XI. History and War
War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with
civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only
268 have seen no war. We have acknowledged war as at present the
ultimate form of competition and natural selection in the human species.
“Polemos pater panton,” said Heracleitus; war, or competition, is the father
of all things, the potent source of ideas, inventions, institutions, and states.
Peace is an unstable equilibrmm, which can be preserved only by
acknowledged supremacy or equal power.
The causes of war are the same as the causes of competition among
individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and pride; the desire for food, land,
materials, fuels, mastery. The state has our instincts without our restraints.
The individual submits to restraints laid upon him by morals and laws, and
agrees to replace combat with conference, because the state guarantees him
basic protection in his life, property, and legal rights. The state itself
acknowledges no substantial restraints, either because it is strong enough to
defy any interference with its will or because there is no superstate to offer
it basic protection, and no international law or moral code wielding
effective force.
In the individual, pride gives added vigor in the competitions of life; in
the state, nationalism gives added force in diplomacy and war. When the
states of Europe freed themselves from papal overlordship and protection,
each state encouraged nationalism as a supplement to its army and navy. If
it foresaw conflict with any particular country it fomented, in its people,
hatred of that country, and formulated catchwords to bring that hatred to a
lethal point; meanwhile it stressed its love of peace.
This conscription of the soul to international phobia occurred only in the
most elemental conflicts, and was seldom resorted to in Europe between the
Religious Wars of the sixteenth century and the Wars of the French
Revolution. During that interval the peoples of conflicting states were
