the debt. 1 
 The sums raised by additional taxes during that 
 war were quite small, though very oppressive to 
 industry and commerce. The cost of the French 
 wars, 1793-1815, is usually put at 831 millions, of 
 which no less than 624 millions were added to the 
 National Debt. I have already mentioned Mr. 
 Gladstone's proposition (borrowed, it should be 
 said, from a passage in Sir Henry Parnell's impor- 
 tant book on Financial Reform} that, had Mr. Pitt 
 imposed the effective income tax, which operated 
 during the last ten years of the war, at its commence- 
 ment, no addition need have been made to the debt, 
 
 1 So Porter in his Progress of the Nation. Sir G. Lewis put it at 
 i Z millions.
 
 456 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 so that in 1816 the country would have had to pay 
 an annual charge, not of 32^, but of 9^ millions. In 
 that case the whole national debt could easily have 
 been extinguished before the Boer War. To put it 
 in another way the nation would have been saved in 
 annual payments of interest alone from that day to 
 this, over 2000 millions sterling. 
 
 Nor for my part do I feel much doubt that very 
 early in the course of the war and most certainly 
 long before its close the country would have found 
 the advantage of paying its way, especially if it had 
 done so by means of a land tax. Northcote indeed 
 seems to have thought that in war time it may be 
 "less injurious to part with capital than with ear- 
 nings." But he forgot to make allowance for many 
 important facts. After Waterloo the debt charge was 
 much greater than the whole revenue of the country 
 in 1793. Again, in time of war, wages are often 
 artificially raised, and the working classes are better 
 able to contribute in the years of war than in the 
 years of depression which follow. Moreover, all 
 incomes are not earnings ; and an income tax, espec- 
 ially if it be graduated, may serve as a stimulus to 
 the rich drones of society to exert themselves, whereas 
 borrowing, by raising rates of interest, though it de- 
 preciates investments, enables the monied classes to 
 increase their incomes without any exertion. That 
 Pitt's second thoughts were far wiser and more states- 
 manlike than his first is to my mind conclusively 
 proved by another very remarkable fact remarkable 
 at least until one realises the proposition that the more 
 you borrow the more you have to pay for accommoda- 
 tion and it will, I feel sure, appeal to Mr. Meyer.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 457 
 
 According to Porter 1 (whom I have always found 
 a trustworthy authority) the average rate at which 3 
 per cent, stock was created between 1793 and 1801 
 was .57 7 s - 6d. paid into the Exchequer for every 
 jioo of stock, while from 1803 to 1815 the average 
 rate was 60 js. 6d. 
 
 Meyer. Most remarkable ! prodigious ! No race 
 but the Germanic, and no branch of it but the Anglo- 
 Saxon, could have improved its credit and borrowed 
 at a lower rate in the second than in the first half of 
 a twenty-two years' war. 
 
 Ego. But we seem to be degenerate now. Think how 
 steadily our consols declined during the Boer War. 
 Every loan was contracted on worse terms than its 
 predecessor. 
 
 Meyer. No wonder, with Hicks-Beach 
 
 Clarke. A man of good intentions, who often ex- 
 pressed them but never carried them out. He always 
 thought that, if he insisted on sound finance, he and 
 his party would be drowned in a butt of unpopularity. 
 His fears of opposition were always out of all pro- 
 portion to its amount. 
 
 Ego. Exactly so. He should have taken Harcourt's 
 advice and clapped something on to the income tax 
 for the last quarter or half of the year. That would 
 have been a plain and easy course. 
 
 Meyer. When do you mean ? 
 
 Ego. When Parliament assembled in October, 1899. 
 Instead of that he committed himself to two absurdities, 
 first, that the war could not possibly cost more than ten 
 or at most eleven millions ; second, that its cost would 
 be defrayed by the gold mines, so that he persuaded 
 
 1 Porter's Progress of the Nation, 1847 edition, p. 485.
 
 458 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 himself to take the depraved course of asking Parlia- 
 ment to sanction a loan without providing a farthing 
 out of taxation. I attribute much of the waste of 
 money during the war and since the war, as well as the 
 huge addition to the debt and the great depreciation of 
 consols, to the shocking weakness of the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer at the outset. The ground then lost 
 was never recovered. The budget of 1900 was quite 
 inadequate and was not redeemed by its successors. 
 The spending departments presumed more and more 
 on the squeezability of the Treasury. The estimates 
 from the very first were a mockery. Since then we 
 have not known what it is to have an honest budget, 
 or a surplus at the end of the year. The War Office 
 and the Admiralty have wallowed in aimless profusion ; 
 the accounts have been so embarrassed, Parliament 
 so perplexed by supplementary estimates and extra- 
 ordinary expenditure, and by the sham statements of 
 responsible ministers that I really sometimes wonder, 
 pace Mr. Meyer, whether we do live in the best of all 
 countries under the best of all constitutions. 
 
 Meyer. Our Staat is very good, but our Staatsmen 
 are very bad. The machinery is perfect ; we only 
 want the men to work it, and the nation will find 
 them before long. 
 
 Arbiter. But you will want something more than 
 men ; you will want a policy. Now what is the 
 policy that the City requires ? I'm not asking 
 about the unemployed, or drunkenness, or lunacy, 
 or rural depopulation. Just give us your idea of 
 what the City needs. 
 
 Meyer. My dear sir, it needs precisely what you 
 have given up so much of your life to advocate
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 459 
 
 economy and reduced taxes. Some friends of mine 
 on the Stock Exchange the other day made a careful 
 calculation of the losses suffered by investors in 
 consols and other first-class securities in the British 
 Empire, between 1899 and the present time, and 
 found they amounted to 1000 millions sterling. 
 
 Ego. If the military and naval expenditure of 1898 
 had been adhered to 
 
 Admiral. Which could easily have maintained the 
 two-power standard 
 
 Ego. And the Boer war had been avoided, surely 
 consols could not have stood much lower than no, 
 even to-day ? They are actually at 88. 
 
 Meyer (eagerly}. You have right ! You have right ! 
 Considering the vast productive energies of the 
 country, I have the deep conviction that with a 
 good financier at the Exchequer, who would restore 
 the Sinking Fund to its full vigour and set ener- 
 getically to work at reducing the floating debt, I 
 feel sure, I say, that in five or six years, the life- 
 time of a Parliament, the whole of those lost 
 twenty-four points might be regained and the 
 thousand millions recovered. 
 
 Ego. That would solve fast enough the problem of 
 the employable unemployed. 
 
 Meyer. I go further : I say that if the peaceful 
 diplomacy of Lord Lansdowne could be maintained, 
 a good Chancellor of the Exchequer, reasonably sup- 
 ported by economical colleagues at the War Office 
 and Admiralty, would be able in two Budgets at the 
 most to restore consols to par, the half-way house. 
 And that would mean an addition of hundreds of 
 millions to the invested wealth of the empire.
 
 460 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Seymour. Possibly a better asset, even from a mili- 
 tary point of view, than two superfluous army corps 
 and half-a-dozen superfluous battleships ! 
 
 Arbiter. Meyer, you always were a shrewd fellow, but 
 those are the shrewdest words I ever heard you utter. 
 I only wish some statesmen I could mention were 
 in the room. Mark my words, retrenchment means 
 the diffusion of wealth, prosperity, and comfort through- 
 out the nation ; it means that all sorts of social reforms 
 involving expenditure become possible, it means a reduc- 
 tion of taxation, it means scattering cheapness and plenty 
 through the land ; it is the only radical and honest 
 remedy if we except reform in the land system and 
 liquor traffic for social distress, it is the first condition 
 of economic regeneration, and therefore it is the only 
 antidote to the new Chamberlainism. 
 
 Clarke. Can experience be said to prove that the 
 lower the level of taxation the higher the standard 
 of living and comfort ? 
 
 Ego. No ; because there are two kinds of taxation, 
 according to the use the money is put to. The 
 first kind is for unproductive purposes, such as 
 pageants, unnecessary palaces, or unnecessary arma- 
 ments. The higher that kind of taxation is, the 
 lower must be the standard of living and comfort. 
 For what is spent on such purposes is withdrawn 
 from capital, profits, rents, and wages. But the 
 other kind of taxation for reproductive purposes, 
 such as education, public health, roads, waterways, 
 railways, etc., may be heavy and yet may actually add 
 to the efficiency, comfort, happiness, and wealth of 
 the nation. Rates may be high without being onerous, 
 and so might taxes but for the army and navy.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 461 
 
 Meyer. But many of our local bodies are wasteful. 
 Local loans have a very depressing effect upon the 
 money market. 
 
 Arbiter. Ah ! you have been deluded by some of 
 your respectable London bankers. They are very timid 
 men, afraid of attacking Government loans, waste on 
 war, armaments, and the like. So in hard times like 
 these, when consols are very low and the money 
 market " tight," they make a scapegoat of the muni- 
 cipalities, and try to fasten the blame on their loans 
 investments of capital for purposes of public health 
 and convenience. I have no patience with such men 
 with their property and defence associations, their 
 pretentious claptrap about thrift, and their habits of 
 personal luxury penny wise and pound foolish. Let 
 them attack wholesale waste of taxpayers' money on 
 bad objects, and then they may see clearly to denounce 
 here and there an extravagant outlay of ratepayers' 
 money on good objects. 
 
 Ego. There are many free traders who stultify their 
 position through failing to perceive that the objects 
 of taxation are at least as important as the modes. 
 Take the case of Russia and the United States, two 
 of the largest free trade areas in the world, which 
 rival one another in the barbaric height of their 
 protective barriers against foreign goods. In spite 
 of a tariff which has very bad social and economic 
 effects the United States, having long devoted most 
 of the national revenues to purposes either repro- 
 ductive or neutral, has secured a relatively high 
 standard of living. The American workman is, 
 generally speaking, better off than the English, 1 and 
 1 Though he has to work harder.
 
 462 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 not worse off than the Canadian and Australian, 
 who have also been spared hitherto from the curse 
 of militarism. But Russia is in a wretched state, 
 because there high protection is combined with 
 heavy expenditure on armaments. There expendi- 
 ture upon necessaries, such as roads and education, 
 is extravagantly low. In Europe you can see the 
 advantages of free trade and the evils of conscrip- 
 tion by comparing the wages and standard of living 
 in such free-trade countries as England, Holland, 
 Switzerland, and Denmark (which have to pay heavily 
 for armaments but are free from the curse of com- 
 pulsory service) with the rates and standards that 
 prevail in other parts of the old world, in Germany, 
 France, Austria, Italy, and Spain. If you want an 
 index to the wealth of a country, first find out what 
 proportion of its public revenues is laid out on arma- 
 ments, and whether conscription (the blood tax) is 
 established ; and in the second place, by what taxes 
 the revenue is raised. I think you will concede that 
 a free-trade country which raised a heavy revenue by 
 irreproachable means by taxes on land, on noxious 
 luxuries, on incomes, and on property would be in 
 a very pitiful condition if it devoted all its funds to 
 preparations for war. 
 
 Meyer. Of course, of course. Perhaps after all 
 the Anti-Municipal Trading Association has rather 
 diverted our energies from more important objects. 
 
 Ego. Yes, you would have saved three millions 
 sterling if you could have stopped the Gibraltar 
 works, and two and a-half millions if you could have 
 prevented the Somaliland War. By stopping the 
 West Ham omnibus you might perhaps save the
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 463 
 
 ratepayers 50 a year. I attach so much importance 
 to the distinction between productive and unproductive 
 expenditure by the State, that I am anxious to 
 lay before you a few figures by way of illustrating 
 from English experience the tendency of useful 
 expenditure to outgrow expenditure on armaments. 
 
 Archbishop Whately, who held the Chair of Political 
 Economy at Oxford, in 1830-1, pointed out, in one 
 of his lessons on money matters, that more than three- 
 fifths of the taxes raised annually went in paying 
 interest on the national debt, and nearly all the rest 
 of the revenue was swallowed up by the army and 
 navy. Every pound paid in taxes was disposed of 
 in about the following proportions : 
 
 S. D. 
 
 On the army and navy, etc., - 7 2 
 
 On the civil services, - o 10 
 
 Interest on national debt, 1 2 o 
 
 A generation later Judge Longford made a similar 
 calculation, which worked out as follows. The pro- 
 portion allocated to the civil services had been 
 multiplied as you see by five from lod. to 45. 2d.: 
 
 S. D. 
 
 On the army, navy, etc., 7 9 
 
 On civil services, - 4 2 
 
 Interest and sinking fund on debt, - 8 I 
 
 In 1898, before the Boer War, a similar calculation 
 would have given the following result showing another 
 gain for the civil service, but also, I am sorry to say, 
 a threatening increase in the naval and military share : 
 
 S. D. 
 
 On the army and navy, - 9 10 
 
 On the civil services, 5 o 
 
 Interest and sinking fund on debt, - 5 2
 
 464 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 In 1903-4, another year of peace, but after the 
 Boer War, the expenditure under all three heads 
 had greatly increased ; but this time the proportion 
 spent on the civil services had slightly diminished : 
 
 S. D. 
 
 On the army and navy, - - 10 9 
 
 On civil services, - 49 
 
 Interest on debt, 4 6 
 
 But if rates are included in taxes, and the expendi- 
 ture of local authoritis added to the item of civil 
 services, we shall be able to show a real improve- 
 ment in the relative proportion of civil to military 
 expenditure. To illustrate this let me compare the 
 year 1870-1 with the year 1903-4, in each case adding 
 the produce of the rates to the produce of the taxes, 
 and the local expenditure out of rates to the expendi- 
 ture on civil services : 
 
 In the year ending March 3ist, 1871, the public 
 revenue from taxes amounted to just over 68 millions; 
 the public expenditure was just under 68 millions ; 
 the local revenues, including rates, tolls and profits, 
 but excluding government contributions, came to 
 25 millions. The expenditure for the year 1870-1 
 (excluding the cost of collecting revenue) then works 
 out as follows in round figures : 
 
 Civil services : 
 
 (a) national, - 1 3 millions. 
 
 () local, - 25 millions. 
 
 Total civil services, - 38 millions. 
 
 Army and navy, - -24 millions. 
 
 Service of debt, - 26 millions. 
 
 Thus, out of a total of 88 millions of expenditure 
 defrayed from taxes and rates, 24 went to the army
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 465 
 
 and navy, 26 to the debt, and 38 to what may be 
 called by contrast productive and beneficial expendi- 
 ture the civil departments and local government. 
 Out of every pound taken from the pockets of British 
 ratepayers and taxpayers in 1870 
 s. D. 
 
 5 5 were spent on the army and navy. 
 511 were spent on the national debt 
 
 (interest and sinking fund). 
 8 8 were spent on poor relief, police, 
 education, roads, public health and 
 other civil or local services. : 
 
 In 1903-4 the national expenditure (excluding 
 expenditure from loans) had risen to 130 millions, 
 and the local expenditure from rates, tolls, rents, etc. 
 (excluding expenditure from loans and government 
 contributions), to about 90 millions. The total 
 expenditure to be considered (after deducting the 
 cost of collecting customs and inland revenues) is 
 about 216 millions, divided as follows : 
 Civil services : 
 
 National, - 27 millions. 
 
 Local, - 90 millions. 
 
 Total civil services, 1 1 7 millions. 
 
 Army and navy, - 71 millions. 
 
 Service of debt, . 28 millions. 
 
 Thus, out of every sovereign taken by the Govern- 
 ment from the pockets of British ratepayers and 
 taxpayers in 1903 
 s. D. 
 
 6 8 were spent on army and navy. 
 
 3 o were spent on the national debt. 
 10 4 were spent on civil and local services. 
 1 See Statistical Abstract, 1873, Table I. 
 
 2G
 
 466 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Clarke. On the whole then you think that less 
 proportionately of the taxpayer's money is wasted ? 
 
 Ego. Yes, that is the tendency, and if we can keep 
 at peace for twenty years a very great improvement 
 ought to be effected. 
 
 Case. But the sum spent on war and armaments 
 of late years has been appalling. 
 
 Ego. Undoubtedly ; and you see the natural results 
 in the statistics of pauperism, wages, and unemploy- 
 ment since 1900. On the other hand if you look 
 at the last edition of Marshall's Principles of Economics 
 you will find a note showing that early in the nine- 
 teenth century " imperial taxes, for the greater part 
 war taxes, amounted to one-fifth of the whole income 
 of the whole country," whereas at the end of the 
 century they amounted to not much more than one- 
 twentieth, and even of this sum a considerable portion 
 was spent (as I have shown) on education and other 
 beneficial services practically unknown to our ancestors 
 and uncared for by statesmen of the olden time. 
 
 III. 
 
 IT would be absurd to treat of a subject like this 
 even in a summary way without trying to give you 
 some conception of the cost and magnitude of modern 
 armaments. Figures, of course, when they run into 
 millions produce the very faintest impression of things. 
 If an astronomer announces that the sun is 93 million 
 miles away we stare and gasp, but we should be 
 hardly less staggered if he told us it was 93 thousand 
 miles away. The same vagueness obscures the popular 
 mind when a war lecturer gloats or a peace lecturer
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 467 
 
 groans over a billion dollar war. We must try to 
 translate the multitudes of ciphers into terms of 
 common life. We must find out the war monster's 
 "keep" by counting up the taxes he devours, or by 
 numbering the comforts and luxuries he eats off the 
 poor man's table. I could easily show you that if 
 it were content to leave taxes as they are and revert 
 to the war expenditure of 1898 our own Government 
 could in ten years provide every working class family 
 in England, Scotland, and Ireland with a home twice 
 as large at half the rent it pays at present, and that 
 the State would then be left with a handsome annual 
 rental of several millions to apply to the reduction of 
 taxes or of the national debt. 
 
 Arbiter. You do well to draw attention to the 
 necessity of translating figures for popular consump- 
 tion. No one knew better than John Bright the 
 futility of talking in millions. What does a million 
 sterling convey to a man who earns a pound a week ? 
 I recollect that one of his illustrations was drawn from 
 a comparison of war expenditure with exports. In 
 1852 we paid 17 millions for army and navy and 
 28 millions for the charge on the national debt 
 45,000,000 in all. In that year the total value of 
 the exports of British and Irish produce, " far the 
 largest year of exports we had ever known," amounted 
 to 78 millions sterling. " Well, then," said the orator, 
 " plant some one at the mouth of every port and 
 harbour in the United Kingdom, and let him take 
 every alternate ship that leaves your rivers and your 
 harbours with all its valuable cargo on board, and 
 let him carry it off as a tribute, and it will not amount 
 to the sums that you pay every year [as interest on
 
 468 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 debt] for a war, 1 th,at fifty years ago was justified as 
 much as it is attempted to justify this impending war." 
 This was a pictorial way of stating that the interest on 
 the war debt together with the military and naval 
 expenditure amounted to more than half the total 
 value of British exports. 
 
 Ego. In another famous speech after the Crimean 
 War had begun, Bright declared that if England, 
 seventy years before, had adopted the principle of 
 non-intervention in every case where her interests were 
 not directly and obviously assailed " this country 
 might have been a garden, every dwelling might 
 have been of marble, and every person who treads 
 its soil might have been sufficiently educated." 
 
 What an enormity is the thing we call the armed 
 peace of Europe. At the birth of Christ the standing 
 army which defended the Roman Empire in Europe, 
 Asia, and Africa numbered only about 300,000 men ; 2 
 and I suppose that the sum total of the standing 
 armies of the principal European powers in the reign 
 of George the First was no larger. Yet it was growing, 
 and the evil arrested the attention of the clear-sighted 
 Montesquieu, who protested most vigorously against 
 the ruinous competition in armaments. " Each mon- 
 arch," he wrote, " keeps as many armies on foot as 
 if his people were in danger of being exterminated ; 
 and they give the name of peace to this general effort 
 of all against all." The consequence, he added, is 
 " a perpetual augmentation of taxes." For this there 
 might have been a natural remedy ; but another mis- 
 
 x The French War, 1794-1815. 
 
 2 In 1897 less than 30,000 soldiers sufficed to guard the United 
 States of America.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 469 
 
 chief had supervened. Kings were no longer content 
 to spend their revenues. They went to war with their 
 whole capital, and staked the future as well as the 
 present earnings of their people with the utmost levity. 
 Indeed they had already begun to mortgage their funds 
 in time of peace for purposes of war. 
 
 But if the evil was already manifest to Montesquieu, 
 the whole scheme and proportion of things altered with 
 the system of conscription, a system first introduced 
 by Napoleon and gradually perfected by the Con- 
 tinental powers during the last fifty or sixty years. 
 To bring home to our minds the vastness of the 
 development to measure the rate of acceleration it 
 is necessary to take two dates and compare the state 
 of armaments. I shall select 1858 and 1898. The 
 first year is an interesting one, because it immediately 
 preceded the first of the two sharp but decisive 
 struggles which terminated in the establishment of 
 the modern Kingdom of Italy and the modern Empire 
 of Germany. According to a computation made by 
 a careful writer of that day from the best sources the 
 peace establishment of Europe consisted of over 2^- 
 millions of men. This barrack population was made 
 up as follows : 
 
 (1) Russia, 
 
 (2) Austria, - 
 
 (3) France, - 
 
 (4) Prussia, - 
 
 (5) Lesser German 
 
 States, - 
 
 (6) Bavaria, - 
 
 (7) Hanover, 
 
 (8) Saxony, - 
 
 (9) Turkey, - 
 (10) England, 
 (i i) Spain, 
 
 (12) Naples, - 
 
 (13) Sardinia, - 
 
 600,000 
 380,000 
 366,000 
 1 6 1 ,000 ' 
 
 124,000 
 
 87,000 
 
 26,000 
 
 25,000 
 
 143,000 
 
 140,000 
 
 1 1 2,000 
 
 92,000 
 
 48,000 
 
 (14) Lesser Italian 
 
 States, - 
 
 (15) Belgium, - 
 
 (16) Switzerland, 
 
 (17) Holland, 
 
 (18) Sweden and 
 
 Norway, 
 
 (19) Principalities, - 
 
 (20) Portugal, 
 
 (21) Denmark, 
 
 (22) Greece, - 
 
 36,000 
 73,000 
 72,000 
 58,000 
 
 42,000 
 34,000 
 26,000 
 21,000 
 9,000 
 
 Total, 2,675,000
 
 470 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 The reflections made by the compiler of these statistics 
 are worth recalling, for they apply with greater force 
 to the even more appalling conditions which confront 
 us now. 
 
