Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/844

762 constitutions in the community, and, having passed, leaves the average of constitutional vigor somewhat higher than before. If we do not laud war, still less should we laud the dispositions that lead to war. Yet this is precisely the fatal error into which many fall: because some of the ulterior effects of war have in certain cases been beneficial, they hold themselves justified in cultivating and encouraging the war spirit. As well might we deliberately heap up garbage for the purpose of breeding a second epidemic because a preceding one had, from a sanitary point of view, produced some good results. The lesson to be learned from epidemics is how to avoid them, not how to bring them on; and, so with war, the question should ever be how to prevent it for the future, how to destroy the nidus in which its seeds germinate.

As we have already hinted, the eloquent De Quincey is far, in our opinion, from having proved his contention that war ought to exist, even if we had power to abolish it. He is not the only writer, however, who puts forward this view. "It is a question," says M. Lavisse, in the work to which we have already referred, "whether universal peace is a desirable object, whether it would not diminish the original energy of national genius, whether the best way to serve humanity, would be to create human banality, whether new virtues would arise to replace the virtues of war. It is also a question whether universal and perpetual peace is not radically and naturally impossible." The doubts expressed by so competent a writer, and one commanding so wide a survey of the historical field, are certainly deserving of all consideration. What strikes us, however, at the first glance is, that plausible as these generalities may be, they have nothing whatever to do in determining the course of events, or in guiding the policy of a single state. Even could it be proved, much more conclusively than has ever been done yet, that war, with all its drawbacks, was favorable to the progress of the world, no nation would on that account burden itself with a war budget. The sole reason why nations tax themselves for the maintenance of armaments is because they consider it necessary to their safety to do so. There is not a power in Europe to-day that would not gladly disband its armies and dismantle its fleets if it were fully persuaded that no prudential reasons existed for keeping them in a condition of efficiency. This, it seems to us, is the broad fact to look at: war may be a school of virtue and may have a thousand other beautiful aspects, but it is not for the promotion of virtue, or the alimentation of poetry and romance, or for any general philanthropic purpose, that the nations of the world arm themselves to the teeth. Their views are of, a more practical kind. They dread the injustice and greed of one another; each would feel its existence imperiled if it did not provide in ample measure to resist foreign aggression. If war