As I mentioned, I've been reading Bernhardi's Germany and the Next War. It's filled with all manner of brilliant arguments. For example, not only is war great fun and evidence of non-decadentness but it's morally right because of the laws of nature. Indeed, the only way to tell if one nation has the right to take over the territory and, as by the way, markets and natural resources, he really does say that, is to fight to the death. The winner has the right to take all the loser's stuff. Call it the Donald Trump theory of international a relations.
As one of the institutions/attempts to stop so necessary and great an event as a war between the great powers from breaking out, Bernhardi, like TR and for the same reasons, finds President Taft's attempt to set up some kind of an international arbitration council to resolve any and all conflicts between nations beneath contempt and slander on the greatness of humanity as mass murderer. As it turns out, August 4th was the hundredth year of the anniversary of the signing of these treaties between Britain, France, and the US. What always surprises me when this sort of thing comes up, is how easy it is to forget not only Norman Angell and Ivan Bloch but also the whole peace movement and its successes and failures.
But the thing that is most forgotten is the extent to which, in the USA and elsewhere, the peace movement was populated by businessmen and supported by the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotarians. The business men were the pantywaists Bernhardi warned against. Odd, that.
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