SOURCE: "Machiavelli and Modern Statecraft," in The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 226, No. 461, July, 1917, pp. 93–112.

The work by which Nicholas Machiavelli is best known is Il Principe: a treatise popularly regarded as the standard manual of unscrupulous diplomacy. The word Machiavellism, like its counterpart Jesuitism, is a current term with a definite meaning: the former may be employed by an admirer of Machiavelli, as the latter by a lover of the Jesuits. It signifies a philosophy of pure expediency; the subordination of every moral and human consideration to the political needs of the hour.

The Prince is a work as characteristic of its author as any of the others; though we may add that it will be best understood by those to whom it is not the only one with which they are acquainted. Some students of Machiavelli have, indeed, tried to place this book in a special category: they have regarded it as ironical; or as a description of the vices of princely rulers cast into the illusory form of a treatise for their guidance; or even as just a time-serving effort to enter into grace with the Medicis, when thus alone its author could hope to obtain public employment.

This last motive may, indeed, have had something to do with the actual form of the work; but as for the other interpretations they are surely uncalled for. If ever a writer was clear and consistent and characteristic throughout his works, it is Machiavelli; we may not always like his meaning, but we can never mistake it. Some of the most unscrupulous passages from The Prince could be set beside others from the Discourses on Livy though the first is on tyrannical and the second on popular government. Thus in chap, xviii. of The Prince having given reasons why a prince cannot always keep his word, Machiavelli concludes that a prudent ruler 'neither can nor ought to keep faith when to do so would be to his disadvantage, and when the motives for which he made his promise are no longer existent.'

But in the Discourses on Livy Machiavelli applies the same principle of expediency to the conduct of the loyal citizen:

'No sensible person will reproach anyone for however extraordinary an action that is directed to the well-ordering of a kingdom or the founding of a republic'

And in another place: 'When the salvation of our country is at stake all questions of justice and injustice, of mercy and cruelty, of honour and dishonour must be set aside; every other consideration must be subordinated to the one aim of saving her life and preserving her honour.'

We need not multiply examples. The consensus of opinion is that, whatever else he also was, Nicholas Machiavelli was Machiavellian: as Machiavellian as Bismarck; as Machiavellian as the German General Staff; as Machiavellian as the rest of us, and the best of us, in the realm of diplomacy, unconsciously or protestingly, are to some extent bound to be.

Machiavelli was a diplomat: a statesman in so far as his position permitted of it; and, in all his strivings, a state-builder. He was in love with ancient Rome, with all her works, and all her pomps; with her wisdom and her perfidy; her magnanimity and her ruthlessness. He studied, with passion and admiration, the story of her political evolution; of the emergence of a self-governing people from the warfare of conflicting sects. He held that men changed but little in the course of history, and that what had been done could be done again. He dreamed of a modern Florence fashioned according to the lessons of Livy: a free, strong, democratic and austere republic. But with Latin sincerity he set forth his doctrine of ways and means, and in that doctrine is the philosophy of Machiavellism, though, as we shall see, there is also something besides.

But once again, just because he was a thorough Latin, his subject interested him for its own sake, apart from its practical bearings. Thus in dealing with the question of tyrannical government, even had there been no living tyrants with whom he had to reckon, the subject would have interested him for its own sake, and he would have set forth the rules that should guide the conduct of a prince, who aimed at despotic power for purely selfish ends, just as calmly and fully as though he were advocating tyranny as his own ideal.

To the ordinary English mind this moral detachment is perplexing and misleading, like much else in the Latin temperament. The Englishman is more truthful than the Latin, but he is not so great a lover of truth. The Latin thinks it and speaks it as his intellect moves him to do, the Englishman speaks it because he holds that he ought to do so; his moral life is more vigorous, his intellectual life is not so keen. Hence the quiet indifference with which a Latin will declare certain actions—to have been admirably fitted to the attainment of their own end, without uttering or implying further comment: the manner, for instance, in which Machiavelli describes the clever trapping and murdering of his enemies, Vitellozzo Vitelli and three others, by the Duke of Valentinois, will confuse the Anglo-Saxon, but not the Latin, to whom it is the fact, and not its moral bearings, that presents the main intellectual interest.

But even with this proviso Machiavellism remains a distinct code of action, of ethical as well as intellectual import: a statement of politics and diplomacy not originated by its namesake, but by him put into work and system. Therefore, the first thing we want to understand in Machiavelli is his Machiavellism, and its relation to modern statecraft; only then can we see whether, and how far, Machiavelli is greater than Machiavellism, just as we can also, by a frank estimate of our own Machiavellism, best appreciate how far our own policy is set towards higher ends.

