Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/241

Rh farmer's house, every village upon the road had been burned to the ground." The histories of all the wars ever fought are only variations of the same hideous theme. However much they may be studied, they can not be forced to yield a profounder secret.

Out of the devotion of all the resources of society to the sole object of destruction spring momentous and far-reaching consequences. One of the most important and conspicuous is the creation of a powerful central authority to wield the resources of society, and the pursuit of a policy at home and abroad that shall insure the most effective use of those resources. Never was a war fought that did not bring into existence a strong executive, or make still stronger the executive already in existence. Troops must be raised and commanded; taxes must be levied and collected for their support; all needful political machinery must be created to facilitate both. Only one man, like Cæsar, Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, or a very small body of men like the Spartan ephors or the Venetian Council of Ten, aided by obedient subordinates, can do such work. It was in unconscious recognition of this fact that the liberty-loving Dutch, when hard beset by the forces of Spanish bigotry and despotism, turned instinctively to the Prince of Orange. Had he accepted and exercised the authority that they urged upon him, he would have been as autocratic as Philip II. In obedience to the same pitiless law of militant activity, the opponents of the despotism of Charles I fell under the despotism of Oliver Cromwell. That it has not ceased to operate in times much more recent, there is ample proof in the records of the civil war. By the stress of that conflict, Abraham Lincoln was forced to exercise an authority in shocking disregard of the principles of American freedom. Even the violence of the great strikes in the last few years has led to a strengthening of the hands of the executive that has evoked the severest criticism.

The law that despotism, like the destruction of life and property, is an invariable product of war, is as immutable as the law of gravitation or the persistence of force. It is as potent and universal in the interpretation of the phenomena to which it applies as either in the interpretation of the phenomena to which they apply. True of every age, of every country, of every people, it throws a light upon constitutional history that shines from no other quarter. Flooded by its powerful rays, the cause of the destruction of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Roman Empire becomes a commonplace. The incessant wars of the Roman people could have produced no other effect. It is obvious, too, that feudal despotism was only the natural product of mediæval disorder. "Royalty," says Guizot, reaching out feebly after the law that Mr. Spencer alone has firmly grasped, "is admirably adapted to epochs