The Warfare of Humanity With Unreason: Hugo Grotius

II

THE first characteristics which the book of Grotius revealed were faith and foresight. Great as it was, — the most beneficent among all volumes not claiming divine inspiration, — yet more wonderful than the book itself was the faith of its author. In none of the years during which he meditated it, and least of all during the years when it was written, could any other human being see in the anarchic darkness of the time any tribunal which could recognize a plea for right reason in international affairs, or enforce a decision upon it. The greatness of Grotius lies first of all in the fact that he saw in all this darkness one court sitting supreme to which he might make appeal, and that court—the heart and mind of man.

What the darkness was which his eye alone could pierce was stated in his preface. He says: “I saw many and grave causes why I should write a work on that subject. I saw in the whole Christian world a license of fighting at which even barbarous nations might blush. Wars were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all, and carried on without any reverence for law, Divine or human. A declaration of war seemed to let loose every crime.”¹

To understand the significance of Grotius ’ work, let us glance over the evolution of international law up to his time.

The Hebrews, in their wars with their neighbors, considered themselves bound by hardly any of the rules of humanity which in these days prevail as axioms. On sundry neighboring nations they thought themselves commanded by the Almighty to exercise merciless cruelties: “to save nothing alive that breatheth;” to burn cities: to mutilate and murder captives; to spare neither men, women, nor children. Any exceptions to this barbarity were, as a rule, confined to populations which would consent to be enslaved.

Exhortations to cruelty are not only constant in the laws of Moses, but they ring loud and long through the Psalms and Prophecies. Yet here and there we see an evolution of a better view: out of this mass of savagery there was developed some regard for treaties and for the persons of ambassadors, and from time to time precepts and examples of mercy.

During the Hellenic period, germs of humanity had appeared. Among themselves, the Greek states observed truces and treaties, took pains at times to make war less barbarous, occasionally gave quarter, substituted slavery or ransom for the murder of prisoners, spared public monuments, respected the persons of heralds and ambassadors. Such, with exceptions many and cruel, was their rule among themselves; but in dealing with those who were not of Hellenic origin, their rule, in peace and war, was outrage and slaughter.

The Roman Republic, struggling constantly with tribes, nations, and races not bound to it by any recognized tie, acknowledged, as a rule, no claims of humanity. In conquering the world, it demanded none, and, as a rule, granted none.

Under the Roman Empire a better evolution was seen. The Roman feeling for system and order took shape in their municipal law, and this was extended largely and wisely over their conquests. Though it was really a law imposed by conquerors upon conquered, it came to have many characteristics of an international law between the subject states. Law to nations began to look much like a law of nations: the jus gentium came to be mistaken by many, then and later, for a jus inter gentes.

In the confusion which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, there was one survival to which the world seemed likely to turn at once, and this was the idea of an imperial power giving laws to the nations. The heirship of this power was naturally claimed by the mediæval empire in northern Europe, based upon German characteristics but permeated by Roman ideas; and had the successors of Charlemagne proved worthy of him, there might have been imposed upon Europe a pax Germanica as strong and as durable as the pax Romana had been. But the German Empire, fallen to weaklings and broken into discordant states, lost more and more its power to enforce a mediating will upon Europe-; and, though at the Reformation it still called itself “Holy” and “Roman” and an “Empire,” it had become merely a single party in a great struggle of warring religions and policies.

But there had arisen another power which soon appeared even more likely to inherit the old Roman mission of enforcing peace and law throughout the world. For this mission the Papacy seemed to fulfill every requirement. Seated on the hills once occupied by the Cæsars, representing an unquestioned spiritual authority, it seemed, even more than the German Empire, fitted to impose upon Europe, and indeed upon all mankind, a true law of nations, or at least to establish a court before which the nations should appear.

Great pontiffs came, like the early Gregories and Leos and Innocents, who worthily proclaimed this high mission. The Church at large, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was clearly ready to join in it, and at various centres throughout Europe the spirit of the blessed Founder of Christianity asserted itself in efforts to check the mediæval flood of cruelty in war. Most striking among these efforts was the “Truce of God” which condemned and largely prevented war at various sacred seasons and on certain days of the week. But, unfortunately, the central hierarchy began to show an alloy of human weakness which gradually deprived the Papacy forever of this splendid and beneficent function.

The first element in this alloy was the lust for a petty earthly dominion. There came the pretended “ Donation of Constantine,” the false Decretals, the struggles with sword and pen to despoil this petty prince, to win that petty territory, to establish a petty temporal throne, in the shade of which grew luxuriantly and noxiously nepotism and scoundrelism.