One of the first and most fundamental characteristics of Machiavellism is its estimate of human nature. The majority of men are mean, cowardly, and self-interested; this is the primary fact with which the statesman has to deal. He may start with another view if he likes, but he does it at his own risk and that of his country.

It may be said of men in general [he writes in The Prince] that they are ungrateful, plausible, deceitful, cowardly, and avaricious; so long as you benefit them they are yours—they offer you their blood, their possessions, their life, their children, while danger is distant; but when it comes too near, they turn. And then the Prince, who has made no other provision than his trust in them, is ruined.' (Ch. xvii.)

There are two ways of dealing with men, he tells us in the next chapter: by law and by force. Law is properly for men, and force for beasts; but since human beings are in part beasts, the prince must be fox and lion as well as man. It is a fine thing to keep faith, but only with those who are correspondingly loyal. Mutual distrust is a primary principle of sound diplomacy.

The next guiding principle of Machiavellism is the avoidance of half measures. 'He who would be a tyrant, but slays not Brutus, and he who would free his country, but slays not the sons of Brutus, is doomed to failure.' (Discorsi, Bk. III. ch. iii.)

Nor is it enough to kill some of the children of Brutus and leave others; all must go. Machiavelli often refers to the downfall of his friend Piero Soderini, one time Gonfaloniere of Florence, as the consequence of an admixture of human with political motives; while the Duke of Valentinois (Cesare Borgia) was, even from the humanitarian standpoint, more successful, in virtue of his swift and ruthless action.

Krieg ist Krieg; for Machiavellism there is no other conception of war. For war is, indeed, the supreme occasion in which it is man as beast, and not man as man, with whom we are dealing. Law, as Machiavelli has already stated, is for man; force is for the brute. If, between ruler and people, occasions arise on which the bestial and not the human element is to be taken into count, how much more is this the case when it is with avowed enemies that we have to deal. We have yet to see if, in the philosophy of Machiavelli, there be any hint of pacifist tendencies; but in war itself he allows no place for half-measures. For him peace was peace, and war was war:

'You cannot call it peace,' he says, 'when States are continually falling on one another with armies; nor can you call it war when men are not killed, cities are not ravaged, governments are not destroyed.' And he adds regretfully that war at one time became so decadent, 'that it was undertaken without fear, waged without danger, and concluded without loss.' (Istorie Florentine, Bk. V.)

To be thorough, and also to be fearless and to be swift: this is Machiavellian wisdom. The Pecca fortiter of Luther, which has been so wholeheartedly adopted as a German motto, is in perfect consonance with this principle of moral fearlessness. Machiavelli relates, with pity and contempt, how Giovampagolo Baglioni, having the opportunity of murdering Pope Julius II. and a number of his cardinals through the rashness of the former, failed to take advantage of it. Machiavelli would not have blamed him had he been a good man, deterred from the crime by conscientious motives. But, as he explains:

It was not his goodness nor his conscience that restrained him; there was no room for considerations of duty in the breast of a wicked man who lived with his own sister, and had murdered his cousins and nephews in order to reign; but the fact is that few men are capable of being honestly bad or perfectly good, and, when a bad deed demands a certain measure of greatness and generosity, they are incapable of it (Discorsi, Bk. I. ch. xxvii.).

Machiavelli implies, in this chapter, that Julius II. proved himself in every sense the greater, and the stronger, and even the better man, by daring his lesser adversary to commit a crime whose greatness appalled him, though its actual wickedness would have counted but little. Baglioni desired the end, but he shrank from the means; and no greater sin can be committed against the principles of Machiavellism.

Yet this same doctrine of the means to the end as consistently reprobates useless daring as it commends that which can be successful. No vain sacrifices, in the name of courage and honour, can find place in Machiavellian policy. To die for your country—yes, a hundred times if need be—but only provided your death truly saves her. A military expedition, however desperate and daring, when necessity demands it, and when there is some hope of success; but no sheer waste for however honourable a cause. The good of the country is the supreme end; 'whether by glory or by humiliation she is to be served and saved.' (Discorsi, Bk. III. ch. xii.)

