Chapter 7 No.7

He was not the first to plan a definite scheme for establishing a perpetual peace. Long ago Emeric Cruce had given to the world a proposal for a universal league, including not only the Christian nations of Europe, but the Turks, Persians, and Tartars, which by means of a court of arbitration sitting at Venice should ensure the settlement of all disputes by peaceful means. [Footnote: Le Nouveau Cynee (Paris, 1623). It has recently been reprinted with an English translation by T. W.

Balch, Philadelphia (1909).] The consequence of universal peace, he said, will be the arrival of "that beautiful century which the ancient theologians promise after there have rolled by six thousand years. For they say that then the world will live happily and in repose. Now it happens that that time has nearly expired, and even if it is not, it depends only on the Princes to give beforehand this happiness to their peoples." Later in the century, others had ventilated similar projects in obscure publications, but the Abbe does not refer to any of his predecessors.

He was not blinded by the superficial brilliancy of the reign of Louis XIV. to the general misery which the ambitious war-policy of that sovran brought both upon France and upon her enemies. His Annales politiques are a useful correction to the Siecle de Louis Quatorze. It was in the course of the great struggle of the Spanish Succession that he turned his attention to war and came to the conclusion that it is an unnecessary evil and even an absurdity. In 1712 he attended the congress at Utrecht in the capacity of secretary to Cardinal de Polignac, one of the French delegates. His experiences there confirmed his optimistic mind in the persuasion that perpetual peace was an aim which might readily be realised; and in the following year he published the memoir which he had been preparing, in two volumes, to which he added a third four years later.

Though he appears not to have known the work of Cruce he did not claim

originality. He sheltered his proposal under an august name, entitling

it Project of Henry the Great to render Peace Perpetual, explained

by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. The reference is to the "great design"

ascribed to Henry IV. by Sully, and aimed at the abasement of the power

of Austria: a federation of the Christian States of Europe arranged

in groups and under a sovran Diet, which would regulate international

affairs and arbitrate in all quarrels. [Footnote: It is described

in Sully's Memoires, Book XXX.] Saint-Pierre, ignoring the fact that

Sully's object was to eliminate a rival power, made it the text for

his own scheme of a perpetual alliance of all the sovrans of Europe

to guarantee to one another the preservation of their states and to

renounce war as a means of settling their differences. He drew up the

terms of such an alliance, and taking the European powers one by

one demonstrated that it was the plain interest of each to sign the

articles. Once the articles were signed the golden age would begin.

[Footnote: For Sully's grand Design compare the interesting article of

Sir Geoffrey Butler in the Edinburgh Review, October 1919.]

It is not to our present purpose to comment on this plan which the

author with his characteristic simplicity seriously pressed upon the

attention of statesmen. It is easy to criticise it in the light of

subsequent history, and to see that, if the impossible had happened and

the experiment had been tried and succeeded, it might have caused more

suffering than all the wars from that day to this. For it was based on a

perpetuation of the political status quo in Europe. It assumed that the

existing political distribution of power was perfectly satisfactory and

conformable to the best interests of all the peoples concerned. It would

have hindered the Partition of Poland, but it would have maintained the

Austrian oppression of Italians. The project also secured to the sovrans

the heritage of their authority and guarded against civil wars. This

assumed that the various existing constitutions were fundamentally just.

The realisation of the scheme would have perpetuated all the evils of

autocratic governments. Its author did not perceive that the radical

evil in France was irresponsible power. It needed the reign of Louis XV.

and the failure of attempts at reform under his successor to bring this

home. The Abbe even thought that an increase of the despotic authority

of the government was desirable, provided this were accompanied by an

increase in the enlightenment and virtue of its ministers.

In 1729 he published an abridgment of his scheme, and here he looks beyond its immediate results to its value for distant posterity. No one, he says, can imagine or foresee the advantages which such an alliance of European states will yield to Europe five hundred years after its establishment. Now we can see the first beginnings, but it is beyond the powers of the human mind to discern its infinite effects in the future. It may produce results more precious than anything hitherto experienced by man. He supports his argument by observing that our primitive ancestors could not foresee the improvements which the course of ages would bring in their rudimentary arrangements for securing social order.