A far more serious obstacle in the way of the Papacy to recognition as a mediator and moderator between states was its doctrine regarding dealings with unbelievers and misbelievers. For the fundamental doctrine which permeated theological thought and ecclesiastical action was condensed into the statement that “no faith is to be kept with heretics.'’ Throughout the Middle Ages and afterward, this doctrine steadily undermined confidence in the Papacy as an international umpire. The burning of John Huss by the Emperor Sigismund at the behest of ecclesiastics, in violation of a solemn promise and safe conduct; the advice to Charles V to violate the safe conduct he had given Luther; and various similar cases, quietly had their effect. Memorable was the solemn declaration, just after the Reformation, made by the Bishop of Augsburg: “There can be no peace between Catholics and heretics; as well attempt to make agreements between light and darkness.” Significant, too, in Grotius’ own time, was the declaration of an eminent professor of theology at Mainz, the seat of the German Primate, that “a peace which permits men to be Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist is absolutely null, because it is contrary to the law of God.” Even in 1629, four years after the appearance of Grotius’ work, came a treatise, eminently approved by the older Church throughout Europe, which declared: “Any treaty between Catholics and heretics is originally void.” Indicative of a recognized fact was the declaration of the Jesuit father, Ribadeneira: “If Catholics sometimes make agreements with Protestants, it is solely in order to gain time and to get forces together with which to overwhelm them.”²

But that which most fatally undermined the Papal position as a law-giving and moderating umpire in Europe was its assertion, loud and frequent, of its power to break treaties and annul oaths. The fundamental doctrine of the Church on this subject, which theologians had devised and which ecclesiastics had enforced, was laid down in the decretal which declared in express terms that “ an oath contrary to the interests of the Church is void.” ³

What this meant was seen when Clement VI gave to the confessors of a French king power to give releases from various oaths and vows which it might be found “inconvenient to keep;” when Eugenius IV released Nicholas Piccino from his solemn agreement with Francis Sforza; when Julius II released Ferdinand of Spain from the oath sworn upon his treaty with Louis XII of France; and, above all, when the Papal absolution, and indeed persuasion, led Francis I of France to break his solemn oath and pledges to the Treaty of Madrid, and to renew the war which desolated France, Germany, and Spain. So fearful had this evil become in Grotius’ own land and time, that William of Orange made a solemn protest against the annulling of oaths and treaties as “leaving nothing certain in the world.” ⁴

War to extermination thus became the only means of obtaining peace. This was the strictly logical basis of the decree of the Holy Inquisition which Philip II solemnly approved, condemning to death the entire population of the Netherlands. All treaties had thus become illusory.

Nor was there any possibility, after the Reformation, of a Protestant international tribunal. For the breaking of oaths was sanctioned also by the Reformed Church. Noteworthy was the case of the Count of Nassau, of the great Protestant house of Orange. He had sworn to a treaty tolerating the worship of his Catholic subjects, but the Calvinist theologians insisted that he must violate his oath on the ground that Catholics were idolaters. It is something, however, that William of Orange and Beza opposed this decision.⁵

In another important respect, Protestant practices were less excusable than Catholic. The Roman authorities and all that obeyed them throughout Europe felt themselves, in all their cruelties, to be striving for the “salvation of souls.” The Protestants had no such excuse. They waged war, not only against conscientious Catholics, who, as they thought, came under the Old Testament denunciation for idolatry, but also against their Protestant brethren who differed from them on merely metaphysical points not involving salvation. The only thing to be said in mitigation of Protestant intolerance is that, though more inexcusable than the intolerance of the older Church, it was less inexorable: for in the Protestant Church there was no dogma of infallibility which prevented an open modification or even reversal of any teachings which the evolution of humanity had gradually proved false and noxious.

But, despite this mitigation, the Protestants found, as they thought, a sure warrant for cruelties quite as great as any practiced by Catholics. Among all who broke away from Papal authority in the sixteenth century, there had come an especial appeal to the Jewish and Christian sacred books. They were read as never before. From the Protestant pulpit, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, or Anabaptist, constant appeals were made to them as final in the conduct of war. On both sides of the great controversy which had taken such fearful shape in the middle of the seventeenth century, but especially on the Protestant side, the minds of men were devoted, not to seeking that peace which was breathed upon the world by the New Testament, but to finding warrant for war—and especially the methods of the Chosen People in waging war against unbelievers — in the Old Testament. Did any legislator or professor of law yield to feelings of humanity,he was sure to meet with protests based upon authority of Holy Scripture. Plunder and pillage were supported by reference to the divinely approved “spoiling of the Egyptians”’ by the Israelites. The right to massacre unresisting enemies was based upon the command of the Almighty to the Jews in the twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy. The indiscriminate slaughter of whole populations was justified by a reference to the divine command to slaughter the nations round about Israel. Torture and mutilation of enemies was sanctioned by the conduct of Samuel against Agag, of King David against the Philistines, of the men of Judah against Adoni-bezek. Even the slaughter of babes in arms was supported by a passage from the Psalms,—“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” Treachery and assassination were supported by a reference to the divinely approved Phinehas, Ehud, Judith, and Jael; murdering the ministers of unapproved religions, by Elijah’s slaughter of the priests of Baal.

