Christian Lous Lange

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.

The free trade movement in the middle of the last century represents the first conscious recognition of these new circumstances and of the necessity to adapt to them.

It is against this concept of the sovereign state, a state isolated by protectionism and militarism, that internationalism must now engage in decisive battle.

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.

The sovereign state has in our times become a lethal danger to human civilization because technical developments enable it to employ an infinite number and variety of means of destruction.

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.

For the state by its nature claims sovereignty, the right to an unlimited development of power, determined only by self-interest. It is by nature anarchistic.

Moreover, if the territorial state is to continue as the last word in the development of society, then war is inevitable.

The simultaneous reactions elicited all over the world by the reading of newspaper dispatches about the same events create, as it were, a common mental pulse beat for the whole of civilized mankind.

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.

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.

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.

Every time economic and technical development takes a step forward, forces emerge which attempt to create political forms for what, on the economic-technical plane, has already more or less become reality.

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.

Internationalism is a social and political theory, a certain concept of how human society ought to be organized, and in particular a concept of how the nations ought to organize their mutual relations.

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.

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.

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.

A pacifist will often - at least nowadays - be an internationalist and vice versa. But history shows us that a pacifist need not think internationally.

No state is free from militarism, which is inherent in the very concept of the sovereign state. There are merely differences of degree in the militarism of states.