Essays in war-time / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Essays in war-time / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    б4 ESSAYS IN WAR-TIME international organisation and bonds of the workers' associations, would interpose a serious menace to the plans of war-makers. These influences were real and important. But, as we know, when the decisive moment came, the diplomatists and the militarists were found to be at the helm, to steer the ship of State in each country concerned, and those on board had no voice in deter¬ mining the course. In England only can there be said to have been any show of consulting Parliament, but at that moment the situation had already so far developed that there was little left but to accept it. The Great War of to-day has shown that such barriers against war as we at present possess may crumble away in a moment at the shock of the war-making machine. We are to-day forced to undertake a more searching inquiry into the forces which, in civilisation, operate against war. I wish to call attention here to one such influence of fundamental character, which has not been unrecognised, but possesses an importance we are often apt to overlook. A French gentleman, well acquainted with the constitution of his country, wrote Thicknesse in 1776,^ told me above eight years since that France increased so rapidly in peace that they must necessarily have a war every twelve or fourteen years to carry ofí the refuse of the people. Recently a well-known German Socialist, Dr. Eduard David, member of the Reichstag and a student of the population question, setting forth the same ^ Ralph Thicknesse, Л Year's Journey Through France and Spain, 1777, p. 298.