But while the Germanic Empire and the Papacy had proved their unfitness to mediate between the nations of Christendom, and while the Reformation had shown itself utterly unable to diminish the horrors of war or to increase the incentives to peace, there had been developed some beginnings of an appeal to right reason.

The first of these were seen when plain merchants and shipmasters devised such maritime codes as the Jugemens d’Oleron, the Consolato del Mare, the Laws of Wisby, the Customs of Amsterdam, and others. Still more important, there had come, during the closing years of the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern period, even more hopeful evidences of a growth of better thought. Men like Vittorio, Soto, Vasquez, and Suarez in Spain, Conrad Bruno in Germany, Ayala in the Netherlands, and, above all, Albericus Gentilis in England, were the main representatives of this evolution of mercy. But the voices of these men seemed immediately lost in the clamor and confusion of their time. And yet their efforts were not in vain.

It is beyond a doubt that the ideas of these men, no matter how imperfect and inadequate, were received into the mind of Grotius. He himself makes ample acknowledgment of this.

But, as the Renaissance progressed, the system developed in diplomacy, and war became more and more vile. The fundamental textbook was Machiavelli’s Prince. Lying and treachery were the rule. Assassination by poison and dagger, as supplementary to war, was frequent. Catherine de Medici, Philip II, Alva, Des Adrets,Tilly, Wallenstein, were simply incarnations of the Machiavellian theories which ruled this period.

The treatment of non-combatants is perhaps the most fearful element in all this chaos. The unspeakable cruelties of the war in the Netherlands, spread along through more than half a century, the world knows by heart.

The Thirty Years’ War in Germany was in many respects worse. Apart from a few main leaders, of whom Gustavus Adolphus was chief, the commanders on both sides prompted or permitted Satanic cruelties. Ministers of religion were mutilated in every conceivable way before murder; the churches drenched in the blood of non-combatants and refugees; women treated with every form of indignity and cruelty; children hacked to pieces before their parents’ eyes; the limbs of non-combatants nailed to the doors of churches; families tied together and burned as fagots; torture used to force revelations regarding buried treasure;

whole city populations put to the sword; people of great districts exterminated; those not exterminated by the sword swept off in vast numbers by pestilence and famine. At the taking of Magdeburg by Tilly, four years after the publication of Grotius’ book, the whole city was burned, — only the cathedral and a few houses being left, — and from twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants were massacred. Other captured cities were reduced to one fourth their original population; hundreds of towns disappeared from the map of the empire. During all that period men might cry, with the king’s son in Shakespeare’s Tempest,—

Two hundred and fifty years after the Treaty of Münster, Germany had not fully recovered the prosperity which she enjoyed before this war of thirty years.

Especially to be noted in Grotius’ work are the sources from which he develops it. These are two. The first is the principle of natural morality, — the commands of justice written, as he claims, by God on the hearts and minds of men. These, he says, are to be ascertained by right reason, — by the powers of discernment which God has given; thus is obtained what he calls the “Law of Nature.” His second source he finds in the institutions, or enactments, or ideas, which the nations or gifted men have agreed upon as right, necessary, or final; thus is obtained what he calls the “Law of Nations.”

Difficulties and dangers, many and great, meet him at once. Frequently the elements obtained from these sources did not at all agree; — indeed, in some cases could not by any ordinary means be made to agree. There were struggles as regarded “Natural Law” with theologians who pointed triumphantly to texts of Scripture; there were conflicts as regarded the “ Law of Nations ” with jurists who showed that what he maintained was by no means what had been held “always, everywhere, and by all.”

No man of less splendid powers, intellectual and moral, could have grappled with such opponents and triumphed over such difficulties. His genius as a reasoner, his scholarship so vast in range, his memory bringing to him the best thoughts of the best thinkers in all literature, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, his skill in applying the doctrines of Roman jurisprudence, enabled him to develop out of these elements a system. But his main guide through all this labyrinth of difficulties was his own earnestness and unselfishness, his nobility of mind, heart, and soul. He fused together right and authority on every fundamental question, and with precious results.

Some of the elements he cast into his crucible were doubtful, and some of his reasoning faulty; yet, when all were submitted to the fervor of his love of justice, the result was always the same, — a new doctrine, clear and lustrous, a new treasure for humanity.

Take, for example, the fundamental question which met him at the outset, regarding the right of waging war. He declares that war is legitimate if just, and in answer to the question what is a just and proper motive for war, he allows simply one cause, — a sincere desire for justice. To those who confront him with the Sermon on the Mount, he answers that similar arguments can be drawn from the Gospels against civil and penal justice, and concludes that the doctrines alluded to were ideals and not intended for literal embodiment in actual law.⁶

As another example of his method, take his dealing with the question of wars for religion. He gives many reasonings which are precious, but, with them, some which seem to us in these days fallacious and even dangerous. He allows, for example, with all men of his time, that war is lawful to avenge insults offered to God, and brings this into accord with his fundamental assertion as to the proper motive for war by arguing that since any nation which insults the Almighty endangers the very foundations upon which all nations repose, the rights of all are violated, and war to maintain these rights is of course allowable.