It is in this chapter that he refers to the advice given by Lentulus to the Roman Army trapped within the Caudine Forks; surrender might be ignoble, and those who advocated it might be accused later on of regard for their own skins, but in this way alone could Rome be saved. A good end, according to Machiavellism, may justify questionable means; but the best of ends cannot justify hopeless and inadequate measures.

Machiavellism manifests that kind of respect for religion which we have seen advocated in recent years by a modern French school. 'Princes and republics that would preserve their State from corruption must, above all things, maintain the ceremonies of religion incorrupt, and treat them with veneration; for there is no more emphatic sign of the ruin of a province than the contempt of divine worship.' (Discorsi, Bk. I. ch. xii.)

And the next chapter is entitled: 'How the Romans made use of religion for the good order of the city, for the success of their enterprises and the suppression of tumults.'

But, at the same time, the character of the Christian religion may prove dangerous to the State, for whereas in Pagan religions the brute element of man had its share, in the Christian religion the human and the divine elements are supreme:

They [i.e. ancient religions] lacked neither pomp nor magnificence of ritual, but to these was added the practice of bloody and ferocious sacrifices, in which multitudes of animals destroyed one another; which awful sight inspired similar sentiments in the beholders. Also ancient religions only beatified men full of worldly glory—such as military captains and political leaders. Our religion has glorified the humble and contemplative rather than the energetic. It has placed the highest good in humility, abjection, and the contempt of human things; while pagan religion aimed at greatness of soul, strength of body, and everything that contributed to velour. And though our religion would have us strong, yet it asks of us rather to suffer than to act as though we were strong. This manner of life appears therefore to have weakened the world and left it the prey of wicked men, who can easily control their fellow beings, seeing that the majority of the latter, for the sake of Paradise, are more ready to support illtreatment than to revenge themselves. (Discorsi, Bk. II. ch. ii.).

SS. Francis and Dominic, who, in the view of Machiavelli, saved Christianity from utter extinction, by reanimating its early fervour, also, incidentally, encouraged the vices of prelates; for they taught the people 'that it is evil to speak evil of the bad, and that it is better to live in obedience, and 'leave the punishment of wicked superiors to God; as a result of which doctrine these latter have done the worst they could, since they had no dread of a punishment they neither saw nor believed in.' It may be remarked, in passing, that the contemporary Pope and prelates, who allowed the writer of this passage to go by unchastised, must, in spite of the vices of their day, have exercised a tolerance of which our own age does not always show examples.

Yet Machiavelli will not allow that this is the last word in the matter. He was a cynical Churchman, but a believing Christian; and he goes on to say, after the former of these two passages:

Though it would therefore appear as though the world were effeminate and heaven disarmed, this result arises, in reality, from the meanness of men, who have been influenced by sloth, and not by virtue, in their interpretation of religious teaching. For if they remembered how our religion permits us to glorify and defend our country they would see that she expects us to love and honour it, and make ourselves such that we are able to defend it.' (Discorsi, Bk. II. ch. ii.).

As Machiavellism distrusts men in general, so also it contains special warnings against the danger to the State of over-powerful individuals. On this point Machiavelli treats princes and republics to the same advice: not because he esteems them equally, but because their case and its dangers are the same. Men are out for their own ends, and the individual is out for individual ends: this is the teaching of Machiavellism, then as now. Hence king and republic must jealously watch their own best servants, and must put an end to them, whatever their claims to gratitude, if they are taking advantage of their credit for the satisfaction of their private ambition.

There is, in one case he introduces, a curious similarity to one of recent occurrence in our own country. The Florentines had made the mistake of sending two envoys to treat with France of the restitution of Pisa. Giovambattista Ridulfi was the better known man, and consequently the chief; Antonio degli Albizi was the more really capable. But this second, seeing that the other overshadowed him, took refuge in silence, and did nothing for the good of the mission. As Machiavelli remarks, he gratified his vanity and ambition not by opposition, but by silence and disdain; and only exerted his superior powers when the other man was withdrawn.

Machiavelli, as was natural in those days of mercenary armies, was particularly alive to the danger accruing to a ruler from a successful general. It is painful to kill the man who has led his armies to victory; it is happier for him if the same should die in a natural manner; but, on the whole, there is but one way of avoiding the dilemma, and that is for the prince to lead his expeditions himself. We shall see, later on, in what way a republic was to avoid the same danger.

We are reminded once more of things that have taken place in a neighbouring country when Machiavelli warns statesmen of the need of suspecting even pious and charitable works, which may contribute to the excessive power of those who direct them.

