PEACE AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL REFORM. 227 



farmer's house, every village upon the road had been burned to the 

 ground." The histories of all the wars ever fought are only varia- 

 tions 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 conse- 

 quences. 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 com- 

 manded; taxes must be levied and collected for their support; all 

 needful political machinery must be created to facilitate both. Only 

 one man, like Caesar, 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 w^hich 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 be- 

 comes 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 mediaeval disorder. 

 " Royalty," says Guizot, reaching out feebly after the law that Mr. 

 Spencer alone has firmly grasped, " is admirably adapted to epochs 