The danger of this concession is evident. for who is to decide what constitutes an insult to God ? In one country, men see such an insult in a neglect to kneel before the consecrated wafer; in another country they see it in disrespect to the sacred cattle; here, in eating flesh on Friday; there, in catching fish on Sunday. But to this concession Grotius adds deductions from natural law which, in connection with his previous statements, give a noble product, for he arrives at the conclusion that war against infidel nations or against heretics as such is unjust. He says, “ Christianity consists of mysteries which cannot be established by material proof, and therefore nations cannot force them upon any man’s conscience, or make disbelief in them, by any person, a crime.” He reminds his readers that all cannot believe who would gladly believe, that belief comes by the grace of God; and if war against infidels cannot be justified, still less, he says, can we justify war against heretics who have separated themselves from the Church on merely secondary beliefs; and he cites the words of Christ, of St. Paul, of St. John, and various fathers and doctors of the Church, as disapproving forced conversions.⁷

A striking example of Grotius’ method, both in its weakness and in its strength, is his discussion of the question how far war shall be extended as to methods and persons. This was a question of capital importance. In his time, the theory and practice of antiquity and the Middle Ages were in cruel force. A vast array of authorities, from the commands of Jehovah to the children of Israel down to the latest orders in the Thirty Years’ War, were frightfully cruel. Not only might combatants who had laid down their arms be massacred, but non-combatants; and not only men, but women and children. To the question — where is the limit to what is lawful and unlawful?— he answers: “The substance of the evil ought to be in proportion to the right sought and the culpability of the enemy refusing to grant the right.” From this it is easy for any one to follow him to the conclusion that, in modern times, the criminality of the enemy can rarely, if ever, be so great as to warrant the massacre of prisoners, and never so great as to warrant such reprisals as the slaughter and outrage of innocent non-combatants.

That some of his concessions were dangerous was the fault of the age. Grotius could not, in the seventeenth century, have solved the questions at issue otherwise. Had he not paid every respect to the Old Testament authorities, he would not only have done violence to his own convictions, but would have insured the suppression of his book by both Catholics and Protestants as blasphemous. Yet, even in the midst of these concessions, he seeks to deduce from its best sources a Law of Nations distinct from the Law of Nature, yet combining with it. He brings a mass of arguments to bear against assassination, against dishonor and cruelty to women and children, against plunder, against the whole train of atrocities common in his time; and finds authority for his declaration after his usual method: by citing the ideas and practice of the noblest warriors and thinkers of all nations and periods, thus stimulating the leading warriors and statesmen of his time, of whatever creed or party, to admire and imitate the noblest examples. The Renaissance had not spent its force. It was a period when, as never since, statesmen and generals emulated the great men of antiquity, — and Grotius’ method proved fruitful in clemency.⁸

Among a vast number of difficult questions, comes up the limit of a conqueror’s rights over the conquered. First, as to property, shall he reimburse himself by stripping individuals and reducing them to poverty, or by levying contributions on the entire nation ? Grotius concedes that the authorities warrant either of these methods, but his noble instincts again lift him to a height from which he discerns a solution, and he declares strongly in favor of the modern and more merciful system of levying contributions, not on individuals, but on the entire hostile nation.

Then the second part of the question comes up. What is the right of the conqueror as regards the persons vanquished ? Here, too, his sane instincts have to meet terrible precedents, in both sacred and profane history, but he falls back on his argument that the penalty should be brought into proportion with the offense, preaches clemency and moderation, applies his method of ascertaining the Law of Nations from the noblest utterances and examples, and leaves in his reader the conviction that there are few, if any, offenses in modern times of a nature which can justify extreme retaliation upon individuals.

Such is an outline of a few of the main positions of Grotius in regard to some of the larger practical questions of that and after ages. That the solutions are at times inconclusive, especially in the domain of what he calls “Natural Law,” is the fault partly of his age, in which it was vain to deny or combat authorities held sacred, and partly of sundry limitations in his own reasoning; but his work had, none the less, vast results, — the De Jure Belli ac Pacis is the real foundation of the modern science of international law.

And here should be mentioned the most penetrating of all its doctrines.

