Leo Tolstoy
Translated by
Dmitry Fadeyev
Apart from all the calamities and horrors of war, one of its greatest evils is its corruption of people’s minds. An army exists and costs money to maintain, and this needs to be explained. But there is no rational explanation for it, so reason itself is corrupted.
Here is what the character of Micromegas from Voltaire’s tale, a being from another planet, said to humans:
“O you, rational atoms, in which the Eternal Being has expressed his art and his power, no doubt you are experiencing pure joys on your earthly globe for, being made up of so little matter and being so developed spiritually, you must spend your time in love and contemplation, since that is what the true life of spiritual beings consists in.”
In response to this speech all the philosophers shook their heads and one of them, the most sincere of them, said that, excepting a small number of respected figures, the rest of the population consists of the insane, the wicked and the unhappy.
“There is too much materiality in us, if evil is caused by materiality, and too much spirituality, if evil is caused by spirituality,” he said. “Thus, for example, at the present moment thousands of madmen in hats are killing a thousand other animals in turbans, or are being killed by them, and this is how it is since time immemorial everywhere on earth.”
“So what are the little animals fighting over?”
“Over some little piece of dirt the size of your heel,” answered the philosopher, “and not a single one of those who are slaughtering each other has anything to do with that piece of dirt. Their only question is whether this little piece will belong to the one whom they call sultan, or another whom they call caesar, even though neither the former or the latter had ever seen this piece of earth. Out of all those animals who are slaughtering each other, almost no one has seen the animal for whose sake they are being slaughtered.”
“Unhappy ones,” cried the citizen of the planet Sirius. “Is it possible to imagine such senseless insanity? Really, I want to take three steps and squash the whole anthill of these ridiculous murderers.”
“Don’t bother,” they replied. “They will take care of this themselves. And anyhow, it is not they who should be punished, but the barbarians who, sitting in their palaces, are prescribing murders and ordering people to solemnly thank God for it.”
— Voltaire
Can there be anything more absurd than the fact that a person has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his lord has a quarrel with mine, even though I did not quarrel with him?
— Pascal
A time will come when nations will understand the insanity of war.
Four centuries ago, the citizens of Pisa and Lucca were divided among themselves by such a fierce hatred that it seemed it would last forever and that even the most insignificant porter from Pisa considered it a shameful betrayal to make use of anything from even a first class citizen of Lucca. And what remains now of this hatred? What will remain of the Prussian’s absurd hatred of the French? It is safe to say that these feelings will seem to our descendants like the hatred of the Athenians for the Spartans, or the citizens of Pisa for the citizens of Lucca. People will realize that they have much more important things to do than to attack one another; that their common enemies are poverty, ignorance and disease; and that their efforts should be focused against these terrible calamities, and not against their companions in misfortune.
— Charles Richet
The various states of Europe have accumulated a debt of 130 billion, of which around 110 was made in the course of one century. The whole of this colossal debt has been made exclusively for the expenses of war. In peacetime, European states maintain a standing army of over 4 million men, and can grow this number up to 19 million in wartime. Two thirds of their budgets are consumed by interest on the debt and maintenance of their armies and navies.
— Molinari
If a traveller to some remote island were to see people’s houses surrounded by loaded cannons, with sentries patrolling around these houses day and night, he could not help but think that bandits were living on that island. But is it not the same thing with European states?
Either religion has very little influence on people, or we are very far away from true religion!
— Lichtenberg
Do not try to justify or deny war and the existence of the military class: every application of rational arguments to a clearly bad case can only corrupt the mind and the heart.