Christian Lous Lange Quotes
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Today we stand on a bridge leading from the territorial state to the world community. Politically, we are still governed by the concept of the territorial state; economically and technically, we live under the auspices of worldwide communications and worldwide markets.
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Militarism is basically a way of thinking, a certain interpretation of the function of the state; this manner of thinking is, moreover, revealed by its outer forms: by armaments and state organization.
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In particular, the efforts to reestablish peace after the World War have been directed toward the formation of states and the regulation of their frontiers according to a consciously national program.
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Hand in hand with nationalist economic isolationism, militarism struggles to maintain the sovereign state against the forward march of internationalism.
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Within each such social group, a feeling of solidarity prevails, a compelling need to work together and a joy in doing so that represent a high moral value.
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Like all social theories, internationalism must seek its basis in the economic and technical fields; here are to be found the most profound and the most decisive factors in the development of society.
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But teleological considerations can lead no further than to a belief and a hope. They do not give certainty.
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The growth of means of transport has created a world market and an opportunity for division of labor embracing all the developed and most of the undeveloped states.
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A pacifist will often - at least nowadays - be an internationalist and vice versa. But history shows us that a pacifist need not think internationally.
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It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each individual's intelligence or morality.
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The territorial state is such an ancient form of society - here in Europe it dates back thousands of years - that it is now protected by the sanctity of age and the glory of tradition. A strong religious feeling mingles with the respect and the devotion to the fatherland.
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Just as characteristic, perhaps, is the intellectual interdependence created through the development of the modern media of communication: post, telegraph, telephone, and popular press.
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Modern techniques have torn down state frontiers, both economical and intellectual. The growth of means of transport has created a world market and an opportunity for division of labor embracing all the developed and most of the undeveloped states.
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Internationalism on the other hand admits that spiritual achievements have their roots deep in national life; from this national consciousness art and literature derive their character and strength and on it even many of the humanistic sciences are firmly based.
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It is characteristic that this should take place just when it is becoming more and more clear to all who think about the matter, that technically and economically we have left the territorial state behind us.
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All species capable of grasping this fact manage better in the struggle for existence than those which rely upon their own strength alone: the wolf, which hunts in a pack, has a greater chance of survival than the lion, which hunts alone.
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On the contrary. Internationalism also recognizes, by its very name, that nations do exist. It simply limits their scope more than one-sided nationalism does.
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Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.
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Propaganda must appeal to mankind's better judgment and to the necessary belief in a better future. For this belief, the valley of the shadow of death is but a war station on the road to the blessed summit.
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Earlier ages fortified themselves behind the sovereign state, behind protectionism and militarism.
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The theoretically unrestricted right to develop power, to wage war against other states, is antisocial and is doubly dangerous, because the state as a mass entity represents a low moral and intellectual level.
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Moreover, if the territorial state is to continue as the last word in the development of society, then war is inevitable.
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The main concept is that of an international solidarity expressed in practice through worldwide division of labor: free trade is the principal point in the program of internationalism.
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The idea of eternity lives in all of us. We thirst to live in a belief which raises our small personality to a higher coherence - a coherence which is human and yet superhuman, absolute and yet steadily growing and developing, ideal and yet real.