Herodotus tells us that the Scythians
worshipped as their god a naked sword; that is the deity to be installed
in the place once held by the God of Christianity, the God of
righteousness and mercy.
States--mostly despotic States--have sometimes applied parts of this
system of doctrine; but none have proclaimed it. The Roman conquerors of
the world were not a scrupulous people, but even they stopped short of
these principles; certainly they never set them up as an ideal; neither
did those magnificent Teutonic Emperors of the Middle Ages, whose fame
Gen. von Bernhardi is fond of recalling. They did not enter Italy as
conquerors, claiming her by right of the strongest; they came on the
faith of a legal title which, however fantastic it may seem to us today,
the Italians themselves, and, indeed, the whole of Latin Christendom,
admitted. Dante, the greatest and most patriotic of Italians, welcomed
the Emperor Henry VII. into Italy, and wrote a famous book to prove his
claims, vindicating them on the ground that he, as heir of Rome, stood
for law and right and peace. The noblest title which these Emperors
chose to bear was that of Imperator Pacificus.
In the Middle Ages, when men were always fighting, they appreciated the
blessings of war much less than does Gen.
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