Wednesday, March 7, 2012

6. Treaty Obligation from the Protestant Reformation to 1919: Part 6 Honour's Role in the International States' System

Allen Z. Hertz was senior advisor in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's Prime Minister and the federal cabinet. He formerly worked in Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and earlier taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto and Hong Kong. He studied European history and languages at McGill University (B.A.) and then East European and Ottoman history at Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.). He also has international law degrees from Cambridge University (LL.B.) and the University of Toronto (LL.M.).

Foreword

This is first publication of the integral text of "Treaty Obligation from the Protestant Reformation to 1919." However, portions dealing with "Honour's Role in the International States' System" were published in Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 31 (2002), pp. 113-155, and also appear (without the footnotes) as a separate posting on this website. Research for this present essay took place in Ottawa during service with the Privy Council Office which greatly assisted by regularly making conveniently available a variety of materials, including some rare books, from the Supreme Court of Canada Library, the National Library of Canada and the Library of Parliament. "Treaty Obligation from the Protestant Reformation to 1919" is current to the end of 2002.

The Part 1: Introduction  discusses the thesis that before the First World War the moral or "natural law" principle that "agreements are to be kept" (pacta sunt servanda)  was binding in honour alone. Part 2  reviews classical international law’s assessment of the treaty as a legal source.  Part 3  shows that before the First World War treaties were not always accepted as an integral part of international law. Part 4  explains why treaties were then not seen as legally binding, and describes how international law governed treaties via the doctrine of good faith, i.e. pacta sunt servanda  as a moral or "natural law" requirement. Part 5  illuminates the State’s moral personality with reference to both personification and treaties as “contracts of kings.” Honour  is identified as one of the principal features of pre-1914 European civilization and international relations in this present posting, Part 6.  Part 7  portrays the “old diplomacy” as a milieu focusing on honour. Part 8  shows what kings, prime ministers, philosophers and lawyers had to say about treaties as binding in honour. The honour of treaties as seen in Britain and the USA is the subject of Parts 9 and 10  respectively. Part 11  recalls that, before 1914, all treaties were a “gentlemen’s agreement” — an expression which only made sense in public international law after  1919, i.e. as a specific exception to the new rule that treaties are normally binding in law. Part 12  treats the “new diplomacy” that arose during the First World War and discusses the rise of the legal paradigm. Finally, Part 13  highlights the law-centered order inaugurated by the 1919 Paris Peace Settlement which created conditions supporting 20th-century discourse about treaties as legally binding.



Honour's role in the States' system

The First World War’s origins were studied by James Joll (1918-1994), Professor of International History at the University of London:
In the late 20th century we perhaps find it easier to conceive of foreign policy as being motivated by domestic preoccupations and by economic interests than by... considerations of prestige and glory.  It does not necessarily follow that the men of 1914 thought in the same way as we do.[1]
What is honour?


An answer comes from French magistrate, parliamentarian, historian and aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859):
It first signifies the esteem, glory, or reverence that a man receives from his fellow men; and in this sense a man is said ‘to acquire honour’ (conquérir de l’honneur).  Secondly, honor signifies the aggregate of those rules by the aid of which this esteem, glory, or reverence is obtained.  Thus we say that ‘a man has always strictly obeyed the laws of honour’; or ‘a man has violated his honour.’[2]  
According to German archivist and military historian Karl Demeter (1889-1976): “Honour can be either a condition or a reflex, subjective or objective: it can be purely personal or it can be collective.”[3]  Similarly, University of Chicago anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers (1919-2001) observed:
Honour is the value of a person in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of his society.  It is his estimation of his own worth, his claim to pride, but it is also the acknowledgement of that claim, his excellence recognized by society, his right to pride.[4]  
Honour is a manifestation of what USA political philosopher Francis Fukuyama describes when he points to man’s desire for recognition:
People believe that they have a certain worth, and when other people treat them as though they are worth less than that, they experience the emotion of anger.  Conversely, when people fail to live up to their own sense of worth, they feel shame, and when they are evaluated correctly in proportion to their worth, they feel pride.[5]
Honour’s significance is something the 21st century grasps poorly, because as honour, the concept is now virtually obsolete and the “vocabulary of honour has acquired archaic overtones in modern English.”[6]  De Tocqueville shrewdly perceived that honour’s obsolescence parallels the eclipse of aristocracy:
The dissimilarities and inequalities of men gave rise to the notion of honor; that notion is weakened in proportion as these differences are obliterated, and with them it would disappear.[7]  
Thus, the shift from an aristocratic to a bourgeois culture caused aristocratic honour to fade in favour of middle class public opinion — the latter perhaps featuring as frequently in modern political discourse as did the former in previous times.[8]  However, an important subset of what was once called honour survives today in the narrower concept of prestige among States.[9]  In a detailed examination of the goals of foreign policy, French political scientist Raymond Aron (1905-1983) argued:
Political units are in competition: the satisfactions of amour-propre, victory or prestige, are no less real than the so-called material satisfactions, such as the gain of a province or a population.[10]
The Duke of Wellington probably never said “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton,” but élite education in Europe specifically tried to inculcate a cult of honour, in part to support the officer corps.[11]   Thus, honour was identified as an essential component of “the genius for war” by Prussian soldier and writer Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831):
Of all the noble feelings... in the exciting tumult of battle, none... are so powerful and constant as the soul’s thirst for honour and renown, which the German language treats so unfairly... in the words Ehrgeiz (greed of honour) and Ruhmsucht (hankering after glory)....  Has there ever been a great Commander destitute of the love of honour, or is such a character even conceivable?”[12]  
But, Clausewitz caustically criticised courtly 18th-century generals so taken with “the conception, Honour of Victory” that they failed to exploit their triumph by vigorously pursuing the enemy.[13]

Proposing the Legion of Honour’s creation, Napoleon remarked (May 4, 1802):
I do not believe that the French people love liberty and equality.  The French are not changed by ten years of revolution.  They are what the Gauls were, proud and frivolous.  They believe in one thing: Honor![14] 
Similarly, Swiss historian Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (1818-1897) observed that honour:
has become, in a far wider sense than is commonly believed, a decisive rule of conduct for the cultivated Europeans of our own day, and many who still hold faithfully by religion and morality are unconsciously guided by this feeling in the gravest decisions.[15]  
The same bourgeois experience was recently described by Yale University historian Peter Gay (1923-    ) who indicts the honour-fixated societies of the 19th century for spawning hatred:
Touchiness on the great matter of honor was extreme.  All significant aspects of life — rites of passage, social intercourse, the choice of a mate, orders of rank and precedence, even commercial transactions — were meticulously regulated and subject to obsessively enforced rituals.  Affronts, whether real or trumped up, had to be avenged with the most extreme remedies at hand....  Men felt compelled to display and continuously reaffirm their manhood from the time they were striplings, to prove their hardihood, their sheer physical strength, and their tenacious endurance of the bodily suffering that their risk-seeking lives necessarily entailed.  For societies living by heroic codes, prestige was the cherished aim, pain the necessary test, disgrace a perpetual threat; autonomy was sacrificed to the good opinion of others.[16]
Honour a staple of political philosophy?
“Honour” was until recently a central construct in European socio-political thought and a commonplace in works of law and political philosophy.  Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a Florentine public servant, diplomat and political writer.  Following a 14th century trail blazed by Petrarch[17], Machiavelli deplored Christianity’s emphasis on humility and heaven. He instead urged individual virtù (manliness, courage, pluck, fortitude, boldness, valour, steadfastness, tenacity)[18] to gain honour and glory — perhaps man’s highest pleasure.[19]  Machiavelli’s writings reveal honour’s several faces which are generally linked to virtù.  According to USA political theorist Leo Strauss (1899-1973):
For Machiavelli, the honorable is that which gives a man distinction or which makes him great and resplendent. Hence extraordinary virtue rather than ordinary virtue is honorable.  To possess extraordinary virtue and to be aware of one’s possessing it is more honourable than merely to possess it.  To have a sense of one’s superior worth and to act in accordance with that sense is honorable.  Hence it is honorable to rely on oneself and to be frank when frankness is dangerous.  To show signs of weakness or to refuse to fight is dishonorable.  To make open war against a prince is more honorable than to conspire against him.  To lose by fighting is more honorable than to lose in any other way.  To die fighting is more honorable than to perish through famine.[20]  
Although Machiavelli was outstanding in stressing dissimulation and even brutality, he was entirely with his contemporaries in seeing honour, glory and fame as the prince’s ultimate goal.[21]

The image of the "gentleman," including the cult of honour, was a Renaissance icon.[22]  References to honour, good name, reputation, dignity, greatness, glory and fame abound in Guicciardini’s Ricordi composed over the years from 1512 to 1530.[23]  The emphasis on honour was also natural for Emperor Charles V who was steeped in chivalry as Grand Master of the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece.  When chided for failing to follow Julius Caesar in fully exploiting victories, Charles replied:
The ancients had only one goal before their eyes, honor.  We Christians have two, honor and the salvation of the soul.[24]  
In entrusting Spain to his son Philip II, Charles advised (1543):
to take as examples all those who have made good their want in age and experience by their courage and zeal in the pursuit of honour [and to study as] the only means by which you will gain honour and reputation.[25]
Later in the 16th century, Bodin divided social rewards into the profitable and the honourable, with a preference for the latter:
For as a generous and noble minded man doth more esteem honour than all the treasure of the world; so without doubt he will willingly sacrifice his life and goods for the glory he expects — and the greater the honours be, the more men there will be of merit and fame.[26]  
This was consistent with the understanding of French magistrate and essayist, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592):
Of all the delusions in the world, the most fully accepted and most universal is the seeking for fame and glory, which we espouse to the point of giving up wealth, repose, life, and health, which are real and substantial goods, to follow that airy phantom....[27]  
Shakespeare’s plays show Elizabethan England putting relatively strong emphasis on the concept of honour.[28]  In the same English context, Gentili understandably included a chapter on “conflict between what is honourable and expedient” in his Three Books on the Law of War:
Honour (honestas) is so highly valued that it takes precedence over what is lawful, and may even be sought at the expense of a certain amount of injustice.  For the sake of honour (honestatis caussa), says Augustine, we should give up what is lawful but would be advantageous only to a part of mankind.[29]  
In the Netherlands, Grotius — also referring to wartime — later discussed “with what meaning a sense of honour (pudor) may be said to forbid what the law permits.”[30]

