PART IV - Just wars reborn (1919–)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Summary
The first stage in getting rid of our instruments of coercion, or reducing them to vanishing point, is … to transfer them from rival litigants to the law, to the community, to make of our armies and navies the common police of civilization, standing behind a commonly agreed rule. But, before that can be done, there must be created a sense of community, a sense of our interests being common interests, not inherently … in conflict.
Norman AngellIt is … very probable that we will have in the future, fewer wars, but more ‘hostilities’.
Josef L. KunzThe Great War of 1914–18 changed the world in many ways. It unleashed forces far beyond those of the cabinet wars of the nineteenth century. It proved, if proof were needed, that there were no significant legal barriers to the waging of total war – war prosecuted not merely against the armed forces in the field but also against the whole of the enemy's society, particularly its economic capacity and its civilian morale. It dramatically demonstrated the power of advanced technology to wreak death and destruction on a scale never seen before. Our concern, however, is with the impact that it had on legal ways of thinking about war. This may be summed up most briefly in the phrase that surfaced at the time: that this conflict must be made into something unique in history, ‘a war to end all wars’.
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- War and the Law of NationsA General History, pp. 277 - 284Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005