 Why, he asked, should Europe require eight or nine 
 times as many soldiers to protect her after nineteen 
 centuries of Christian preaching as she needed under 
 the pagan empire of Augustus ? All external danger 
 had disappeared. The Sultan was powerless except to 
 murder his own subjects. The foreign risks of Europe 
 were measured by her own aggressions in Africa and 
 Asia. Each of the Christian powers of Europe main- 
 tained, at vast expense and sacrifice, a huge and costly 
 military establishment in order to protect itself against 
 attack from its neighbours or to support its own 
 schemes of aggrandisement. For nearly two centuries 
 Europe had been free from the fear of a horde of 
 invading barbarians. Her rich and flourishing cities 
 were not liable to be sacked by Goths and Visigoths, 
 Franks and Huns, Picts, Saxons, and Danes, or the 
 rest of the unnumbered and unnamed hordes which 
 the populous north " poured from her frozen loins 
 to pass Rhene or the Danau." 
 
 Case. Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Histro. 
 
 Ego. The Dacian no longer plots a raid over the 
 Danube upon Vienna. His modern successors, the 
 Ruthenians fleeing from the Austrian Pole, or the 
 Poles and Finns and Doukhobors fleeing from the 
 grinding despotism of the Czar, are transported by 
 thousands to Canada and the United States, where 
 they become industrious and prosperous citizens de- 
 voted to the Star Spangled Banner or the Union 
 Jack. Emigration is no longer the movement of an
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 471 
 
 armed tribe driving out the old inhabitants by fire 
 and sword. It is an affair of cheap railway tickets 
 and steerage rates by transatlantic lines. The ever- 
 increasing commerce and intercourse between States, 
 so marvellously promoted by railways and steamers, 
 have made all the difference. Aggression, at least in 
 Europe, is but rarely attempted with a view to 
 permanent occupation, and never, I suppose, from 
 the hope of spoil. For it is a maxim cf discipline 
 and success in war that an army must pay its way. 
 Everywhere business payments are made by bills and 
 cheques ; money is no longer hoarded ; and besides, 
 as someone has remarked, money knows so well 
 how to make itself scarce upon the first rumour of 
 danger that the movements of modern armies cannot 
 possibly be supported by plunder even if soldiers were 
 allowed to plunder. The late China War, to avenge 
 the Boxer outrages and the siege of the Legations, 
 was accompanied by the utmost licentiousness. We 
 were shocked at the well authenticated reports of 
 murder and pillage committed on defenceless China- 
 men by European troops. But that did not reduce 
 the expense of the campaign. For the handful of 
 British and Indian troops that went to Pekin we 
 had to pay I think over six millions sterling. 
 Indemnities seldom come off. Look at the case of 
 " the gold-reefed city." Undoubtedly the English 
 Government and the English people really did enter 
 upon the Boer War with the idea that the gold 
 mines would pay the cost of it. But as the war 
 proceeded the contributions of the gold mines receded 
 and the taxpayer began to look blue. 
 
 Clarke. You remind me irresistibly of something
 
 472 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 I read the other day in Rousseau : Tai battu les 
 Romains, ecrivoit Annibal aux Carthaginois ; envoyez- 
 moi des troupes ; fai mis r Italic a contribution, envoyez 
 moi de r argent. 
 
 Ego. Delightful. Just as our Hannibal wrote : " I 
 have beaten the Boers, send me reinforcements. I have 
 taken the Rand ; send me money." But this is a 
 digression. I have given you the armies of Europe 
 as they stood on a peace footing in 1858. Forty 
 years later the standing armies of Europe, according 
 to the English handbooks which I have consulted, had 
 increased by nearly a million, at a greater rate than the 
 population, though probably not at a greater rate than 
 the wealth. Let us place them in their new order : 
 
 EUROPEAN ARMIES ON A PEACE FOOTING IN 
 Russia, 1 860,000 
 
 Germany,- - 585,000 
 
 France, 3 - 576,000 
 
 Austria and Hungary, 4 397,000 
 Italy, 5 
 Great Britain, 6 at 
 
 home and in the 
 
 colonies, - 
 
 In India, 
 Turkey, 
 Spain, 
 
 185,000 
 
 Holland, 
 Denmark, - 
 Belgium, 
 Bulgaria, 
 Sweden, 
 Roumania, - 
 Montenegro, 
 Portugal, 
 Greece, 
 Norway, 
 Servia, 
 Total peace footing, - 3,562,000. 
 
 Luxemburg, a neutralised State with a population 
 of 217,000, had in 1898 an army of 325 men. 
 
 Switzerland has no standing army ; but the whole 
 population receives a short military training. Nearly 
 
 1 War footing, about 3,400,000. 2 War footing, about 3,975,000. 
 8 War footing, about 3,900,000. 4 War footing, about 2,749,000. 
 5 War footing, about 2,200,000. Total force in 1898, including 
 army reserves, militia, yeomanry, and volunteers, 742,000. 
 
 171,000 
 
 73,000 
 
 180,000 
 
 120,000 
 
 78,000 
 50,000 
 47,000 
 42,000 
 40,000 
 46,000 
 35,000 
 30,000 
 26,000 
 18,000 
 13,000
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 473 
 
 500,000 men could be called upon to resist invasion. 
 The above figures, as I have said, are drawn from 
 English sources, and they do not give an adequate 
 notion of the burden of armaments. 
 
 Another and probably better representation of 
 European armaments in 1898 was prepared for the 
 Czar and his ministers in that year in order to pave 
 the way for the Hague Conference. It appeared in 
 the Official Messenger of St. Petersburg by way of 
 supplement to Count Mouravieff's Note. I will give 
 you these calculations in my own words as a repre- 
 sentation of Europe armed in 1898, but pray recollect 
 that since then the war monsters have grown in bulk, 
 and require far more food to support them, even if 
 they are kept in their cages. What they devour, 
 when they break loose and fight one another, you 
 may judge by the cost of the wars in South Africa, 
 in the Philippines, and the still more horrible one 
 that is raging in Manchuria. 
 
 In 1898 it was true, as it still is, that on paper 
 the Russian army far surpassed in size the armies of 
 other Powers. She had a peace establishment of about 
 a million men, and 280,000 conscripts were annually 
 enrolled. On a mobilisation the Russian forces were 
 supposed to number 2^- millions, exclusive of about 
 6,950,000 militia and reserve ; so that Russia, with a 
 population of 120,000,000, had on paper a force 
 of over 9,000,000 trained soldiers. France had, 
 including reserves, 4,370,000. Her standing army 
 numbered 589,000, which could be raised by mobilisa- 
 tion to a war footing of 2^- millions. Germany, with 
 a peace effective of 585,000 boasted that she could 
 mobilise two and a quarter million men in ten days
 
 474 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 though how long she could maintain and feed them 
 was quite another question. There were supposed to 
 be 4,300,000 trained soldiers in Germany. The 
 standing army of Austria-Hungary consisted of 
 365,000 men, 15,000 less than in 1858, but rising 
 to 2^- millions on mobilisation, and to 4 millions in- 
 cluding reserves. Italy had a peace establishment of 
 174,000, which could be raised to nearly i^- millions 
 by mobilisation, with a reserve in addition of 720,000. 
 The standing army of Great Britain was larger than 
 that of Italy by 50,000 men (220,000 in all), but our 
 total force, including militia and volunteers, only num- 
 bered 720,000. This, however, excluded over 100,000 
 sailors and marines in the Royal Navy. To give an 
 idea of the numbers of these gigantic hosts, it was 
 calculated that the French army in line formation 
 would extend a distance of about 325 miles ; while the 
 34,000,000 men who composed, on paper, the per- 
 manent forces of the Continent in 1898 (20 per cent, 
 of the whole male population), would stretch, if they 
 could actually have been called out and drawn up in 
 line, from Paris to St. Petersburg. America was 
 comparatively free from this curse, though several 
 of the South American Republics maintained con- 
 siderable armies, and had adopted, or were about to 
 adopt, conscription. 
 
 Then as to cost. The permanent standing armies 
 of the world were computed by the Official Messenger 
 at 5j millions always under arms, which, at an aver- 
 age cost of 40 per man per year 1 (a very moderate 
 
 1 In 1898 the annual cost to the taxpayers of every soldier in 
 the standing armies of the six great European powers varied from 
 30 in Russia to 8 1 in Great Britain. A German soldier cost 
 , and a French soldier 65.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 475 
 
 estimate), would mean an annual sum raised by tax 
 and debt of ^210,000,000, representing at 4 per cent, 
 a capital sum devoted to militarism, and withdrawn 
 from industry, of ^5,250,000,000. But the 210 
 millions ought to be doubled in order to allow for 
 the product of the men's work, if they had been 
 allowed to remain in industry. What comfort and 
 happiness might be diffused among the labouring poor 
 of the world if half this gigantic sum could be 
 restored to the fruitful and fertilising channels of 
 industry, and if, at the same time, 1\ millions of 
 labouring men could be dismissed from the ranks, 
 and instead of drilling two years for mutual destruc- 
 tion, might join in producing works of utility or 
 beauty in short, if they could withdraw from the 
 service of the devil and enter the service of man. 
 
 From a series of articles which appeared in La 
 Revue Statistique about the same time (September, 
 1898), it appeared that the ordinary cost of European 
 armies in time of peace, per head of the population, 
 varied from 2s. yd. in Finland to 135. lod. in France. 
 The average for a Dane was 55. 3d., for a Dutch- 
 man 8s. 3^-d., for an Englishman 93. 6^-d., and for a 
 German us. 8d. An English family of four persons 
 would therefore pay on an average at that time nearly 
 2 per annum for the army. 
 
 Since the Boer War our military expenditure has 
 increased more than 50 per cent., so that a family of 
 the same size would now pay 3 a year on this head 
 alone. The cost of the navy at that time in Europe 
 varied from lod. a head in Austria-Hungary to us. 
 yd. a head in Great Britain. In France it was 6s. 
 ., in Germany 2s. lid., in Russia is. 2d., in
 
 476 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Holland 55. 5^d., and in Denmark 35. 5^-d. Here 
 again British expenditure has increased since that time 
 by at least 50 per cent. The total military budget of 
 Europe was, in 1897-8, about 156,000,000, and the 
 total naval budget, 61,000,000, of which the British 
 share was more than a third. I cannot do better than 
 conclude this survey with the words of the Official 
 Messenger of St. Petersburg : 
 
 " By no possibility could expenditure on this colossal scale be 
 reproductive. It exhausts the sources of national revenues, increases 
 taxation, paralyses the action of national finance and commerce, and 
 arrests the general well-being. The best minds of all countries and 
 all ages have therefore sought to assure peace without recourse to 
 constantly increasing armaments by principles of justice and equity 
 operating through the channel of arbitration." 
 
 Case. The Hague Conference has established a 
 Court of Arbitration, but not a Court of Disarma- 
 ment. How is it that the neighbourly game of " Beggar 
 my neighbour" could not be ended in the Oranje Zaal ? 
 
 Arbiter. Your question is one that requires a rather 
 long answer ; for Clark did not bring his paper on 
 Federation up to date. Of the many proposals, that 
 have been made from time to time for solving inter- 
 national disputes and for reducing the burden of 
 militarism, the most recent and by far the most 
 important of all were initiated by Russia at the Hague 
 Congress. On August 24th, 1898, a Note was handed, 
 by order of the Czar, to the representative of every 
 Power accredited to the Court of St. Petersburg. It 
 opened with these resounding words : " A universal 
 peace, and a reduction of the intolerable burdens 
 imposed on all nations by the excessive armaments ot 
 to-day is the ideal towards which every Government 
 should strive."
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 477 
 
 The Imperial Government, the Note went on, 
 believed the moment to be a very favourable one for 
 an international inquiry into the most effective means 
 of securing a real and durable peace for all nations, 
 and in particular of arresting the progressive increase 
 of armaments. For the past twenty-five years the 
 maintenance of peace between the Powers had been a 
 main object of European policy. Great alliances had 
 been concluded and undoubtedly they had conduced 
 to the maintenance of peace. Nevertheless, in the 
 emphatic words of this remarkable document, "the 
 unceasing increase in financial burdens is threatening 
 the very roots of public prosperity." Labour and 
 capital, enterprise and invention, were being diverted 
 from the service of man into unnatural channels of 
 destruction. Millions were being spent on engines 
 of warfare which might be deemed irresistible at the 
 time but might on the morrow be rendered valueless 
 by a single new discovery. Economic crises were 
 justly attributed to this system of armed peace and a 
 prediction was made that if the system were indefinitely 
 prolonged it would inevitably end in the cataclysm 
 which it was designed to prevent. " To set a final 
 term, therefore, to these armaments and to discover a 
 means of preventing calamities that threaten the entire 
 world is the supreme duty of every modern State." 
 
 The courteous and generally favourable reception 
 given to the Russian Note led, as we all know, to the 
 Hague Conference. On the I3th January, 1899, 
 Count Mouravieff addressed an invitation to all the 
 Powers ; after referring to his previous Note he pointed 
 out that the latest estimates of military and naval 
 expenditure showed a continued growth of armaments.
 
 478 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 He therefore renewed his proposal that " an inquiry 
 should be initiated without delay into the means of 
 limiting the present augmentation of military and naval 
 armaments, a question evidently becoming more and 
 more urgent," and also that the way should be prepared 
 for " a discussion of questions touching the possibility 
 of substituting the pacific action of international 
 diplomacy for the arbitrament of force." 
 
 England and the United States were comparatively 
 prosperous, and their governments sadly indifferent. 
 Germany was actively hostile. Let me read you 
 a sentence or two from the speech of one of 
 her representatives upon the Russian proposal for 
 an international agreement not to increase the size of 
 armies : " The German people is not crushed under 
 the weight of charges and taxes. . . . Quite the 
 contrary, public and private wealth is increasing. . . . 
 So far as compulsory military service is concerned, 
 which is so closely connected with these questions, 
 the German does not regard this as a heavy burden, 
 but as a sacred and patriotic duty to which he owes 
 his country's existence, its prosperity, and its future." l 
 
 Arbiter. Perhaps you could tell us a little more 
 about the progress of armaments since 1898. 
 
 Ego. Perhaps the best thing will be to give, as near as 
 may be, the naval and military expenditure of a num- 
 ber of countries in 1898, and the estimates for the 
 present year (1904). The budgets of different coun- 
 tries are prepared at different times, but as my object 
 is to present a general view of the changes that have 
 
 1 Speech by General von Schwarzhoff before the First Committee 
 of the Hague Convention, June 27, 1899. The general had a 
 right to speak for his master but not for his countrymen.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 479 
 
 occurred in the last half dozen years, you will not 
 object to a difference in a year. 
 
 Naval Expenditure Naval Estimates 
 
 in 1898. 
 
 Great Britain, 2 5, 600,000 l 
 
 France, - 1 1,700,000 
 
 Germany, 5,900,000 
 
 Russia, - 7,000,000 
 
 Italy, 4,700,000 
 
 Army Expenditure 
 
 in 1898. 
 
 Great Britain,- 20,800,000 2 
 
 France, - 26,000,000 
 
 Germany, 32,000,000 
 
 Russia, - 30,000,000 
 
 Italy, 1 2,000,000 
 
 in 1904. 
 
 42,400,000! 
 
 12,500,000 
 
 1 1,600,000 
 
 1 1,800,000 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 Army Expenditure 
 
 in 1903. 
 
 3 2, 600,000 3 
 
 26,000,000 
 
 32,000,000 
 
 35,000,000 
 
 I 1,000,000 
 
 I may sum up with a recent calculation made by 
 M. de Molinari that the European working man of 
 the present day has to work a whole month in the 
 year to defray the cost of war and armaments ; and in 
 most countries I'm afraid he has to work a week or 
 two longer to pay interest on national debt, that is 
 for the wars which his predecessors could not pay for. 
 
 Clarke. What an awful thing ! And yet we talk 
 of " the comity of nations." 
 
 Arbiter. There is a good deal of truth in the dictum 
 that military expenditure depends on policy. A policy 
 of territorial expansion that bullies small peoples and 
 dispossesses inferior races is costly enough, but when it 
 comes to a dispute with great nations you must 
 obviously be backed by large forces, prepared at any 
 
 1 Including "extraordinary" expenditure on capital account, i.e. 
 on naval works. 
 
 2 Including extraordinary expenditure on capital account, i.e. 
 on military works. 3 For 1903-4.
 
 480 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 moment to take the field or the sea. By force Frederick 
 the Great succeeded, after a terrible war, in retaining 
 his Silesian conquest. By force the House of Hohen- 
 zollern won and held the Empire of Germany. For 
 want of forces equal to his restless ambitions, Napoleon 
 the Third fell, and France lost two provinces which 
 she had held for a century and a half. But the dictum 
 is only half a truth. The other half is, that expendi- 
 ture determines policy. Ricardo once said that to 
 keep Ministers peaceful you must keep them poor ; 
 and while he was in the House of Commons he voted 
 steadily against every tax on which a division was 
 challenged. 
 
 Ego. Yes ; and in voting, as he did, against all 
 projects for adding to taxes, Joseph Hume was quite 
 justified by the circumstances of the time. It is 
 nonsensical to object that, because it is the business of 
 the Government to fix the estimates and of Parliament 
 to approve them, therefore the estimates only can be 
 attacked. A minority which believes in retrenchment 
 will oppose the estimates, and then if it is beaten on 
 the estimates it will proceed to oppose the taxes that 
 it regards as most obnoxious ; and it may very likely 
 be more successful in opposing high taxation than it 
 was in opposing high expenditure ! If it succeeds 
 against a tax, the Government must either resign, or 
 revise and cut down its estimates. In 1816 a very 
 large retrenchment in military expenditure was effected 
 by a vote of the House of Commons abolishing 
 the income tax. That was no doubt a shamefully 
 selfish performance the rich men's representatives 
 abolished the rich man's tax. But it brought about 
 an immediate retrenchment which would otherwise not
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 48 1 
 
 have been made. It had many bad consequences, but 
 it probably did more good than harm, because it forced 
 a long succession of Governments into the path 
 of economy. 
 
 Arbiter. Yes, it was want of money, not of will, 
 that restrained the warlike tendencies of men like 
 Canning, Palmerston, and Wellington. I agree with 
 you that expenditure on armaments and a policy 
 of aggression are related not only as effect and 
 cause, but as cause and effect. 
 
 Seymour. That is true enough. But there are other 
 things to consider. Retrenchment is all very well, 
 and a peaceful disposition is all very well. But what 
 if another great Power is warlike and quarrelsome, 
 and makes gigantic preparations ? 
 
 Arbiter. In such a case common-sense must be 
 exercised. If Reuter telegraphs that Germany or 
 Russia is preparing a naval programme for building 
 twenty battleships, and thirty cruisers, and fifty 
 submarines, at a cost of fifty millions, keep cool. 
 
 Admiral. Wait at any rate till the rumour is officially 
 confirmed ; then wait again till the money is voted, 
 the contracts made, and some of the ships are laid 
 down. The great rule in naval or military prepara- 
 tions, especially for the leading Power, is never to 
 provoke a race. If our naval supremacy is challenged 
 by a programme we must lay our plans accordingly. 
 
 Arbiter. Always remembering that in a great and 
 prolonged war it is on the patriotism, the wealth 
 and health, the enterprise, energy and endurance 
 of the nation that success depends. 
 
 Seymour. Certainly in the army we could do with 
 less money if it were intelligently applied. We want, 
 
 2 H
 
 482 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 as Disraeli said, a model force, small but well paid, 
 with plenty of intelligence and leadership. Then, if 
 war should unfortunately break out, you will be able 
 to carry it to a successful conclusion by successive 
 developments of men and materiel, even against far 
 superior numbers. 
 
 Ego. And surely we may conclude, from the examples 
 of Holland in the seventeenth century, and from our 
 own history, that a sound system of unembarrassed 
 finance, supported by commercial and manufacturing 
 activity, high credit, low debt, large accumulations of 
 wealth and capital, is far more serviceable even for war 
 than unwieldy fleets and armies, which impoverish and 
 overtax the resources of the country. 
 
 Arbiter. I have the more confidence that this truth 
 can be brought home again to the people, because 
 we are not repeating a merely Cobdenic argument. It 
 was upon these principles that Walpole, and Pitt, and 
 Fox, Peel and Lord John Russell, Disraeli and Glad- 
 stone spoke, voted, and acted over and over again. 
 
 Admiral. Up to the last few years, when five-sixths 
 of our politicians have turned tail for fear of being 
 called Pro-Boers or Little Englanders, no one doubted 
 the truth of those principles except a few half-pay 
 officers, panic-mongers by profession, and half-a-dozen 
 neurotic journalists. 
 
 Arbiter. Well, of course, I can't use such strong 
 language myself, though we are both old enough to 
 remember a succession of military and naval " Heroes " 
 who have lost their nerves in old age, and have really 
 struck panics into the public mind. But certainly since 
 1894 England has been the champion panic-monger 
 and armament builder. It has been a most disgraceful
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 483 
 
 epoch for Europe, and for us especially ; in resigning, 
 rather than accede to the naval estimates of 1894, 
 Mr. Gladstone was consistent, prescient, and absolutely 
 right. 
 
