"No government nowadays admits that it maintains an army so as to satisfy it's occasional thirst for conquest. The army is supposed to be for defense, that morality which sanctions self protection is called upon to be it's advocate. This is how all states now confront one another. They presuppose an evil disposition in their neighbor and a benevolent disposition in themselves. This presupposition, however, is a piece of inhumanity as bad as, if not worse than, a war would be. The doctrine of the army as a means of self-defense must be renounced just as completely as the thirst for conquest. And perhaps there will come a great day on which a nation distinguished for wars and victories and for the highest development of military discipline and thinking, and accustomed to making the heaviest sacrifices on behalf of these things, will cry of its own free will: "We shall shatter the sword" - and demolish its entire military machine down to its last foundations. To disarm while being the best armed, out of an elevation of sensibility - that is the means to real peace. Better to perish than to hate and fear, and twofold better to perish than to make oneself hated and feared - this must one day become the supreme maxim of every individual state!"
Is foresight easier to see in hindsight?
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