Last among the main principles of Machiavellism which we will select for its better definition, may be placed its deep sense and acknowledgment of Fate; of the restriction of human power by the great Hinterland of uncontrollable forces and circumstances. Fate, or Fortune, as Machiavelli calls it, limits the attainable and narrows the domain of conscience and ethics. In by no means the best of worlds neither can a man always do his best. The ought and the must are to be measured by the can. Men may 'follow fortune, but not oppose her; they can weave her webs, but not break them.' It is the fool, and not the wise man, who, ignoring 'the just bounds of hope, and looking not to what can be done, but to what he would wish to do, is brought to ruin.'

Machiavelli's description of the ever recurring round of good and evil in human life almost suggests the 'Ewige Wiederkehr' of Nietzsche.

Nature [he says] allows not of rest. So soon as earthly things have attained perfection they begin to sink, because they can rise no further; and when, through disorder, they have fallen as low as they can, not being able to descend further, they begin again to rise and thus they swing perpetually from good to bad and from bad to good. For virtue begets tranquillity, tranquillity sloth, sloth disorder, and disorder ruin; and similarly, from ruin springs order, from order virtue, and from virtue happiness and glory. (Istorie Florentine, Bk. V.)

So much for some of the main principles of Machiavellism. It is hard to resist the temptation of giving much fuller quotations from the mass of shrewd wisdom, truly Italian wisdom, which the works contain. In the more intellectual days of English life, when the young man with pretensions to a good education made his tour of Europe, the works of French and Italian wisdom were more familiar to our country than they now are. The keen Latin intellect had its share in moulding the richer Anglo-Saxon mind and clarifying its power of utterance. We are more left to our own intellectual resources in these days, though we are now looking forward to better times, of fuller intellectual community.

And now we have to see whether Machiavelli can teach us anything besides Machiavellism. That he systematised the policy that bears his name is undoubted; but that his philosophy also contains principles that morally and spiritually transcend it, will be, I think, to any careful student of his works, equally positive. And for those who believe that nearly all statecraft yet contains its admixture of Machiavellism, this will be a question of high interest; for what we shall want to know is whether an unavoidable blend of Machiavellism precludes, in any State philosophy, the hope of eventual development into a more human system from which such elements may be finally eliminated.

'In what,' asks Cosimo Rucellai of Fabrizio Colonna, 'would you have us copy the ancients?'

Fabrizio replies that he would have the modern State 'honour and reward virtue; not despise poverty; respect the methods and laws of military discipline; compel citizens to love one another, to avoid factions, and to set the public above the private good.'

The speaker goes on to maintain that such ideals are not mere dreams, but have only to be rightly set forth in order to be accepted. 'Their truth,' he says, 'is so evident that the most ordinary intelligence can perceive it. And to labour for such an end is to plant trees under which mankind could rest with greater peace and joy than the present state of things can afford.' (Arte della Guerra, Bk. I.)

In the same work, speaking of that very Cosimo, Machiavelli says of him, as the highest praise he could bestow: 'I know not what thing that belonged to him, not even excepting his own soul, he would have refused to his friends; I know not what enterprise would have daunted him if he had seen in it some good to be achieved for his country.'

The statesman that planned for his city such an ideal of well-being, and planned it even while composing a treatise on war, aimed at something more than mere Machiavellian prosperity. This man, diving amidst that turmoil to which one of the fairest and most intellectual lands of Europe had been reduced by the quarrels of her neighbours, and the rival ambitions of Pope and Emperor, kings and small princes, cast a yearning glance back through history to the days of Roman greatness and liberty. Not even an American president, in these democratic days, can be more convinced that the greatest menace to 'peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments, backed by organised force which is 'controlled wholly by their will and not by the will of the people,' than Machiavelli, who believed that in freedom alone could political salvation be found. A republic was, for him, the highest form of government; but his was too unprejudiced a mind not to see that liberty has been consistent also with the well-constituted government of a monarch. And this was to him a truth of considerable moment; for his aim was practical and immediate, not abstract and remote: he wanted the good of his own beloved Florence; and if he could not have it, in the best way, by means of a republic, he would have it in the second best way, by forming good rulers. He distinctly sets forth in one place (Discorsi, Bk. I. ch. ix.) his belief that, for certain crises of growth or transformation, the' government of one man is best; though for the continuance of the State the republican form is alone satisfactory.

