Page:The History of The Great European War Vol 1.pdf/70

 ase of the stronger nation taking advantage of the weaker, of might resolving itself into right? The stronger State constructs and develops the railways, public works, and natural resources of the weaker State, peoples that State's territories with its commercial and other agents and eventually with its police and even its soldiers, lends money to the smaller State and to its traders, takes more than adequate security and waits and perhaps works for default, and then, like the most unscrupulous of moneylenders, seizes and occupies the territories of the weaker State as the result of its "peaceful penetrating" operations.

But war stands on a different footing altogether. War is the supreme arbitrator in the conflict of supreme States. No State that has any national spirit worth having can admit for one moment that any other State or combination of States, however neutral, can have the right to limit its sovereignty. There is but one power higher than the State, that is the Almighty, and His tribunal on earth in the Court of Nature, and its procedure is the strife of armed force. From the point of view of the miseries and hardships attendant upon warfare, bloodshed among men, economic and political ruin among States and peoples, it may be conceded that war may be unreasonable, but its very unreason is its supreme justification. The greatest civilisations have attained their heights without ever a dependence upon reasonable action or progress. The greatest men, leaders in politics, science, art, and all great human movements, have found their source of inspiration and success in some super-rational ideal, which they have been unable themselves clearly to explain, but which has forced them on to a strenuous and unhesitating struggle to realise it. Of all things that have contributed to the attainment of the greatest heights of state of man, reason is the one thing which is most remarked by its absence.

Notice, urge the Pan-Germanists, how war has persisted in spite of what seems its unreason. Notwithstanding all the efforts of Pacifists, war and its spirit is to-day as powerful and as widely extended throughout society as it ever has been. It is an expression of the highest power of heroism. Death to the individual comes as nothing to him and others, so ruin to a State comes as nothing to it and to others. Death and ruin of individual and State is but the means by which the supreme life rises and has its being above and beyond the present life. This final heroism, the power to rise superior to death itself, is the greatest possession possible for State or man. Accordingly, State and man should, and do in fact, value it far above industry, social comfort, and even religion.