Hobbes was preoccupied with honour[31] which he carefully defined:
The manifestation of the value we set on one another is that which is called honoring and dishonoring.  To value a man at a high rate is to honor him, at a low rate is to dishonor him.  But high and low, in this case, is to be understood by comparison to the rate that each man sets on himself.[32]  
French lawyer, political philosopher and aristocrat Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755) identified honour as the key principle distinguishing monarchies, from republics on the one hand, and from despotisms on the other.[33]  Honour was portrayed as monarchy’s actuating spring because nobles serving the king, were motivated by the quest for position and precedence.  But, Montesquieu also saw honour as a common code limiting the power and guiding the conduct of king and noble alike:
There is nothing so strongly inculcated in monarchies, by the law, by religion and honour as submission to the prince’s will; but this very honour tells us that the prince never ought to command a dishonourable action, because this would render us incapable of serving him.[34]
Wolff provides rich evidence showing that the 18th century was incapable of describing the international system without referring to honour’s vocabulary.  Setting out the “duties of nations to themselves and the rights arising therefrom,” his systematic treatise includes substantive paragraphs on “the necessity of not bringing disgrace on one’s nation,” “zeal for the reputation (fama) of one’s nation,” “what fame (gloria) is,” “the fame (gloria) of a nation," "the desire for fame (gloria)” and “how far this applies to the ruler of the state.”[35]
Which man is insensible to the attractions of glory?  It is the last passion of the sage.  Even the most austere philosophers cannot uproot it.  What are exhaustion, troubles and dangers in comparison with glory?  It is a passion so mad that I cannot at all conceive how it does not turn everyone’s head.[36]  
These were the words of Frederick the Great who believed:
A good prince’s true merit is to have a sincere attachment to the public good, to love his country and glory: I say ‘glory’ because the happy instinct which animates men with the desire for a good reputation is the real principle of heroic actions; it is the soul’s nerve, awakening it from lethargy to carry it towards useful, necessary and praiseworthy enterprises.[37]
As early as 1790, Burke denounced the French Revolution’s “grim and bloody maxims” as antithetical to a unique European notion of honour drawn from medieval chivalry.  For Burke, “the spirit of a gentleman” was fundamental to Europe’s civilization:
It was this which, without confounding ranks, had produced a noble equality and handed it down through all the gradations of social life.  It was this opinion which mitigated kings into companions and raised private men to be fellows with kings.  Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power, it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws to be subdued by manners.[38]
“Word of honour” and courtly society


Keeping a promise as “word of honour” was similar, but not identical to the pacta sunt servanda of natural and canon law, which as legal systems were for a long time less effective than honour in encouraging treaty compliance by successors.  As long as there was a sense in which treaties remained the contracts of kings, performance profited from dynastic honour as a recognized framework for a son’s feeling bound by his father’s treaty.  This consciousness of family obligation alleviated difficulties about succession to natural law promises and transcended the limitations of the oath, by which a king could imperil his own soul, but not that of his son.

With honour, the context was neither natural nor canon law, but rather a related socio-religious norm emerging from the ethical and aesthetic ideals of the late Middle Ages, when — according to Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), the "thought of all those who lived in the circles of court or castle was impregnated with the idea of chivalry [and] permeated by the fiction that chivalry ruled the world."[39]  Pertinent here is the emphasis which medieval chivalry had placed on vows, steadfastness, “keeping faith” and “remaining true to one’s word.”[40]  This phenomenon was understood by De Tocqueville who perceptively saw the link with the key medieval institution of allegiance:
Every man looked up to an individual whom he was bound to obey; by that intermediate personage he was connected with all the others.  Thus, in feudal society, the whole system of the commonwealth rested upon the sentiment of fidelity to the person of the lord; to destroy that sentiment was to fall into anarchy.[41]  
Huizinga was understandably surprised that Ernest Nys, after so much study of  international law’s historical origins,[42] had missed the key contribution of chivalric ideas — including “fidelity to one’s given word.”[43]  Huizinga was convinced by 14th century sources that “the system of chivalric ideas as a noble game of rules of honor” was linked to international law:
The origins of the latter lay in antiquity and in canon law, but chivalry was the ferment that made possible the development of the laws of war.  The notion of a law of nations was preceded and prepared for by the chivalric ideal of honor and loyalty.[44]
The enduring focus on honour was reflected in the European obsession with reputation.  For example, scrupulous treaty performance was seen as giving rise to “true grandeur and solid glory” by Charles Rollin (1661-1741), classical historian and former Rector of the University of Paris.[45]

The importance of keeping promises was also affirmed by Frances Osborne, Duke of Leeds, who resigned (April 21, 1791) as Foreign Secretary after parliamentary pressure prompted Prime Minister William Pitt the younger to cancel planned naval demonstrations against Russia.  Because the warships had already been promised to Prussia’s King Frederick William II, Leeds saw personal and national honour lost by Britain’s volte-face.[46]  In 1864, future Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (as MP Lord Robert Cecil) similarly emphasized:
One promise is as good as a hundred, and one disregarded promise casts upon the escutcheon of a country disgrace which is only increased in degree by multiplied repetitions.[47]  
In the same vein, lying for reasons of State had been roundly condemned by 18th-century diplomatist Lord Malmesbury:
No occasion, no provocation, no anxiety to rebut an unjust accusation, no idea, however tempting, of promoting the object you have in view, can need, much less justify, a falsehood.  Success obtained by one is a precarious and baseless success.  Detection would ruin, not only your own reputation forever, but deeply wound the honour of your Court.[48]  
This rhetoric exemplifies the imperative of honouring both truth and promises that was a key ingredient of the chivalric archetype, perpetuated and transformed by the “courtly-aristocratic” society, which held sway in Europe until swept away during the First World War.[49]

King’s honour nationalized?

By the 18th century, the very old notion of the king’s honour had mingled with the closely related idea of the honour of the State or nation.[50]  According to de Tocqueville:
In some nations the monarch is regarded as a personification of the country; and the fervor of patriotism being converted into the fervor of loyalty, they take a sympathetic pride in his conquests, and glory in his power.[51]  
For example, King George III explicitly identified his personal honour with that of Britain — a sentiment seconded by the pseudonymous Junius:
The king’s honour is that of his people.  Their real honour and real interest are the same.”[52]  
This link was no less compelling for soldier-diplomat and adventurer, Sir Robert Wilson who (1826) urged Parliament “to uphold with a strong hand the honour and interest of the Crown, which in this country are inseparable from the honour and interest of the people.”[53]  Similarly, Lord Salisbury said on the death of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli:
The honour of the Crown and the honour of the country were in his mind inseparable: and in comparison to them, questions of internal policy occupied a secondary rank.[54]
Already in the 18th century, Wolff had taught that “the ruler of a state ought to direct the royal acts to the glory of his nation  (gloria Gentis), consequently to do nothing to diminish or destroy it.”[55]  For him, fame (gloria) meant “ein grosser Nahme” (a great name):
Fame (gloria) is primarily and of itself attributed to the nation, because it is considered as a single person, which has its own actions dependent upon intellectual and moral virtues; but even more is it attributed to it, because the renown (laus) of individuals is passed over to it on account of acts or deeds which are considered as those of the individuals.[56]  
Similarly, Charles Jenkinson (later 1st Lord Liverpool) was in 1758 comfortable declaiming:
Great and wise governments have always been jealous of national glory: it is an active principle, which properly cultivated, operates in virtuous actions through every member of the State.  To preserve this in its purity is the duty of everyone who loves his country.[57]
It was entirely natural for France’s new National Assembly to speak (1792) of “the offended dignity of the French people” and for British Foreign Secretary Lord Grenville to defend “the dignity and honour of England.”[58]  Similarly, “the glory of the French people” was rhetoric Napoleon used to encourage soldiers in the 1796 campaign in Italy.[59]  After Allied victory at Waterloo (1815), the Duke of Wellington and other British statesmen judged sparing France’s “national honour” to be a key consideration in framing peace terms.[60]

In the 19th century such references to national honour became increasingly common, especially in France, Britain and the few other countries where control of foreign policy was gradually shifting to a governing class which, according to Sir Harold Nicolson, developed a corresponding feeling that “engagements entered into by the government pledged the honour of the class as a whole.”[61]  Similarly, British historian A.J.P. Taylor (1906-1990) observed that pre-1914 treaties were no longer simply between monarchs, but “absorbed by public opinion” and therefore also between nations.[62]

Honour in the international of kings
During the 18th century, dynastic ties had been so important that mutual courtesies persisted even during wartime, when contending rulers exchanged letters of congratulation and condolence.[63]  Such monarchical solidarity was fortified by the challenge of the French Revolution.  After France’s King and Queen were arrested (June 21, 1791) at Varennes, Marie Antoinette’s brother, Habsburg Emperor Leopold II wrote to his fellow rulers that the detention violated “the honor of all sovereigns and the security of all governments.”[64]  In fact, 19th century European rulers were an interrelated family, mostly of German descent.  According to British historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012), these kings had “more in common with the other members of the international princes’ trade union... than with their own subjects.”[65]  Similarly, Nicolson portrayed the post-1815 Concert of Europe as a system of trust operating via the creation of confidence and the acquisition of credit in an International of Monarchs — a freemasonry of kings.[66]  Accordingly, he saw 19th-century international relations as resting on:
a tacit understanding between the five Great Powers that there were certain common standards of dignity, humanity and good faith which should govern the conduct of these powers in their relations with each other and in their dealings with less potent or less civilized communities.[67]  
British international lawyer Coleman Phillipson (1875-1958) thought the Concert functioned tolerably well as long as governments valued “honour, fidelity and good report” and had a strong “desire to stand well with their fellows.”[68]  Consonant with these values was the dictum of former Foreign Secretary and future Prime Minister Lord Grenville (1802):
Loss of territory might be regained, commerce might be revived, and industry encouraged and invigorated; but honour and faith, once forfeited, could never [sic] be repaired but imperfectly.[69]  
In the same vein, MP Lord Robert Cecil (1864) insisted that “loss of dignity and honour is not a sentiment; it is a loss of power.”[70]  Avoiding stain of dishonour was thus a key incentive promoting conformity with the rules making up a common code.