In one of his most eloquent passages he invites reigning princes to look back on the days of Nerva and Marcus Aurelius, to compare them with those that went before and those that came after, and to ask themselves in which time they would have chosen to live and reign. In those days of good rulers you may see

a prince secure amidst a secure people, a world filled with justice and peace. You will behold the Senate established in authority and magistrates in honour. The rich there enjoy their own riches; virtue and nobility are exalted; peace and goodness prevail; rancour, licence, corruption and ambition are extinguished. Those were the golden times in which each one could hold and defend his own opinion. Then did the world triumph, for the prince was full of reverence and glory, the people of love and confidence. Glance, then, at the state of things under the other emperors, and you shall see terrible wars, discords and seditions; cruelty in peace and in war; princes slain by the sword, civil dissensions, foreign wars; a sorrowful Italy torn by misfortune, with her cities ravaged and ruined. You shall see Rome burnt, the Capitol destroyed by the citizens, the ancient temples desolate, their ceremonies neglected, the town filled with adulterers, the sea covered with exiles, her rocks stained with blood…. You shall see informers rewarded, slaves seduced against their masters, servants against their patron while those who have no enemies are persecuted by their friends. Then you will know what Rome, Italy, and the world owed to Caesar…. Indeed, if a prince seek worldly glory he should desire to rule a corrupt city: not to spoil it like Caesar, but to re-order it like Romulus.
(Discorsi, Bk. I. ch. x.)

And later on: 'The true salvation of a republic or a kingdom is not to have a prince who rules it wisely in his lifetime, but one who orders it in such manner that it goes on well after his death.'

But such princes are rare, and, in the opinion of Machiavelli, the hereditary principle is fatal to the chances of finding them. 'That the sins of the people are caused by their princes,' is the title of one chapter of the Discorsi, in which he goes on to warn princes that they have no right to complain of the faults of their people, which arise from their own negligence or from similar faults in themselves. In another chapter he tells us that the people are wiser and more constant than princes; in the following one that republics keep faith better than kings.

Thus Machiavelli would have endorsed a recent utterance, according to which 'a steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by the partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.'

In chapter xviii. of The Prince his very counsels lightly cloak his intimate conviction that the government of one man is too unavoidably selfish to be really clean and honourable. That it is praiseworthy in a prince to keep faith and practice honesty rather than fraud is obvious. Nevertheless, we see by the experience of our own day that those princes have done best who made light of their promises.'

Elsewhere he describes the misery that a prince is forced to inflict upon the State over which he would tyrannise. He must change everything, upset all peace and happiness; behave not only as an enemy of Christ but as the foe of mankind. 'It were surely better,' he adds, 'to live as a private citizen, than to rule at the cost of so much human misery;' but there is no middle course. The despot must renounce his ambition or take the necessary means to its fulfillment. Machiavelli hated tyrants; but he more than hated—he despised—the man who tried to satisfy his conscience as well as his greed: an attempt that ended in greater misery to others as well as personal failure. Rather would he follow such a man as the Duke of Valentinois than a pious tyrant. Knowing too well the selfishness of man to suggest to the Medicis, at a certain crisis in Florentine affairs, that they should actually free the city, he submitted to Leo X. a scheme that would, he hoped, satisfy both objects. They were to prepare the State, during their lifetime, for the exercise of republican freedom, into which it was to enter at their death. But the scheme was, of course, too noble for their moral reach.

As to the individual citizen, he would, in the ideal State, enjoy freedom and happiness, but it would be at the price of loyal and devoted citizenship.

Machiavelli speaks little of the rights and much of the duties of citizens in a free State: their glory is in the service they can render and not in the power they can exercise. It was not of his age to lay stress on the claims of the individual: it is not, perhaps, of any age with strong idealistic tendencies. Freedom for him was of a corporate and not a private character; and the main privilege of free citizenship was co-operation to the good of the State. He lauds the great Roman dictator generals, who faced danger in the moment of national emergency, and, after their hour of glory, returned to their little farms. 'Restored to private life, they became frugal, humble, careful administrators of their modest possessions, obedient to the magistrates, reverent to their betters; it was indeed a marvel to see one man capable of sustaining two such different lives.'

A story is told of General Joffre that is not unworthy of this passage. When after the battle of the Marne, some one said to him 'General, you have gained a great victory!' his reply was 'I hope that I have gained the right to return to my country farm.'

To maintain this character of true citizenship Machiavelli regarded poverty as essential. The austere ideal of Roman republicanism was ever before him. And as the true citizen was to serve, but not for reward, so he was 'to forget private injuries for the love of his country.'