 Ego. Do you remember, Mr. Case, that you are 
 under an engagement to disclose something about the 
 methods of modern firms which manufacture war 
 material ? 
 
 Case. I do. You must know that an action was 
 brought the other day against the famous firm of 
 Armworth & Co. by a gentleman let us call him 
 Thomas who had acted for many years as a news- 
 paper correspondent in various countries. He was 
 specially well acquainted with Spain and Portugal, 
 and some of the South American Republics, where he 
 seems to have had influential friends. Mr. Thomas 
 continued to serve his newspaper until 1894; but at 
 that time he had already for eight years been acting 
 for Armworths, not as an ordinary commission agent, 
 but (to use the language of his counsel) " in a position 
 somewhat analogous to that of a private diplomatic 
 agent, or a sort of a private ambassador." 
 
 Meyer. Ambassador ! I see not what good an 
 ambassador can do in selling ships. Ambassadors 
 play no great role in commerce. 
 
 Case. Well, perhaps the metaphor was unfortunate; 
 for Mr. Thomas was no child in matters of commerce. 
 But my learned friend went on to explain that his 
 client's business was " to find out what was happening 
 in various countries, to let his employers know what 
 was likely to be required, and generally to prepare 
 the way for the receipt of orders for warships and 
 armaments." From 1886 to 1890 Mr. Thomas acted
 
 for the British firm in Spain and Portugal, but was 
 unable to do much business. In 1890 he went to 
 Argentina and acted as the firm's representative there 
 and in Chili, a curious arrangement at first sight, 
 considering the hostile relations which then subsisted 
 between the two Republics. But of course this very 
 fact made the business thrive. The private ambassador 
 was impartial in his sympathies. He was just as 
 eager to supply one rival as the other. 
 
 Ego. What was the commission ? 
 
 Case. It varied. By an arrangement made in 1892 
 he received 5 per cent, on orders for artillery and 
 armaments, and i\ per cent, on hulls and machinery. 
 In 1893 he went to China. He was there during 
 the Chino-Japanese War, and stayed in the Far East 
 for four years with one short interval. In the first 
 instance he received 1000 for expenses and i per 
 cent, on all orders. In February, 1894 to quote 
 one of the reports " there was a slight misunderstand- 
 ing between the plaintiff and the managing director, 
 in consequence of which the plaintiff gave a six months' 
 notice to the firm, determining his agreement with 
 them ; but this misunderstanding was subsequently 
 cleared up, and the plaintiff continued to act as the 
 agent of the defendants." In September, 1894, the 
 plaintiff ceased to act as a special correspondent 
 owing to a difference of opinion between himself and 
 the editor as to the political situation in the East. 
 
 Ego. Did that affect his relations with the armaments 
 firm ? 
 
 Case. No. The arrangement made in February, 
 according to the plaintiff's account, was that he should 
 receive ^3000 a year for expenses, in addition to
 
 the i per cent, commission on orders. " Not a 
 penny of that has been paid," was his complaint, 
 " and although Mr. Thomas obtained orders worth 
 millions of pounds for armaments and vessels for 
 Chili, China, and Japan, he said he had only received 
 5000 in 1895 and 1896, and 1000 on account 
 of expenses in 1892." He had received 3695 in 
 1893, and Sjii in 1895 on sa ^ es f warships to 
 Argentina and Chili ; but these were for sales effected 
 before the arrangement of 1892. 
 
 In August, 1895, the plaintiff returned to the 
 East, remaining out there till May, 1897. The 
 greater part of the moneys he claimed to have earned 
 while in China and Japan still remained outstanding 
 and owing to him by the defendants, who, as the 
 plaintiff alleged, declined to render any accounts. 
 Hence arose the action. Nearly the whole of the 
 first day was occupied in reading the voluminous 
 correspondence which had passed between the plaintiff, 
 
 Sir , and other members of the defendant 
 
 firm from 1887 to 1895. 
 
 In the year 1893, I should add, Mr. Thomas was 
 the first to get news that France might attack Siam. 
 He at once hurried off to Siam where he was received 
 by the King, and very soon his name " rang through- 
 out Siam," whence he wrote and telegraphed to the 
 firm about getting orders for warships and other 
 armaments from the Siamese Government. 
 
 Arbiter. Was there anything of general interest in 
 the correspondence ? 
 
 Case. Yes, it was most instructive, and in parts 
 highly interesting. Unfortunately it was read so 
 rapidly that only very slight extracts were preserved
 
 486 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 by the press, and the dates are only given in one or 
 two cases. I propose, however, if you will allow me, 
 to read a few specimens from the London press. 
 We all hewed him to -proceed. 
 
 oo - 
 
 Case. These extracts are all from letters written 
 by Mr. Thomas to Armworth's Managing Director, 
 and you will agree, I think, that they show what 
 an indefatigable and brilliant agent the firm had to 
 represent their interests. The first three were written, 
 apparently, in 1892, during a brief stay in London 
 previous to his departure to the Far East. 
 
 1. "I have taken large offices in Bouverie Street, 
 where I shall receive ambassadors, ministers, and 
 attaches." 
 
 2. "I shall try and see the Mikado with regard 
 to the model of your new battleship. In spite of 
 all difficulties I shall also try and show the model 
 to the Emperor of China." 
 
 3. "I intend, with De B 's help, to make this 
 
 [the increase of the American naval force in 1892] 
 very clear to the Japanese ; and I think they will 
 go ahead in their naval preparations. Lord S y 
 
 knows Admiral H m's views, and I intended before 
 
 leaving discussing the matter with the former, as I 
 have been in communication with him through his 
 secretary on our policy in the Pacific. I am sorry 
 
 Lord S y is likely to go out of office, but I 
 
 have already arranged to carry on the matter with 
 
 Lord R y if he becomes Minister of Foreign 
 
 Affairs." 
 
 Next come four extracts from letters which Mr. 
 Thomas wrote to his chief from the Far East in 
 the years 1893-7.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 487 
 
 1. "As regards China . It may surprise you; 
 
 but it doesn't surprise me, that the Chinese authorities 
 are on good terms with America and Japan. It is 
 quite as well that I am also on very friendly terms 
 with Japan. That may be very useful to Armworth's. 
 
 2. " I get on very well with Satow. Ministers 
 differ so very much in character, that one can never 
 be always sure of striking the right chord in a man 
 you don't know although I have generally been 
 pretty fortunate in this respect. 
 
 3. "Russia and France have stolen a march on our 
 Government with regard to lending money to China. 
 The sum is fifteen millions. Thus China practically 
 becomes the debtor of Russia. The Chilian loan is 
 a very great success." 
 
 4. " I cautioned the Japanese not to make armour 
 plates for their own ships. I am all right in Japan." 
 
 Let me conclude with a delicious quotation from 
 a letter Mr. Thomas wrote from London when a 
 war between Chili and Argentina appeared to be 
 imminent : 
 
 " I am going over to Paris to see Mattei [the 
 Chilian Minister], and push him to order another 
 ship. I am really alarmed at the reckless prepara- 
 tions of the Argentines, and I proposed to him that 
 if Chili is going to do anything to meet these pre- 
 parations no time must be lost." 
 
 Meyer. A wonderful, invaluable agent. 
 
 Seymour. Yes ; every order he got from Argentina 
 made it easier for him to do business with Chili. 
 
 Ego. Surely that is not all. You are illuminating a 
 very dark corner of my subject. 
 
 Case. The action, alas, was settled after the first
 
 4 88 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 day. But it had lasted long enough to show what a 
 queer game the war game is on its commercial side. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Arbiter now turned to me and asked me to continue 
 
 my paper. 
 
 Ego. The idea that one commercial nation may gain 
 by ruining another used to be a maxim of high 
 policy. In the second half of the seventeenth 
 century and the first part of the eighteenth the 
 authors of commercial books and pamphlets almost 
 always urged the Government to undertake some 
 particular war which they said was absolutely essen- 
 tial in order to preserve or enlarge the national 
 commerce. Sometimes it was Holland, sometimes 
 France, sometimes Spain that encountered the jealousy 
 and alarm of English merchants. Not until a peace- 
 ful policy had been practised and its advantages 
 proved by statesmen like Walpole, Shelburne, or 
 Pitt, and expounded in the essays of Hume or 
 Tucker and in Smith's Wealth of Nations, did our 
 commercial classes begin to understand a little better 
 their own interests. Even now the vulgar error that 
 trade may be made to thrive by war lingers in the 
 minds of many, and we cannot too often insist that 
 all trade is barter, that exports depend on imports, 
 and that it is impossible for one nation to be ruined 
 by the commercial success of another. An individual 
 firm, of course, may be severely hit by either a foreign 
 or domestic rival ; but not only do consumers reap 
 an advantage in a cheapening of the price, but it is 
 certain that where a foreign import takes the place of
 
 a domestic product some other domestic product must 
 be exported to pay for what we have received. This 
 is not merely scientific truth ; we know by experience 
 that the countries which the cheap journalist describes 
 as dangerous rivals the countries whose commercial 
 expansion we are invited to watch with so much 
 jealousy and ill-feeling are the very countries which 
 afford us a large and increasing market for our manu- 
 factures. In Condorcet's Life of Turgot, where Con- 
 dorcet expounds Turgot's political philosophy, the 
 subject is nobly treated ; and as the passage was not 
 referred to by Mr. Clarke when he was speaking of 
 Turgot's views upon federation, I will try to para- 
 phrase it in English : 
 
 "If one considers the relations of one people to another, one may 
 say that national interests do not exist, or at least that there is no 
 such thing as a conflict of national interests. No doubt the rulers of 
 one nation may find it of real advantage to subdue another people ; 
 but that advantage cannot extend to the whole body of the nation. 
 The more a country is surrounded by rich, powerful, and industrious 
 neighbours, the more easily will it be able to obtain what it wants, 
 and the more will its own industries be encouraged. It will doubt- 
 less be obliged to cultivate only those commodities for which its soil 
 is best suited, and to carry on those forms of industry only in which 
 it can excel and successfully compete. But that, so far from being 
 a loss, will be an advantage to all parties. Liberty of foreign com- 
 merce is the only means by which national trade and industry can be 
 placed beyond the reach of monopoly. It is equally important for us 
 that in disposing of their commodities our producers should be 
 rendered independent of home orders by the competition of foreign 
 bidders, and that this same competition, by bringing us foreign 
 goods, should protect us from the avidity of our own manufacturers. 
 Even when other nations reject our commodities and close their ports 
 against them our interest is to keep our own ports open. A recip- 
 rocity of prohibitions would only serve to deprive us of foreign 
 supplies and condemn us to pay dearer for our requirements. The 
 interest of every people is the same -to be well governed, to be just
 
 490 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 to citizens and also to foreigners, to keep at peace with neighbouring 
 nations. Wars of glory, wars of ambition, wars of commerce are 
 equally without object. It is never to the interest of a people either 
 to attack others, or to restrict their liberty, or to exclude them from 
 some branch of commerce in order to obtain a monopoly. In fine, 
 the interest of any one nation accords with the common interest of 
 all, just as the interest of each individual rightly understood accords 
 with that of the society to which he belongs. The more the nations 
 get of good laws, the less will wars take place. Bad laws are the source 
 both of national hatreds and of those unquiet and turbulent passions 
 which have caused so much national turmoil." 
 
 I was anxious that this paper of mine on the poli- 
 tical economy of war should not be open to the 
 reproaches so often hurled at arguments from the 
 dismal science. Economists are always liable to be 
 charged with materialism, with disregard for their 
 country's honour and reputation, if they argue that 
 the nation should act in such and such a way in 
 order that it may grow rich, or that it should not 
 adopt such and such a policy because it would 
 infallibly grow poorer. When one is met with this 
 taunt it is always well to examine the case of your 
 opponent, and you will generally find that his policy 
 is as immoral as it is economically disastrous. But 
 in Turgot economic and moral truths are so closely 
 woven that critics of the " blood and glory " school 
 gnash their teeth at him in vain. 
 
 Arbiter. Your " blood and glory " men are like 
 Tucker's heroes and bruisers. " We don't want to 
 
 fight, but ." You do right to fix our attention 
 
 again on wars for trade. If they can be completely 
 discredited and hissed off the stage hardly any inflam- 
 mable material will be left for mischief-makers. If 
 you have some more information upon the subject 
 up your sleeve, please produce it.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 491 
 
 Ego. I had intended to spare the company, re- 
 membering that you yourself treated the subject on 
 the day we first met. But as you insist, I will give 
 one or two illustrations. The first shall be from the 
 favourite war of the commercial jingo. Browne dealt 
 with it splendidly, but I want to add a little to his 
 sketch : 
 
 In the Guildhall at the foot of Chatham's statue 
 an inscription records what Macaulay supposes to have 
 been the general opinion of the citizens of London, 
 that under his administration commerce, for the first 
 time, had been united with and made to flourish by war. 
 
 The Seven Years' War is one of the few which 
 are still popularly supposed to have " paid." But 
 this delusion is not shared by those who have looked 
 facts in the face, and consulted the original and con- 
 temporary authorities. The war was ended by the 
 Peace of Paris in 1763. In the Spring of 1761, 
 writes Lecky, " the burden of the war was beginning 
 to be seriously felt." 1 The arguments in favour of 
 terminating a war " are always strong " in the opinion 
 of that sober historian, " but in this case they had a 
 more than common force." The debt was rapidly 
 increasing and the estimates had risen to an alarming 
 extent. In 1752 three per cent, consols stood at 
 1 06. In 1755, on the eve of war, they fell to 90, 
 and continued to fall through almost the whole course 
 of the war, though a rumour of peace in March 1761 
 sent them up four points. But in 1762 they dropped 
 to 63.2 Early in 1761, when a new ballot was about 
 to be enforced for service in the militia, riots took 
 
 1 See Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, chap. x. 
 
 2 See Hamilton on The National Debt, 3rd edition, 1818, p. 318.
 
 492 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 place in several counties. At Hexham, where the 
 Deputy Lieutenant and Justices met on March 9th, 
 four companies of the Yorkshire Militia were attacked 
 by 6000 or 7000 Northumbrians, mostly pitmen armed 
 with spiked clubs. An officer and three soldiers were 
 killed. The soldiers fired, killing forty-two and wound- 
 ing forty-eight. A letter from Berwick recounting the 
 tragedy was printed in the London papers. The writer 
 looked forward with dread to some more extensive 
 movement : " Where it will end, God knows ; so 
 variable is the multitude that a measure, 1 brought 
 about a few years ago by their clamour, appears now 
 to them the most oppressive that ever a free nation 
 was subjected to." 
 
 The popular change in sentiment was reflected by 
 Burke in the political summaries of the Annual Register. 
 In 1759 there is a note of triumphant satisfaction. 
 " Power and Patriotism unite. Liberty and Order 
 kiss. The nation is happy and secure." 2 Six millions 
 had been borrowed at an easy rate, and though tax- 
 ation was high, voluntary subscriptions had been raised 
 in the large towns for the patriotic purpose of enlisting 
 soldiers, and for the philanthropic purpose of providing 
 French prisoners with clothing. In the following year 
 (1760) the tone is philosophic and subdued. The 
 writer has been persuaded that victories do not decide, 
 the fate of nations. The balance of power, he com- 
 plains, is the cause of infinite contention and fruitless 
 bloodshed. France, described as " bankrupt " the year 
 before, was now said to be " inspired with no small 
 
 1 The Ballot Act, under which working men had to draw lots 
 for military service. 
 
 2 Annual Register for 1759, PP- 7 5^-
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 493 
 
 hope." Beaten at sea, she looked for success in 
 Germany, relying upon (i) "the strength and per- 
 severance of the two empresses," (2) " the wasted 
 condition of the King of Prussia," and (3) mark 
 this " the enormous expense of the German War to 
 England, which must gradually exhaust the resources 
 of her credit, and with them, the patience of an 
 inconstant people." 1 In another passage the writer 
 explains that the English people are now opposed to 
 the war and discontented with its conduct. France 
 had received financial relief from the loss of her navy 
 and of her colonies, and could now carry on a war in 
 Germany against England more cheaply. We were 
 now incurring " an expense which the single revenue 
 of England is by no means able to bear." 2 The 
 Annual Register for 1761 gives an account of the 
 negotiations which terminated in the Peace of Paris, 
 and of Pitt's dramatic resignation when his proposal 
 for attacking Spain was rejected by the Cabinet. The 
 attempt made to procure addresses and resolutions in 
 Pitt's favour from the civic and municipal bodies was 
 a failure. The movement was " slow and languid, 
 
 1 The only hope of a " happy conclusion " is that England and 
 France " wearied and exhausted by war " will " huddle up a 
 peace," and so compel Austria and Prussia to do the same. The 
 first overtures must be between France and England, " for they 
 never think of peace in Germany," Annual Regisfer, 1760, p. 5. 
 About this time a great effect was produced by a peace pamphlet, 
 Considerations on the German War, by one Manduit. Lecky says it 
 had more influence than any similar publication since Swift's 
 Conduct of the Allies. 
 
 -Id., pp. 52-3. On the other hand (p. 54) it was argued, 
 no doubt correctly, that France was really more exhausted than 
 England, and that the channels of colonial trade, at any rate, had 
 been secured bv the naval victories.
 
 494 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 only a few corporations took part, and some even of 
 those few in a manner less warm than was to be 
 expected." The truth seems to be that the war had 
 begun to occasion much inconvenience and suffering, 
 and Pitt only lost his power when his war lost its 
 popularity. Burke thinks that a no less advantageous 
 peace might have been concluded in 1758, at the close 
 of the third campaign. But the war was then still 
 popular in England. By 1760-1 if the animosity of 
 the belligerent Powers was not abated, " at least a great 
 part of the fuel of discord had been consumed." 
 
 Macaulay himself, than whom few great writers have 
 been less insensible to glory and martial achievement, 
 or more disposed to slur over the social and economic 
 suffering that are involved, cannot assent to the Guild- 
 hall inscription. The price, he says, at which Chatham 
 purchased victory, " though far smaller than that which 
 his son, the most profuse and incapable of war ministers, 
 paid for treachery, defeat, and shame, was long and 
 severely felt by the nation." 
 
 Meyer. The war must have circulated a lot of money 
 in Germany. 
 
 Ego. Yes : Horace Walpole, after describing the 
 severity of the winter campaign of January, 1860, 
 expressed his amazement that with such weather, such 
 ravages, and distress there was anything left in Germany 
 but money : " for thither half the treasure of Europe 
 goes : England, France, Russia, and all the Empress 
 [Maria Theresa] can squeeze from Italy and Hungary, 
 all is sent thither, and yet the wretched people have 
 not subsistence. A pound of bread sells at Dresden 
 for elevenpence." 
 
 Case. To complete your picture of the misfortunes
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 495 
 
 caused by the Seven Years' War, let me subjoin the 
 reflections of my hero, Romilly, to whom this very 
 war suggested the paradox that a victorious war is 
 more calamitous to England than defeat. 
 
 " I had the mortification, a few days ago," he wrote (June 4, 
 1 790) to a friend in France, " of finding myself considered as a 
 maintainer of the most extravagant paradoxes, because I asserted 
 that a war of any kind must be to England a calamity ; but that 
 a victorious war would be the greatest of all calamities. And this 
 is thought a paradox after the experience of the glories, as they 
 are called, of Lord Chatham's administration glories which pro- 
 cured no one solid advantage to this country ; which did not add 
 one single moment's happiness to the existence of any human 
 being, but which were purchased by an immense debt, by infinite 
 bloodshed, and, what was worse, which gave us false notions of our 
 honour, and our dignity, and our superiority, of which we cannot 
 be corrected but by the loss of much more treasure and much 
 more blood." 
 
 A melancholy analysis this ; and it came dolefully 
 true. Yet we had already been corrected by the 
 humiliations of the American War and the loss of all 
 our richest colonies. Romilly 's remarks were pro- 
 voked by the clamour for a war with Spain, which 
 was being artificially worked up " by the barbarous 
 prejudices of persons concerned in privateering, or 
 in particular branches of commerce." The discovery, 
 he says, of a grand elixir which would efface pain 
 and disease from the list of human calamities could 
 not have given a humane person more pleasure than 
 some Londoners felt at the prospect of plundering 
 foreign merchants and sinking Spanish ships. It was 
 easy, by means of the London mobs, to make Parlia- 
 ment think that an unjust and impolitic war would 
 be popular. 
 
 Ego. I promised you another illustration of wars for
 
 496 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 trade, and it shall be a modern one, from British policy 
 in West Africa. Few of those who supported the 
 late war in Ashanti did so on grounds of morality, 
 justice, honour, or even prestige. It was simply a 
 war for trade, or as certain company promoters would 
 say a war for goldfields. What is the history of the 
 Gold Coast settlements? From 1672 to 1807 we 
 used them simply to obtain a cheap supply of slaves 
 for our colonies and plantations, as the directors of 
 the Chartered Company and the owners of the Rand 
 still use the northern districts of Rhodesia to recruit 
 cheap labour for the mines. In 1807 slavery was 
 abolished. In 1830 the British Government, finding 
 Gold Coast administration costly, and that its cost 
 was not justified by its trade, determined to withdraw. 
 The British merchants concerned then appointed the 
 Governor (Maclean) to be their agent, and obtained 
 4000 a year as a grant-in-aid from the British 
 Government. Governor Maclean had never believed 
 in provoking war, and he was now absolutely prevented 
 from fighting by lack of soldiers. He understood the 
 natives, and cultivated peaceful relations with them. 
 What was the consequence ? During the nine years 
 of his peaceful reign the value of our exports to the 
 Gold Coast, according to official statistics, amounted 
 to 2,274,000. 
 
