War Always a Social Disease 107 



to do so. In Germany as elsewhere it was the 

 philosophy of force that prevented unity. "No 

 country had so little militarism in the Middle 

 Ages as England," says Mr. Lacombe.^ Conse- 

 quently it was the first nation to unify, while 

 Germany's unity, on account of the dominance of 

 the philosophy of force, was the slowest of all in 

 forming. When it is realized that national unity 

 merely means that the people inhabiting a country 

 have found another way of adjusting their differ- 

 ences, other than wholesale murder on the field of 

 battle, it is at once apparent that war is always a 

 process of dissociation, never of association. 



The indirect result of war as a process of dis- 

 sociation retards the progress of the human race 

 much more than the direct result in the number of 

 men actually killed and maimed. This is because 

 association is not an addition, but a multiplication 

 of vital power. Ten men working together under 

 a system of division of labour produce, not ten 

 times as much as ten men working alone, but one 

 hundred times as much. In the same way war is 

 not a subtraction of vital power but a division. 



Since even the philosophy of force recognizes 

 that war is a social disease when it occurs within 

 the limits of human society, and since the growth of 

 communication and of interdependence has made 

 the entire human race into a single social organism, 

 all war must now be considered as a social dis- 

 ease. Health is a state which makes for growth, 



' L'histoire consideree comme science, p. 4. 