19th-century monarchs and statesmen displayed real anxiety about peer judgment and frequently appealed to the standard of what would be honourable “in the eyes of Europe.”[71]  For example, Queen Victoria facilitated British foreign policy by assiduously exploiting her private correspondence and family reunions to gather intelligence and cultivate influence in the exalted circle constituted by her royal relatives abroad.[72]  Reminding her Prime Minister of “the importance of keeping our foreign policy beyond reproach,” she said:
Public opinion is recognised as a ruling power in our domestic affairs; it is not of less importance in the society of Europe with reference to the conduct of an individual state. To possess the confidence of Europe is of the utmost importance to this country.[73]  
 Victoria insisted that “the honour of England” touched her “more nearly than anyone else.”[74]  She explained:
What my Ambassador does, he does in my name, and I feel myself bound in honour thereby, but also placed under an obligation to take upon myself the consequences.[75]  
Moreover, the Queen claimed to have “public and personal obligations towards those Sovereigns with whom she professes to be on terms of peace and amity.”[76]

At the beginning of the 20th century, King Edward VII was imagined to be even more closely involved in British diplomacy, which ostentatiously exploited his encounters with other rulers, including the Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov Emperors.  Aimed at ending the old Anglo-French antagonism, his 1903 Paris visit was then seen as proof of his major role in foreign affairs.[77]  However, the resulting Anglo-French entente cordiale (1904) pointed to Europe’s fateful split into two hostile camps — Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one side, and Britain, France and Russia on the other.  By then, the traditional pan-monarchic trust and confidence had waned, principally because the balance among the European Powers had shifted so radically in Germany’s favour.[78]  Yet, kings kept their keen sense of personal and professional honour and pretended that diplomacy was still tied to their person, until they almost all lost their thrones during the First World War.[79]


Honour and interest: rhetoric of British foreign policy
Compelling linguistic evidence shows that, at least until 1914-1918, honour was one of the key categories for British thinking about foreign policy.  Specifically, talk about international relations almost invariably involved doublets in which one element points to prestige (honour, glory, dignity, reputation, pride, position, standing) and another to a political assessment (interest, advantage, security, safety, victory, defeat, injury). This striking duplex featured in almost every foreign-policy debate in parliament, and in a wide variety of State papers and political writing.

Burke’s Letters on a Regicide Peace supported augmenting “national glory” and “public interest,” and opposed sacrificing “national dignity” and “national acquisitions.”[80]  Examples abound in the debate on the preliminaries of peace with Napoleon (1801).  King George III approvingly said “substantial interests of this country, and honourable to the British character” and “advantage and honour.”  “To maintain the honour and preserve the security of the British Empire” were the words of Prime Minister Henry Addington.  Sir Edmund Hartopp used "beneficial to our interests and reputation."  “Honourable and advantageous” said Foreign Secretary Lord Hawkesbury, Viscount Limerick, and naval heroes Earl St. Vincent and Lord Nelson.  William Pitt the younger employed “strength to our security and lustre to our national character”; “to protect England’s honour and maintain her interests”; and “sources of justifiable pride, but grounds of solid security.”  Charles James Fox offered “safe and honourable” and “defence of our honour and our independence.”  Thomas Grenville protested “neither safe nor honourable.”  Earl Temple warned “dangerous to safety, and degrading to honour.”  Sir William Windham added “degrading and injurious.”  William Elliot and Richard Ellison deplored losing “our honour and interests.”  “Dishonourable and insecure” was Earl Carnarvon’s verdict.[81]

Debating whether to aid Portugal (1826), future Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham offered “security or honour” and “credit and safety.”[82]  For foreign affairs, identical or similar doublets were favoured by Queen Victoria who got back the same from her Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries.[83]  These doublets were also exchanged in the impassioned speeches sparked by the 1864 Austro-Prussian attack on Denmark.[84]  Finally, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith and Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey joined other MPs in repeatedly referring to Britain’s “interest and honour” in the fateful August 1914 deliberations on war with Germany.[85]



Honour cultivated for political ends?


Still the centre of Western civilization, pre-1914 Europe had experienced a curious “persistence of the old regime.”[86]  This antedeluvian age was marked by the enduring social supremacy of court aristocracies, the presence of lesser nobilities, and the co-optation of the upper middle classes which — in significant social, cultural and political respects — still aped the conduct and discourse of their “betters.”[87]  Because so much of the social and political role of king, court and aristocracy survived beyond 1900, perpetuated too was a matching ideology.  For example, English literature in the two generations before 1914 often displayed a special rhetoric — a high, romantic diction that was “essentially feudal language” for preparing young males for self-control, sacrifice, defence and aggression.[88]  "The mid-Victorian cult of retrenchment, economy, rationality and utilitarianism" had by the 1890’s fully given way to an exaggerated love of pomp and show, including the invention of “traditional” ceremonies.[89]  It is difficult to escape the suspicion that these early 20th century societies were seeking to popularize “king and country” by  systematically cultivating an “archaic ethos of heroism, glory and honour.”[90]
Individual battlefield bravery could still be credibly characterized as glorious, honourable, and courageous, until heroism became largely irrelevant amidst the horrific mechanization of 1914-1918 trench warfare — including barbed wire, machine guns, artillery barrages, poison gas, and tanks.[91]  By contrast, USA foreign relations scholar George F. Kennan referred to the halcyon prewar decades which still cherished:
the romantic-chivalric concept of military conflict: the notion that whether you won or lost depended only on your bravery, your determination, your sense of righteousness, and your skill. [warfare was viewed as] a test of young manhood, a demonstration of courage and virility, a proving-ground for virtue, for love of country, for national quality.[92]  
This dovetails with Moltke’s 1880 view:
Perpetual peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream.  War is an element of the world order established by God.  In war develop mankind’s most noble virtues: courage and self-denial, loyalty to duty and the spirit of sacrifice — the soldier gives his life.  Without war, the world would stagnate and lose itself in materialism.[93]  
Similarly, Queen Victoria rhapsodized:
To die for one’s country and Sovereign in the discharge of duty is a worthy and noble end to this earthly life for a soldier.[94]

War as duel: countries fight for honour?


In Europe, honour continued to hold an astonishingly strong grip on individual imagination and conduct, as evidenced by persistence into the 20th century of duelling — an élite practice sustained by several honour-related ideas, including the premium on readiness to risk life in a rite affirming masculinity, courage and character.[95]  An early juridical treatment of the well-known link between honour and duelling is afforded by Bologna University’s Giovanni da Legnano who argued (1360) that duels are fought for one or more of three reasons — hatred, an accusation’s compurgation, or glory (propter gloriam).  In the last case, the duellist seeks the joy of victory, i.e. “to win public glory by the strength of the body” and “from the disgrace of his fellow and neighbour.”[96]  This assessment was later confirmed by Bacon: “Honour that is gained and broken upon another hath the quickest reflexion, like diamonds cut with fascets.”[97]

Already noted has been Bacon’s understanding of war as trial by combat.  This was a metaphor common enough to cause Italian philosopher of law and cultural history, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) to observe that the moral theologians’ understanding of  war’s external justice was based on the custom of duelling observed by individuals in their private affairs. Through the fortune of arms, divine providence was said to legitimate the victor’s conquests.[98]  Similarly, Clausewitz began his classic study On War by defining conflict between States as “nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.”[99]  


Travers Twiss (1809-1897) was Professor of International Law at King’s College, London. Using purum piumque duellum (unstained and upright duel) for war as international law’s ultimate sanction, he insisted that the metaphor was “not a fiction of Jurists, but a stern reality of International Life” as “the ruins of Sebastopol bear convincing testimony.”[100]  The duel was also the metaphor for Edward Creasy (1812-1878) who was a Lincoln’s Inn barrister, judge and historian.  He asserted a country’s “right to repel and to exact redress for injuries to its honour” as a “right of self-preservation,” because “among nations, as among individuals, those who tamely submit to insult, will be sure to have insults and outrages heaped upon them.”[101]
A bitter critic of France’s foreign policy, Fénelon pointed to Louis XIV’s desire for glory as one of the two causes of the Dutch War (1672-1678) said to have triggered a chain of conflicts impoverishing France.[102]  Even a shrewd Realpolitiker like Frederick the Great believed that some wars were fought for glory, reputation and honour.  Frederick said seeking glory was partly his motive for beginning (1740) the War of the Austrian Succession and that of the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II for the 1778 War of the Bavarian Succession.[103]  Experience taught Frederick that respect accorded by fellow rulers was proportional to his success on the battlefield.[104]  He classified countries as primarily seeking either “glory” or “wealth.”  He said States preferring glory tended towards France, but those preferring wealth towards England.  Differentiating glory from interest, he judged that for France to fight for the Rhine frontier was a matter of genuine interest, but for France to fight to be Europe’s arbiter sheer vanity.[105]