In Machiavelli's days the notion of a 'concert of peace' would have been an anachronism. Furthermore, in the actual waging of war Machiavelli is thoroughly Machiavellian. For him, indeed, war was war, and he would not have attached much importance to the greater or less ferocity with which it was carried on. Yet he was, even in those savage days, no militarist; and if he could not advocate universal peace yet he dealt a solid blow at the idea of war for war's sake by his endeavour to substitute a national for a foreign and mercenary army. This was a really remarkable effort at that time. Europe was ploughed up by a professional and mercenary soldiery, as deadly, in the end, to those who employed them as to those against whom they were led. Owing to the hopelessness of his circumstances Machiavelli's attempt was unsuccessful, but it was a noble failure.

Not only did he aim at the formation of a national army, but he would have had it constituted on territorial lines: the soldiers were to be well acquainted with one another and with their leaders; for only amongst those who have been born and have lived in the same place does there exist that confidence which makes for success.

Though he wrote a treatise on The Art of War yet he opens it with a protest against regarding war as an art; for it is by so doing that war becomes prized for its own sake, and creates the demand for a professional soldiery. Professional soldiers, he says, 'are scandalous, idle, undisciplined, irreligious, fugitives from paternal rule, blasphemers, gamblers, badly educated, … which characteristics are the very opposite of what is needed for a strong and efficient army.' And to those who feared an armed people his advice was to govern them well, and then there would be nothing to apprehend.

Though war admits of fraud, yet such fraud must only be practiced 'against those who do not trust you '; to break faith with those who believe in you may indeed be profitable, but it is inglorious.

Also there is such a thing as magnanimity in victory. Like the old Roman leader, the general must be too proud to take advantage when the enemy is at his feet. He cites from Livy the words put in the mouth of Scipio, who granted to Antiochus, after a further defeat, the very terms he had previously refused; for 'Romani, si vincuntur, non minuuntur animis, nec si vincunt insolescere solent.'

In religion he was cynical, as those must have been who saw their country ruined by the ambition of the Church. And yet the sum of his charge, in one remarkable chapter, is not that the Church has directly ruined the State, but that her ambition has ruined religion, and thereby, indirectly, weakened and corrupted the State.

He speaks first of the piety and reverence of ancient Rome; of the strictness with which she upheld all religious laws and ceremonies. Had the Christian Church protected religious observance in the same way—

Christian republics would be happier and more united than they are. Nor can we better gauge the decline of religion than by seeing how those countries that are nearest to the Roman Church, the head of our religion, are the least religious….

And whereas some maintain that the good of Italy depends on the Roman Church, I will refute this view by the arguments that occur to me.

The first is that, through the evil example of that Court, this country has lost all her piety and religion, which is the cause of immense inconveniences and disorders…. So that the first obligation we Italians owe the Church and her priests is to have become through them irreligious and bad; but there is yet another and a greater one, the true cause of our ruin—that is, that the Church has kept, and still keeps, our country in a state of division…. Not being powerful enough to hold Italy herself, nor allowing any other power to hold her, the country has not been able to come under one rule….

This is what we Italians owe to the Church, and to no one else. And if any would prove the matter, and were strong enough to send the Roman Court to dwell in Switzerland, with the same power that it possesses in Italy, they would soon see how in that land, where at present the people live, both in religious and military matters, most like the ancients, there would result greater disorders from the evil customs of that Court than could arise from any other cause. (Discorsi Bk. I. ch. xii.)

In sum, the ideal State of Machiavelli was one in which the people should be self-governing, but should sacrifice private aims to the welfare of their country; one in which property should be protected, but in which the citizens should be poor and austere. The highest privilege of their freedom would be the right to serve their country while co-operating in her government. They should be fully equipped for her defence, but should defend her themselves at the cost of their own peace and comfort, with no mercenary army to suggest war for its own sake or for purely ambitious ends. Yet in his Machiavellism its author faces the un-ideal state of things that actually existed: he takes count of the selfishness of mankind; and gives precepts as to how, given the psychological and physiological facts of human nature, the bark of the State is to be steered with safety and success.

Thus do we find in Machiavelli, first of all Machiavellism in the most cold-blooded and inhuman sense of the word; but afterwards the germ and promise of a state-craft inspired by more human and spiritual ideals. To Machiavelli the former was a necessary constituent of the latter, and in his highest flights of idealism he would not have denied those maxims of selfish, worldly wisdom, simply because to have done so would have been, for him, not to deny an immoral principle, but to deny a non-moral fact.