 After his retirement the Gold Coast had twenty- 
 six new Governors in twenty years. An aggressive 
 policy was again undertaken. There was a big war 
 in 1863 (costing 700,000), and another in 1873-4 
 (costing 900,000), and altogether, between 1854 and 
 1874, the British taxpayer had to pay 2,090,000 for 
 military and civil expenditure on account of Ashanti,
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 497 
 
 while British merchants and manufacturers were selling 
 goods to the value of 2,300,000. Thus in twenty 
 years of war for trade they sold only 26,000 more 
 than in nine years of peaceful commerce ! 1 dare say 
 it will appear, when the Colonial Office, the Foreign 
 Office, and the Board of Trade have disgorged 
 their secret hoards of mystifying figures, that we 
 have come off even worse in West Africa during the 
 wars of the last ten years. The absurdity of fighting 
 for trade outlets and commercial privileges can be 
 demonstrated in every case ; but the economic futility 
 of such a course must be obvious to the simplest 
 jingo when the question is one of colonial expansion 
 in tropical countries. For great Powers like France, 
 Germany, and Great Britain to quarrel about tracts 
 of Central Africa will not bear thinking of. A few 
 years ago a careful statistician computed the annual 
 profits of the whole of our West African trade at 
 170,000, and of our whole China trade at 900,000. 
 What would a war with a great Power cost in taxes, 
 debt, and commerce ? Say 500 millions sterling, which 
 would represent the sum total of the profits on the 
 China trade and the West African trade for 500 years 
 to come. 
 
 The latest chapter of Ashanti history may be called 
 " The Quest of the Golden Stool." In December, 
 
 1899, an idiot boy came to Accra, and said he knew 
 where the Golden Stool was concealed. The British 
 Governor listened eagerly to the boy, coveted the 
 stool, and sent an expedition to find it. In March, 
 
 1900, he told the chiefs that King Prempeh would 
 never be restored, demanded the Golden Stool, and 
 asked for a large tribute. From this arose a dreadful 
 
 2 I
 
 498 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 war, which cost many hundreds of thousands of 
 pounds, and many thousands of lives. This war for 
 the Golden Stool was waged with the sanction of the 
 Colonial Office. It was quite typical of the new 
 imperialism. Our prancing proconsul, in his address 
 to the chiefs, is reported to have cried : " Where is 
 the Golden Stool ? " " Why am 1 not sitting on it 
 at this moment ? I am the representative of the 
 paramount Power ; why have you relegated me to 
 this chair ? " referring to a biscuit box, seated on which 
 he was trying to assume the imperial pose. 
 
 King Prempeh was stripped of his golden ornaments 
 that they might be exhibited at a Colonial Office 
 exhibition. And our Colonial Secretary's excuse for 
 this contemptible theft was that most of the ornaments 
 were only plated ! The quest of the Golden Stool 
 we are still in quest was defended on the plea that 
 " it possesses a great moral and intellectual force." 
 The possession of the stool "gives supremacy"; 
 and " if ever we should secure the stool we should 
 be doing more for confirming the peace of Ashanti 
 than probably by any armed expedition." 
 
 Arbiter. Your account is very interesting. It would 
 be well if our own people, and the French and the 
 Germans and the Dutch and the Spanish and the 
 Italians, could learn from the historian as well as 
 from the taxgatherer the futility of these small 
 wars. But to return to the big wars and the financing 
 of them. Prussia, you reminded us, emerged from 
 the Seven Years' War practically without debt. But 
 that was the last case of the kind, I should imagine, 
 and in every fresh war credit seems to play a more 
 important part. What says Capel Court to that ?
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 499 
 
 Meyer. I reply in the affirmative. Japan is main- 
 taining her gold currency entirely by means of internal 
 and external loans. The German theory that a large 
 gold reserve is necessary for war is quite obsolete. 
 Russia is old-fashioned enough in all conscience; but 
 that huge treasury in St. Petersburg is not kept for 
 paying the army, but for maintaining Russian credit, 
 to help to borrow the funds out of which the 
 soldiers are paid. 
 
 Arbiter. And the cost of this war is being defrayed, 
 in the first instance, by other countries. 
 
 Meyer. For the most part by English, French, 
 German, and American investors. 
 
 Arbiter. And without these foreign loans such a 
 war could not be carried on. 
 
 Meyer. Not for long, I think, on its present scale, 
 without bankruptcy in Japan or revolution in Russia. 
 
 Arbiter. And Japanese investors in a " Patriotic 
 Loan " might hedge by investing in a Russian Loan. 
 
 Meyer. Naturally. According to the saying, Capital 
 has no sentiment. 
 
 Ego. I recollect two early cases in the Napoleonic 
 wars. One, I think, is from Buxton's Life. 1 Roths- 
 child transmitted 800,000 in gold to the Duke of 
 Wellington through France. In that case Frenchmen 
 smuggled eight tons of gold through their own country 
 to provide the army of their most dangerous foe. 
 The other instance is given in Bourriennes Memoirs. 21 
 Bourrienne was ordered to procure 16,000 military 
 coats, 37,000 jackets, and 200,000 pairs of shoes for 
 the French army for the Eylau campaign, and he 
 got them from England through a Hamburg firm. 
 J P. 289. 2 Vol. vii., c. 20.
 
 500 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Many English mills must have been kept busy many 
 weeks with this order ; and of course the manufacturers 
 (and probably their workmen) knew that they were 
 employed in equipping their enemy. 
 
 Case. Those are precedents I suppose ; but now- 
 a-days we go far beyond them. Witness that recent 
 case I gave you of a great battleship firm with a 
 clever traveller seeking orders all over the world. 
 
 Seymour. There is a fierce competition, of course, 
 among firms manufacturing arms, explosives, and 
 war material of all kind for foreign orders. I believe 
 French and German diplomacy often concerns itself 
 to obtain orders for rifles and guns from countries 
 like Turkey. 1 
 
 Admiral. In a naval war I suppose we shall see 
 something of this kind. Reuter's correspondent 
 
 telegraphs from that the British battleship 
 
 " Victory " (Armstrong's) was attacked by three 
 German torpedo boats (Whitworth's). Happily she 
 was saved by the new torpedo nets (recently pur- 
 chased from a Westphalian firm) and only one of 
 the torpedo boats escaped, the other two being sunk 
 by well directed shots from two of Krupp's 6-inch 
 guns." 
 
 Clarke. The world will have to revise its notions 
 of patriotism in the light of modern commerce. 
 Surely, Truelove, one of your German moralists 
 must have examined this problem ? Is the Staat to 
 allow its subjects to arm foreign States against itself? 
 
 Truelove. The German philosophers no longer 
 speak out on these subjects. From the time when 
 
 1 A Turkish loan was recently authorised in France on condition 
 that an order for guns should be given to French firms.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 501 
 
 Hegelianism became the Court-philosophy, it has 
 been a maxim of German politics that morality 
 does not count. Might is right. Individual gain 
 is national advantage. 
 
 Meyer. The Kaiser likes to see the whole world 
 armed. So long as Essen is prosperous, and the 
 Fatherland has the first pick, he will not be troubled 
 about Germans arming their neighbours. 
 
 Seymour. I doubt, if any check on such exports is 
 practicable. Look at the strength of the interests. 
 Where is the Government that would dare to pro- 
 hibit Birmingham firms from executing orders for a 
 foreign Government ? Even in our small frontier 
 wars British soldiers must expect to be shot at with 
 British rifles. 
 
 Meyer (pensively}. Certainly war is becoming very 
 international. Yet, if one should break out, say, 
 between Great Britain and Germany, I doubt if popular 
 sentiment would allow a German battleship to be built 
 on the Thames or a German loan to be floated, 
 officially, in London. But why not ? Business is 
 business. It cannot be mixed up with patriotism. 
 Let manufacturers sell to the highest bidder, and 
 let investors put their money into the best thing 
 that offers. If I make a profit from Germany I shall 
 be better able to pay my taxes. 
 
 Case. Mr. Meyer is logical. I believe if war goes 
 on much longer it will be a purely govermental affair. 
 Apart from its cost, no one will take much interest 
 in it except the professional men the army and navy 
 I mean. I remember once proposing at a college 
 debate that we should hire eight gyps to row in 
 future instead of making galley slaves of eight luckless
 
 502 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 undergraduates. Well, war is rapidly becoming a game 
 to which some such principle will have to apply. If 
 a few Jingo demagogues (" representative " statesmen) 
 set two civilised nations by the ears, you cannot expect 
 intelligent citizens on either side to become enemies, 
 or traders to cease from trading. The virtue of 
 patriotism, so far from being peculiar to war, will 
 only shine in peace. War is a thing so stupendously 
 foolish and wicked that true patriots, if they cannot 
 avert it or stop it, will try to disregard it ; and we 
 should encourage the salutary tendency of international 
 law to restrict war as far as possible to the contending 
 armies and navies, and to protect private property 
 and commerce, not only from seizure, but from search. 
 
 Seymour. For my part, so long as the custom of 
 war continues, I hope that quarrels will be national 
 and that the whole nation will suffer with the army 
 and navy. Private property and trade in articles not 
 contraband of war should be respected, I agree. But 
 except in the case of an unjust war every patriotic citizen 
 should surely desire and seek to compass victory. 
 . Arbiter. If it were not so late I should command 
 you to define " unjust " and " patriotic "; but we want 
 to hear the economist out. 
 
 Ego. I have not much more to say, though the 
 subject is really inexhaustible ; and I want to end 
 where I began, on the analogy between the nation 
 and the individual. 
 
 A nation is not an economic unit in the same sense 
 as an individual, and many of the current arguments 
 about "international trade," being based upon this 
 supposed identity, are fallacious. But as every nation 
 has its own financial organisation, its separate statistics
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 503 
 
 and its customs tariff (as well as its history), and as 
 it therefore acts separately in accordance with what 
 its rulers for the time being regard (or affect to 
 regard) as its interests, we may for many purposes 
 treat the financial life of a nation as we should 
 treat that of an individual. They are similar though 
 not identical. We all know how an individual amasses 
 wealth or sinks into poverty. If he goes on for a 
 long time spending more than his income he must 
 fall into debt, and eventually perhaps into inextricable 
 embarrassment. If he spends less than his income 
 and invests his savings judiciously he gains in wealth 
 and independence. But the character of his expendi- 
 ture is quite as important as the difference between 
 his expenditure and his income. Mark Pattison used 
 to say that every one ought to spend at least ten 
 per cent, of his income on books. From a merely 
 economical point of view an intelligent manufacturer 
 or merchant would probably spend at least that pro- 
 portion on obtaining the best information, and in 
 years of prosperity he might wisely spend twenty- 
 five or fifty per cent, of his profits in improving his 
 machinery or rebuilding his premises. It might even 
 be advisable to borrow a large sum to effect improve- 
 ments which would recoup themselves in economies 
 of production or distribution. The principal differ- 
 ence, when we turn from the individual to the 
 nation, is that what is called the national income, i.e. 
 the revenue of the Government, is only a fraction 
 varying perhaps from one-fourth to one-twentieth 
 of the aggregate total income of the individuals who 
 constitute the nation and contribute to its funds. 
 Consequently a course which leads an individual to
 
 504 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 ruin in a few years may be persisted in by a Govern- 
 ment for a long period without producing national 
 bankruptcy. In an age of invention and manufac- 
 turing improvement an industrious and enterprising 
 community may enjoy a continually advancing pros- 
 perity, though its Government is continually wasting 
 public money, and though its annual budgets exhibit 
 a long series of deficiencies. 
 
 The economic history of France since the war with 
 Germany is an example. Its population has been 
 almost stationary, expenditure on unproductive ser- 
 vices has increased, the debt has grown, deficits have 
 been the rule ; yet in the absence of war its indus- 
 trious and thrifty population is probably rather better 
 off than it was in the sixties. It was once argued 
 but not, I think, proved by an Edinburgh reviewer 
 that Great Britain was more prosperous in 1816 than 
 in 1776, in spite of an addition of more than seven 
 hundred millions to the national debt and of about 
 ten millions to the annual expenditure upon the 
 army and navy. 
 
 Keeping this in mind, we shall be able to avoid 
 exaggerations. We shall find, without travelling out- 
 side the limits of truth and fact, that the nature 
 and extent of taxation and of expenditure by a 
 government is intimately associated with the welfare 
 of the governed. As Count Mollien, Napoleon's 
 Minister of the Treasury, says in his memoirs, 
 "Public finance touches private at a multitude of 
 points, and raises up for itself a judge in every 
 household." 
 
 No one who has been acquainted with the history 
 of government securities during the last few years,
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR 505 
 
 still less the student who has profited by the recorded 
 experience of a century, can doubt that every addition 
 to debt, at least every addition for a profitless object, 
 prevents or checks the rise of public credit, deadens 
 enterprise and narrows the field of employment. It is 
 equally certain that every increase of taxation is an 
 evil save in so far as the money raised is expended 
 upon public health, public education, public recreation, 
 or some other work, such as the improvement of roads, 
 railways, or canals, which adds to the amenity, health, 
 and intelligence of the nation. There are still, indeed, 
 people who, confounding taxes with some particular 
 form of public expenditure which they desire, or 
 falling into a cruder error still, contend that taxes if 
 spent in the country do no harm. If a penny were 
 added to the income tax and the two and a-half 
 millions thus produced were spent in gunpowder 
 manufactured in the United Kingdom, and were 
 fired off in royal salutes at different towns of 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland, no loss, they say, 
 would be felt ; we should be exactly as we were. 
 But if the gunpowder were bought, let us say, in 
 Germany and fired away in the Crimea, the whole 
 sum would be wasted and lost in an economic sense, 
 however greatly it might add to the power and 
 renown of the United Kingdom and to the confu- 
 sion of our enemies ! 
 
 Meyer. But taxes, they say, return to those from 
 whom they are collected. 
 
 Ego. That sounds very plausible until we go on to 
 ask about the process by which they are returned. 
 Take the case of a soldier whom it costs j8o a year 
 to feed, equip, and house in time of peace. This
 
 506 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 ;8o is paid by twenty working men with families 
 on an average of three, say by eighty people. Each 
 of the eighty persons contributes a sovereign during 
 the year. The money goes to the Treasury, the 
 Treasury pays it to the War Office, a servant of 
 the War Office buys the wheat, meat, cloth, etc., 
 from English farmers and manufacturers. But the 
 farmer and the manufacturer do not get what the 
 twenty labourers have given to the Treasurer given 
 back to them. They have to exchange goods for 
 money. And the net result is that the community 
 has to spend 80 a year in order that one of its 
 members may perform unproductive work as a 
 soldier. If that soldier is not required to defend 
 the country the sum is wasted just as much as if 
 j8o worth of hay had been burnt. 
 
 Arbiter. That is an excellent answer to a time- 
 honoured fallacy, and I shall not allow Meyer the 
 privilege of a reply ; for the luncheon hour is about 
 to strike, and so, like the town clerk of Ephesus, 
 though for a different reason, I dismiss the assembly.
 
 THE SEVENTH DAT. SUNDAT. 
 
 MARTIN TRUELOVE'S ESSAY ON CHRISTIANITY 
 AND WAR. 
 
 I. 
 
 I SUBMIT this paper with a deep sense of its un- 
 fitness and unworthiness, but with a stronger sense 
 of the duty that lies on a Christian clergyman to 
 discover for himself and interpret to others the 
 teaching of Christ and His Church about war. 
 Hardly had I begun to collect my materials when 
 Tolstoi's extraordinary letter appeared in the Times. 1 
 It enchanted and (let me confess) it enthralled me. 
 When I had shaken off the spell and began to see 
 the foundations of his appeal the impression produced 
 by its dramatic simplicity remained ; I felt the nobility 
 of the sentiment ; I recognised the merciless severity 
 of the reasoning and the power of the categorical 
 imperative. " Fight not at all," says Tolstoi, " that 
 is the clear precept of Christ." But I could not 
 accept his premises, even though I could not prove 
 them untenable. At last I retreated. You may say 
 that I was a coward ; but after all I am not bound 
 to write a treatise on Man i>. State ! Frankly, I was 
 
 1 Since reprinted with additions under the title " Bethink Your- 
 selves," by the Free Age Press.
 
 508 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 impressed without being convinced by the Russian. 
 With his hatred of the State as such I cannot agree. 
 After all it is the State that has saved the individual 
 from private war. It is with his other view, that all 
 war is essentially unchristian, that this essay of mine 
 is concerned. A heathen can arrive at the conclusion 
 that most wars are wrong. Must a Christian affirm 
 positively that all war, even a defensive war against 
 an invasion, is wrong ? Here again let me be candid 
 and cowardly. I dare not take the responsibility of 
 saying yes or no. If I said " Yes," I should have to 
 censure all the great warriors who have been called 
 great Christians ; I should have to decanonise saints 
 innumerable. If I said " No," I should be going 
 against a deep instinct that tells me he is right. 
 Tolstoi reminds us of our Master's precept : " love 
 your enemies." The Christian world of practical men 
 answers : " Yes, but what if they attack you ? " Tol- 
 stoi replies : " they won't attack you ; if you love 
 your enemies you will have none." This ought to 
 be true, but is it ? 
 
 Truelove paused in evident doubt and confusion. The 
 Arbiter kindly interposed to give him time to recover. 
 " Yes," he said, " that is a fine saying. Tolstoi 
 sometimes repels me too. A German critic has 
 compared him to a Greek Monk. His dislike of 
 government is perhaps an abstraction from his ex- 
 perience of Czardom. It almost blinds him to the 
 necessity of a society and quite to the virtues of 
 national and civic life. But as a Christian Evangelist 
 he has planted himself securely on the highest ground. 
 If mankind follow that argument with good sense 
 and moderation they will eventually and perhaps the
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 509 
 
 end is nearer than we believe find peace. And 
 when we talk of practical policy, let us not forget 
 that our free trade policy of open ports was regarded 
 as an impracticable Utopia by its author. It has 
 proved to be our strongest bulwark. But for that 
 our empire, our wealth, our conceit must long ago 
 have united the envy of Europe against us. We 
 have disarmed enmity by the policy of the open 
 door. If you love your enemies and treat them as 
 friends, you will have no enemies. We are the best 
 customers of nearly every nation. We might have 
 tried retaliation. Instead we have applied Christian 
 wisdom to commercial policy. And if ever we were 
 involved in war and our navy beaten, neutral nations 
 would take very good care, in their own interests, to 
 preserve their commerce with us, and consequently 
 our food supply. But I am interrupting you, Martin. 
 Pray, read on ; it promises to be very interesting." 
 
 " I am afraid that you will find it the reverse," 
 said Truelove. " The fact is, as I told you, I had 
 not the courage (or rather I had too much discretion) 
 to stand up to Tolstoi. I really felt unequal to 
 grappling with his philosophy and pronouncing an 
 opinion on the merits of anarchism. He would 
 abolish wars by abolishing governments. I would 
 abolish wars by improving governments. But 1 do 
 not like to offer you my own raw notions of politics 
 to devour. My discourse, as you will soon discover, 
 is mainly an attempt to elucidate the teaching of the 
 New Testament and the judgments and practices of 
 the early church." 
 
 True/ove thereupon continued his paper. " There have, 
 needless to say, existed for many centuries com-
 
 510 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 munities of Christians who regarded war as a thing 
 unlawful and incompatible with their faith. Such 
 was the view of the Paterines or Gazari of Italy 
 in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, 
 and of the more famous Waldenses, Albigenses, and 
 Lollards who succeeded them." Truelove turned to 
 Clarke and asked whether this was correct. 
 
 Clarke. Assuredly. A number of these persecuted 
 people from France and Italy, who bore no arms, it 
 is said, and rather chose to suffer than resist wrong, 
 settled in Bohemia on the Eger in the twelfth century. 
 Some of them found their way to Germany and the 
 Low Countries, where they were called Lollards ; thence 
 the name came to England and was applied to the 
 followers of Wycliffe. That great Christian and 
 reformer regarded human life as sacred and war as 
 utterly unlawful. You remember his famous question : 
 " When will the proud priest of Rome grant indulgences 
 to mankind to live in peace and charity, as he now does 
 to fight and kill one another ? " 
 
 Truelove (continuing]. " During the Reformation there 
 were great discussions on this question among the 
 Socinians on the Continent, some maintaining that 
 war was altogether unlawful, others conceding that 
 arms may be used in self-defence." Truelove again 
 stopped, and again turned to Clarke. " But you 
 are far more familiar with this controversy than I 
 am." 
 
 Clarke. There undoubtedly were differences of 
 opinion as to the lawfulness of war for self-defence ; 
 but I think it was the general view of the Socinians 
 for a long time that all killing is murder. I have 
 a note here that I took the other day on the subject :
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 511 
 
 (reads] " Ruarus of Amsterdam, referring to the 
 frequency of wars and capital punishment in his day, 
 remarks that it is harder for a Christian to be a 
 magistrate (i.e. to hold office under government) than 
 for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
 Heaven." But will you not tell us about your own 
 great luminary Chillingworth, who, after a brief 
 conversion to Rome, shed such lustre on the Church 
 of England ? 
 
 Truelove (colouring). I did not know him as a 
 pacificator. Indeed, I thought he had fought with 
 the Royalists. 
 
 Browne. Yes, at the fruitless siege of Gloucester, in 
 1643, ne directed the construction of certain engines 
 for assaulting the town, modelled upon the Roman 
 testudines cum pluteis. 
 
 Clarke. Very true ; but I am thinking of a sentence 
 in Clarendon's admirable portrait : "he did readily 
 believe all war to be unlawful ; and did not think 
 that the parliament (whose proceedings he perfectly 
 abhorred) did in truth intend to involve the nation 
 in a civil war, till after the battle of Edgehill ; and 
 then he thought any expedient or stratagem that was 
 like to put a speedy end to it, to be the most com- 
 mendable." 
 
 Seymour (laughing). And I suppose he flattered him- 
 self that his testudines would put down all resistance. 
 