Avenging insults and defending England’s honour was demanded by the “hard-hating, elegant polemicist” Junius who derided King George III for failing to fight Spain to enforce Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands: 
To depart, in the minutest article, from the nicety and strictness of punctilio, is as dangerous to national honour, as it is to female virtue.  The woman who admits of one familiarity, seldom knows where to stop, or what to refuse; and when the counsels of a great country give way in a single instance, when they are once inclined to submission, every step accelerates the rapidity of their descent.[106]  
Otherwise pacific, British Parliamentarian Charles James Fox likewise believed:
Among individuals, and much more among nations, honour is the most essential means of safety, as it is the first, and I had almost said the only legitimate ground of war.[107]

Showing Napoleon III and William I with foils, Punch famously portrayed the “point of honour” and the duel as the metaphor for the war which France began against Prussia in July 1870.[108]  Prussia’s Chancellor Bismarck took lifelong pride in having won twenty-five student duels.[109]  This fact must be recalled in connection with the Ems telegram which Bismarck edited so as to produce the abrupt tone which was, according to the then prevailing code of honour (Ritterkodex), tantamount to declaring war.[110]  With precisely this in mind, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Granville said it was “inconceivable that, in the present state of civilisation, hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen should be hurled against like numbers of Germans, on a point limited to a matter of etiquette.”[111]  Also with reference to the Franco-Prussian War, Granville said: “It is sometimes useful to compare the action of nations and that of individuals, and very often the conduct of a high-spirited nation and of an honourable man is very much the same.”[112]  This discourse of honour was continued by the German Crown Prince: “It would surely be no shame to France that has fought bravely, to confess at last that she has been beaten by an Army equal to hers.  No one would accuse France of cowardice, or believe that her military honour had not had justice done to it.”[113]

The duel metaphor was also used by Prime Minister Disraeli to portray Foreign Secretary Granville’s conduct at the 1870-1871 London Conference revising the 1856 Paris Treaty’s Black Sea clauses:
Why, the noble Lord went there to vindicate the honour and the interests of his country; and if the Russian Ambassador had refused the compensation which he demanded it would have been the noble Lord’s duty to coerce the Power which had first outraged England, and then refused to do the only act which the noble Lord could devise in order to remove that stain on her reputation.[114] 


In the Annual Message to Congress (1905), President Theodore Roosevelt proved that honour’s rhetoric was not limited to Europe:
This mighty and free Republic should ever deal with all other States, great or small, on a basis of high honor, respecting their rights as generously as it safeguards its own.”  He believed that “if war is necessary and righteous then either the man or the nation shrinking from it forfeits all title to self-respect.[115]  
A year later, he told Congress that “honorable men” and an “honorable nation” must choose to fight rather than buy peace through “sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare.”  Roosevelt said “a beaten nation is not necessarily a disgraced nation; but the nation or man is disgraced if the obligation to defend right is shirked.”[116]  Reflecting on the 1898 Spanish-American War, he said:
I believe that war should never be resorted to when or so long as it is honorably possible to avoid it.  I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war, and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor.[117]

“Nations and States can achieve no loftier consummation than to stake their whole power on upholding their independence, their honour, and their reputation.”[118]  With these words, German soldier, historian and diplomat Friedrich von Bernhardi (1849-1930) argued that the State has both the right and the duty to make war:
If sometimes between individuals the duel alone meets the sense of justice, how much more impossible must a universal international law be in the wide-reaching and complicated relations between nations and States! [...] Even if a comprehensive international code were drawn up, no self-respecting nation would sacrifice its own conception of right to it. By so doing it would renounce its highest ideals; it would allow its own sense of justice to be violated by an injustice, and thus dishonour itself.[119]  
Recalling Frederick the Great, Bernhardi argued: “Cases may occur where war must be made simply as a point of honour, although there is no prospect of success.”[120]

Seeing the word honneur in the French text of the Preamble to the League of Nations Covenant, Oxford University Professor of International Relations Alfred Eckhard Zimmern (1879-1957) reflected:
Honneur suggests not ‘fair play’, with its spacious tolerance and comfortable associations with the world of sport, but the rigorous punctilio of the tournament and the duel.[121] 
Indeed, European foreign policy before 1914 was frequently formulated and executed by individuals who duelled or subscribed to the cult of duelling.[122]  According to Edinburgh University History Professor Victor Kiernan:
Just as the duellist claimed exemption in his chosen sphere from ordinary law, monarchs... and almost equally the small cliques in control of foreign policy... set their ‘honour’ above the common welfare of mankind. 
Statesmen and duellists shared an obsession with peer standing that caused Kiernan to comment: “None of the diplomats and generals of 1914 could risk appearing the first to give way, any more than duellists could resist the pressure of social opinion.”[123]   It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, before 1914, the State was personified as a nobleman with a sense of honour, and that foreign relations were seen through the prism of the cult of honour accepted among gentlemen.


Honour a cause of the First World War?
Looking at power structures, German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) pointed to prestige as a factor influencing foreign policy:
Prestige of power, as such, means in practice the glory of power over other communities; it means expansion of power, though not always by way of incorporation or subjection.
He saw the Great Powers as large, status-seeking political communities naturally challenging all other possible prestige bearers. On the eve of the First World War, Weber wrote:
Experience teaches that claims to prestige have always played into the origins of wars.  Their part is difficult to gauge; it cannot be determined in general, but it is very obvious.  The realm of ‘honor’ which is comparable to the ‘status order’ within a political structure, pertains also to the interrelations of political structures.[124]

Rejecting economic determinism, Fukuyama relies on interpretations of Hegel for the proposition that the “motor of history” is man’s desire for recognition, which along with “the accompanying emotions of anger, shame, and pride, are parts of the human personality critical to political life.”  Fukuyama’s explanation of the development of international politics points to what amounts to honour:
The desire for recognition that led to the original bloody battle for prestige between two individual combatants leads logically to imperialism and world empire.  The relationship of lordship and bondage on a domestic level is naturally replicated on the level of states, where nations as a whole seek recognition and enter into bloody battles for supremacy.[125]  
Fukuyama sees the 1914-1918 war as a battle for pure prestige.  He invokes Platonic θυμός (thymos) — the soul’s spirited element offering courage, fierceness, and indignation tied to a sense of honour — to dub the war, a classic thymotic struggle.[126]  Joining historians pointing to the mass exhilaration that greeted the war’s outbreak, he diagnoses an honour-related syndrome, a megalothymia (exuberance) of nations seeking “recognition of their worth and dignity” and of individuals rebelling against the isothymia (boredom) of everyday life.[127]  Fukuyama’s focus on θυμός coincides with the many references to honour in August 1914.[128]  His approach is specially pertinent to the prestige orientation of both Austria-Hungary and Russia, the States most directly responsible for the catastrophe.


“You see in me the last monarch of the old school” said (1910) eighty-year-old Habsburg Emperor Francis Joseph to former USA President Roosevelt.[129]  Indeed, honour and duty were central themes in Francis Joseph’s increasingly fatalistic understanding of statecraft:[130]  
The honour of the Monarchy [i.e. Austria-Hungary] still held pride of place in Franz Joseph’s Weltanschauung.  And in a sense his policy was the same after 1866 [Austria’s defeat by Prussia] as before — to defend his position as long as possible, to do his duty, and if that failed, to go down with honour.  But it was nevertheless for the emperor to judge when the honour of the Monarchy was being openly challenged.  After 1866 he was simply more long-suffering and more reluctant to go to war than in his earlier years.  It was not until 1914 that he despaired of maintaining the honour of the Monarchy by diplomatic means.[131]

After a Serbian nationalist killed the Habsburg heir apparent, retaliation was endorsed by Francis Joseph who knew that resort to arms would probably trigger a European war that might destroy Austria-Hungary.[132]  His ancien régime logic he explained to General Staff Chief Conrad von Hötzendorf: “If  the Monarchy is already doomed, at least it ought to go down honourably (anständig).”[133]  The Sarajevo assassination caused Conrad to write in the same vein:
It will be a hopeless struggle, but nevertheless it must be, because such an ancient monarchy and such an ancient army cannot perish ingloriously.[134]  
After Francis Joseph declared war on Serbia, he asked his peoples to make “sacrifices for the honour, the majesty, the power of the Fatherland.”  Justifying recourse to force, he explained:
The machinations of a hostile power, moved by hatred, compel me after many long years of peace to take up the sword to preserve the honour of my Monarchy....”[135]  
Similarly, German Emperor William II called on his people to “stand, in resolute fidelity, by our ally,”Austria-Hungary “which is battling for its reputation as a great power, and with whose humiliation our power and honor, too, would be lost.”[136]

