war one of the greatest consecrations that war has ever
received. And the attitude of Mediaeval Europe towards eternal peace
is the attitude of Judaea, of Hellas, and of Rome.[9] This is
conspicuous in Saint Bernard, the last of the Fathers, and three
centuries later in Pius II, the last of the crusading Pontiffs, the
desire of whose life was to go even in his old age upon a crusade.
This desire uplifts and bears him to his last resting-place in Ancona,
where the old man, in his dying dreams, hears the tramp of legions that
never came, sees upon the Adriatic the sails of galleys that were to
bear the crusaders to Palestine--yet there were neither armies nor
ships, it was but the fever of his dream.

During the Reformation the ideal of Universal Peace is unregarded. The
wars of religion, the world's debate, become the war of creeds. "I am
not come to bring peace among you, but a sword." Luther, for instance,
declares war against the revolted peasants of Germany with all the
ardour and fury with which Innocent III denounced war against the
Albigenses. War in the language and thoughts of Calvin is what it
became to Oliver Cromwell, to the Huguenots, and to the Scottish
Covenanters, to Jean Chevallier and the insurgents of the Cevennes. As
Luther in the sixteenth century represents the religious side of the
Reformation, so Grotius in the seventeenth century represents the
position of the legists of the Reformation. In his work, _De Jure
Belli ac Pacis_, Universal Peace as an object of practical politics is
altogether set aside. War is accepted as existent between nation and
nation, State and State, and Grotius lays down the laws which regulate
it. Similar attempts had been made in the religious councils of
Greece, and when the first great Saracen army was starting upon its
conquests, the first of the Khalifs delivered to that army instructions
which in their humanity have never been surpassed; the utmost
observances of chivalry or modern times are there anticipated. But the
treatise of Grotius is the first elaboration of the subject in the
method of his contemporary, Verulam--the method of the science of the
future.

In the eighteenth century the singular work of the mild and amiable
enthusiast, the Abbe de Saint-Pierre,[10] made a profound impression
upon the thought not only of his own but of succeeding generations.
Kings, princes, philosophers, sat in informal conference debating the
same argument as has rec