 Browne. Waller took him prisoner at Arundel 
 Castle without the help of testudines \ 
 
 Arbiter. But Chillingworth, too, was accused of 
 being a Socinian ; which reminds me of a passage in 
 Tillotson that you must really let me read before 
 Martin goes on. It is a great favourite of mine,
 
 5i2 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 and I hope you won't think it irrelevant to this 
 discussion. 
 
 (Here the Arbiter took a book from one of his shelves 
 and read] : 
 
 "I know not how it came to pass, but so it is, that everyone 
 who offers to give a reasonable account of his faith, and to establish 
 religion on rational principles, is presently branded for a Socinian ; 
 of which we have a sad instance in that incomparable person, Mr. 
 Chillingworth, the glory of this age and nation : who, for no 
 other cause that I know of, but his worthy and successful attempts to 
 make the Christian religion reasonable, and to discover those firm 
 and solid foundations upon which our faith is built, has been 
 requited with this black and odious character. But if this be 
 Socinianism, for a man to inquire into the grounds and reasons 
 of a Christian religion, and to endeavour to give a satisfactory 
 account why he believes it, I know no way but that all considerate 
 and inquisitive men that are above fancy and enthusiasm must be 
 either Socinians or atheists." 
 
 "The pure milk of the word," cried Clarke, "and 
 from an archbishop, whom one would expect to supply 
 more water than milk." 
 
 Browne. But allow me to add, before Truelove 
 goes on, that the Anabaptists and Independents did 
 not harmonise practice with precept any better than 
 Chillingworth. His opponent Cheynell says : " An 
 Anabaptist doth not think it lawful to be a cutler ; 
 he thinks no sword ought to be made, because he 
 conceives it unlawful to use a sword. It is well 
 known that the Anabaptists go to sea without ordnance 
 in their ships, and travel without any sword at their 
 side." And he goes on to explain the fact that there 
 were plenty of fighting Anabaptists in the Civil Wars, 
 by supposing the English Socinians to have taught 
 the English Anabaptists to deny those principles in 
 practice which they maintained in dispute.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 513 
 
 Clarke. Your facts can't be gainsaid; but the golden 
 principles of their founders were kept pure by the 
 Mennonites or Unitarian Baptists, in Germany, Russia, 
 and Holland. Even the Independents, by whose 
 valour England won herself for a time republican 
 institutions, and destroyed for ever " the right divine 
 of kings to govern ill," refused to adopt the common 
 maxim of the military profession that a soldier has 
 nothing to do with the justice of his cause. When 
 Cromwell began a war of aggression against Spain, 
 with the wanton seizure of Jamaica, many of them 
 threw up their commissions. 
 
 Case. Possibly the action of conscience in that 
 instance was invigorated by the prospect of death by 
 disease in some malarious eldorado of the West. 
 
 Admiral. Like enough. The Spanish Main had 
 already lost its glamour for Englishmen. 
 
 Clarke. I think you do them an injustice. At all 
 events you must admit that the Independents were 
 the first set of people in modern Europe, who, hav- 
 ing become the ruling class in a great State, established 
 the principle of religious toleration, and so, in the 
 words of one of their two greatest men : 
 
 " Helped us to save free conscience from the paw 
 Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." 
 
 Arbiter. True, it was a splendid example for con- 
 querors to set. The cessation of religious war and 
 of religious persecution is one of the greatest benefits 
 conferred upon mankind since Christ's coming; aye, 
 and I make no doubt, the longest step we have yet 
 taken toward the fulfilment of His promises. And 
 for that the Independents deserve all credit. Yet 
 there was one brutal exception. Cromwell's treatment 
 
 2 K
 
 5 1 4 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 of the Irish Catholics is a foul and ineffaceable blot 
 upon his government 
 
 True/ove. Yes and in their scheme for an Independent 
 Establishment in 1657, the Independents excluded from 
 toleration Prelacy as well as Popery, and I rather think 
 they persecuted the Quakers both in England and 
 America. 
 
 Clarke. As to prelacy the disestablishment of a 
 persecuting church was necessary to the establishment 
 of toleration. The early Quakers were often wild, 
 anarchical and turbulent. Some of them were 
 dangerous violent fanatics. I don't think it was part 
 of the Independent policy to interfere with the practice 
 of any form of religion. True the policy of toleration 
 did not extend to the Irish Papists ; but that was mainly 
 because they were in armed rebellion against the new 
 order. The English Catholics were not persecuted 
 according to the ideas of the time, as Philip II., for 
 instance, persecuted his Protestant subjects in Spain and 
 Netherlands. It was in war, and in Ireland, that 
 Cromwell was so merciless. And even in Ireland, 
 Papists who took no part in the rebellion received 
 grants of land in Connaught. 
 
 Browne. On a small scale, the sack of Drogheda 
 was comparable to the sack of Magdeburg though 
 it had this excuse that it was an act of reprisal and 
 policy. As for persecution, there was still on the 
 statute book at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 a provision that any Jesuit priest found in England 
 should suffer death. 
 
 Here there was a pause, and the Arbiter nodded to 
 True/ove, who -proceeded with his paper. 
 
 The last of the sects to whom I should like to
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 515 
 
 refer in these preliminary remarks is of course the 
 Quakers, a name that is almost synonymous with 
 peace. Blessed are the Peace-makers ! 
 
 It would require a volume even to epitomise the 
 noble deeds of this small community. Are they not 
 the salt of the Anglo-Saxon earth ? It was a Quaker, 
 William Penn, who founded the colony of Pennsyl- 
 vania the first modern constitution, if we except that 
 of Maryland, which provided for freedom of conscience, 
 the first State which made a fair treaty with savages 
 and kept it. Voltaire called it " the only treaty with 
 Indians never sanctioned by an oath and never broken." 
 Even in our own day Quakers, in England certainly, 
 if not in the United States, are the backbone of most 
 of the resistance that has been offered to recent out- 
 bursts of aggressive imperialism. To the Quakers 
 more than to any other set of men we owe the 
 foundation and beneficial activity of the various societies 
 for spreading the principles of Peace and Arbitration. 
 Peace Conferences promoted by them have had most 
 important results. Quakers again have taken the lead 
 in abolishing slavery, in humanising warfare, in im- 
 proving treatment of the wounded and of captives, and 
 in affording succour to non-combatants. An adequate 
 survey of their work would be almost equivalent to 
 a history of the humanitarian forces in English and 
 American society during the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries. The fundamental articles of their creed in 
 this respect may be set out in the quaint but beautiful 
 language of Robert Barclay, one of their earliest and 
 ablest apologists : 
 
 " If to revenge ourselves, or to render injury, evil for evil, wound 
 for wound, to take eye for eye, tooth for tooth ; if to fight for
 
 5i 6 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 outward and perishing things, to go a-warring one against another, 
 whom we never saw, nor with whom we never had any contest, 
 nor anything to do ; being, moreover, altogether ignorant of the 
 cause of the war, but only that the magistrates of the nations foment 
 quarrels one against another, the causes whereof are, for the most 
 part, unknown to the soldiers that fight, as well as upon those whose 
 side the right or wrong is ; and yet to be so furious and rage one 
 against another, to destroy and spoil all, that this or the other 
 worship may be received or abolished ; if to do this, and much 
 more of this kind, be to fulfil the law of Christ, then are our 
 adversaries indeed true Christians, and we miserable heretics, that 
 suffer ourselves to be spoiled, taken, imprisoned, banished, beaten, 
 and evilly treated, without any resistance, placing our trust only in 
 God, that He may defend us, and lead us by the way of the 
 cross into His kingdom. But if it be otherwise, we shall 
 certainly receive the reward which the Lord hath promised to 
 those that cleave to Him, and in denying themselves, confide in 
 Him." 
 
 These words take us at once to the question which 
 every Christian is bound to answer for himself, either 
 by directly searching the Scriptures, or by seeking 
 the authority of the Church, or by both methods, as 
 I conceive to be the duty of a member of the Catholic 
 and Apostolic Church. Let us then first ask what 
 is the teaching of the New Testament, and next 
 what interpretation was placed upon it by the early 
 Christian fathers. In his chapter on War and Military 
 Establishments, Paley observes in his superior way : 
 " Because the Christian Scriptures describe wars as 
 what they are, as crimes or judgments, some have 
 been led to believe that it is unlawful for a Christian 
 to bear arms." This belief, he contends, is erroneous, 
 for the reason that society must protect itself by 
 force if necessary. " Hence, although the origin of 
 wars be ascribed in Scripture to the operation of law- 
 less and malignant passion, and although war itself
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 517 
 
 be enumerated among the sorest calamities with which 
 a land can be visited, the profession of a soldier is 
 nowhere forbidden or condemned." Paley's argument 
 has often been used and abused. It is as old as the 
 later fathers. It has been glossed and reglossed in 
 the voluminous writings of many pious, learned, and 
 acute men who have handled this most difficult theme. 
 
 Browne. Talking of the later fathers how do you 
 account for the fact that in the declining days of the 
 Empire Christians used to apostrophise Augustus as 
 a temporal Christ ? 
 
 Clarke. Christians ! You mean courtiers. But they 
 yield to the monk, rebuked by Bossuet. who compared 
 Louis the Fourteenth with God, and decided that the 
 latter was the copy. 
 
 Truelove. The idea about Augustus was based upon 
 the pacific character of his Empire. Augustan Rome 
 was mistress of the whole civilised world, and an 
 army of less than 300,000 men sufficed to police the 
 provinces and to maintain their frontiers against the 
 barbarians. Therefore, it was natural to regard the 
 Roman soldier as first of all a policeman, a man who 
 kept the peace, maintained the majesty of the law, 
 and secured the subjects and citizens of the Empire 
 in their lives and properties. This simple fact should, 
 I think, weigh heavily against the merely negative 
 argument upon which both Grotius and Paley lay so 
 much stress that the military calling is not expressly 
 forbidden by Christ or His apostles. If the whole 
 civilised world were united under one government, 
 if its policy were a policy of non-extension, 1 and an 
 army were maintained merely for the purposes of 
 
 1 The policy prescribed by Augustus in his will.
 
 5 i 8 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 police and of protection against barbarian inroads, the 
 soldier's profession would not call for moral repro- 
 bation. 
 
 Remembering this, we shall hardly hang, or attempt 
 to hang, an argument for the Christianity of war upon 
 so slender a thread as our Master's eulogy of a Roman 
 centurion : " I have not found so great faith, no, not 
 in Israel," or upon the story of Cornelius. Yet it has 
 been seriously contended that, because the first Gentile 
 convert was a Roman centurion, and because we are 
 not told that he quitted the service after becoming 
 a Christian, therefore war is approved by Christianity! 
 Others, in their desperate search for precedents, have 
 appealed to the case of Sergius Paulus, a civil magis- 
 trate, who (they point out) is not said to have abdicated 
 his office after conversion to the Christian faith. 
 Another argument is, that when the soldiers asked 
 John the Baptist what they should do, he did not 
 tell them to relinquish their profession, but only said : 
 " Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, 
 and be content with your wages." If, as I suggested, 
 we read policemen for soldiers, this is exactly the kind 
 of rule upon which one would like policemen to act. 
 
 Case. If you had travelled on circuit and attended 
 Quarter Sessions you would have been still more 
 impressed by the excellence of John's counsel. It 
 is an epitome of the good policeman's character. 
 
 Truelove. Should this answer of mine appear in- 
 sufficient, I may be allowed to quote what Barclay 
 says in his Apology (prop. 15, sect. 15) : "The question 
 is not concerning John's doctrine, but Christ's, whose 
 disciples we are, not John's ; for Christ, not John, 
 is that prophet whom we all ought to hear. But what
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 519 
 
 was John's answer, that we may see if it can justify 
 the soldiers of this time? Consider, then, what he 
 dischargeth to soldiers, viz. not to use violence or 
 deceit against any; which being removed, let anyone 
 tell how soldiers can war. For are not craft, violence, 
 and injustice, three properties of war, and the natural 
 consequences of battles?" 
 
 Grotius remarks that the apostle Paul, when he was 
 informed of the Jews lying in wait for him, let the 
 captain know, and so obtained a guard for his journey, 
 and did not warn the captain or the soldiers that it 
 is wrong to repel force by force. To this he adds 
 a passage (Acts xxv. 1 1), where St. Paul says : " If I 
 be an offender or have committed anything worthy of 
 death, I refuse not to die." The apostle therefore, 
 Grotius infers, must have thought that even after the 
 publication of the Gospel law there were still some 
 crimes that ought to be punished by death. " But 
 when we have proved," continued the Dutch casuist 
 
 for this is casuistry rather than reasoning " that 
 capital punishment may lawfully be practised after the 
 coming of Christ, we have also proved, as I conceive, 
 that war may be lawfully made, for example, against 
 an armed multitude of evil-doers who must be over- 
 come in battle that they may be dealt with by 
 justice." 
 
 Upon these texts I must remark : first, it seems a 
 little rash to conclude from St. Paul's " if" that our 
 Lord was in favour of capital punishment ; and, 
 secondly, it does not at all follow that because capital 
 punishment is right, therefore war is justifiable. No 
 one argues that the capital punishment of an innocent 
 
 1 See Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pads, Book i., chap. xi. sec. 13.
 
 520 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 man is right, and no one denies that war involves 
 a slaughter of innocent men. The late Doctor 
 Whewell wrote a note upon this passage, which 
 shows that Grotius' argument almost amounts to a 
 condemnation of war. 
 
 He says : " To treat the army of an enemy as a 
 body of evil-doers is not the true view of war, nor 
 necessary to its justification. War is a relation between 
 two States ; and the right of making war is a necessary 
 right of a State." 
 
 Here of course the Cambridge casuist separates 
 politics from ethics, and contends for a political as 
 distinct from a religious or moral justification, which 
 it is not within my province to examine. 
 
 Already the principal texts of the New Testament, 
 upon which Christian apologists for war rely, are nearly 
 exhausted, and I am sure you will agree that they 
 are poor defences to sustain those who would like to 
 be militarists and Christians at the same time, thereby 
 nullifying the whole spirit and purport of Christ's 
 coming and Christ's teaching Peace on earth and 
 Good Will to men. 
 
 The New Dispensation appears to me to have 
 differed radically from the Old though even in the 
 Old Testament there are remarkable anticipations of 
 the Sermon on the Mount. The command, "Thou 
 shalt not kill," and the warning, " Whoso sheddeth 
 man's blood by man shall his blood be shed," are 
 indeed explicit enough ; but it is impossible to main- 
 tain that war was not in many cases both permitted 
 and enjoined by the God of the Hebrews. How 
 often must we blush as we read the prescribed lessons 
 in the history of God's chosen people ! Is it edifying
 
 5 2I 
 
 to remind Christian congregations that some of the 
 worst and foulest atrocities known to history are re- 
 corded with joy and approbation by some of the writers 
 of the Old Testament. But what the lover of peace 
 loses in the Kings and Chronicles, he regains in the 
 Prophets. It is in Isaiah, of course, that the idea of 
 universal peace is first adumbrated as a consequence 
 of the coming of the Messiah. 
 
 " And He shall judge among nations, and shall rebuke many 
 peoples ; and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and 
 their spears into pruning-hooks : Nations shall not lift up swords 
 against nations, neither shall they learn war any more." 
 
 Other predictions of equal truth and beauty are re- 
 corded in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, in the fourth 
 of Micah, and in the second of Hosea ; and their ful- 
 filment, so far as the divine command is concerned 
 we find in the Sermon on the Mount, though that 
 command has not yet been executed by Christian 
 peoples. 
 
 Grotius, who concludes that all war is not unlawful, 
 examines first the principles of natural law, then the 
 principles of the old dispensation, or of the Old 
 Testament, and lastly, the law of Christ. From the 
 two first he finds little difficulty in justifying resort 
 to arms in certain cases, either by individuals or 
 States. But he admits that there is a radical difference 
 between the law of Christ and the law given by 
 Moses : Te have heard it was said by them of old time. 
 . . . But I say unto you. . . . Obviously Christ was 
 not a mere interpreter of the law given by Moses. 
 Although most of the virtues required of Christians 
 were either recommended or enjoined to the Jews, 
 they were not set forth in the same degree, or with
 
 522 
 
 the same breadth. Touching the Sermon on the 
 Mount, and Christ's teaching generally, Grotius can 
 only urge that if Christ's intention had been to take 
 away the right of making war under any circumstances, 
 He would have done so in the most express and 
 specific language, on account of the magnitude and 
 novelty of the proposal. But considering the univer- 
 sal peace which reigned over the civilised world in 
 the life-time of Christ, the idea of peace was not 
 startling or novel. It was the Roman mission to 
 civilise and pacify the world. Christ seemed rather 
 to be recommending an institution than destroying 
 one. He was enjoining the artificial peace of the 
 Roman empire as a moral law to its individual citizens 
 and subjects. He showed how peace might be built 
 up on a foundation of good will among men. As 
 Grotius himself admits, following Arnobius and 
 Lactantius, " it is certain that if all were Christians, 
 and lived as Christians, there would be no wars." 
 
 Arbiter. Surely that is good sense as well as good 
 morals ? The Quakers of Pennsylvania, in the early 
 days of the colony's history, when they controlled 
 its government, made the experiment of treating the 
 Indians in a Christian fashion, and never made use 
 of arms. The colony was singularly prosperous, and 
 the natives never seem to have molested it as long 
 as the colonists retained the principles of their founders. 
 Seventy years later, when another faction wrested the 
 control of Pennsylvania from the Quakers, an atrocious 
 warfare with the Indians began. 1 Another equally 
 significant fact is that the Irish Quakers were never 
 molested by the wild Irish Catholics in 'ninety-eight, 
 1 See Clarkson's Life of Penn.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 523 
 
 when so many atrocities were committed against the 
 other Protestant settlers. 
 
 Admiral. To go about unarmed among savages 
 requires enormous moral courage ; but it has been 
 proved over and over again to be better than dagger- 
 proof coat, sword, or pocket-revolver. 
 
 True/ove. I suppose if one were asked for an epitome 
 of Christ's teaching one would read aloud the Sermon 
 on the Mount ; its keyword is for the nations, peace ; 
 for the individual, love. In the epistles the same 
 thoughts are conveyed, often in subtle language and 
 artful metaphor ; as when Paul exhorts the Ephesians 
 to put on the whole armour of God that they may 
 be able to withstand the rulers of darkness in this 
 world and spiritual wickedness in high places. He 
 speaks of the armour of God in order to accentuate 
 the impossibility of true Christians taking part in the 
 battles which Christ has proscribed. " Stand there- 
 fore, having your loins girt about with truth, and 
 having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your 
 feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace " the 
 gospel for which St. Paul, in his own apt and magni- 
 ficent words, was an ambassador in bonds. 
 
 Clarke. An ambassador of peace, not a missionary 
 of empire, not one of the hypocrites who chalk the 
 white cross on a black flag. 
 
 True/ove (continuing). Attempts have been made 
 to find countenance for the system of war in the I3th 
 chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, or rather 
 in the first seven verses of that chapter, which counsel 
 subjection to the powers that be. This, it is suggested, 
 might include military service ; for does not the 
 Apostle say : " Render therefore to all their dues :
 
 524 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom 
 custom ; fear to whom fear ; honour to whom honour." 
 It would be a strange thing indeed if these precepts 
 stood alone. They were directed of course against 
 the turbulence and unlawful conduct to which small 
 communities of men, inspired by a religious enthusiasm, 
 often bordering on fanaticism, might easily be led. 
 The early Christians were always in danger of confusing 
 licence with liberty, or imagining that to break the 
 laws of the pagans would be an acceptable service 
 to their own God. If St. Paul had meant more 
 than a warning against lawless conduct how could 
 any Christian martyrdom have been justifiable? If 
 there were no limits set upon Christian obedience to 
 authority, Christianity itself being forbidden should 
 have been renounced. Paul meant of course obedience 
 to authority so far as it was compatible with the 
 religion and service of Christ. And lest there should 
 be any doubt about his meaning he recapitulated the 
 Christian law in the verses immediately following 
 (Romans xiii. 8-10) : 
 
 " Owe no man any thing, but to love another ; for he that 
 loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 
 
 " For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not 
 kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou 
 shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is 
 briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself. 
 
 " Love worketh no ill to his neighbour : therefore love is the 
 fulfilling of the law." 
 
 And that the context may be complete let me read 
 the last verses of the preceding chapter, remembering 
 that the division into chapters and verses is a modern 
 device :
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 525 
 
 " If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with 
 all men. 
 
 " Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place 
 unto wrath ; for it is written, Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, 
 saith the Lord. 
 
 "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, 
 give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on 
 his head. 
 
 " Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." l 
 
 Arbiter. Is it not rather curious that Christian 
 revolutionaries, who make an exception in favour of 
 the holy right of insurrection against tyranny, should 
 have to rely upon those first seven verses ? You 
 remember there were "the fighting Quakers" in the 
 war of Independence, who tried to justify themselves 
 from the Epistle to the Romans. Yet that war, 
 arising immediately out of the customs duties on tea, 
 rather suggested the verse, " Tribute to whom tribute 
 is due, customs to whom customs ! " 
 
 True/ove. Yes ; on the whole St. Paul's epistles 
 are not very favourable to those who seek to establish 
 the righteousness even of what is called a just war. 
 Erasmus very truly said that Christians who defend 
 war must defend the dispositions that lead to war, 
 " and those dispositions are absolutely forbidden by 
 the Gospel." They are no less strictly forbidden by 
 the epistles. In the short time at my disposal I must 
 not multiply examples. But there is a crowning 
 admonition in the Epistle of St. James which may 
 appropriately conclude this part of my sermon : 
 
 " From whence come wars and fightings among you r Come 
 they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members ? 
 
 " Ye lust, and have not : ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot 
 obtain : ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not." 2 
 
 Romans xii. 18-21. 2 Epistle of St. James iv. i, z.
 