Prestige was also crucial to the Russian Empire, trying to regain standing among the Great Powers after humiliating defeats in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War and the 1908-1909 Bosnian annexation crisis.  “We will not let ourselves be trampled upon,” said Nicholas II (January 1914) to French Ambassador Théophile Delcassé.[137]  Upholding national honour drove Russia to support Serbia said British historian Dominic Lieven:
To understand why Russia went to war in 1914 it is... necessary to grasp the values and mentality of the Russian ruling élites, including Nicholas II.  In old regime Europe the nobleman was brought up to defend his public reputation and honour at all costs, if necessary with sword in hand.  The ethic of the duel still prevailed in aristocratic and, in particular, military circles.  No crime was worse than cowardice.  Kings, aristocrats and generals were not used to being pushed about or humiliated.  In contemporary parlance, they had a short fuse.
On war’s outbreak, Nicholas II proclaimed that it was imperative “to protect the honour, dignity and safety of Russia and its position among the Great Powers.”[138]

Honour was also targeted by its critics.  For example, Norman Angell (1910) wrote The Great Illusion — an anti-war best seller deriding the idea of national honour, and deploring the survival of the code duello, then “maintained as vigorously as ever in the relations of States.”[139]  This critical current flowed in Parliament on the eve of Britain’s entry into the First World War.  Labour Party Leader James Ramsay Macdonald argued:
There has been no crime [i.e. going to war] committed by statesmen of this character without those statesmen appealing to their nation’s honour.  We fought the Crimean War because of our honour.  We rushed to South Africa because of our honour.  The right hon. Gentleman [Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey] is appealing to us today because of our honour.[140]  
Exactly this view was echoed by Independent Labour Party Chairman James Keir Hardie.[141]  Similarly, Liberal MP Sir William Byles said:
It is not a war to defend our hearths and homes.  If it were I could understand this exultation.  It is to defend our honour....  It is for honour that a German duellist fights his fellow officer.  Whether he kills his opponent or is killed by him, honour is revenged.  So it is to be now.  We are to hire a number of men, a number of soldiers, to go and blow out the brains of another number of men, to vindicate our honour.[142]  
For Liberal MP John Annan Bryce, going to war was “a regular house that Jack built” because “we have the French joining the Russians on a point of honour and we are joining the French on a point of honour.”[143] 


"National honour" in international law?
Although our own fin de siècle finds appeals to honour pompous, affected and even ridiculous, pre-1914 juridical discourse abounds with sincere references to “honour” in speeches, diplomatic papers, private correspondence, books and treaties.  Such language was not merely rhetorical because customary international law then recognized that a country had a “right to reputation,” i.e. respect for its moral and juristic personality, including “the right to demand satisfaction for an offence against its honour.”[144]  In 1851, Reddie included among a nation’s general permanent attributes its “national honour” or “national reputation” defined as:
the right of a nation to the maintenance of its honour, character, and reputation—a right which is so difficult to define in the abstract; but which, in the concrete, and in the particular case, is so easily understood and felt, and the maintenance of which is so conducive to the security and prosperity of a nation.[145]  
This “right to respect” was also described by Alphonse Pierre Octave Rivier (1835-1898) who was a Swiss diplomat and Professor of International Law at Brussels University:
The State’s moral character, dignity, honour, credit, and good reputation are as much elements of its personality as its physical, economic and juridical condition. The State has the right to keep them intact against any slur.[146]  
Similarly, Abdy identified as the primary objects of international law, “the independence of nations, the inviolability of their several territories, and the maintenance of their honour.”[147]  There are numerous examples of 19th century States using force to defend their honour.  For example, national dignity was offended by Venezuelan President de Castro’s 1908 dismissal of Dutch Minister Resident de Reuss.  In reprisal, Dutch cruisers captured two Venezuelan public ships which were held pending apology.[148]

Just as the aristocrat refused “to remit to the courts the settlement of his affairs of honour,” so national honour was generally regarded as a matter of paramount concern beyond the bounds of arbitration.[149]  According to Argentine international lawyer, diplomat and historian Carlos Calvo (1824-1906):
 Arbitration can settle every species of difference except those in which honor and national dignity are directly in play and which arise from a personal sentiment which no third state can properly judge, each nation being the sole judge of its dignity and the rights which guarantee its safety.[150]   
The International Law Association’s 1893 arbitration plan accordingly distinguished arbitrable disputes from those involving national honour and independence.[151]  In 1896, British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury weighed the possibility of “establishing a system of international arbitration for the adjustment of disputes” with the USA.  Sending to Washington the outline of a stillborn arbitration treaty, Salisbury noted: “Neither Government is willing to accept arbitration upon issues in which the national honour or integrity is involved.”[152]  Hardly surprising, therefore, was the inclusion in the 1899 Hague Convention for the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes of a provision limiting fact-finding commissions to “disputes of an international character involving neither honour nor vital interests.”[153]  Referring to the new Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague, Britain and France made (1903) an agreement excluding from compulsory arbitration, differences affecting “the vital interests, the independence, or the honour of the two Contracting States.”[154] Although the Anglo-French treaty was hardly the first to exclude disputes affecting national honour,[155] the tripartite exception — or variations thereof — was replicated in subsequent British and French treaties with other countries, and adopted by the USA and other States for many of the bilateral arbitration conventions signed before the First World War.[156]



Dishonour international law’s sanction?
From the perspective of 19th-century international law, Bernard opined:
Honour — which in its higher sense means self-respect, in its lower sense respect for the opinion of a particular class — may and does help to supply, among nations as among individuals, the absence of those sanctions which wait upon municipal law.[157]  
Similarly, Woolsey included among international law’s sanctions each State’s “moral sentiment” as “a considerable and an increasing force... which comes into the recesses of palaces and cabinets; and which sometimes speaks in threatening tones against gross wrongs.”[158]  He believed that a whole country’s population could feel the sting of a national insult, and sense:
the loss of a good name upon intercourse with other states, as well upon that self-respect which is an important element in national character....  Without such a value set on reputation, fear of censure could not exist, which is one of the ultimate bulwarks of international law.[159]  
Sounding a more positive note, Bluntschli argued:
Any State — even the most powerful — will appreciably gain in honour before God and man, if it is found to be loyal and sincere in its respect for and compliance with the law of nations.[160]
In 1908, USA Secretary of State Elihu Root told the American Society of International Law that the conduct of States was judged by “the general opinion of the world” and that governments “dread the moral isolation created by general adverse opinion and unfriendly feeling.”  This, the principal sanction of international law, he described through comparisons with his own domestic society, which from today’s perspective appears astonishingly preoccupied with propriety and honour — in Root’s words, “social esteem and standing, power and high place.”  To deter against anti-social behaviour, he downplayed the role of “sheriff and policeman” and highlighted reputation as “nearly everything for which men strive in life.”  So, in international relations, Root deprecated the sanction of war and focused on “the power of international opinion.”  In essence, he believed that States are subject to “recognized rules of right conduct,” violation of which results in discredit and debilitating ostracism — “a nation which rests under the world’s condemnation is weak, however great its material power.”[161]

Notes to Part 6

[1].  James Bysse Joll, The Origins of the First World War, 2nd ed. (New York, 1992), 240.