Actually, is not all state-craft even yet in the same predicament? Can statesmen, of whatever country, safely and patriotically act on the assumption that men in general are good and unselfish and disinterested? Can a diplomatist successfully eschew all vulpine wisdom? Can a general restrain, in himself or his soldiers, all that savours of the ferocity of the lion? Can war be waged without fraud and violence or without the sacrifice of the innocent and helpless? Must a government put blind trust in even the best of its own citizens? Must not the most gentlemanly of our politicians sacrifice, at times, their own high code to the exigencies of diplomacy? Do not half-measures prove as fatal now as they did in the days of Machiavelli? Is not a disregard for unpleasant and immoral facts as disastrous as ever in its results? Is not ruthlessness, now as then, sometimes more merciful in its results than a half-hearted severity? To sum up these questions in one, Can or does any State, even in our more civilised days, behave in its corporate capacity as a man of perfectly noble character can behave in his individual capacity? Can it exercise meekness, altruism, brotherly love in its dealings with neighbouring States, or even with its own citizens? Can a State behave like a perfect Christian or even like a perfect gentleman?

We know quite well what is the only truthful answer to such a question, but what we are persistently unwilling to admit is that, in so far as state-craft precludes the acceptance of an unreservedly human and a wholly Christian¹ ideal, so far also does it necessitate an admixture of Machiavellian principles and practice.

That another political attitude is possible and imperative is the claim of Christian idealists, first among whom may be named Tolstoi, who has followers, nowadays, amongst the genuine conscientious objectors.² To this school the human ideal so entirely transcends all claims of mere patriotism that they would ask of their country, as they would ask of an individual, the sacrifice of life for so noble a cause. The early Christians were, in the opinion of Roman politicians, a danger to the State from their contempt of the State religion. Therefore the State endeavoured to exterminate them, as it would now exterminate those who prize their own moral judgments above their duties of citizenship. The early Christians proved that men could be good citizens, and even good soldiers, without belief in the Pagan religion of the State; but the misgivings of their rulers were justifiable, for indeed Rome, without her religion, was bound to become, at last, another Rome. Christianity was an enemy to the Pagan State.

So, too, is the full spirit of Christianity hostile to the modern State, and the Tolstoyan, or genuine conscientious objector, is a proof of the fact. The State cannot do with him, for the State is not wholly Christian; it has as much right to persecute him as he has a right to maintain his own principles at the cost of his life as a citizen.

Yet the conscientious objector, or the unqualified pacifist, is probably not the one who does best for the promotion of his own ideals. Good is not worked in isolation, and there are truer forms of humanism, humbler forms of Christianity, more hopeful forms of pacifism, which do not wholly deny the fact and the duties of citizenship; which accept the moral resulting obligations of having drawn life and education and nurture from a certain country; and which therefore admit of the corresponding necessity to share the moral inadequacies, even the sins of that country.

'Justum est bellum quibus necessarium, et pie arma quibus nisi in armis nulla spes est.' Such pacifism will not allow of abstention in the hour of our country's need; though it will unrestingly endeavour to transform the politics of the world in accordance with its ideal.

But, on the other hand, I would urge that pacifists, whether of the former or of the latter category, are consistent: just as those who admit that the prevailing state-craft inevitably contains certain non-Christian and non-human elements are consistent. But those, on the contrary, who would maintain that state-craft can admit of diplomacy, in the classical sense, without any admixture of Machiavellism, or of warfare that can be termed Christian, are not consistent nor sincere; and they justify the position of the unqualified pacifist, as those do not who confess that the best of us are yet far from the attainment of a purely human and Christian ideal in politics. To deny Machiavellism is to deny facts.

But as in the philosophy of Machiavelli, so in modern statecraft, the question is not, does it actually and always set forth a wide and human and disinterested policy? but does it admit of it? The philosophy of Machiavelli did—the philosophy of his Machiavellian disciple Bismarck did not; for the former aimed at the formation of a free, self-contained State, with an army for defensive purposes, and citizens whose pride it would be to govern and to serve; while the latter set himself to constitute a powerful autocratic government, strong for purposes of world-dominion.

Even the Mid-Europe policy, as set forth by Friedrich Naumann, which is not indeed wholly and heartlessly Machiavellian, is yet exclusive of any widely human policy. Not a great wall, but a great ditch, is to include the German State of the future, and all its dependent States, and to exclude the rest of the world from a share in German wealth and power.

