It is, in the first place, a national institution destined for attack abroad or for the protection against a danger coming from abroad, in short, designed for international complications or, to use a military catch-phrase, against the foreign enemy.
That function has in no way been done away with by more recent developments. For capitalism war is indeed, in Moltke's phrase, "a part of God's world order."[1] It is true that there exists in Europe itself at least a tendency to eliminate certain causes of war, and the probability of a war originating in Europe itself decreases more and more, in spite of Alsace-Lorraine, the anxiety about the trio, Clémenceau, Pichon, Picquart, in
- ↑ In his well-known letter to Bluntschli (December, 1880) we read: "Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one, and war is a part of God's world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man, courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice at the risk of life. Without war the world would sink into materialism." A few months earlier Moltke had written: "Every war is a national misfortune" (Collected Works, V, p. 193 and p. 200), and in 1841 he even wrote in an article that appeared in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung: "We confess openly to be in favor of the much derided idea of a general European peace."
resting on a basis different from that of universal military service are, for instance, the mercenary armies. In the Italian cities of the XVth century militias were also known (Burckhardt, p. 327).
