The Ethics of Force (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Ethics of ForceBut the conception of national honor has been derived from the ideas of heroism and patriotism still found under high civilization. How have these come about We say sometimes they have been perverted. On the contrary, they are only too faithful a transmission of those which prevailed under a lower culture. They have not developed to meet the changed conditions of life.Governments do not act upon the highest intelligence of the community, but upon a composite, called public Opinion. Perhaps in a degree they cannot do otherwise, but it is most unfortunate if those in authority have no higher standard, intellectual and moral, than that of the average citizen. However this may be, it is clearly futile to hope for the cessation of war through a realization of its wickedness. Wicked for whom The enemy, of course, always. But if the mass of men can be brought to see its expensiveness, not to a figment called government, but to themselves, to see that national honor does not necessarily require the destruction of persons living under another government, with whom they may differ, and that an economical way of settling these differences is in actual use or perfectly practicable, then war will cease.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.