For a question of more practical importance than any other arises, — the nature of the tribunal in case of an infringement by one nation of the rights of another. His answer has been fruitful in the past and is to bear still greater fruit in the future. In his usual way, he points first of all to authority, and quotes Cicero as follows: “There are two ways of ending a dispute, — discussion and force; the latter manner is simply that of brute beasts, the former is proper to beings gifted with reason: it is permitted then to recur to violence only when reason is powerless.” He then takes up various methods by which international questions may be settled without war, and from these he deduces naturally the idea of conferences and international arbitration. Here is the culmination of his services to mankind. Others, indeed, had proposed plans for the peaceful settlement of differences between nations, and the world remembers them with honor: to all of them — from Henry IV and Kant and St. Pierre and Penn and Bentham down to the humblest writer in favor of peace — we may well feel grateful; but the germ of arbitration was planted in modern thought when Grotius wrote these words: “But especially are Christian kings and states bound to try this way of avoiding war.” Out of the arguments of which this is the solemn culmination has arisen the greatest hope of mankind in its dealings with international questions.⁹

The whole work of Grotius has been often censured, and harshly. Some religionists have insisted that his use of reason unduly tempered the authority of Scripture; some anti-religionists, that he yielded unduly to Scripture; others have complained of the arrangement of the work, of its immense number of citations, of what they call its “pedantry;” and among these are Voltaire and Dugald Stewart. It must be confessed that, wonderful as the book is, its arrangement, style, and sequence of thought are at times vexatious. Yet these are but the defects of its qualities. In the midst of masses of learning which not infrequently cloud the main issue, and fine-spun arguments which seem to lead nowhither, there frequently comes a pithy statement, an illuminating argument, a cogent citation which lights up a whole chapter. It reminds an American of Emerson. Grotius has even more than Emerson’s power of pithy citation, — a power which anyone who studies Pufendorf’s clumsy efforts to imitate it will appreciate painfully. As to the charge based on the number of citations, nothing can be more unjusl. It arises from a complete misapprehension of Grotius’ method; the brilliant refutation of it by Sir James Mackintosh is convincing. These citations were in accordance with the fundamental plan of the work, which was to formulate the decisions of right reason by showing its action in countries most diverse in situation and history and among men most different in habits and opinions. Grotius’ own statement is conclusive. He says: “In order to give proofs on questions respecting this Natural Law, I have made use of the testimonies of philosophers, historians, poets, and, finally, orators. Not that I regard these as judges from whose decision there is no appeal, for they are warped by their party, their argument, their cause, — but I quote them as witnesses whose conspiring testimony, proceeding from innumerable different times and places, must be referred to some universal cause which, in the questions with which we are here concerned, cannot be any other than a right deduction proceeding from the proofs of reason or some common consent. The former cause of agreement points to the Law of Nature, the latter, to the Law of Nations.”¹⁰

It has been objected that Grotius made a concession fatal to humanity, in excusing slavery. Rousseau was especially severe upon him for this.

But, in the atmosphere of Grotius’ discussions of slavery, an evolution of ideas destructive to all involuntary servitude was sure. Starting with the idea that slavery is the first step beyond the massacre of prisoners, he limits and modifies it in ways which lead more and more clearly to its abolition. He constantly finds mitigations of the Law of Nations in the Law of Nature, and of the Law of Nature in the Law of Nations; he dissents from a theological argument that slaves have, by the Law of Nations, no right to escape; he limits the right of the master in administering punishment; he insists that the private acquisitions of a slave, by economy or donation, are his own; that his ransom should be moderate; that his children should be free save as they are held for debts due for sustenance during their minority. In behalf of justice and mercy, he cites Seneca, St. Paul, Clement of Alexandria, and many others, until he finally rises to a conception of human brotherhood in which the whole basis of slavery, and indeed its whole practice, is soon dissolved away.¹¹

Another of his conclusions which has repelled, and even angered, many critics is embodied in his statement that to save the state or the city an innocent citizen might be delivered into the hands of the enemy. But, when closely scrutinized, we find it an extreme statement due to his horror of war, — much like that attributed to Franklin, — that there could not be a good war or a bad peace. Grotius’ statement was evidently based on a very high conception of the duty of the individual to the state, namely, that to save the state the individual should be ready to sacrifice himself, and that the state had a right to presume on this readiness.¹²

Another charge which has been made against him is that he committed himself virtually to the doctrine of a primitive contract and was thus a forerunner of Rousseau and Robespierre. This charge has been made in many forms and reiterated, even in our own time, by sundry countrymen of Grotius, in whose hearts there still linger the old sectarian hatreds.¹³