The ideal citizen of Naumann is, indeed, to live for the State, but not as the austere and disinterested citizen of Machiavelli, who has his ever active share in the shaping of her destiny. For Naumann's citizen it is a question of commercial success: 'For the sake of personal interest he becomes a member of an impersonal institution and works for it as for himself…. Individual ism is fully developed, but it is then carried up into the next higher form of economic co-operative existence.'

The State, on the other hand, uses individuals for her purpose, as those same individuals seek their purpose in her. 'For it is only by means of healthier, better educated, and better nourished masses that the military, financial, and civilised Mid-Europe of which we dream can come into existence.'

Mr. Bertrand Russell, in 'Principles of Social Reconstruction,' has divided the impulses of political life into two groups: 'the possessive and the creative, according as they aim at acquiring or retaining something that cannot be shared, or at bringing into the world some valuable thing—such as knowledge, or art, or goodwill—in which there is no private property.'

'Ecco chi crescera i nostri amori,' said Machiavelli's great countryman, in describing that love which knows not envy nor rivalry. To act as though such love could be the law of political life, before its sun has risen above our horizon, is the dangerous mistake of the idealist without a sense of facts. But this same idealist would be less excusable if our State philosophers had the candour to confess the Machiavellism they cannot avoid. Then would they be justified in demanding of the citizen that he should not be too good for the country to which he owes the protection of his life and his interests; that he should work along with her, but not apart from her, in the pursuit of a greater international ideal.

That ideal has at last found expression in the mouth of a statesman who has not disregarded facts, on the lips of a pacifist who has accepted the necessity of war:

We are glad [said President Wilson] now that we see facts with no veil of false presence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world…. The world must be safe for democracy…. We desire no conquests and no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, and no material compensation for sacrifices we shall freely make…. Right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for the universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as will bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

It would be rash to take these words as the absolute due of our own cause, just and righteous as that cause may be. It is through a higher fatality than our own statesmanship that we are now fighting alongside of an emancipated Russia, and not a Czar. We are yet in a state of confusion in regard to national and international ideals which is significant of effort rather than attainment. In all our talk of a new Europe there has been, as yet, but little preoccupation with the ideal of a new Africa, with a new standard for the treatment of native races. Until Russia found her soul there was yet the danger that her alliance might be rewarded regardless of the true interests of some of the lesser nations.

These words of the American President are rather the noble expression of a deep and universal human aspiration than of the actual policy of any one of us, and we should be nearer the attainment of that higher policy if we believed it. As George Tyrrell writes in his 'Essays on Faith and Immortality':

'This is the meaning of Christ Crucified—man agonising for goodness and truth even unto death, and thereby fulfilling the universal law of God in Nature and in himself…. Hence, instead of hell-fire, I should preach the hollowness of the self-life in and out, up and down, till men loathed it and cried "Quis me liberabit?"'

Such cannot yet be the spirit of diplomacy; but for those who believe in the union of nations, and in a worldwide policy inspired by human love, it is on these lines that their ideal is to be sought.

It is a frightening thought that a few men will, by and by, sit round a table to settle the welfare of the world. It would be a still more alarming thought if we believed that they really would settle it, and that the visible actors on the world's stage were as potent as they appear to be. Yet their opportunity is a great one, and could we hope that fifty percent of the future Peace Conference would be inspired by the temper of President Wilson's speech; that disinterestedness, altruism, humanity, and a pride magnanimous but not boastful, would be their characteristics; then, indeed, their efforts, seconded by a greater fate and by the pressure of those nobler aspirations that are stirring in the heart of the world, might bring good from the most awful happenings that our lives have known.

One quality we would wish them for the performance of their weighty task, and that is unflinching moral courage: a courage that will not shrink from the acknowledgment of unpleasant facts; that will not endeavour to clothe the acts of self-interest, unavoidable as they may be, in the garment of human love; a courage that will give them the strength to acknowledge wherein each country yet seeks her own, even at the expense of her friends. But their courage must go farther still, and, just as it shrines not from admitting what we are, so must it also boldly state what we would be; having acknowledged the unpleasant truths of worldly prudence it must go on to enunciate fearlessly the nobler truths of human wisdom and love.

Notes

¹ I use here the word Christian in a moral sense, as denoting a principle of unselfish love and devotion.

² I believe that such exist, though not all who refuse military service on those grounds deserve the name.