250 Force and the Social Structure 



the sake of the community would be too obviously 

 a contradiction in terms. Thus, von Treitschke, 

 who has been the chief exponent in Germany of 

 Bodin's doctrine of the supreme authority of the 

 State, says : 



War is elevating, because the individual disappears 

 before the great conception of the State. . . . The 

 highest moral duty of the State is to increase its 

 power. The individual must sacrifice himself for the 

 higher community of which he is a member; but the 

 State is itself the highest conception in the wider 

 community of man, and therefore the duty of self- 

 annihilation does not enter into the case. The 

 Christian duty of sacrifice for something higher does 

 not exist for the State, for there is nothing higher than 

 it in the world's history; consequently it cannot 

 sacrifice itself to something higher. When a State 

 sees its downfall staring it in the face, we applaud 

 if it succumbs sword in hand. A sacrifice made to 

 an alien nation is not only immoral, but contradicts 

 the idea of self-preservation, which is the highest 

 ideal of a State. ^ 



In England, Spencer Wilkinson, Chichele Pro- 

 fessor of Military History in Oxford University, 

 starts from the same principle to prove that the 

 abandonment of force as between nations is 

 permanently impossible. He writes^: 



. . . The employment of force for the maintenance 

 of rights is the foundation of all civilized hirnian life, 



'Treitschke, Politik, vol. i., §3. 



» Britain at Bay, Constable & Co., London. 