Nothing can be more superficial or unjust. The “social contract” theory was not invented by Rousseau; a long series of men had labored at it, and, among them, Hobbes and Locke, with enormously different results. Grotius’ theory is entirely different from that of Rousseau, both in its essence and outcome. To Rousseau’s mind, as to that of Robespierre, human beings in a “state of nature” were good, and the generality of mankind, when freed from the ideas and institutions of civilized society, would return as a whole to this native goodness. The most effective appeal of Rousseau’s disciples was to the Parisian mob, — the same mob which had applauded the St. Bartholomew massacres, the same which applauded the September massacres and the cruelties of the Reign of Terror, and which adored la sainte guillotine ; — the same which glorified Napoleonism, deifying the man who trampled on their earlier ideal and sent them to slaughter by myriads; — the same which upheld the Commune. On the other hand, while Grotius accepted the hypothesis which for so long a time proved so serviceable, namely, the idea of original human consent to law, his appeal was not to “man in a state of nature” or to a mob of men in a “state of nature,” whether that mob tyrannized a village or an empire. As a student of classical antiquity, he knew that some of the worst of the Roman emperors had been adored by the people; as a student of modern history, he knew that Henry VIII of England had been one of the most popular of monarchs; from his every-day life he knew but too well that Philip II of Spain, the monarch under whom he was born, — narrow, bloodthirsty, brutal, — was yet considered, by the vast majority of his subjects, as an exponent of the Divine Will; he knew that Barneveld, one of the strongest and noblest men Europe had ever seen, who had served the Netherlands faithfully in the most difficult of all emergencies at home and abroad for forty years, had against him the vast majority of the people of the Dutch Republic simply because he had dreaded absolutism and loved toleration; and could he have looked forward an hundred years, he would have seen two other great Netherlands statesmen, the De Witts, murdered by “the people” at The Hague, within a stone’s throw of the spot where Barneveld had suffered. The real appeal of Grotius was not to “man in a state of nature,”but to the sense of justice, humanity, righteousness, evolved under the reign of God in the hearts and minds of thinking men. His appeal was not to a “contract made in the primeval woods,” but to the hearts, minds,and souls of men, developed under Christian civilization.

Grotius’ appeal was not to a mob; it was not, indeed, to the average man of the mob at any period; it was to the thinking man, whether educated or uneducated, whether Protestant or Catholic, whether Lutheran or Calvinist, whether Gomarist or Arminian. One feature of Grotius’ great inspiration was his faith that there were such men, and that an appeal to them might be of use to the world. The result of Rousseau’s idea was seen in the excesses of the French Revolution which led to new deluges of bloodshed, both during the Revolution and the reaction which followed it; the result of Grotius’ theory was seen in the beginning of a new era of mercy to mankind, an era in which wars became infinitely less cruel both to combatants and non-combatants.¹⁴

But the good results of Grotius’ book were at first veiled. Except Gustavus Adolphus and Richelieu, no commander of that time seems to have read it. In France, its influence seems manifest in the mercy shown to the Huguenots after the siege of La Rochelle, but in Germany the Thirty Years’ War dragged on more and more cruelly for over twenty years after its publication. Commanders on both sides, Protestant and Catholic, seemed to become more and more merciless. Arson, bloodshed, torture, and murder became more and more the rule. But at the close of the war, as we have seen, in the Treaty of Westphalia, some of the fundamental ideas of Grotius had evidently taken hold of the plenipotentiaries at Osnabrück and Münster, and were wrought into their work.

During the fifty years which followed that great treaty, the book, thanks to disciples like Pufendorf and Thomasius, became more and more known; but at first there was little to show that its ideas had taken practical hold on Europe. Louis XIV, in his policy at home and in his wars abroad, showed little trace of Grotius’ ideas on either toleration or peace: le Grand Monarque, under the inspiration of his bishops and his confessor, did his worst in revoking the Edict of Nantes and in laying waste the Palatinate; but in spite of his cold-blooded cruelty there was a steady diminution in military ferocity.

Early in the first days of the eighteenth century came the great War of the Spanish Succession, spreading over much of the same German and Dutch territory which had suffered during the Thirty Years’ War; but a great change was now evident. Instead of leaders like Mansfeld, Wallenstein, Christian of Brunswick, and so many others, who had led in the old indiscriminate pillage and arson and murder and preying upon the enemy’s country, there now came Marlborough, Eugene, Villars, and other commanders on both sides, who, as a rule, repressed pillage, murder, and arson, paid for supplies taken from the inhabitants, levied their contributions upon governments and not upon individuals, cared for their prisoners, were merciful to non-combatants, and in every way indicated an immense progress in mercy and justice. Here and there, it is true that, in spite of all that commanders could do, cruelties took place, as in the devastation of Bavaria in 1704; but, as a rule, the ideas advocated by Grotius had begun to take strong hold upon the world’s best thought.

We must now return to Grotius’ personal history and to his fruitful labor in another great field of humanitarian effort.

Until 1631, he remained in Paris, greatly honored, yet often suffering from poverty. The pension granted him by Louis XIII was rather honorable than useful; it was rarely paid.