 526 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 From the records of Christ's teaching I turn to 
 the Fathers of the Early Church, who were doubt- 
 less inspired by an oral as well as by the written 
 tradition. There seems to be satisfactory evidence 
 that for the first two and a half centuries after Christ 
 it was considered absolutely unlawful for Christians 
 either to fight in individual quarrels or to serve in 
 the army. " We fight not with our enemies," wrote 
 Justin Martyr in his first apology for the Christian 
 faith addressed to the Emperor Antonine about 
 140 A.D. Justin ascribed war to the devil and held 
 that Isaiah's prophecy was being fulfilled in the 
 renunciation of war by the Christian Church. A little 
 later Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, another martyr 
 of the second century, and a pupil, be it remembered, 
 of Polycarp, who was one of St. John's disciples, 
 adopts the same literal interpretation and boasts that 
 Christians had already forgotten how to fight. 1 About 
 the same time Tatian declared that war is unlawful 
 and that Christianity cannot be reconciled with soldier- 
 ing. Tertullian, the first of the Latin Fathers whose 
 writings have come down to us, was the son of a 
 
 O ' 
 
 centurion. Many of his metaphors were drawn from 
 camp life. Jesus was his Imperator. The Christians 
 were " milites Christi." This great and learned father, 
 whom Cyprian called his master, was celebrated for 
 his skill in the Roman law and also for his minute 
 knowledge of the different varieties of Christian belief. 
 He is also famous for his obscurity. But upon the 
 relations of the profession of Christian to the profession 
 of soldier no one has ever written more boldly or 
 
 1 In the Latin translation, "jam nesciunt pugnare." Adv. 
 iv. 34.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 527 
 
 plainly. Upon this point at least he felt no doubts 
 or scruples. In the famous chapter xix. of his work 
 on Idolatry he writes : 
 
 " There is no agreement between the human and divine sacra- 
 ment, the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, the 
 camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be 
 bound to two [masters] God and Caesar. It is true Moses carried 
 a baton * and Aaron wore a buckle, 2 and John the Baptist is girt 
 with leather, and Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of march ; 
 and the Chosen People warred : I grant you all this, if it pleases 
 you to sport with the subject. But how shall a Christian be a 
 fighter, nay, how shall he even serve as a soldier in time of peace 
 without a sword ? But of a sword our Lord has deprived him. 
 For although soldiers had come to John and had received a form 
 of ordinance ; though likewise a centurion had believed ; yet after- 
 wards our Lord in disarming Peter disarmed every soldier. 3 
 
 And in another of his writings he asks : " Shall it 
 be lawful for Christians to wield the sword, when 
 our Master declares that he who shall use the sword 
 shall perish by the sword ? And shall the child of 
 peace whom it ill befits to go to law engage in 
 battle ? " 4 Military service seemed to Tertullian " a 
 carrying of the name over from the camp of light 
 to the camp of darkness." He admits that the case 
 of those who were already soldiers before they became 
 Christians is different from that of the Christian who 
 is considering whether he should adopt the military 
 profession. " Yet, at the same time, when a soldier 
 has become a believer, and faith has been sealed, there 
 must be either immediate abandonment of the pro- 
 fession of soldier, which course has been taken by 
 
 1 Virga, the centurion's staff. ~ Like a Roman soldier. 
 
 3 "Omnem postea militem Dominus in Petro exarmando discinxit." 
 De Idol.y cap. xix. 
 4 De Cor., cap. xi.
 
 528 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 many, 1 or there must be quibbling of all kinds to 
 avoid offences against God ; and that is not allowed 
 even outside of military service ; or, last of all, for God 
 the fate must be endured which a civilian faith has been 
 no less ready to accept." 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, Origen's teacher, who wrote 
 The Pedagogue > a regular course of instruction for 
 Christian converts, was concerned like Tertullian for 
 the professional soldier, and even allowed that it might 
 be lawful for a Christian to serve, if, when he was con- 
 verted to Christianity, he was in the army. But such 
 converts, if they remained in the army, were only to 
 obey the_/#j/ demands of their officers. Yet the number 
 of Christians in the Roman army cannot have been 
 large at that time ; for early in the third century 
 Celsus, one of the subtlest of Pagan controversialists, 
 attacked Christianity as a danger to the State. Since 
 Christians, he said, refused to fight, it followed that 
 if all Roman citizens became Christians, the Empire 
 would be overwhelmed by the barbarians. Origen 
 in his reply (A.D. 230) admitted the charge. It did 
 not occur to him that Christianity, when it came into 
 power, would drop its principles. He distinguished 
 between the law of Moses and the law of Christ. 
 Christians were not allowed, as the Israelites had some- 
 times been commanded, to kill their enemies or to 
 condemn offenders against their laws to be burnt or 
 stoned to death. They were fulfilling the prophecies 
 of Isaiah. " For we draw not the sword against any 
 people, and we learn not the art of War after that 
 through Jesus we are become the children of Peace." 
 
 Seymour. It is curious that just at this time, in the 
 
 1 Ut a multis actum. See De Cor. Mil., cap. ii.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 529 
 
 first quarter of the third century, the first Christian 
 work on military tactics was produced by Julius 
 Africanus, in a mathematical treatise called /tear-rot. 1 
 
 Truelove. Yes, it is a coincidence ; but the inclusion 
 of a section on military tactics in a mathematical 
 encyclopaedia does not of course imply approval of 
 war. You are quite right as to the date ; for Afri- 
 canus was a contemporary of Origen, and wrote him 
 a letter about the history of Susannah. In his reply 
 to Celsus, I should add, Origen did not merely 
 admit and glory in the charge that Christians would 
 not fight for Rome. He claimed that the Christians 
 were among the best friends and supporters of the 
 Empire. " There are none," he wrote, " who fight 
 better for the Emperor than we do. True, we do 
 not march with him into the field, even when he 
 commands us to do so. 2 But we fight for him in 
 that we form a special army of our own, an army 
 of piety, by prayers and supplications to God." It 
 is not surprising that Harnack, the greatest living 
 authority on the doctrine and practice of the early 
 Church, should dwell upon this passage, in which 
 Origen goes even beyond Tertullian, plainly defying 
 the Roman Emperor : " You may conscribe us but 
 we will not fight," precisely the same advice which 
 Tolstoi with almost equal courage has been offering 
 to the Russian peasants. And Origen is perhaps 
 the greatest of all the early Fathers. Learned and 
 industrious, but speculative and rather adverse to 
 dogma, he surprises us by the austerity of his tone 
 
 1 Printed among the Mathematlci Veteres, and translated into French 
 by Guiscard in his Memoires Mllitaires des Grecs et des Remains. 
 
 a /xev avro) KO.V 
 2 L
 
 530 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 upon this question. It is quite true that in later 
 times it was regarded as a heresy even to suppose 
 that Origen had been saved ; and John Picus, Earl 
 of Mirandula, was censured for having published 
 the opinion that it is more reasonable to suppose 
 Origen saved than damned. But his peace doctrine 
 was not a count in the long indictment ; and I may- 
 prefer the favourable opinion of Eusebius and the 
 praises of Erasmus, who affirmed " he would rather 
 have one Origen than ten Orthodox." From the 
 letters of Cyprian, the great Bishop of Carthage, 
 it is plain that the new faith had from time to time 
 appeared in the ranks of the African army in the 
 first half of the third century. But Cyprian would 
 make no terms with the military profession. In his 
 sixth epistle he deplores the spread of war and " the 
 bloody horror of camps," and shudders at the thought 
 that " murder, which in the case of an individual 
 is admittedly a crime, is called a virtue when com- 
 mitted wholesale." 
 
 Another eminent Father and moralist, Lactantius, 
 " the Christian Cicero," in the sixth book of his 
 Divine Institutes (about the year 320 A.D.) followed 
 what we may now term the unbroken tradition of 
 the first three centuries : " The righteous man may 
 not be a soldier, for righteousness itself is his soldier- 
 ship." 1 And Epiphanius, "the Pentaglot," who lived 
 into the fifth century, speaks of a set of heretics called 
 " soldier Christians," 2 like " the fighting Quakers,'* 
 who made their appearance at the time of the American 
 
 1 Ita neque militare justo licebit cujus militia est ipsa justitia 
 De Vero Cultu, vi. 20.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 531 
 
 Revolution. The nickname is significant. It gives 
 us reason to think that the practice of the early 
 Christians did not lag far behind the doctrines of 
 the early Fathers of the Church. At the end of the 
 third century there were undoubtedly Christians in 
 the army ; for, according to Eusebius, one or two 
 Christians were put to death by Maximian and Galerius. 
 Maximilianus, an African youth who had been brought 
 before the magistrates by his father to be recruited, 
 was sentenced to death for obstinately asseverating 
 that his conscience and religion forbade him to embrace 
 the military profession : " I cannot be a soldier, I can- 
 not do evil deeds, I am a Christian." 1 Again, if I 
 am not tiring you with examples, Tarachus, another 
 martyr, said, on being examined : " When I was a 
 soldier I was called Victor : because I was a Christian 
 I renounced the service." Another instance, vouched 
 as authentic by the sceptic Gibbon, is that of Marcellus 
 the centurion, an officer of Trajan's legion, who, at 
 a public festival, threw away his arms and uniform, 
 exclaiming with a loud voice that he would be the 
 soldier of none but Jesus Christ the Eternal King, 2 
 and that he renounced for ever the use of carnal 
 weapons and the service of an idolatrous Emperor. 
 Marcellus was condemned and beheaded as a deserter. 
 About the same time Galerius dismissed a number 
 of Christian officers from their employment ; but 
 Gibbon discredits the legend, first published by 
 Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons, in the middle of the 
 
 1 " Non possum militare, non possum malefacere, Christianus sum." 
 2 " Jesu Christo regi eterno milito." Marcellus, like the veteran 
 Julius, seems to have sought martyrdom rather because pagan worship 
 was associated with military discipline than because war was for- 
 bidden to Christians.
 
 532 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 sixth century, that the Thebaean legion, consisting of 
 6000 Christians, suffered martyrdom by order of 
 Maximian in a valley of the Pennine Alps. A famous 
 but fabulous example of Christian militarism is the 
 mythical story of the Thundering Legion. When 
 the Roman Emperor Marcus was with his army in 
 Germany they suffered from a terrible drought. But 
 the Christian soldiers in this Legion fell on their faces, 
 and by their prayers obtained a thunder shower, which 
 refreshed the thirst of the Roman army but only 
 distracted and terrified the enemy with a violent whirl- 
 wind and flashes of light. This miracle is attested 
 by an epistle of the Emperor preserved by Justin 
 Martyr, who lived about that time, but the story 
 has long been regarded as the invention of a credulous 
 age. One of the first to expose it was our own 
 Walter Moyle, in his learned letters Concerning the 
 Thundering Legion. He cited Athenagoras, Minucius 
 Felix, and many other Christian authorities, " who 
 directly or in consequence deny the lawfulness of war, 
 and not only represent it as their own private opinion 
 but as agreeable to the universal belief and practice 
 of that age." I may add to this a story told by 
 Sulpicius Severus, the Christian Sallust, of Martin, one 
 of the pagan Emperor Julian's soldiers, who, being 
 converted to Christianity, refused his share of a bounty 
 which was being distributed in the army before a battle. 
 " Hitherto," said Martin to Caesar, " I have fought 
 for thee ; let me now fight for my God. Those who 
 are going to do battle may accept thy bounty. I am 
 the soldier of Christ; for me the combat is unlawful." 1 
 
 1 See Sulpicius' Life of St. Martin. Sulpicius was a disciple of 
 St. Martin of Tours, and a friend of Paulinus, Bishop of Nola.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 533 
 
 May we not hope then that the Church, as she 
 inclines more and more to study and imitate her earlier 
 and better self, will more and more remember that, 
 as Christ at His coming into the world brought peace 
 with Him, 
 
 " Nor war, or battle's sound 
 Was heard the world around," 
 
 so at His departure He left peace as an everlasting 
 legacy. God the Father has chosen to call Himself 
 the King and Father of Peace, His Kingdom the 
 Kingdom of Peace, His servants the Sons of Peace. 
 Therefore, His Church from the most ancient times, 
 that by this it might be known whom she served, 
 everywhere in the public form of divine service inter- 
 laced this comfortable salutation : Peace be with you all. 
 When the bishop came into the church, wrote Saint 
 Chrysostom, he came like Noah's dove into the ark, 
 with an olive branch of peace in his mouth, and his 
 first words were : Peace be with you all. With the 
 same words he began his sermon and with the same 
 words his blessing. And when the sacrifice of Christ 
 was represented at the altar the bishop would celebrate 
 the memory of it with the same benediction, crying 
 ever and anon, Grace be with you and peace. It is 
 true, alas, that the later history of the Church is a 
 sad calendar of controversies and schisms, which grew 
 to such bitterness that Christians began to inflict on 
 one another such persecutions as they never felt under 
 the hand of paganism, persecutions that rent asunder 
 great provinces and mighty kingdoms, and caused 
 the most ferocious wars, massacres and tortures. But 
 while we lament a declension from the purity of our 
 early faith and practice we may also rejoice in the
 
 534 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 modern growth of toleration. Not that in so doing 
 the true Christian may plume himself on an outward 
 conformity and plausible correspondence with the 
 Church's constitution, as though by such means he 
 could procure for himself the peace left to the Church. 
 In her first heroic and exemplary days the Church 
 was the peaceful, the persecuted. But as her wealth 
 and authority multiplied her virtues were impaired. 
 She won secular honour, she allied herself to the 
 State, she became persecutor. She is no longer per- 
 secutor, no longer an active disturber of the world's 
 peace. Let her beware of indifference : if she is to 
 be a visible Church let her once more actively promote 
 the public good by proclaiming in no faltering accents 
 her Master's Gospel of Peace on Earth. 
 
 At the conclusion of Trueloves paper we all looked 
 at one another, each one hoping that someone else would 
 speak first. At last the Admiral, after refreshing his 
 memory by a glance at a sheet of notepaper, cried 
 out : 
 
 " Bravo, Martin, a splendid paper, 1 congratulate 
 you. If all parsons had been like you this would 
 have been a different world. But what a mess they 
 have made of it. You have shown clearly enough 
 that when religion came to be organised it was lost. 
 What could Christianity do, with Rome and Constan- 
 tinople, and Canterbury and Geneva, on its shoulders ? 
 The priests and presbyters have been too strong for 
 the gospel. No wonder that 
 
 ' Religion blushing veils her sacred fires 
 And, unawares, morality expires.' 
 
 For my part I'm almost of Byron's opinion, ' Man 
 is the same rancorous animal now that he was from
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 535 
 
 the beginning ; and if the Christ they profess to 
 worship reappeared, they would again crucify Him.' ' 
 
 Arbiter. No, Tracy, it's not as bad as that. We 
 are improving, though slowly, and we shall get you 
 to admit it before the end of the day. At the same 
 time I agree with you that the organisation of rich 
 and powerful churches has often choked Christian 
 morality. Where religion becomes a profession, more 
 or less under the patronage of the State, experience 
 shows that the pure teaching of its founder is adul- 
 terated. An established clergy seems incapable of 
 denouncing abuses in the State, or of protesting 
 against the policy of its secular rulers, howsoever 
 that policy may violate the laws of Christ. How 
 little life there is in the Temperance and Peace 
 Societies of either the Roman or Anglican Church. 
 Yet drunkenness and jingoism are the twin scourges 
 of Christendom. " Peace on earth and goodwill 
 among men " are the good tidings that we celebrate 
 every Christmas. 
 
 Clarke. A fervent and eloquent Roman Christian 
 of the last century actually dared to say " Rien ne 
 s'accorde dans ce monde, comme 1'esprit religieuse et 
 1'esprit militaire." * What have the Catholic Churches 
 done to spread the gospel of peace since the fourth 
 century ? 
 
 Browne. Little or nothing, I'm afraid, since the 
 twelfth Canon of the Council of Nice (A.D. 325) ; 
 and that was probably inspired primarily by the 
 prevalence of pagan worship in the army. 
 
 True/ove. I had forgotten the canon. 
 
 Browne. The operative sentences are as follows : 
 
 1 De Maistre, Soirees, ii. 16.
 
 536 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 " Whosoever being called by grace have first shown 
 their zeal and faith and have abandoned the military 
 profession, but afterwards have returned to it like 
 dogs to their vomit, let them be hearers for three, 
 and penitents for ten, years." But in the Synod of 
 Aries (353 A.D.), the Church ranged herself with the 
 first Christian Emperor, Constantine, enacting in the 
 third canon : " Those who cast away their arms in 
 peace [i.e. at a time when Christians are not persecuted] 
 shall abstain from Communion." 
 
 Clarke. So that when the Emperor paid lip service 
 to the Church, the Church offered life service to the 
 Emperor. The Church forgot her Lord and sacrificed 
 His command to please a new master. From this 
 time, Christianity having become official and imperial, 
 the accents of the Fathers faltered. Occasionally a 
 voice was heard crying in the wilderness, that at least 
 Christians must not shed innocent blood. Grotius, for 
 example, quotes an early address of Christian soldiers 
 to the Emperor. " We offer you our hands against 
 any enemy, though we hold it impious to stain them 
 with the blood of the innocent. Our right hands 
 know the way to fight against the impious and the 
 adversary, but they have not the art of butchering 
 the good man and the fellow-citizen. We recollect 
 that we have taken arms for our citizens rather than 
 against them. We have always fought for justice, 
 piety, the protection of the innocent ; those have 
 hitherto been the rewards of our labours. We have 
 fought for our faith ; and how shall we preserve our 
 faith towards thee [meaning the Emperor] if we do 
 not show our faith towards God?" 
 
 Browne. I think almost the last faint protest of the
 
 537 
 
 Catholic Church was at a Synod in England in the 
 eleventh century, which declared that those who fight 
 only for wages and booty ought to do penance for 
 murder. 
 
 True/ove. Following Saint Augustine's dictum : 
 " Militare non est delictum, sed propter praedam 
 militare peccatum est." 1 
 
 Case. Talking of the Church militant, do you 
 remember that story of Richard Coeur de Lion ? The 
 Pope hearing that he had taken prisoner the fighting 
 Bishop of Beauvais wrote to the king desiring that 
 he should no longer keep his dear son in custody. 
 Richard answered by sending his Holiness the blood- 
 stained coat of mail in which the bishop was taken, 
 with the words of Jacob's sons to their father : a See 
 whether or no this be the coat of thy son." 
 
 Meyer. I had no idea till to-day that war had ever 
 caused conscientious difficulties to Christians. When 
 I was a little boy at Frankfurt they sometimes took 
 me to the synagogue, and I distinctly remember an 
 address on the Lord of Hosts in 1866. It was a 
 wonderful year for our house. My father was busy 
 with the Prussian and Austrian war loans. He had 
 good friends on both sides ; at that time the Prussians 
 guarded one end of the bridge and the Austrians the 
 other. That war made the Prussians masters of 
 Germany ; but Frankfurt is still its financial centre. 
 There was some complaint, I believe, that one House 
 should have financed both loans. The Rosenheimers, 
 who thought they were sure of the Austrian loan 
 (they had once helped one of Francis Joseph's Polish 
 
 1 Military service is not an offence in itself, but it is a sin to 
 serve for plunder.
 
 538 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 favourites over an awkward stile), said it was dis- 
 honourable and unpatriotic. 
 
 " And unchristian too," said the Arbiter slily ; " but 
 then, of course, your firm was under the old dis- 
 pensation." 
 
 Meyer. But many Christians subscribed to both the 
 loans. My father only took his little profit. And 
 when I came to England and began to mix in 
 Christian circles in the city and the suburbs I really 
 found no difference, except that there was more 
 patriotic talk. But patriotism never interfered with 
 business. I remember our vicar presided at a local 
 demonstration at Bampton Slick when we gave my 
 three most incompetent clerks their send off as 
 Imperial Yeomen ; and at Bumbledon the bishop 
 presented the mule harnesses, and gave the men 
 their watchwords : " For my Queen and my God " 
 and " My country right or wrong." 
 
 Case (drily). " I wonder if one of your clerks was 
 the Imperial Yeoman on the Home Circuit who, a 
 month after his return, pleaded guilty to pilfering 
 the sacred vessels from the church at Ditchmole, 
 and said he had done it in a fit of absence. He 
 had thought he was in the Orange Free State, and 
 only came to himself when he was arrested." 
 
 Meyer. Surely it was not F r. I heard that 
 
 the young fellow had got into some scrape. But 
 no, no ; he would not have had the courage to do 
 anything like that. I think it was some trouble 
 with a cheque, and that was why we could not take 
 him back. But surely, Mr. Truelove, if Christianity 
 really were, as you say it is, a religion of peace, the 
 Church would not provide chaplains for the army.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 539 
 
 True love (in some confusion). I suppose I suppose 
 that they are there to persuade the army to carry on 
 war in as Christian-like a way as possible. 
 
 Arbiter. But I thought we were agreed that there 
 is nothing in the Gospel that can have the least 
 tendency to promote or justify war nay, that it is 
 expressly forbidden. 
 
 Meyer. Surely, then, the Gospel must do harm 
 among fighting men. Perhaps Captain Seymour can 
 tell us what occasion there is for divines in an army. 
 Do they not dispirit the soldiers ? 
 
 Seymour. The average chaplain is simply a nuisance. 
 He does not do anything at all. But his proper 
 function is not to depress, but to inspirit the soldiers. 
 You must remember that the common soldiers are 
 very ignorant, and that ignorance is always supersti- 
 tious. It is one of the oldest principles of strategy 
 that a general should have suitable priests to animate 
 the men, especially on the eve of battle. 
 
