r two and a
half centuries. When the ancient Germans swept through Spain (as
Procopius, who was an eye-witness, tells) they slew every human being
they met, including women and children, until millions had perished. The
laws of war, though not always observed, are constantly growing more
humane, and Sutherland estimates that warfare is now less than
one-hundredth part as destructive as it was in the early Middle Ages.

[222] This inevitable extension of the sphere of law from the settlement
of disputes between individuals to disputes between individual states
has been pointed out before, and is fairly obvious. Thus
Mougins-Roquefort, a French lawyer, in his book _De la Solution
Juridique des Conflits Internationaux_ (1889), observes that in the
days of the Roman Empire, when there was only one civilized state, any
system of international relationships was impossible, but that as soon
as we have a number of states forming units of international society
there at once arises the necessity for a system of international
relationships, just as some system of social order is necessary to
regulate the relations of any community of individuals.

[223] In England, a small and compact country, this process was completed
at a comparatively early date. In France it was not until the days of
Louis XV (in 1756) that the "last feudal brigand," as Taine calls the
Marquis de Pleumartin in Poitou, was captured and beheaded.

[224] France, notwithstanding her military aptitude, has always taken the
pioneering part in the pacific movement of civilization. Even at the
beginning of the fourteenth century France produced an advocate of
international arbitration, Pierre Dubois (Petrus de Bosco), the Norman
lawyer, a pupil of Thomas Aquinas. In the seventeenth century Emeric
Cruce proposed, for the first time, to admit all peoples, without
distinction of colour or religion, to be represented at some central
city where every state would have its perpetual ambassador, these
representatives forming an assembly to adjudicate on international
differences (Dubois and Cruce have lately been studied by Prof.
Vesnitch, _Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique_, January, 1911). The history
of the various peace projects generally has been summarily related by
Lagorgette in _Le Role de la Guerre_, 1906, Part IV, chap. VI.

[225] The same points had previously been brought forward by others,
although not so vigorously enforced. Thus the well-known Belgian
economis