PACIFISM. - Pacifism is both a doctrine and a movement. Under the first aspect it presents itself as the most open antithesis of militarism, to whose apology for war—considered as a natural, necessary and beneficial event, according to the Darwinian conception of international relations—it opposes the exaltation of peace and the unconditional condemnation of the use of violence. Under the second aspect it gathers together all those currents which set out to make the theoretical principles of doctrinal pacifism penetrate the common consciousness and thus to create the psychological and political conditions for the attainment of a perpetual peace among nations. To its formation there have contributed in varying degrees humanitarianism, particularly of the Anglo-Saxon stamp, romantic cosmopolitanism and internationalism.
Theoretical pacifism starts from the concept of the fundamental unity of the human race and of the inviolability of individual life, from which it deduces the absolute reprobation of the killing of man and of war as collective homicide. Applying this consequence, it condemns not only offensive or conquering war, but also defensive war, since the latter obliges one to attack the life of one's fellow man in equal measure as the former. In this attitude of its own one discerns in particular the influence of humanitarianism, tinged with a vague sentimentalism, whose object of worship resides in humanity. Pacifism, however, does not fail to have recourse to other arguments to invigorate its conceptual positions. It insists, first of all, on the evils produced by armed conflicts, whose humanization proves utopian. Just as in the internal life of States private vengeance has long been forbidden, so in international life it must be forbidden that the State take justice into its own hands through the use of violence. This is further required by the inadequacy of force to resolve the questions pending among States. Victory does not always smile upon the one who is in the right, nor does war untie international political problems. Under the influence of cosmopolitanism some pacifist currents wish for the disappearance of national and religious divisions, the origin of most competitions among States, and dream of a humanity gathered into a universal society without fatherlands and without diversity of creeds, as the surest means of obtaining perpetual peace.
The theoretical motives of pacifism are not without a soul of truth. No doubt can be raised about the sacred character of human life and the respect owed to it. Nevertheless such a character cannot prevent the application of the norms of justice, which require the punishment of the delinquent and permit legitimate defence against an unjust aggressor, both in the internal social life and in the broader sphere of international relations. The integral acceptance of the pacifist presupposition would lead to the universal immunity of the crime committed by States and to the consecration of the fait accompli, to which it would in no way be possible to bring reparation, if the use of force is intrinsically immoral. Real, moreover, are the evils that war produces: this does not however remove the fact that right is the greatest good of social coexistence and that society must possess the necessary means to defend it or to compel its reparation, once it has been injured by a criminal act. In the international field self-defence can only be surpassed with the constitution of an organic society which possesses coercive means to impose respect for justice. It is simply utopian, finally, to think of a community of peoples in which national and religious divisions have disappeared, since the former especially are an insuperable effect of the associative tendencies of human nature, necessary for harmony and progress. Notwithstanding these observations, it is dutiful to recognize in pacifism the anxiety for the attainment of a noble ideal, such as that of the establishment of perpetual peace among peoples and the proscription of war, toward which other currents tend with equal enthusiasm, without however falling into its exaggerations.
Because of this theoretical attitude of its own, pacifism must be kept distinct both from Christian thought and from true internationalism. No doctrine like the Christian one has nourished in men the sentiment of universal brotherhood, which joins them in one same family, and has inculcated with greater insistence mutual love beyond every ethnic barrier. Its announcement of peace is however already associated in St. Paul with the realistic vision of the necessity of the sword for the punishment of evildoers. Nor did the Fathers of the Church, developing the evangelical message, find any incompatibility between the use of arms and the Christian profession. St. Augustine, continuator of their tradition, condemned unjust wars, calling them magna latrocinia, but affirmed the lawfulness of those undertaken for the protection of right, as did after him the Fathers who followed him.
Sound internationalism likewise detaches itself from pacifism. While the latter, yielding to the suggestion of humanitarian cosmopolitanism, would wish fatherlands and States suppressed, the former recognizes the natural necessity of their existence and admits their legitimate defence, in case of grave threat. To this objective observation it adds only the imperative need of a suitable international organization with appropriate institutions to ensure the peaceful coexistence of nations, resting on the solidary unity of the human race and on the economic interdependence of peoples, whose prosperity requires the collaboration of all and lasting relations of peace.
Pacifism may be called a rather modern phenomenon. In the vague form of an aspiration toward peace and the liberation from war it is found in all times. In Greco-Roman antiquity, historians such as Xenophon vividly deplored the evils of war; poets such as Virgil dreamed of an era in which arms would be changed into instruments of labour; philosophers, particularly of the Stoic school, such as Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, made themselves heralds of a cosmopolitanism that would make peoples brothers. But a true pacifism is not found in this period, just as it is not found in Christianity, which fills the succeeding age with itself. Founded on religious motives and therefore called ascetic, it appears, instead, among certain sects, among which the followers of Wyclif and of Huss distinguished themselves, who, like the Mennonites and the Quakers later, upheld the absolute inviolability of human life and the illegitimacy of the use of force, even against evil and evildoers. To this current the pacifism of today is sentimentally linked, which has gone on strengthening itself, until it became a vast international movement, after the appearance of Enlightenment humanitarianism and romantic cosmopolitanism.
Projects for the organization of a perpetual peace already exist in the 17th century. Noteworthy are that of Crucé of 1623 and that of the Duke of Sully of 1638. They obtained a greater flowering in the 18th century, during which there stand out the memoirs for rendering peace perpetual in Europe of Charles Irénée Castel, abbot of St-Pierre, published in 1712, the treatises of Rousseau (1760), toward which Voltaire exercised his mordant criticism, of Bentham (1789), which gave occasion to Immanuel Kant to publish his opuscule on perpetual peace (1793). In the works recalled, pacifism deepens its ideal motives and joins with internationalism, which moves toward the same goal, activating the creation of international institutions.
In the following century, independently of this systematic effort, the pacifist movement was born. Its country of origin was the United States of America, where, in 1815, David L. Dodge founded the New York Peace Society, followed by the proliferation of other similar associations, which in 1828 merged into the American Peace Society. The movement soon crossed the seas and spread across the old continent, giving rise to various and repeated international congresses. To its credit must in part be ascribed certain institutions, created by states for the peaceful resolution of their disputes, such as arbitration and the international court of justice. The founding of the League of Nations, after the First World War, was promoted by the moral pressure of pacifists on American public opinion, which in turn influenced President Wilson, whose first declarations were pronounced at a meeting of the Association for the Peace Movement. The new international body had as its principal aim the development of cooperation and the defense of peace and collective security, which remained substantially unchanged in the more recent United Nations Organization, successor to the League of Nations. The Kellogg Pact of 1928 seemed to crown the aspirations of pacifism with the renunciation, set down in it by the contracting states, of recourse to war as an instrument of national policy. But it was a short-lived illusion: perpetual peace remains even today an aspiration, to which reality refuses to conform.