Now only backward governments call upon Christ. Progressive nations cut each others' throats in the name of pacifism. Wilson drags America into the war in the name of the League of Nations, and perpetual peace. Kerensky and Tseretelli call for an offensive for the sake of an early peace. Our epoch lacks the indignant satire of a Juvenal.
Pacifism is of the same historical lineage as democracy.
The bourgeoisie made a great historical attempt to order all human relations in accordance with reason, to supplant blind and dumb tradition by the institutions of critical thought. Bourgeois democracy demanded legal equality for free competition, and for parliamentarism as the means of governing public affairs. It sought also to regulate national relations in the same manner. So it began to advise the people in poetry, in philosophy, in ethics, and in business methods, that it is far more useful for them to introduce perpetual peace. These are the logical arguments for pacifism.