usually concur to produce a War, modern times, is often underrated, and, partly, as admitting, more than other causes, of the application of direct remedial processes. It will have been obvious throughout the enquiry, that no single one of these causes ever stands alone. Most usually several causes concur, and Various causes sometimes all these causes, and others in addition, are present at once. Thus, in the case of the Crimean War, the rapid political growth of Russia; the chronic revolutionary condition of the Turkish provinces, inviting the competitive intervention of Russia on the one side, and England and France on the other; the rival political schemes of Russia and England; indifference on all sides to the sufferings and losses to all concerned which War entails; the existence and éclat of fixed military institutions, especially in France and Russia; and the doubts attaching to the legal claims of the Christian subjects of Turkey, were all among the causes of War. To these causes might be added national and religious antipathies, and other still more vague political tendencies, in England and elsewhere, which cannot be usefully analysed here. as in the Crimean War, German War. So, in the case of the Franco-German War, and the Franco- the growth of Prussia and Germany has already been noted as the most direct of the causes. But to this cause must be added the alleged intervention of France, in nominating Hohen zollern as successor to the Spanish Crown, the real, or imputed, political schemes of the Emperor Napoleon, the antipathy existing between the French and German people, the territorial acquisitiveness on both sides, the enormously developed military institutions on both sides, and the alleged ill-treatment, or at least contemptuous treatment, of the French Ambassador at Berlin. Probably the first of these causes was the strongest, namely, the determination of Bismark to secure an united Germany, under the military leadership of Prussia, and to put a final close, if it werc possible, to the scarcely intermittent invasions by France of German territory. It may well be doubted whether the appropriation by the Treaty of Peace of territory so long attached to France will diminish, rather than increase, the probability of recurrent War. War are becoming obsolete European There are some causes of War which, though Some causes of they have figured conspicuously in past times, between are now becoming extinct, at least among States. States enjoying an equal amount of civilisation. Such are Wars of religion; Wars waged in order to extort commercial privileges, Wars waged in defence of colonies, or of the advantages of colonial trade, Wars of dynastic succession, and Wars proceeding from nothing else than chronic international hatred or jealousy, as were many of the Wars between England and France. That some of these causes of War are by no means obsolete when a civilised State has to deal with one less civilised, or at least with a State at once weak and physically remote from the operation of public opinion in Europe, the incessant Wars which England has waged with China, and which she is constantly waging with the Asiatic potentates, whose territories border on her Eastern possessions, are sufficient proofs. But the principle of free trade, the modern policy of colonial independence, the general and steady advance of notions of Religious toleration, and the lessened influence of dynastic families in political, and especially in international, affairs, are quickly bringing to an end some of the most notorious causes of War in the past. CHAPTER III. OF SOME POLITICAL REMEDIES FOR WAR. SECTION I. OF THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF POLITICAL AND of universal IN the invention of remedies for the evils which beset the natural body, it is well known to be a source of fallacious treatment, and consequent disaster, to rely upon any single and definite medicament as always and everywhere No one remedy applicable to a malady, the symptoms and efficacy. causes of which are manifold, and differ widely for almost every individual case. This is equally true in devising remedies for special political evils; and is most conspicuously so when the evil to be grappled with is the product and expression of a vast variety of independent facts, each of which, in itself, is of a most complex kind, and connected with past events by a long chain of historical sequence. War is, eminently, an evil of this nature, and the complexity of the evil is sufficiently manifest from the brief review in the last chapter of some of the principal causes of modern European Wars. But each one of the causes there enumerated would admit of further analysis, the result of which would be to indicate that there is scarcely a human passion, or a folly, or a political error, and still less a political wrong, which has not contributed, in its measure and degree, to swell the great aggregate of causes of which War is the inevitable effect. Hence, when it is purported to invesIs it reasonable tigate remedies for War, it might be held that, in the strict sense of the word remedy, the enterprise would be not merely ambitious, but puerile. It is, then, matter for consideration in what sense of the word remedy, the search for remedies for War can be held to be a reasonable and legitimate object of serious political enquiry. to seek remedies for War? Though it is quite true that the grounds of War, and of its perpetuation, must be sought deep down in the nature of man, and in the general historical evolution of political society, yet it has been endeavoured, in the last chapter, to establish that the consideration of the more general causes of War can, for modern times, and for the special circumstances of the civilised States of Europe and America, be reduced and narrowed to that of a limited number of groups of circumstances, which, in part, predispose States to War with each other, and, in part, directly originate Wars. These groups might, |