Upon the union of the male germ cell with the female egg cell, a new cell is created which almost immediately splits into two parts. One of these grows rapidly, creating the human body of the individual with all its organs, and dies only with the individual.
The territorial state is such an ancient form of society – here in Europe it dates back thousands of years – that it is now protected by the sanctity of age and the glory of tradition. A strong religious feeling mingles with the respect and the devotion to the fatherland.
Only recently, during the nineteenth century, and then only in Europe, do we meet forms of the state which have been created by a deliberate national feeling.
A pacifist will often – at least nowadays – be an internationalist and vice versa. But history shows us that a pacifist need not think internationally.
The simultaneous reactions elicited all over the world by the reading of newspaper dispatches about the same events create, as it were, a common mental pulse beat for the whole of civilized mankind.
It is characteristic that this should take place just when it is becoming more and more clear to all who think about the matter, that technically and economically we have left the territorial state behind us.
History shows us that other highly developed forms of civilization have collapsed. Who knows whether the same fate does not await our own?
Moreover, if the territorial state is to continue as the last word in the development of society, then war is inevitable.
The growth of means of transport has created a world market and an opportunity for division of labor embracing all the developed and most of the undeveloped states.
Propaganda must appeal to mankind’s better judgment and to the necessary belief in a better future. For this belief, the valley of the shadow of death is but a war station on the road to the blessed summit.
For the state by its nature claims sovereignty, the right to an unlimited development of power, determined only by self-interest. It is by nature anarchistic.
The sovereign state has in our times become a lethal danger to human civilization because technical developments enable it to employ an infinite number and variety of means of destruction.
The free trade movement in the middle of the last century represents the first conscious recognition of these new circumstances and of the necessity to adapt to them.
Hand in hand with nationalist economic isolationism, militarism struggles to maintain the sovereign state against the forward march of internationalism.