 Admiral. I remember Charley Napier telling me 
 that the best chaplain he ever had always found a 
 suitable text from the Old Testament. When a town 
 had to be taken by storm he would rouse the men 
 to a high pitch of enthusiasm by the prospect of 
 pillage ; and he had a wonderful repertoire of the 
 plunder secured on various occasions by the children 
 of Israel. 
 
 Clarke. I think Mandeville, a virtuous heathen in 
 his way, has expounded the functions of a chaplain 
 better than any other writer. The chaplains, he says, 
 often preach morality to the soldiers, " and even the 
 Gospel at seasonable times," when they are in winter 
 quarters, or in an idle summer when there is no
 
 540 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 enemy near. " But when they are to enter upon an 
 action, to besiege a town, or ravage a rich country, it 
 would be very impertinent to talk to them of Chris- 
 tian virtues, doing as they would be done by, loving 
 their enemies, and extending their charity to all man- 
 kind." 
 
 Meyer (indignantly}. Indeed, such conduct would be 
 grossly unpatriotic, especially for British clergymen. 
 
 Arbiter. In a just and necessary war. 
 
 Meyer. Yes, I meant that of course ; though even 
 a righteous war does sometimes turn out to have 
 been a mistake. But what do they do then, Mr. 
 Clarke ? 
 
 Clarke (reading) : 
 
 "When the foe is at hand, and perhaps a main battle is expected, 
 then the mask is flung off. Not a word of the Gospel, nor of meek- 
 ness and humility. All thoughts of Christianity are laid aside 
 entirely. The men are praised and buoyed up in the high value 
 they have of themselves ; their officers call them gentlemen and 
 fellow-soldiers ; generals pull off their hats to them ; the clergy 
 take care at such times not to mention to them their sins, or 
 anything that is melancholy or disheartening. On the contrary, 
 they speak cheerfully to them, and assure them of God's favour. 
 They take pains to justify and increase the animosities which 
 those under their care have against their enemies, whom to blacken 
 and render odious they leave no art untried, no stone unturned. 
 And no calumny can be more malicious, no story more incredible, 
 nor falsity more notorious, than have been made use of knowingly 
 for that purpose by Christian divines, both Protestants and 
 Papists." 
 
 Truelove. Alas, human nature being what it is 
 there will always be some who chant the services of 
 the Church without obeying her rules.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 541 
 
 II. 
 
 Admiral. I wonder if Christian clergymen are ever 
 hampered by the want of a Gospel text when they 
 preach on the duty of going to war at every favourable 
 opportunity. 
 
 Case. Not they. Coming up in the train on 
 Saturday I happened to look at a copy of the Daily 
 Menace, which someone had left in the carriage, and 
 came upon a picture of some half-naked English sailors 
 firing at a Russian vessel, and above this : " The 
 Anglo-Russian Crisis : x a Saturday Sermon by Arch- 
 deacon ." The most suitable text he could find 
 
 in the New Testament to quote for his purpose was 
 from the chapter in Romans which you have already 
 analysed Romans xiii. 4 " If thou do that which is 
 evil, be afraid : for he beareth not the sword in vain, 
 for he is the minister of God, and revenger to execute 
 wrath upon him that doeth evil." 
 
 The Archdeacon began by saying, " The impulse of 
 every genuine Christian is necessarily towards the 
 patient bearing of injury and wrong." He then quoted 
 a number of passages to prove that this is Christ's 
 teaching, and that " such teaching is not isolated, but 
 continuous and characteristic." So far so good ; but 
 not much use, you will say, to the Daily Menace, 
 which was using every nerve to lash the people into 
 war. Ah, but listen how cunningly the pious prelate 
 insinuates war. How does he do it ? By distinguish- 
 
 1 The placards of the Daily Menace had been misleading 
 throughout the Anglo-Russian crisis, and when the final disappoint- 
 ment came, and the incident was referred to an international 
 commission, the Daily Menace announced " Russian Surrender ! "
 
 542 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 ing between the individual and the State. There is 
 no text to support the distinction. Christ never seems 
 to have thought of it ; but His Archdeacon thinks that 
 what is wrong conduct in an individual would be right 
 in a collection of individuals, and vice versa ; what 
 would be wrong for each of the individuals who 
 compose the public is very right and commendable 
 in the trustees and representatives of the public. It 
 reminds one of the law of conspiracy, which allowed 
 one man to lock out one hundred, but made it illegal 
 for the hundred to strike. Only the archidiaconal 
 gospel is just the other way about. 
 
 Licence to do wrong, which is refused to the man, 
 is not merely offered but pressed upon the multitude. 
 See how artfully, yet with how little Christian evidence, 
 the pious man feels his way: you will forgive me if 
 I shorten a little his periphrastic sentences. There is 
 no doubt, he proceeds, that in personal relations 
 such conciliatory and unaggressive conduct is infinitely 
 more ' effective ' [Christ, you see, was not preaching 
 morality but efficiency the sermon was not delivered 
 on the mount, but on some crooked tower or other] 
 than the vindictive and retaliatory temper. It wins 
 the victory in the end, it ensures respect, it prevents 
 feuds. It is good for our own characters, as well as 
 for the peace and progress of society. 
 
 " But the case is different when we consider the duty of Govern- 
 ments. A Government exists for legislation and administration : 
 that is, for devising means for maintaining right against wrong, 
 for establishing justice, for the protection of the weak, and for 
 seeing that its measures and regulations are obeyed. 
 
 "This must necessarily imply readiness to repel the attacks of 
 proud, aggressive, and jealous foreign Powers, who are sometimes, 
 it would be idle to deny, animated by the desire to infringe on
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 543 
 
 national rights and to diminish national credit. A Government 
 would have to confine the enterprise of its subjects to extremely 
 narrow limits if it would not undertake to ensure their safety on 
 the high seas, or when travelling or plying trade in other lands, 
 so long as their pursuits were lawful. 
 
 " In the case of the British people, a nation given to fishing, to 
 trading in all parts of the world, and to vast Colonial undertakings 
 it is absolutely essential that the King's Ministers should be prepared 
 and willing to make the national power felt in every corner of 
 the earth where British subjects are lawfully employed, and are 
 being oppressed, or treated with injustice. That is why the King's 
 Government exists, and why it controls so vast a navy, and is 
 ready on emergencies to increase its army." 
 
 Next the Archdeacon had to do his best to bolster 
 up the particular war in anticipation of which he wrote 
 his Saturday sermon : 
 
 "If the safety of these vast numbers of scattered subjects requires 
 it, or if national credit would be impaired by an act of idle con- 
 donation, war may arise out of what seems a comparatively small 
 matter. The important consideration is that if so great a calamity 
 as war were to be the issue of such an event, it would prevent 
 its recurrence for a very long time to come." 
 
 The Venerable Archdeacon, you see, never con- 
 templated the possibility of arbitrating instead of going 
 to war on " a comparatively small matter." Which 
 course do you suppose Christ would have advised, 
 Cousin Martin ? 
 
 True/ove. Arbitration. 
 
 Case. But the Archdeacon argued differently : 
 
 " It would be very easy to say in a war with Russia the expenses 
 of a single day would be greater than the value of the whole of 
 the fishing fleets on the Dogger Bank. That is not the point. The 
 immunity from attack of which those peaceful English fishermen 
 ought to be assured is the secret of the immunity of every other 
 British boat afloat, from the smallest yawl to the mightiest liner, 
 and of every other British citizen doing the business of his country 
 to the very ends of the earth."
 
 544 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 This means that the only way to purchase immunity 
 is to have superiority over everybody, so that the 
 English vessel will be the only kind free from attack; 
 a curious religious dispensation. 
 
 " War is odious, horrible, dreadful ; no words are strong enough 
 to describe its awful miseries : but there may be times when even 
 the most peaceable citizens must agree that a national attitude 
 is absolutely compelled from which, if the offending party persists, 
 even war may result." 
 
 " Have you ever heard the doctrine that Christian 
 morality cannot be applied to politics more clearly 
 stated ?" added Case turning to Truelove. 
 
 True/ove. No ; but surely he makes some quali- 
 fication. 
 
 Case. Well here is a sentence in which he tried 
 to pull himself up : " Of course it is still right and 
 possible that the spirit of the Gospel may be main- 
 tained in the courteous and restrained language in 
 which the situation is set forth by diplomacy, in the 
 careful and unaggressive comments of the press, and 
 in personal tone and conversation." 
 
 Clarke. That archdeacon always has plenty of tone. 
 
 Case. If you look a few lines down you will see that 
 his blood was boiling to be " at 'em. " The most that 
 he means is that your declaration of war should be 
 polite. 
 
 Arbiter. I'm afraid that must be so, for he never 
 protested against the tone of Mr. Chamberlain's dip- 
 lomacy. 
 
 Admiral. What preposterous humbug it all is. Men 
 need not pretend to preach the Gospel. Far better 
 to live in a tub on bread and cheese than to be an 
 impostor in a palace. But I never saw that sermon.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 545 
 
 What annoyed me in the paper was an article by 
 F . 
 
 Seymour (starting}. What, the Admiral ! 
 
 Admiral (wrathfully). Yes, if you please, " The 
 Naval situation by Admiral the Hon. Sir Dash Dash 
 
 F ." It's enough to make Nelson turn in his 
 
 grave. You have a crisis. The Admiralty is ordered 
 to prepare for war. Fleets concentrate. And an 
 Admiral is engaged in provocative journalism. This 
 was not the first offence. On the very night the out- 
 rage was heard of he allowed himself to be interviewed 
 by another paper, and declared that the country would 
 insist on war. The article I am speaking of was 
 written after Mr. Balfour's announcement that the 
 International Commission of Inquiry had been agreed 
 upon. Disappointment is obvious in the Admiral's 
 every line. He begins : " To say that the incident 
 is closed and over would be to say too much," and 
 concludes with the following peremptory advice to the 
 Government : 
 
 " Meanwhile the Channel Squadron still remains at Gibraltar 
 though six cruisers have sailed westward. To sum up the situation : 
 Unless the Admiral is detained, and the inquiry is fairly conducted 
 with the object of condign punishment being awarded to the guilty 
 parties, I doubt whether the country will be satisfied or ought to 
 be satisfied. To ensure this it would be better to give notice to 
 the Russians that none of their Baltic Fleet will be allowed 
 to proceed further on their voyage till this is made clear. We 
 must trust to our right arm, in Blake's words, * to prevent the 
 enemy from fooling us.' " 
 
 Ego. I suppose the Government is too weak to pre- 
 vent its servants breaking the rules of the service. 
 But it is intolerable that soldiers and sailors should be 
 allowed to speechify and scribble about national policy. 
 
 2 M
 
 546 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 If admirals and generals are to make speeches in 
 favour of war and expenditure, let Treasury officials 
 make speeches in favour of peace and retrenchment. 
 If military and naval officers want to be politicians, 
 let them throw up their commissions and pensions, 
 and stand for Parliament. 
 
 Clarke. To return to religious morality. Christian 
 nations may be hypocritical ; but their standards and 
 practices are at any rate relatively high. 
 
 Seymour. The Japanese are showing that discipline 
 and restraint in war do not depend upon religious 
 inspiration. 
 
 Admiral. But they have the Eushido. 
 
 Seymour. What is that ? 
 
 Admiral. A code of honour which makes them prefer 
 death to disobedience. 
 
 Truelove. That is all very well, but what if their 
 commanders order atrocity ? 
 
 Seymour. As they did when they first took Port 
 Arthur. 
 
 Admiral. I had not thought of that. 
 
 Browne. The laws of the Samurai in Japan resemble 
 the chivalry of the Middle Ages, which gave us the 
 tournament and the duel. 
 
 True/ove. But chivalry was not Christian. It came 
 with the Goths, and was engrafted on Christian 
 manners. You ought to thank the Church for putting 
 an end to the tournament and discrediting the duel. 
 
 Browne. Nay, I think it has been shown that the 
 duel and trial by battle sprang up and flourished in 
 the most ignorant and lawless ages of Christianity, 
 and that they declined as Roman law and order were 
 .gradually re-established.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 547 
 
 Case. Nevertheless it is true that the Courts of the 
 Church and the Canon law helped to substitute trial 
 by law for trial by battle and ordeal. 
 
 Browne. I agree. But Martin put his case rather 
 too high. 
 
 Arbiter. It has been suggested to me that before 
 we close this discussion we ought to consider a wider 
 question that has several times emerged. We have 
 been trying to ascertain whether a war can be Christian. 
 But there is a wider question that appeals to every 
 moralist and political philosopher. Can a war be just ? 
 
 Clarke. I suppose that depends on what you mean 
 by "just." In Grotius' sense a justum bellum is a 
 war regularly declared and waged between two sove- 
 reign States. In this sense most wars are just, i.e. regu- 
 lar and legal. Irregular warfare, waged by guerillas or 
 franc-tireurs, is not a justum bellum. Where our prayer 
 book allows Christians to serve in justa bella^ advan- 
 tage was probably taken of the double meaning, regular 
 (legal) and righteous. 
 
 Arbiter. Then shall I amend my question ? Can a 
 war be righteous ? 
 
 Case. Perhaps we had better stick to the word 
 "just," remembering that it has the narrower sense ; 
 for in truth there seems to be little or no fixity in 
 men's ideas of justice. It is strange how small an 
 influence Christianity exercised upon the fundamental 
 notions of civilised mankind. I read the other day 
 in a modern commentary on Aristotle the following 
 remarks : 
 
 " Suppose an earnest man in Athens in the middle of the fourth 
 century B.C. to have had doubts whether he was justified in keeping
 
 548 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 slaves. He has been disturbed by the arguments of the jurists 
 referred to by Aristotle, who maintained that slavery was a violation 
 of natural law, and that the convention which sanctioned it was 
 wrong. We may suppose him to have known that Plato had 
 justified the institution, but he decides on taking a second opinion 
 and consults Aristotle. Aristotle assures him that there is no harm 
 whatever in keeping slaves, unless they are Hellenes, and that to 
 do so is equally for the benefit of the slave and himself. The 
 institution of slavery, sanctioned by Plato, approved by Aristotle, 
 and defended by him against opposing critics, was acquiesced in 
 by St. Paul, and tolerated both in theory and practice by the 
 Christian Church for many centuries after St. Paul's death ; it was 
 practised by the most civilised nations of Western Europe until 
 the beginning of the last century, in spite of a dissenting minority, 
 who impeached the custom on the very ground on which it was 
 questioned in Aristotle's day. But in this matter, the arguments 
 for and against which are within the reach of every one, public 
 opinion has now so changed that the first man you meet in the street 
 will tell you that to keep a slave is one of the most immoral things 
 you can do." 
 
 Arbiter. I should not like to be dogmatic upon this 
 point, especially in the presence of two theologians and 
 a historian, but my belief is that the influence of the 
 primitive Christian communities in the first two or 
 three centuries of the Christian era was decidedly pacific, 
 and also contributed much to the mitigation and 
 ultimately to the abolition of slavery in the Roman 
 Empire. But as the Church became a highly organised 
 institution it became less and less disposed to identify 
 itself with the moral side of vexed issues. After the 
 baptism of Constantine the Church began to ally itself 
 with secular Powers, the compact being one of mutual 
 support. 
 
 Clarke. The Church would lend its aid to despotism 
 if despotism would help the Church to stamp out 
 heresy.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 549 
 
 Browne. Yes : and that theory alone is adequate to 
 explain the fearful reign of barbarism and cruelty that 
 followed in the ten centuries after the fall of the 
 Roman Empire. Then, hard upon the revival of art, 
 philosophy, and letters, came the two centuries of 
 religious wars resulting from the attempt of the Roman 
 Church to crush out the Reformation. In the seven- 
 teenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries you find 
 considerable progress. The standard of civilised life 
 rises. The customs of war and peace improve. Re- 
 spect for human life and sympathy for human suffering 
 begin to increase. The spirit of toleration spreads. 
 
 Truelove. And Christianity aids in the development. 
 
 Clarke. But not much praise is due to the highly 
 organised churches. Take, for instance, the Church 
 of England. What did it do for humanity in the 
 eighteenth century ? If it became less intolerant to 
 dissenters and Roman Catholics it was only because 
 its clergy became more indifferent. 
 
 Arbiter. That, I'm afraid, is only too true. William, 
 you can tell us of its attitude to wars and slavery, 
 and to the punishment of crime. We were talking 
 about it only the other day ; but my memory for facts 
 is failing sadly. 
 
 Browne. In the war of American Independence the 
 Anglican clergy were less divided than any other class 
 in support of George III. Out of twenty-six English 
 bishops, Shipley of St. Asaph's was the only supporter 
 of conciliation. Yet there never was a war which 
 counted among its opponents so large and powerful 
 a section of the aristocracy. Again, from the com- 
 mencement to the end of the French War the drum 
 ecclesiastic was sounded in almost every parish.
 
 550 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Admiral. Ah yes, I remember well my father and 
 uncle saying how useful the parsons were in helping 
 to " pinch " likely fellows for the service. 
 
 Browne. Watson was the only English bishop who 
 protested against " the French Crusade," and even 
 he seems to have wearied later on, when he found 
 that his opposition to the Court had sentenced him 
 to remain at LlandafF. As regards slavery the bishops, 
 I'm afraid, were pretty steady supporters of the 
 institution. I was reading the other day a debate in 
 which Lord Eldon argued, perhaps ironically, " that 
 the commerce in human bodies could not be incon- 
 sistent with Christianity as some had supposed, other- 
 wise it could never have been so steadily supported by 
 the Right Reverend Prelates." 
 
 Ego. It appeared in Parliamentary returns that the 
 bishops used to invest largely in the African Slave 
 Trade. 
 
 Arbiter. Then about the Criminal Code ? 
 
 Browne. Have you Romilly's diary ? 
 
 Arbiter. It is on the shelf behind you there ! 
 
 Browne (turning over the pages]. Yes, here it is. 
 Wednesday, May 3<Dth, 1810. 
 
 " The second reading of the Bill to abolish capital punishment for 
 the crime of stealing privately to the amount of five shillings in a 
 shop came on to-day in the House of Lords, on the motion of Lord 
 Holland, who had taken charge of the Bill. It was rejected by a 
 majority of 31 to 11 ; the ministers having secured a pretty full 
 attendance of peers, considering the advanced season of the year, to 
 throw it out. Amongst these there were no less than seven prelates : 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London and Salisbury, 
 Dampier, Bishop of Ely, Luxmore, Bishop of Hereford, Sparke, the 
 new Bishop of Chester, and Porter, an Irish Bishop. I rank these 
 prelates among the members who were solicited to vote against the 
 Bill, because I would rather be convinced of their servility towards
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 551 
 
 government than that, recollecting the mild doctrines of their 
 religion, they could have come down to the House spontaneously 
 to vote that transportation for life is not a sufficiently severe punish- 
 ment for the offence of pilfering what is of five shillings' value, and 
 that nothing but the blood of the offender can afford an adequate 
 atonement for such a transgression." 
 
 Three years later the Bill again passed the House 
 of Commons (by 72 to 34) and was again thrown out 
 in the Lords, this time by a reduced majority 26 to 
 15. Again not a single bishop supported Romilly, 
 and five voted against the Bill. 
 
 Truelove. We admit that the moral tone of the 
 Church has been low at certain times ; but that of 
 course does not affect the validity of her sacraments 
 or the purity of the faith she guards. 
 
 Clarke. No ; unless you admit that a tree is known 
 by its fruit. 
 
 Truelove (a little nettled}. You must remember that 
 the greatest of English dissenters, John Wesley, who 
 did so much to revive spiritual life in England, was 
 a Jingo of the Jingoes in 1776. 
 
 Clarke. Wesley was hardly a dissenter, certainly 
 not a typical one. There is nothing in him of the 
 Independent, or Quaker, or Unitarian. He had no 
 part or lot in the republican spirit. He was a warm 
 emotional loyalist. He only went out of the Church 
 because it was so cold inside. 
 
 Arbiter. Perhaps their founder's emotionalism may 
 explain why Wesleyans are so often warlike. I 
 remember poor old Price Jeffreys-Price who was 
 then a member of the Peace Society, made quite a 
 violent speech at our meeting in October, 1899. 
 When I observed that the questions in dispute should 
 have been referred to arbitration, he said that this
 
 552 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 was the most righteous and godly war England had 
 waged since Cromwell's campaign against the Pope in 
 Ireland. 
 
 Browne. Do you think the old crusading instinct 
 is still alive in the Church ? 
 
 True/ove. Every one who has a fervent faith and 
 a narrow mind is inclined to persecution ; be the 
 faith what you will. In times of ignorance persecu- 
 tions and holy wars occurred from time to time. 
 The crusades are an obvious, and, in my judgment, a 
 most deplorable example of religious warfare. But I 
 have no doubt at all that they were prompted in 
 some instances by quite other than religious motives. 
 
 Browne. Undoubtedly. Some of them of course 
 were genuine immense expeditions in search of 
 heaven and plunder. But it is equally evident that 
 others were got up by the Popes to fill their coffers. 
 
 Case. The learned and careful Selden once said, talk- 
 ing of the crusades, they were a fine juggle between 
 Princes and Pope. On pretence of fighting against 
 the Turk moneys were raised, " but commonly after 
 they had got the money the Turk was pretty quiet, 
 and the Prince and the Pope shared it between them." 
 
 Browne. In his History of European Morals, Lecky, 
 generally a judicious writer, after tracing (very 
 roughly) the transition from the almost Quaker 
 tenets of the primitive Christians to the full blown 
 militarism of the crusaders, thus comments upon 
 the bold predictions of the early Saints that the 
 conversion of the world would lead to the establish- 
 ment of perpetual peace. " In looking back, with our 
 present experience, we are driven to the melancholy 
 conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 553 
 
 of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually, and very 
 seriously, increased it. We may look in vain for 
 any period since Constantine in which the clergy, as 
 a body, exerted themselves to repress the military 
 spirit, or to prevent or abridge a particular war with 
 an energy at all comparable to that which they dis- 
 played in stimulating the fanaticism of the crusaders, 
 in producing the atrocious massacre of the Albigenses, 
 in embittering the religious contests that followed the 
 Reformation." Then after considering what may be 
 said on the other side, he winds up with " the broad 
 fact" that, with the exception of Mahommedanism, 
 " no other religion has done so much to produce war 
 as was done by the religious teachers of Christendom 
 during several centuries." 
 