Interwoven throughout all his efforts for peace and mercy was his continuous labor for toleration. A great publicist has said that “ intolerance was then the common law of Europe.” More than any of his contemporaries, Grotius wrought to undermine it. Neither triumphs nor sufferings abated his steady labor. Treatises philosophical and historical, translations and commentaries in which the first rank in the scholarship of his time was reached, came constantly from his pen; but his great work during this period was one which he had begun during his imprisonment at the Castle of Loevestein, — his Truth of Christianity. Though in advance of his time, its success was enormous. Five times it was translated from the original Latin into French, three times into German, and beside this, into English, Swedish, Danish, Flemish, Greek, Chinese, Malay, Persian, and Arabic. Its ideas spread widely among European Christians of every name, Catholic and Protestant, Arminian and Calvinistic, Lutheran and Anglican. The reason was simple. It was a Christian book, but not sectarian. It was written with full belief in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, but with slight regard for the questions which divided Christians. At first it succeeded, but at last came the inevitable outcry. Narrow men on either side insisted that the book was not sufficiently “positive.” Bigoted Protestants began to express hatred of it because it was not more “positive” in showing the weakness of Catholicism; bigoted Catholics because it was not more “positive” in showing the weakness of Protestantism; bigoted Lutherans because it was not more “positive” in argument against Calvinism; bigoted Calvinists because it was not more “positive” in its denunciation of Lutheranism.

All insisted that Grotius neglected many of the great doctrinal statements developed by theologians. On the fact that Grotius adopted the simple teaching of the Founder of Christianity were based the strongest charges against him. Voetius, an especially bitter foe, in answer to Grotius’ assertions of Christian truth declared that “to place the principal part of religion in the observance of Christ’s commands is rank Socinianism.” This book, too, was put upon the Index at Rome, and its use discouraged by various eminent Protestant authorities. Still, it was effective. Its plan of defense has long since been abandoned; the work begun by Erasmus has brought the world beyond it. Biblical criticism was then in its infancy, and the growth of it has made necessary different methods and new statements; but Grotius’ book on the Christian religion does its author none the less honor. None the less, too, has the book been a blessing to mankind in calling the attention of the Christian world to religious realities and away from theological subtleties. In this, as in all his writings, Grotius struggled as a peacemaker, and in his dedication to King Louis XIII, he especially pleads for toleration. In one of his letters to his brother, he says, “I shall never cease to do my utmost for establishing peace among Christians, and if I do not succeed it will be honorable to die in such an enterprise.” And again, “If there were no hopes of success at present, ought we not to sow the seed which may be useful for posterity?” And again, “Even if we should only diminish the mutual hatred among Christians, would not this be worth purchasing at the price of some labor and reproach?”¹⁵

In 1631, Maurice of Orange having died five or six years before, and his successor, Prince Henry, seeming inclined to lenity, Grotius endeavored to return to Holland. But his reception was disappointing,— at first merely chilly; but erelong the bigots of the day bestirred themselves, and in March, 1632, to such purpose that the States-General offered a reward of two thousand guilders to any one who should deliver him up to them; and again he became an exile. His first place of refuge was Hamburg, and there, giving himself to literary work, he waited again for the return of reason among his countrymen. Flattering offers were now made him by the King of Denmark, by Spain, and even by Wallenstein, who was the real dictator of Germany. But all these he refused. He still looked lovingly toward the little Dutch Republic; and it was only after two years of weary waiting that he gave up that hope and entered the service of Sweden.

The invitation to this service was honorable both in its character and its source. Gustavus Adolphus had died at Lützen, but he had left a request that Grotius be secured for his kingdom; his great chancellor, Oxenstiern, bore this in mind, and in 1635 sent Grotius as Swedish Ambassador to Paris. The position was important, for Sweden was then one of the great militant powers of Europe; but the task of the new ambassador soon became trying. Though the French government were at heart almost as jealous of Sweden as of Austria, he was expected to keep France and Sweden active allies against Austria; and in the Thirty Years’ War, the government of his native country, from both public and private reasons, endeavored to thwart him. In all the more important part of his mission, Grotius succeeded well; in the lesser parts he was not so happy. There were questions of etiquette and form; Richelieu must be flattered; various parties must be petted or bribed; and for such work he was ill fitted: it is related that, while waiting in the ante-rooms at Court, instead of chattering nonsense, he whiled away his time by reading the Greek Testament.

During this final stay in Paris he employed his leisure in various works, among them an investigation as to the origin of the American tribes and an exegetical work upon the Bible; but though this latter showed good scholarship, its significance in modern criticism is small. He did, indeed, declare his conviction that sundry prophecies in the Old Testament, generally supposed to refer to the coming of the Messiah, had reference to events accomplished before that event, and this brought upon him much obloquy; but among the best religionists of all nations, his work was useful. At this time, too, he wrote his history of the Netherlands, and from it one of his best traits shines forth brightly: he was called, as historian, to discuss the character and services of Maurice of Orange; Maurice had unjustly deprived him of home, property, and freedom, and sought to deprive him of life; — but Grotius points out none the less fully his services as a commander and patriot; not a trace of ill will appears in any of his judgments.

The Swedish government showed, erelong, not unnaturally, the belief that one who did so much literary work could hardly do the political work required in such stirring times; his personal relations to Richelieu and Mazarin had become irksome to him; and, in 1645, he resigned his ambassadorship and returned, first to Holland where, at last, he was more kindly received. Thence he went to Sweden, took formal leave of Queen Christina, and started upon his return voyage, hoping to pass the remainder of his life in his native country. But it was not so to be. The ship was thrown by a heavy sea upon the Pomeranian coast, and Grotius, having after great suffering reached Rostock, lay down to die.