[2].  Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve, Francis Bowen and ed. Phillips Bradley (New York, 1945), vol. 2:242, n. 1.
[3].  Karl Demeter, The German Officer-Corps in Society and State 1650-1945, trans. Angus Malcolm (London, 1965), Part 3: Honour, 110-154, at 111.
[4].  Julian Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status,” in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. J.G. Peristiany (London, 1965), 19-78, at 21; for links to hierarchy and self-consciousness, see Norbert Elias, The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Michael Schröter (New York, 1996), 96.
[5].  Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992), xvii.
[6].  Julian Pitt-Rivers, “Honor,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (New York, 1968), vol. 5:510; Peter Berger, “On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honour,” in Liberalism and Its Critics, ed. Michael J. Sandel (New York, 1984), 149-158.
[7].  De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2:254-255.
[8].  W. Phillips Davison, “Public Opinion,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 13:188-197, at 193; see also J.A.W. Gunn, “Public Opinion,” in Ball, ed. Political Innovation, 247-265; Bernadotte E. Schmitt, “The Relation of Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs Before and During the First World War,” in Sarkissian, ed. Studies in Diplomatic History, 322-330; for aristocratic honour replaced by a bourgeois moral code, see Elias, The Germans, 96-97, and Jean Renoir’s film La Grande Illusion, 1937.
[9].  Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, 1981), 30-34.
[10].  Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (New York, 1966), 91.
[11].  Elizabeth Longford, Wellington: The Years of the Sword (New York, 1969), 16-17; for  British officers’ honour at Waterloo, see John Keegan, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (London, 1976), 189-192; for military honour, see Demeter, German Officer Corps, 110-154; Norman Dixon, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence (London, 1976), 196-207; for élite education, see Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, The Army in Victorian Society (London, 1977), 277-278; Dominic Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (New York, 1983), 83-86, and The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914 (New York, 1992), 161-164, 171-172, 177, 191-192, 195-196; Sir Harold Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, First Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy (London, 1930), 7-8.
[12].  Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Anatol Rapoport and trans. J.J. Graham (Harmondsworth, 1968), Bk. I, Ch. 3:146.
[13].  Clausewitz, On War, Bk. IV, Ch. 12:352.
[14].  Quoted by Sanche de Gramont, The French: Portrait of a People (New York, 1969), 309.
[15].  Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore and ed. Irene Gordon (New York, 1960), 304.
[16].  Peter Gay, The Cultivation of Hatred (New York-London, 1993), 112.
[17].  Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1978), 100.
[18].  Relevant 16th century meaning survives in Dizionario Italiano-Tedesco e Tedesco-Italiano, by Oscar Bulle and Giussepe Rigutini (Leipzig-Milan, 1896), vol. 1:905; for Machiavelli, virtù was whatever qualities the prince needed ‘to keep his state’, see Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1:138.
[19].  Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, Illinois, 1958), 189, 291.
[20].  Ibid., 235-236.
[21].  Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1:100-101, 118-121, 130-132.
[22].  J. H. Plumb, The Horizon Book of the Renaissance (New York, 1961), 313-319, and The Italian Renaissance: A Concise Survey of Its History and Culture (New York, 1965), 119-125.
[23].  Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, Italian text with trans. Ninian Hill Thomson (New York, 1949), 1st ser., §§ 1, 11, 18-9, 34, 45, 57, 59-60, 69, 73, 87, 89, 105-6, 125, 137-8, 141, 149, 151, 164, 167-8, 174; 2nd ser., §§ 4, 15-17, 32, 42, 44, 72-3, 86, 104, 118, 133, 142, 150, 157-8, 179, 181, 192, 194, 202, 217, 219.
[24].  Quoted by Jacob Burckhardt, On History and Historians, intro. H.R. Trevor-Roper & trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1965), 123.
[25].  The full text of the 1543 Political Testaments are in Karl Brandi, The Emperor Charles V: The Growth and Destiny of a Man and of a World-Empire, trans. C.V. Wedgewood (London, 1939), 485-493, at 486-487.
[26].  Bodin, Bk. V, Ch. 4:585-586.
[27].  Of Not Giving Away One’s Glory in Essays of Montaigne, vol. 1, Bk. I, Ch. 41:341.
[28].  John Bartlett, A New and Complete Concordance or Verbal Index to Words, Phrases and Passages in the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare with a Supplementary Concordance to the Poems (New York, 1896), e.g., in descending no. of cols. per entry: “love”, “loved”, “lover” & “loving” (28.5); “king” & “kingdom” (17.3); “speak” (13); “time” (13); “heart” (12); “true”, “truly” & “truth” (11); “honour”, “honourable” & “honoured” (10); “heaven” (9.2); “life” (9); “fear” & “fearful” (8); “word” (8); “world” (7.2); “woman” (7); “grace” (6); “soul” (5.5); “hope” (4.8); “desire” & “desired” (4.6); “wit” (4.6); “war” (4.5); “wisdom” & “wise” (4); “state” (4); “tear” (4); “wrong” (4); “virtue” (3.6); “law” & “lawful” (3.5); “favour” (3); “home” (3); “spirit” (3); “faith” (2.5); “fault” (2.5); “sorrow” (2.5); “swear” (2.5).
[29].  Gentili, Bk. III, Ch. 12: On Conflict Between Honour and Expediency (Si utile cum honesto pugnet)—570-576, at 572 (Latin); 349-352, at 350 (English).
[30].   Grotius, Bk. III, Ch. 10, § 1:716.
[31].  Richard Peters, Hobbes, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, 1967), 142.
[32].  Leviathan, Part 1, Ch. 10:78-86, at 79.
[33].  Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent, revised by J.V. Prichard (Chicago, 1952), Bk. III, Chs. 6-8, 10-11; Bk. IV, Ch. 2; Bk. V, Chs. 16-19; Bk. VI, Ch. 21; Bk. VIII, Ch. 9; Bk. XII, Ch. 27.
[34].  Ibid., Bk. IV, Ch. 2.
[35].  Wolff, Ch. 1, §§ 45-51—vol. 1:17-19; vol. 2:30-33.
[36].  Les plus belles pages de Frédéric II, ed. Charles-Adolphe Cantacuzène (Paris, 1935), 110-111.
[37].  Histoire de mon temps, avant-propos de 1775, in Mémoires de Frédéric II, vol. 1:4-5; Frederick to D’Alembert, Sept. 26, 1770, in Oeuvres posthumes de Frédéric II, Roi de Prusse (Berlin, 1788), vol. 11:88: “Noble spirits work only for glory.”
[38].  Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 86-90, at 87.
[39].  Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages: Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the 14th and 15th Centuries (New York, 1954), 67-107.
[40].  Ward, Enquiry into the Foundation and History of the Law of Nations, vol. 2:159, 161, 167, 174-188, 205; Kent’s Commentary on International Law, ed. J.T. Abdy, 2nd ed. rev. (Cambridge, 1878), 26; Robert Redslob, Histoire des grands principes du droit des gens depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à la veille de la Grande Guerre (Paris, 1923), 122.
[41].  De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2:245-246.
[42].  Nys, Origines du droit international.
[43].  Johan Huizinga, “The Political and Military Significance of Chivalric Ideas in the Late Middle Ages,” in Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, trans. James S. Holmes and Hans van Marle (New York, 1959), 196-206, at 204.
[44].  Ibid., 203.
[45].  Charles Rollin, De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les belles lettres (Paris, 1740), vol. 2, Part 1:55-56, 65, 70.
[46].  Sending ships was “manly and consistent conduct” in conformity with “honour,” the contrary “disgraceful” exhibition of “caution bordering upon timidity,” see The Political Memoranda of Francis, Fifth Duke of Leeds, ed. Oscar Browning, Camden Society, new ser., no. 35 (London, 1884), ix-x, 150-174; the reversal was arguably consistent with the explicitly defensive 1742 and 1788 Anglo-Prussian treaties, see CTS, vol. 36:498-503; vol. 50:333-338, 354-358; Temperley, Foundations of British Foreign Policy, 1; for the “armament” against Russia, see Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, 1783-1793 (Cambridge, 1994), 285-328.
[47].  July 5, 1864, Commons, Parl. Deb., 3rd ser., vol. 176:851.
[48].  Sir James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury (1746-1820), quoted by Algernon Cecil, “The Foreign Office,” in The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783-1919, ed. Sir A.W. Ward and G.P. Gooch (Cambridge, 1923), vol. 3:551; “feelings of morality and honour” caused 2nd Earl, James Edward Harris (1778-1841) to resign as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs because national security forced him to lie (1807) about Britain’s plans to seize the fleet of neutral Denmark, see 3rd Earl, James Howard Harris (1807-1889), Memoirs of an Ex-Minister: An Autobiography (London, 1884), vol. 1:1-2.
[49].  For the knight\courtier transition and courtly-aristocratic society’s enduring impact, see Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford, 1994), 168-178, 266-272; for chivalry’s deep mark on Western civilization, see Demeter, German Officer-Corps, 115; for the pre-1914 “sumptuous neo-absolutist court culture,” see John C.G. Röhl, The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge, 1994), 70-106; for 19th century chivalry and its 1914-1918 death, see Mark A. Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven-London, 1981), passim and 290.
[50].   Norman Hampson, “The French Revolution and the Nationalisation of Honour,” in War and Society: Historical Essays in Honour and Memory of J.R. Western, ed. M.R.D. Foot (London, 1973), 199-212; Geoffrey Best, Honour Among Men and Nations: Transformations of an Idea (Toronto, 1982); the shift to “national honour” marks nationalism’s rise, see Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military, rev. ed. (New York, 1959), 442-450; for “collective honour,” see Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status,” 35-36.
[51].  De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1:251.
[52].  Letters from George III to Lord Bute 1756-1766, ed. Romney Sedgwick (London, 1939), No. 205, Oct. 22, 1762: 149; To the Printer of the Public Advertiser, Jan. 30, 1771, No. 42, in The Letters of Junius (London, 1810), vol. 2:44-55, at 55; about the mysterious Junius, see Stanley Ayling, George the Third (London, 1972), 164-167.
[53].  Dec. 11, 1826, Commons, Parl. Deb., 2nd ser., vol. 16:336.
[54].  To Queen Victoria, Apr. 25, 1881, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 3:216.
[55].  Wolff, Ch. 1, § 51—vol. 1:19; vol. 2:33.
[56].  Wolff, Ch. 1, § 48—vol. 1:18; vol. 2:31-32.
[57].  Jenkinson, Discourse on the Conduct of Great Britain (1759), 7.
[58].  Statement of French Foreign Policy, 14 Apr. 1792, in Stewart, Documentary Survey, 283-286, at 284; Grenville to French Ambassador, Marquis de Chauvelin, 31 Dec. 1792, in Temperley, Foundations of British Foreign Policy, 3-8, at 5.
[59].  Proclamation to the Army of Italy, 26 Apr. 1796, in Stewart, Documentary Survey, 672-673.
[60].  E.g., see British Diplomacy 1813-1815: Select Documents Dealing with the Reconstruction of Europe, ed. C.K. Webster (London, 1921)—British Prime Minister Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, to Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh negotiating peace in Paris, July 15, 1815: “It is argued with much force that France will never forgive the humiliation which she has already received—that she will take the first convenient opportunity of endeavouring to redeem her military glory...” (346); Liverpool to Castlereagh, Aug. 18, 1815: “An arrangement on this principle would have nothing in it which could really be considered as humiliating to France” (368); Liverpool to Castlereagh, Aug. 23, 1815: “Such a stipulation need not, in our judgment, mortify the pride of the French nation” (369); Castlereagh to Liverpool, Aug. 24, 1815: “...if you take part of old France and add it to Belgium, all France will, as a point of honour, be anxious to regain it” (371); British peace negotiator, the Duke of Wellington to Castlereagh, Paris, Aug. 31, 1815: “...the measure would afford to France a just pretence for war, and all the means which injured national pride could give for carrying it on” (374); Castlereagh to Liverpool, Sept. 4, 1815: “...for objects that France may any day reclaim from the particular States that hold them, without pushing her demands beyond what she would contend was due to her own honour...” (376).
[61].  Nicolson, Diplomacy, 90-91.
[62].  Taylor, “International Relations,” 552.
