The immediate causes of these wars can of course be tracedbut to believersin the permanent return of peace they were a bitter deceptionEven morealarming than the return of war was the intrusion of war into peaceAfterthe defeat of Jenathe limitation of their army which the Emperor Napoleonforced upon the Prussians produced a system of which the effect was to teachthe Western world a new method of military organizationThe whole populationof a country was passed through the ranks of armiesAs in the most ancientdaysthe young men primarily foughtafter them came the next above themin ageafter these their eldersall of them knewand now knowthe useof armsand nobody escapes the necessity for fighting in particular contingencies,except either the very old or the very youngThe figures are exceedinglyastonishingWhen Russia was rising to the height of military reputationwhich she gained in 181and 1813she had always a difficulty in bringingas many as 100,00men into the fieldnow she is said to contain six millionsof armed menThe most energetic effort which was ever made by France toarm her population was in 1813after the retreat from Moscow and beforeNapoleon's surprising campaigns within the limits of France herself werecommencedThe number of men which Napoleon with all his lieutenants ledto combat from FranceItalyand the Confederation of the Rhine (to whichwere added the disengaged garrisons of French soldierswas almost exactlyequal to the number of men which France at this moment regards as that ofher army when on a strictly peace footing.
'War,says Grotiusin a remarkable passage in which he shows his dissentfrom the opinions of the preceding age'war is not an art.Nowadays notonly is it an art requiring a long apprenticeship and equipped with a multitudeof precise rulesbut besides this it is the mother of new artsThe wholescience and art of explosiveswhich has occupied the inventive genius ofcivilised lands for about twenty yearsis of warlike originand an apparentlymost peaceful arthydraulic engineeringis said to owe its remarkable moderndevelopment to the study of the means of lifting and working great navalgunsGuns of long range were first tried in the field during the Crimeanwarwhen they were on the whole pronounced to be a costly failureBut wehave some very remarkable evidence at this moment of what they have cometosupplied partly by a Committee of the House of Commons appointed to considerthe army estimatesand partly by the report of a Royal Commission appointedto investigate the subject of naval patternsor in other wordsthe modein which new inventions are dealt with by the civil and military officersof our governmentThe Director-General of Artillery stated to the ParliamentaryCommittee that the increase in army estimates which was due to the advanceof military sciencebegan in 1882-83when breech-loading guns were finallyadoptedThe cost of the steel gun was a third more than that of the oldwrought-iron tubebut this cost increased till in the case of the 100-tongun it exceeded 19,00l.while the cost of the projectilewhich once wasrather over l.now reaches at least 15lAll the treasure and all thelabour and all the skill expended nowadays on ships and fortifications appearto end in thisEach of the most modern guns is likely to cost 20,00l.
It fires a charge of powder and shot weighing about a ton and a quarter.
Each charge costs 15lIt thus happens that one of the large guns usedin the ships in which the great naval victories of England were won at theend of the last century and the beginning of the present did not cost muchmore than a few charges of powder and shot fired off in a gun of the presentdayNor is this all the storyAfter a gun of the present day has fired15shots it is so damaged by the labour and strain it has undergone thatit must be repairedThis short effective existence is the result of theextreme delicacy with which it has been endowed by modern artI repeat,thenmy question when the forces at work are so enormoushow shall theybe controlleddiminishedor reduced by a mere literary agency?
Some consolation may be found in a position which it is all the more necessaryto insist upon because it is not quite in harmony with the assumptions madeby some famous writerspresently to be discussedwho are more associatedthan any others with the origin of International LawMost of them thoughtthat mankind had started from a condition of innocent peaceIt was man'sdepravity which had interrupted this state and had produced virtually universaland unceasing warThere can be no question that this proposition reversesthe truthIt is not peace which was natural and primitive and oldbut ratherwarWar appears to be as old as mankindbut peace is a modern invention.
Our intelligence is only just beginning to enable us to penetrate the cloudswhich rest on the farther verge of historybut what does seem clear to trainedobservation is the universal belligerency of primitive mankindNot onlyis war to be seen everywherebut it is war more atrocious than wewithour ideascan easily conceive.
