one. The
best soldiers of his staff indeed accompanied him, Lannes, the "Roland"
of the battles of the Empire, Murat, Bessieres, Marmont, Lavalette, but
to a resolute government this would but have blackened his desertion of
Kleber and the army of the Pyramids. The adventure appears more
desperate than Caesar's; but speculation, anxiety, even hope, awaited
Napoleon at Paris. Moreau was no Pompey. The sequence of dates is
interesting. On the night of August 22nd, 1799, Bonaparte went on
board the frigate; five weeks later, having just missed Nelson, he
reached Ajaccio; on October 9th he lands at Frejus, on the 16th he is
at Paris, and resumes his residence in rue de la Victoire. Three weeks
later, on November 9th, occurs the incident known to history as 18th
Brumaire.

[6] The Empire of Rome, of Alexander, of Britain, is not even the
antagonist of what is essential in Cosmopolitanism. Rome, Hellas,
Britain possess by God or Fate the power to govern to a _more
excellent_ degree than other States--Imperialism is the realization of
this power. Cosmopolitanism's _laissez-faire_ is anarchism or it is
the betrayal of humanity.

LECTURE V

WHAT IS WAR?

[_Tuesday, June_ 12_th_, 1900]

Assuming then that the imperialistic is the supreme form in the
political development of the national as of the civic State, and that
to the empires of the world belongs the government of the world in the
future, and that in Britain a mode of imperialism which may be
described as democratic displays itself--a mode which in human history
is rarely encountered, and never save at crises and fraught with
consequences memorable to all time--the problem meets us, will this
form of government make for peace or for war, considering peace and war
not as mutual contradictories but as alternatives in the life of a
State? Even a partial solution of this problem requires a
consideration of the question "What is War?"

Sec. 1. THE PLACE OF WAR IN WORLD-HISTORY

The question "What is War?" has been variously answered, according as
the aim of the writer is to illustrate its methods historically, or
from the operations of the wars of the past to deduce precepts for the
tactics or the strategy of the present, or as in the writings of
Aristotle and Grotius, of Montesquieu and Bluntschli, to assign the
limits of its fury, or fix the basis of its ethics, its distinction as
just or unjust. But another aspect of the question concerns us
h