 Clarke. One often nowadays comes across the idea 
 that Christian nations have a mission to the heathen 
 exploited by rapacious and cruel financiers. King 
 Leopold once had the effrontery to declare on behalf 
 of his rubber-extracting Congo Government : " Our 
 only programme is the moral and material regenera- 
 tion of the country." 
 
 Truelove. I have always felt the desirability of sepa- 
 rating Christian missions from military expeditions 
 and from commercial enterprises, and I don't think 
 that churchmen are altogether unaware of the danger 
 of mixed considerations. Lord Hugh Cecil, I re- 
 member, in addressing the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel a few years ago, mentioned uneasy doubts 
 among conscientious people as to whether the work 
 and motives of missionaries are always free from 
 earthly considerations. He suggested that " by mak- 
 ing prominent to our minds the importance of
 
 554 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 missionary work we should to some extent sanctify 
 the spirit of Imperialism." 
 
 Arbiter. You cannot sanctify wrong. 
 
 Truelove. No ; but perhaps you can prevent it, or 
 mitigate its evil result. Imperial expansion, aggression, 
 conquest, are surely better with Christianity than with- 
 out it? 
 
 Browne. Lecky speaks of " the gradual fusion of 
 the military spirit with Christianity." 
 
 Truelove. Yet I think he concedes that, even if 
 Christian spirit did not diminish war, it diminished its 
 atrocity. And Freeman insists strongly upon this in 
 regard to the early history of the Anglo-Saxons. 
 Christianity, he says, stopped the wars of extermination 
 they had waged against the Britons. 
 
 Clarke. What we need to do is rather to moralise 
 Christianity than to Christianise or sanctify wrong. 
 Christianity will lose more from contact with Im- 
 perialism than ever Imperialism can gain by contact 
 with Christianity, 
 
 Admiral. For my part I would far rather the pirate 
 who made me walk the plank were not a Christian 
 pirate. 
 
 Seymour. I should take up a position half way 
 between the Church and the Admiralty. If I were 
 a member of an inferior race for whom the Mark IV. 
 ammunition was designed, I should not care whether 
 death was inflicted in the name of Christ or Buddha. 
 Even if I were informed that my extinction had been 
 prayed for by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or that 
 Confucius thought I had better be withdrawn from 
 evil, I should be no more cheerful than if an unhallowed 
 atheist was about to blow me into the skies.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 555 
 
 Truelove. You cannot judge a church or any other 
 society by its hypocrites. The mere fact that you 
 regard a Christian pirate as a peculiarly objectionable, 
 because hypocritical, rogue, is really a compliment to 
 Christianity. 
 
 Admiral (good humouredly]. There you have me. 
 But what if I were to say that most of your dignitaries 
 occasionally hoist the Jolly Roger ? 
 
 Truelove looked indignant, and his cousin gave a slight 
 turn to the conversation. 
 
 Case. Seeing that for fifteen or sixteen centuries 
 Christians have utterly disregarded the plain teaching 
 of Christ and his apostles on the subject of war ; and 
 further, that even the nominal adherents of the Christian 
 religion are in a minority, so that no code which 
 depended for its validity on Christ's teaching could 
 obtain universal adoption, I think we ought to turn 
 from authority to natural law and reason. You may 
 prove that war is unchristian ; but that does not seem 
 to help you to persuade a Christian, much less a 
 Mohammedan, a Buddhist, or an agnostic that it is 
 wrong. 
 
 Arbiter. I am very glad that you have raised the 
 question in this form. Christianity for Christians ; but 
 it is no use quoting our Christian texts (unsupported 
 by Christian conduct) to educated people in China and 
 Japan. If our own priests and presbyters neglect the 
 gospel of peace we can hardly expect our missionary 
 Empire to be welcomed by the Mad Mullah, and by 
 the monks of Thibet. 
 
 " If gold rust what shall the iron do r " 
 What say you, Martin ? 
 
 Truelove. Certainly, the moral and philosophic
 
 556 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 objection to war ought to be discussed. The foun- 
 dations must be dug deep in human nature if the 
 Temple of Peace is to be built up to the heavens. It 
 is an immortal fabric that springs from man to God. 
 But Reginald is not fair to Christianity. It has 
 abolished slavery, and has almost extinguished the 
 duel. It has even mitigated the scourge of war. 
 Bishops over and over again tried to prevent or stay 
 the clash of arms : witness the conduct of Theobald 
 in the anarchy of Stephen's reign and the action of 
 the Bishops before the battle of Lewes. Nor need 
 we shrink from an inquiry into natural law and reason. 
 The Christain Faith has its mysteries; but it re- 
 cognises also a natural law in the spiritual world ; 
 or rather, I would say it recognises natural law as 
 an expression of divine will. I should be a forget- 
 ful disciple indeed of my old friend and master, 
 the ever memorable T. H. Green, if I were not 
 prepared to give a philosophic rendering of the 
 gospel of peace. Let me begin by asking whether 
 I may assume that every human being has a natural 
 right to live. 
 
 Case. A witness who is about to be cross-examined 
 has no natural right to exchange places with the 
 counsel. But I will waive privilege and answer you. 
 Certainly if you use the words " natural " and " right " 
 in their ordinary sense you are justified in making 
 that assumption. It is, I think, a maxim of juris- 
 prudence or natural law. Every system of law 
 punishes anyone who, without authority, deprives 
 another of life. Therefore, there is a right to live ; 
 and we may call it a natural right. But that right 
 may be forfeited. No system of law that I know of
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 557 
 
 punishes either the hangman or the soldier for de- 
 priving men of their lives. 
 
 frue/ove. That is so, of course. In the eyes of the 
 law the supposed necessities of punitive justice and 
 of war override the individual's rights to live. But 
 what ought to be is still far removed from what is. 
 Let me ask further whether you are willing to admit 
 that, as the rights of the citizen are circumscribed by 
 the necessities of the State, so the necessities of a 
 particular State are, or ought to be, limited by the 
 needs of the world, by the rights of humanity as a 
 whole. A man is first an individual, then a subject, 
 or citizen of a particular State, then a citizen of the 
 world, a man in the fullest sense. 
 
 Case. Again I agree, though we might differ, if it 
 came to defining the extent of (let us say) the 
 world's suzerainty over the British Empire (this with 
 a sly look at Meyer]. 
 
 Meyer. I'm no philosopher, Mr. Case, but I suppose 
 you mean our suzerainty over the world. Ours is 
 an Empire on which the sun never sets. 
 
 Case. I stand corrected. We may hope that a State 
 with such natural advantages will be able to lead the 
 world to the Temple of Justice. 
 
 Truelove. And we, its citizens, will follow Truth 
 whithersoever she leads us. 
 
 Seymour. What does natural law say to the pro- 
 position that war involves murder ? 
 
 Case. Certainly it does not in the legal sense. To 
 murder is to kill a man unlawfully and with intent 
 to kill him. Unless he does it from a balloon, or 
 with an explosive bullet, or by treachery (say under 
 cover of the white flag), a soldier in battle cannot
 
 558 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 kill an enemy unlawfully ; nor is it necessarily his 
 intent to kill ; he may have no intent but that of 
 obeying orders. " Ready, present, fire." The com- 
 mon soldier is a mere machine. He has scarcely 
 more intent than the gun. 
 
 T'ruelove. Nor is it murder in the moral sense. A 
 soldier does not shoot " of malice aforethought," nor 
 to gain private ends save in the case (now com- 
 paratively rare) where plunder is the motive. But I 
 can't allow your comparison of the man with his rifle. 
 
 Case. Why not ? they are both bought or hired 
 by the State for the same purpose to destroy its 
 enemies. However, I don't press the comparison ; 
 for though in fact the common soldier may be a 
 passive instrument, I think that he is responsible for his 
 actions even when he is merely obeying orders. 
 
 'Truelove. Then you are inclined to agree with the 
 Church's compromise that a Christian may serve as 
 a soldier, and may lawfully kill the soldiers of the 
 country with which his country is at war, provided it 
 is a just war. 
 
 Case. Well, at any rate that is an intelligible pro- 
 position. Few moralists will blame a soldier for kill- 
 ing men in a war which he has reason to regard as 
 a just war. But we must blame him, I think, if even 
 in a just war he obeys orders which he knows to be 
 unjust and contrary to civilised practice. For instance, 
 if he is ordered to cut down fruit trees (which even 
 the Israelites were forbidden to do), or to burn farms 
 or to shoot down unoffending non-combatants, or 
 possibly his fellow-citizens in the streets, then the truly 
 courageous soldier, if he be a man of principle and 
 honour, should refuse.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 559 
 
 Seymour. Then he would be shot himself. I'm afraid 
 you would make soldiering even more hazardous than 
 it is. At the same time I agree that soldiers ought 
 not to be mere machines. An officer certainly ought 
 to make up his mind as to the justice of a war, and 
 he should take no part in any foreign war in which he 
 would regard himself as the instrument of unlawful and 
 wrongful aggression. Doubtless also there are some 
 orders which he should refuse to execute even at the 
 risk of being executed himself. The man, however 
 high his rank, however long his pedigree, who debases 
 the usages of warfare and promotes savagery is a 
 monster whom it is shameful to obey, a barbarian 
 whom it is degrading to serve. 
 
 Clarke. We seem to be agreed in condemning the 
 soldier who serves in an unjust war, and also the 
 soldier who gives or executes a barbarous order. But 
 what about the simple act of firing at a man against 
 whom you had no grievence except that he is, or 
 may be, firing at you ? You do not know him ; you see 
 him for the first time, a little speck a mile away perhaps ; 
 and you try to kill him. 
 
 Seymour. The soldier acts under orders. He has 
 to defend his country. To do that he must help to 
 destroy its enemies. The soldier he fires at is not a 
 personal foe but a representative of the public enemy. 
 
 Clarke. Exactly so ; and no one who benefits by 
 the soldier's action will care to censure it, so long as 
 war remains a possible contingency even for a country 
 whose government always acts with justice and modera- 
 tion towards others. But we are discussing now not 
 what is but what ought to be, not the second best, 
 but the best. When the Church waxed worldly and
 
 560 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 wealthy and waned in virtue it made a compromise 
 that a Christian may be a soldier in a just war. 
 But can anything justify the shedding of innocent blood ? 
 Truelove. No, I think not. Yet following the line 
 of thought indicated by Green, 1 should be disposed 
 to conclude that but a small fraction of the blame 
 and responsibility for the shedding of innocent blood 
 in war is to be visited on the contending armies, 
 even though one of them clearly represents aggression. 
 When Green defined war as " destruction of human 
 life inflicted on sufferers intentionally by voluntary 
 human agency," he was not unwilling to transfer the 
 main responsibility from the soldiers to those who set 
 armies in motion, though he always insisted that every 
 war involves wrong-doing and that you do not get 
 rid of responsibility or criminality by shifting it. The 
 persons, whether journalists, or statesmen, or generals, 
 or kings, or governors, or diplomatists, who by word 
 or act seek to bring about war are guilty of a crime 
 similar in kind, and far more ruinous in its con- 
 sequences than that of a man who induces some one 
 to commit a private murder. It is " one of those 
 obvious truths," wrote Green, " out of which we 
 may allow ourselves to be sophisticated " that " the 
 destruction of life in war is always wrong-doing, 
 whoever the wrong-doer." The language we hear 
 from the pulpit about war being a punishment for 
 the sins of nations is perfectly true, he adds, but the 
 inference drawn therefrom, that those who make war 
 are acting under a sort of moral and religious duty, 
 is completely false. The preacher who thus blas- 
 phemes and wickedly perverts religion in order to 
 encourage the worst instincts of his hearers ought
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 561 
 
 to have gone on to remind them that this particular 
 punishment for sin is itself a further sin. Thus, to 
 take a familiar case, the Boer War may be regarded 
 as a punishment for the Jameson Raid, and the 
 importation of enslaved and degraded Chinamen may 
 be regarded as a punishment for the Boer War. But 
 it does not follow that those who concerted and 
 carried out the second crime and the third were 
 innocent, while only the authors and abettors of the 
 first were guilty. In the history of private crimes we 
 often find that one offence leads up to another. But 
 we do not make excuses for one criminal because 
 we regard his act as the judgment of God upon 
 some antecedent sin. Let us be equally careful 
 not to remove war from the first place which it 
 occupies in the category of crimes, on the ground 
 that it is one of the scourges with which God afflicts 
 and chastens mankind for their good. 
 
 Case. There is no religious idea that has done 
 so much to corrupt morality as the idea of God as 
 universal agent; for what could be more natural 
 than that simple folk should be led to think that 
 God permits and sanctions war ? Hence, by a natural 
 transition, preachers who love war begin to extol it 
 as a purifying and strengthening agency ; it is said 
 to nourish virtues and to brace up the energies of 
 a nation. Therefore, as I said before, it is better 
 not to rely upon authority for would not most people 
 now-a-days prefer John Wesley or a living Bishop 
 to a Christian Father or John Wycliffe. Our founda- 
 tion stone is not a sermon or even a text ; it is simply 
 the right of every man, woman, and child to live, a 
 right recognised by every civilised society. 
 
 2N
 
 562 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Truelove. My philosophy also admits and even 
 postulates that right. The question is, how far does 
 it carry us ? 
 
 Case. Generally speaking, the only exception that 
 the most civilised legal systems make to this right 
 is where an individual deliberately violates it by 
 murdering another. Then, as a rule, though not in 
 all countries, he is held to have forfeited his own 
 right to live and is put to death by public authority, 
 partly as a punishment satisfying the natural sense 
 of justice, and appeasing the general indignation of 
 the community, partly as a deterrent to prevent others 
 from committing the same dreadful crime. If the 
 sense of national responsibility and the conscience of 
 governments were as fully developed, as sensitive 
 to an international opinion, as amenable to inter- 
 national law, as the individual is to the opinion of 
 his fellows and to the law of his own society, then 
 the deliberate inception of a warlike policy would 
 excite the same horror and involve punishments as 
 severe as an attempt to commit murder. But I 
 speak as a natural lawyer, a poor Cambridge disciple 
 of Selden. What says the Oxford Idealist ? 
 
 Truelove. There are Idealists and Idealists even in 
 Oxford. The ordinary Hegelian, of course, cannot 
 draw any harsh distinction between right and wrong. 
 Hegel was a bureaucrat. The Staat to him is every- 
 thing. War is a beneficent incident in the life of a 
 State, an outlet for its pent-up irritable activity. If 
 the State requires this outlet it is enough for Hegel. 
 The individual member has no right to live unless 
 it is for the good and convenience of his Staat that 
 he should live. But Green is an English idealist.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 563 
 
 He admits that the necessity of the State may over- 
 ride the rights of the individual ; but " the tyrant's 
 plea " must be very fully made out if it is to lead 
 to the slaughter of innocent men. For instance, 
 dynastic ambitions, religious feuds, national hatreds, 
 imperial vanities, and commercial jealousies, the most 
 fruitful sources of war in the last four centuries, far 
 from being grounds for overruling the individual's 
 right to live, are in themselves odious or foolish 
 passions. When war is the outcome innumerable 
 wrongs are inflicted upon innocent individuals as the 
 result of the wrongful policy of rulers and States. It 
 is absurd, in such cases, to talk of the right c f the 
 State to overrule the individual's right to live. Let 
 me read a few sentences from Green about modern 
 wars : 
 
 " The delusion has been practically dominant that the gain of 
 one nation must mean the loss of another ; hence national jealousies 
 in regard to colonial extension, hostile tariffs, and the effort of 
 each nation to exclude others from its markets. The explosion 
 of this idea in the region of political economy has had little 
 effect in weakening its hold on men's minds. The people of one 
 nation still hear with jealousy of another nation's advance in 
 commerce, as if it meant some decay of their own. ... A hundred 
 and fifty years ago national vanity could scarcely be said to be an 
 influence in politics. . . . Now (under the name of patriotism) 
 it has become a more serious disturber of peace than dynastic 
 ambition. Where the latter is dangerous it is because it has national 
 vanity to work upon." 
 
 Browne. But what of a just war, such as the Dutch 
 revolt against Spain or the war of the English Parlia- 
 ment against Charles, or of the French people against 
 the Bourbons, of the Italians against the House of 
 Austria. In all these cases the party or nation which 
 was, on the whole, in the right might have averted
 
 564 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 the infliction of death and ruin upon thousands of 
 innocent families by submitting to tyranny. Can 
 the philosopher who desires human progress wish 
 that they had preferred submission to war. 
 
 Truelove. There have been, I suppose, a few, a very 
 few wars, the whole responsibility for which rests upon 
 one party. Then the other party is innocent from the 
 great transgression, and indeed is to be admired for 
 prizing liberty above life. 
 
 Arbiter. But war has seldom proved itself the high 
 road to political freedom. It is often only a short cut 
 to military despotism. 
 
 Case. Inter arma silent leges. Post helium evanescit 
 libertas. So Cromwell and Napoleon sharply taught 
 the two great liberal democracies of Europe. 
 
 Browne. But great conquerors do great services to 
 mankind. Conquest is often a civilising agency. 
 Caesar was the civiliser as well as the conqueror of 
 Gaul. Napoleon was a liberator as well as an 
 oppressor. And Cromwell was the Great Protector. 
 
 Meyer. And Bismarck made Germany independent, 
 united, and powerful. 
 
 Arbiter. There are degrees of wrong-doing even 
 in unjust war. But a conquest, I think, always leaves 
 a balance of evil. 
 
 Browne. The balance is heavier far in the case of 
 Philip of Macedon or Tamerlane, than of Caesar, or 
 Charlemagne, or Clive. 
 
 Arbiter. Certainly, and the smaller the balance of 
 evil the less is the blame. But wrong-doing cannot 
 be justified even when its consequences seem to show 
 an ultimate balance of good. 
 
 Seymour. A State must protect its own interests, and
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 565 
 
 it is often necessary in self defence to strike the first 
 blow. 
 
 Arbiter. The second half of your proposition sounds 
 very questionable. I should like some instances. The 
 advantage of the first blow generally involves sharp 
 practice, if not a flagrant violation of law. That is 
 not the way for a country to gain influence and 
 reputation. 
 
 Meyer. But security is more important than reputa- 
 tion. And a great State must show the flag and 
 display its strength. Again, if armies and fleets were 
 never exercised the nation would become soft and 
 effeminate. Patriotism would disappear. 
 
 Truelove. You speak as if the desire to show more 
 military strength than other nations is the best or the 
 only form of patriotism. Surely your State is a wrong- 
 doer if it can only protect its interests and inspire its 
 citizens with enthusiasm by inflicting injury on man- 
 kind or showing its power to do so. 
 
 Arbiter. In reality war is generally the last des- 
 perate remedy of a discredited King or Government. 
 Napoleon the Third's war with Mexico, Disraeli's war 
 with Afghanistan, are cases in point. The better a 
 State fulfils her internal functions the less occasion will 
 there be for armaments and wars. 
 
 Truelove. Let me quote T. H. Green again : " Till 
 all the methods have been exhausted by which nature 
 can be brought into the service of man, till society is 
 so organised that everyone's capacities have free scope 
 for their development, there is no need to resort to 
 war for a field in which patriotism may display itself." 
 
 Case. Bravo Green ! But how do you reconcile 
 that with religion ?
 
 566 THE ARBITER IN COUNCIL 
 
 Truelove. Well, Green and 1 say that in the divine 
 scheme of the world war may be an element in the 
 process through which we approximate to final good ; 
 and indeed this must be so if we conceive of God as a 
 moral agent ; but that does not alter the blessing upon 
 peace-makers or the curse upon war makers. Thus we 
 come to your conclusion or rather to the corollary of 
 your first principle. War is always wrong because it 
 always involves the destruction of life. But both 
 parties are not necessarily or equally in the wrong, 
 nor are the persons who actually do the killing 
 principally to blame. Whether a soldier can be 
 exonerated in the same way as a hangman is a hard 
 question upon which the doctors of religion and 
 morality may well agree to differ. Military patriotism 
 is a survival. It is becoming obsolete like war. The 
 time is coming when no one will be called upon either 
 to kill or to be killed for his country. 
 
 Arbiter. Well said : well said. The patriot may 
 surely be allowed to live for his country and work 
 for it. Nations will rejoice in the prosperity of their 
 neighbours. They will progress, as our municipalities 
 progress, by peaceful rivalry and energetic emulation. 
 Remove from civilised States such occasions of conflict 
 as arise from the error and illusions of privileged 
 classes, or from the existence of oppressed nationalities, 
 or from the bitterness of religious antagonism, or from 
 national vanity (now a worse mischief-maker than 
 dynastic ambition) and you have abolished war. 
 
 Clarke. I agree ; but I should have more hope of 
 a speedy improvement in international relations if you 
 could prescribe a good medicine for national vanity and 
 other odious emotions, such as the widely diffused
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 567 
 
 desire for excitement, that urges city populations to 
 their ruin. 
 
 Arbiter. Spend the money you waste on armaments 
 in destroying slums and gin-palaces ; create healthy 
 places of amusement counter attractions to vice ; take 
 the country into the town and the townsfolk into the 
 country. In other words, let nations so govern them- 
 selves that all their citizens shall have free scope for 
 development. Then there will be plenty to do at 
 home without going to war abroad. Then it will be a 
 sweet and glorious thing to live for one's country. 
 Living patriotism will be so busy that dying patriotism, 
 which is after all only work for the unemployed, will 
 not be called for. 
 
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