[63].  Andrew Lossky, “International Relations in Europe,” in New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 6: 168-169.
[64].  Padua Circular, July 5, 1791, in Stewart, Documentary Survey, 221-222; Adam Wandruszka, Leopold II. (Vienna, 1965), vol. 2:360-369.
[65].  E.J. Hobsbawn, The Age of Empire 1875-1914 (London, 1987), 149.
[66].  Nicolson, Diplomacy, 66-67, 245.
[67].  Nicolson, Diplomacy, 72.
[68].  Coleman Phillipson, International Law and the Great War (London, 1915), 50-51.
[69].  May 4, 1802, Lords, Parl. History of England, vol. 36:588.
[70].  July 5, 1864, Commons, Parl. Deb., 3rd ser., vo1. 176:851.
[71].  See “expose herself to insults of other nations,” to Prime Minister Lord John Russell, 28 July 1850, LQV, 1st ser., vol. 2:306; “such position being highly honourable and advantageous to us in the eyes of Europe,” from Duke of Cambridge, 28 Apr. 1854, LQV, 1st ser., vol. 3:31; “The Queen ... cannot be for peace now, for she is convinced that this country would not stand in the eyes of Europe as she ought,” to Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon, 15 Jan. 1856,  LQV, 1st ser., vol. 3:207; “The Queen ... must say that she would consider it the deepest degradation of this country is she was compelled to appear at the Emperor’s [Napoleon III] Congress,” to Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell, 26 Apr. 1860,  LQV, 1st ser., vol. 3:505; “the goodwill of Europe,” from Foreign Secretary Lord Granville, 10 July 1870, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:24;  “No French Government would be insane enough to put itself in the wrong in the eyes of all Europe,” and “Moral force goes for much in these days, and the sympathy of nations is always with the attacked party.  In the last war, France was the aggressor, and the opinion of Europe went with Germany,” from Foreign Secretary Lord Derby, 5 May 1875, 2nd ser., vol. 2:389-90; “Ridicule and contempt England can very well stand, and laugh at the ignorance of the benighted people that know no better; but England cannot, or rather ought not to, afford to lose her position in Europe,” from German Crown Princess, 19 Dec. 1877, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:578; “We shall never again be able to hold up our head in the eyes of the world,” from Prince of Wales, 23 Dec. 1877, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:580; “maintaining the high position which our nation holds in the world ... the spectacle of indecision and weakness which lowers her in the esteem of the world,” Victoria’s Priv. Secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby to Viscount Halifax, 5 Jan. 1878, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:590;  “We shall become the laughing-stock of Europe and the world!!” to Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, 16 Jan. 1878, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:595; “Is [Foreign Secretary] Lord Derby really going to remain?  He it is who shakes the confidence of all the world in England’s policy,” from Grand Duchess of Hesse, 1 Mar. 1878, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:605.
[72].  F. Gosses, The Management of British Foreign Policy Before the First World War, Especially During the Period 1880-1914, trans. E.C. Van Der Gaaf (Leiden, 1948), 102-104.
[73].  To Prime Minister Lord John Russell, Oct. 18, 1847, LQV, 1st ser., vol. 2:156.
[74].  To Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell, Feb. 15, 1864, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 1:158.
[75].  To King of Prussia, Mar. 17, 1854, LQV, 1st ser., vol. 3:21.
[76].  To Prime Minister Lord John Russell, Nov. 20, 1851, LQV, 1st ser., vol. 2:397.
[77].  Keith Middlemass, The Life and Times of Edward VII (London, 1972), 152-183.
[78].  Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, 270; Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London, 1988), 215.
[79].  Nicolson, Diplomacy, 64; Lamar Cecil, The German Diplomatic Service, 1871-1914 (Princeton, 1976), 191; Röhl, The Kaiser and His Court, 3-4, 71, 106, 115-120, 122-123, 127-128; Zara Steiner, ed. The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World (London, 1982), 11.
[80].  Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 2:265.
[81].  Parliamentary History of England, vol. 36:1, 3 (King George); 16 (Addington); 30 (Hartopp); 39, 48 (Hawkesbury); 159 (Limerick); 184 (St. Vincent); 186 (Nelson); 58, 70-71 (Pitt); 72, 74 (Fox); 51-52 (Grenville); 54-55 (Temple); 130 (Windham); 146 (Elliot); 154 (Ellison); 187 (Carnarvon).
[82].   Dec. 12, 1826, Commons, Parl. Deb., 2nd ser., vol. 16:383, 388.
[83].  For Victoria, see The Queen and Mr. Gladstone: 1880-1898, ed. Philip Guedalla (London, 1933): “dignity & honour as well as the safety of her British & Foreign Empire,” 353; “honour and welfare of her great Empire,” 437; in LQV: “character and honour of England” and “the peace of Europe,” 1st ser., vol. 2:235; “interests of her people, honour and dignity of her Crown,” 1st ser., vol. 2:397; “honour and interests of this country,” 1st ser., vol. 3:237; “honour, power, and peace of this country,” 1st ser., vol. 3:395; “security of my dominions and honour of my Crown,” 1st ser., vol. 3:429-430; “imaginary interests” and “a supposed point of honour,” 2nd ser., vol. 1:158; “safety and dignity of this country,” 2nd ser., vol. 1:231; “every consideration of honour and every consideration of interest,” 2nd ser., vol. 1:419; “England... prepared to maintain the obligation of Treaties, wherever her honour or her interest may call,” 2nd ser., vol. 1:592; “honour and interests of her great Empire,” 2nd ser., vol. 2:501; “honour and interests of this country,” 2nd ser., vol. 2:580; “this country’s position reasserted, her vital interests secured,” 2nd ser., vol. 2:605; “honour and safety of the country,” 2nd ser., vol. 3:50; “honour, dignity and safety of the Indian Empire [of her great Indian Empire],” 2nd ser., vol. 3:126-127; “lasting danger and disgrace to this country,” 2nd ser., vol. 3:464; for Victoria’s Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries, see LQV: Viscount Palmerston—“honour of your Majesty’s Crown and interests of your Majesty’s dominions,” 1st ser., vol. 1:203; “promote the interests of his country and uphold the honour of your Majesty’s Crown,” 2nd ser., vol. 1:140; Lord Russell—“honour or interests of the country,” 1st ser., vol. 1:327; “English interest” and “English honour,” 1st ser., vol. 3:472; “interests and dignity of your Majesty and the country,” 2nd ser., vol. 1:158; Edward Geoffrey, Lord Stanley (later 14th Earl of Derby) — “highly honourable to your Majesty and advantageous to this country” and “glorious to British Arms, and so important to British interests,” 1st ser., vol. 1: 552; Lord Clarendon — “unwise and undignified,” 1st ser., vol. 3: 234; “neither English honour nor English interests,” 2nd ser., vol. 1:315; Lord Granville — “honour or interest of your Majesty,” 2nd ser., vol. 2:581.
[84].   July 4, 1864, Commons, Parl. Deb., 3rd ser., vol. 176 — Disraeli: “honourable and intelligible course,” “honour of England and the peace of Europe,” “honour or independence of England," 731, 748, 750; Chancellor of the Exchequer Gladstone: “an object dearer to England than her interest — namely... her honour and duty," "dignity, independence and strength of her [i.e. Russia’s] position,” “our honour and interests," 764, 767-768; former and future War Secretary Jonathan Peel: “peace and honour of the country,” 799-800; future Foreign Secretary Edward Henry, Lord Stanley (later 15th Earl of Derby): “influence, power, and honour of England,” “a safe, respected, and honourable position,” 811, 813.
[85].  Parl. Deb. (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 65, 1914 — Aug. 3:1810, 1816-1817, 1819-1823, 1825 (Grey); Aug. 6:2074, 2077, 2079-2080, 2083 (Asquith).
[86].  Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (London, 1981); economic aspects of Mayer’s thesis rejected by Lieven, Aristocracy in Europe, 243-244; see also Fukuyama, End of History, 265.
[87].  McAleer, Dueling, 197-199, 203-204; Gay, Cultivation of Hatred, 15, 17, 33, 113.
[88].  Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York-London, 1975), 21-23; for Lord Curzon’s “elaborate, Latinate style of rhetoric,” see David Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven-London, 1994), 81-82.
[89].   Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, 89-92.
[90].  For quote and Britain, see Mayer, Persistence of Old Regime, 91; for Germany, Röhl, The Kaiser and His Court, 104; for Russia, George F. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order: Franco-Russian Relations 1875-1890 (Princeton, 1979), 417-419; Hobsbawn, “Mass Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914,” 281-283.
[91].  Fussell, Great War and Modern Memory, 21; Girouard, Return to Camelot, 290; cinematographic expressions include Lewis Milestone, All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930; Stanley Kubrick, Paths of Glory, 1957; Peter Weir, Gallipoli, 1981.
[92].  Kennan, Decline of Bismarck’s European Order, 423-424.
[93].  Moltke to Bluntschli, Berlin, Dec. 11, 1880, in “Les lois de la guerre sur terre,” 80; for “war as culture,” see Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (London-New York, 1989), 90-94.
[94].  To India Viceroy, Lord Lytton, Dec. 6, 1878, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:651.
[95].  Victor Gordon Kiernan, The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy (Oxford, 1988); Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Oxford, 1993); Kevin McAleer, Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-Siècle Germany (Princeton, 1994); Lieven, Aristocracy in Europe, 195, 199, and Russia and the Origins of the First World War, 86; István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848-1914 (New York-Oxford, 1992), 126-138.
[96].  Giovanni da Legnano, Tractatus de bello, de represaliis et de duello, in Classics of International Law, ed. Thomas Erskine Holland and trans. J.L. Brierly (Oxford, 1917), §§ 169-174:331-341, at 332, 337.
[97].  Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, § 55: Of Honour and Reputation, in Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 1:505-506.
[98].  The New Science of Giambattista Vico, unabridged trans. by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca-London, 1968), Bk. IV, Ch. 2, § 964, p. 356.
[99].  Clausewitz, On War, Bk. I, Ch. 1, § 2:101.
[100].  Sir Travers Twiss, The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Political Communities: On the Right and Duties of Nations in Time of Peace (Oxford, 1861), vi, ix.
[101].  Sir Edward Shepard Creasy, First Platform of International Law (London, 1876), 153.
[102].  Letter to Louis XIV, in Oeuvres de Fénelon, vol. 7:509-513, at 510; this “anonymous letter”circulated from around Dec. 1693 and then went to the King’s mistress, Françoise de Maintenon, see Jean-Christian Petitfils, Louis XIV (Paris, 1995), 536-539; saying gloire was one of the main “values behind decision making” does not mean that policy was not also aimed at enhancing France’s security, see John A. Lynn, “A Quest for Glory: The Formation of Strategy under Louis XIV,” in The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War, ed. Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox and Alvin Bernstein (Cambridge, 1994), 178-204; Hatton, “Louis XIV and his Fellow Monarchs,” 16-59; John B. Wolf, Louis XIV (New York, 1968), 214; Aron, Peace and War, 74.
[103].  Mémoires de Frédéric II, Histoire de mon temps, in vol. 1:75-77; Mémoires de 1775 à 1778, in vol. 2: 443; Mémoires de la guerre de 1778, in vol. 2:469.
[104].  Histoire de la guerre de sept ans, in ibid., vol 1:450.
[105].  Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellianism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and its Place in Modern History, trans. Douglas Scott (London, 1957), 316; Sir Harold Nicolson, Good Behaviour: A study of Certain Types of Civility (London, 1955), 107: “The idea of glory for glory’s sake never pushed deep roots into the thick soil of the English character.  Yet in France such words as ‘gloire’ and ‘panache’ possess even today a certain sentimental value.”
[106].  To the Printer of the Public Advertiser, Jan. 30, 1771, No. 42, in Letters of Junius, vol. 2: 44-55, at 48; characterized by Ayling, George the Third, 164.
[107].  Nov. 3, 1801, Commons, Parliamentary History of England, vol. 36:72.
[108].  “A Duel to the Death,” in Punch, vol. 59 (July 23, 1870), 37: France to Britannia: “Pray stand back, Madam. You mean well; but this is an old family quarrel, and we must fight it out!”
[109].  Gay, Cultivation of Hatred, 258.

