762 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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, pro- 

 duced 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 deter- 

 mining 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 favor- 

 able 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 