The simple recital of the Lutheran pastor, Quistorp, who was with him in his last moments, touches the deep places of the human heart. The pastor made no effort to wrestle with the dying scholar and statesman, but simply read to him the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, ending with the words, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” And the dying man answered, “I am that publican.”

On the 28th of August, 1645, he breathed his last. It had not been given to him to see any apparent result of his great gift to mankind. From his childhood to his last conscious moments, he had known nothing but war, bigoted, cruel, revengeful, extending on all sides about him. The Peace of Westphalia, which was to be so largely influenced by him, was not signed until three years after his death. One may hope that the faith which led him to write the book gave him power to divine some of its results.

His first burial-place was at Rostock near the German coast, and there, before the high altar of its great church to-day, is sacredly preserved, as an honor to Germany, the tomb in which his body was temporarily enshrined.

But his wish had been to rest in his native soil, and, after a time, his remains were conveyed to the Netherlands. It is hard to believe, and yet it is recorded, that as his coffin was borne through the city of Rotterdam, stones were thrown at it by the bigoted mob: finally, it was laid in a crypt beneath the great church of Delft, his birthplace.

Few monuments are more suggestive to the thinking traveler than that ancient edifice. There lie the bones of men who took the lead in saving the Dutch Republic and civil liberty from the bigotry of Spain. Above all, in the apse, towers the canopied tomb of William the Silent, — sculptured marble and molten bronze showing forth the majesty of his purpose and the gratitude of his people. Hard by, in a quiet side aisle, is the modest tomb of Grotius, its inscription simple and touching. Each of these two great men was a leader in the service of liberty and justice; each died a martyr to unreason. Both are risen from the dead, and live evermore in modern liberty, civil and religious, in modern law fatal to tyranny, in modern institutions destructive to intolerance, and, above all, in the heart and mind of every man who worthily undertakes to serve the nobler purposes of his country or the larger interests of his race.

Thrice during the latter half of the century just closed did the world pay homage at this shrine. The first occasion was on April 10, 1883, — the three hundredth anniversary of Grotius’ birth, when the people of the Netherlands honored themselves and mankind by a due celebration of it. The second act of homage took place three years later, on the erection of the bronze statue to his memory in front of the church where he lies buried. Not only the Netherlands, but the world’s whole civilization, was there represented. Most worthily did the eminent Minister of the Netherlands, Mr. de Beaufort, dwell on the services thus commemorated, and the vast audience showed that the country at last recognized its great servant. Yet there came one note of discord. A touching feature in the tribute was the singing of simple hymns by a great chorus of school-children; but this chorus a section of the more determined adherents of the old rigid Calvinist orthodoxy refused to allow their children to join: one of their representatives, indeed, declared that the statue was fitly placed, since its back was turned to the Church; to this it was rejoined that the statue was indeed fitly placed, since its face was turned toward Justice. The allusion was to the fact that the monument faced the Palace of Justice and the effigy of Justice adorning it.

The third of these recognitions was on the Fourth of July, 1899. On that day, the American delegation to the Peace Conference of The Hague celebrated the anniversary of American independence by placing, in behalf of the government of the United States which had especially authorized and directed it, a wreath of silver and gold with appropriate inscriptions on the tomb of Grotius. The audience filling the vast church comprised not only the ambassadors and other delegates to the conference, but the ministers of the Dutch Crown, professors from the various universities of the Netherlands, and a great body of invited guests from all parts of the world. A letter from the King of Sweden and Norway, expressing the gratitude of the power which Grotius had so faithfully served, and the utterances of the Netherlands ministers and of the American delegation presented the claims of Grotius to remembrance; the music of the chimes, of the great organ, and of the royal choir rolled majestically under the arches of the vast edifice: all in tribute to him who, first among men, had uttered clearly and strongly that call to arbitration which the conference at The Hague was then making real.

And it may well be hoped that within the first decade of the twentieth century there will come yet another recognition. By the gift of an American citizen, provision has been made for a palace of international justice in which the Court of Arbitration created by the Hague Conference may hold its sessions. Thanks to the munificence of that gift, the world has a right to expect that this temple of peace will be worthy of its high purpose: its dome a fitting outward and visible sign to all peoples that at last there is a solution of international questions other than by plunder and bloodshed; its corridors ennobled by the statues, busts, and medallions of those who have opened this path to peace; its walls pictured with the main events in this evolution of Humanity. But among these memorials, one monument should stand supreme, — the statue of Grotius. And in his hand may well be held forth to the world his great book, opened at that inspired appeal in behalf of international arbitration: —

“Maxime autem Christiani reges et civitates tenentur hanc inire viam ad arma vitanda.”