Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/178

 no morals between states. If in times of peace nations refrained from murdering the citizens of other nations, from seizing their property, that was because they feared the disagreeable consequences involved in these acts. It was, again, like the state of primitive society before men made laws and organized a police force. When one primitive man respected his neighbor’s property, it was because he did not care to get into a fight. The process was too disagreeable; it was not worth while. But when his desire grew greater than his fears or when his blood was heated, he took or killed with at best only a vague sense of moral wrong.

But finally, when the law within nations became so perfectly established that murder, theft and arson grew uncommon, sporadic, it was as though the reservoir of morals filled up and began to flow over the dams dividing nations. Diplomats and others who represented sovereign states went on lying, deceiving, committing daily in peace or war acts which, performed by one citizen of a state against another, would have been punished by ostracism, jail or the gallows. And they justified themselves to themselves and their fellow-citizens because it was done for the flag, the Patrie, the Fatherland. The cause sweetened any method, But public opinion concerning some of these methods grew so strong as to force these gentlemen at least to hypocrisy. Since the state knows no morals in its relation with other states, a treaty used to be a sort of temporary