[110].  Golo Mann, Deutsche Geschichte des 19. Und 20. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main, 1958), 379; Koppel S. Pinson, Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization (New York, 1955), 144-146, and 589, n. 31.

 [111].  Granville to Queen Victoria, 15 July 1870, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:35.
[112].  Aug. 10, 1870, Lords, Parl. Deb., 3rd ser., vol. 203:1754.
[113].  German Crown Prince to Queen Victoria, 3 Jan. 1871, LQV, 2nd ser., vol. 2:101-102.
[114].  Feb. 20, 1877, Lords, Parl. Deb., 3rd ser., vol. 232:725.
[115].  5th Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 5, 1905, in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, ed. James D. Richardson, vol. 11 (New York, 1908), 1131-1181, at 1150, 1152; Sir Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to Their Economic and Social Advantage, 3rd ed. (Toronto, 1911), 139, quotes Roosevelt (June 6, 1910) at Stationers’ Hall, London: “We despise a nation just as we despise a man who submits to insult.  What is true of a man ought to be true of a nation.”
[116].  6th Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1906, in Richardson, Messages and Papers, vol. 11:1181-1228, at 1223-1224.
[117].  Theodore Roosevelt, National Strength and International Duty  (Princeton, 1917), 15.
[118].  Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, trans. Allen H. Powles (London, 1913), 21.
[119].  Ibid., 25.
[120].  Ibid., 46-47.
[121].  Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law 1918-1935, 2nd ed. (London, 1939), 277.
[122].  Gay, Cultivation of Hatred, 258; McAleer, Dueling, 34-35.
[123].  Kiernan, Duel in European History, 316-317.
[124].  From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1958), trans. & ed. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 159-161.
[125].  Fukuyama, End of History, quotes at xvii and xx, see also143-152; “poverty with prestige is better than affluent with disgrace,” see Howard K. Bloom, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (New York, 1995), 250-257.
[126].  Fukuyama, End of History, xvi-xvii; Francis MacDonald Cornford, ed. The Republic of Plato (Oxford, 1941), 63: “This term [thymos] covers a group of impulses manifested in anger and pugnacity, in generous indignation allied to a sense of honour and in competitive ambition.  Its virtue is courage.”
[127].  Fukuyama, 331-332; Gay, Cultivation of Hatred, 514-517; Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 55-64; Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 (London, 1996), 250-251; James Bysse Joll, Europe Since 1870: An International History, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1976), 193-195.
[128].  Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York, 1963), 103, 117-118, 124, 132, 138, 140-141.
[129].  Quoted by Friedrich Engel-Janosi, “Der Monarch und seine Ratgeber,” in Probleme der Franzisko-Josephinischen Zeit 1848-1916, ed. Friedrich Engel-Janosi and Helmuth Rumpler (Vienna, 1967), 9-24, at 9.
[130].  Ibid; Hugo Hantsch, “Kaiser Franz Joseph und die Außenpolitik,” in Probleme der Franzisko-Josephinischen Zeit, 25-39; Heinrich Benedikt, Die Monarchie des Hauses Österreich: Ein historisches Essay (Vienna, 1968), 124, 226, 229; Adam Wandruszka, The House of Habsburg, trans. Cathleen and Hans Epstein (New York, 1964), 147-154; Briefe Kaiser Franz Josephs an Kaiserin Elisabeth 1859-1898, ed. Georg Nostitz-Rieneck, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1966), 28, 32.
[131].  F.R. Bridge, From Sadowa to Sarajewo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1866-1914 (London, 1972), 12.
[132].  George R. Marek, The Eagles Die: Franz Joseph, Elisabeth and Their Austria (New York, 1974), 441-442, 454-455; told Germany would be true even if Vienna’s planned attack on Serbia triggered “the big war” with France and Russia, Francis Joseph said (July 7, 1914): “Now we can no longer turn back. It will be a terrible war.” Quoted by Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, trans. Isabella M. Massey (London, 1953), vol. 2:142.
[133].  Quoted by Viktor Bibl, Der Zerfall Österreichs: Von Revolution zu Revolution, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1924), 498-499; Francis Joseph repeated remarks circling around the words “to do one’s duty and—if it must be—to go down with honour [Ehre],” see Engel-Janosi, “Der Monarch und seine Ratgeber,” 22; Deák, Beyond Nationalism, 75: “The final responsibility for what happened... lay with Francis Joseph, who... sensing that the monarchy was doomed, nevertheless consented to the issuing of an unacceptable ultimatum. He signed the fatal mobilization order so as to preserve the dignity of the house.”
[134].  28 June 1914, quoted by Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Army of Francis Joseph (West Lafayette, Indiana, 1976), 177.
[135].  Wiener Zeitung, July 29, 1914, quoted by Edward Crankshaw, The Fall of the House of Habsburg (New York, 1963), 404.
[136].  August 6, 1914, Appeal to the German People, quoted by Gay, Cultivation of Hatred, 515.
[137].  Quoted by Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 249.
[138].  Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War, 5 (quote), 7, 20-22, 65-68, 72, 86, 95-96, 100, 108, 111, 114-116, 123, 128, 131-133, and Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire (New York, 1993), 174, 190 (quote), 200-201.
[139].  Angell, The Great Illusion, 175-179.
[140].  Aug. 3, 1914, Parl. Deb. (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 65:1830.
[141].  Ibid., 1841.
[142].  Ibid., 1873.
[143].  Ibid., 1876.
[144].  Bluntschli, Derecho internacional, Bk. II, § 85:95.
[145].  Inquiries in International Law, 198.
[146].  Rivier, Principes, vol. 1:260.
[147].  Kent’s Commentary on International Law, 3.
[148].  Oppenheim, International Law, vol. 2, §§ 34, 37:40, 43.
[149].  Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status,” 30-31; Kiernan, Duel in European History, 316: “What the duel had been for gentlemen... war was now for rulers who were infecting their peoples with the belief that it would be shameful to surrender ‘national honour’ to international laws or courts.”
[150].  Charles Calvo, Le droit international, 5th ed. (Paris, 1896), vol. 3, § 1756, quoted by Jackson H. Ralston, International Arbitration from Athens to Locarno (Palo Alto and London, 1929), § 21:32.
[151].  Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, 138.
[152].  Lord Salisbury to British Ambassador at Washington, Mar. 5, 1896, Doc. No. 12, Documents Relating to the Program of the First Hague Peace Conference Laid Before the Conference by the Netherlands Government (Oxford, 1921), 94.
[153].  Article 9, Convention for the Settlement of International Disputes, 29 July 1899, signed at the Hague, in CTS, vol. 187:415; the Article 9 “honour” exception originated with Russia, see Scott, Hague Peace Conferences, vol. 1:306.
[154].  Article 1, Agreement between France and Great Britain for the Settlement by Arbitration of Certain Classes of Questions which may arise between the two Governments, 14 Oct. 1903, signed at London, in CTS, vol. 194:194-195.
[155].  For example, disputes affecting “either the national honour or the national independence” are excluded by Article 1 of the Arbitration Treaty between Mexico and Spain, signed at Mexico City, 11 Jan. 1902, in CTS, vol. 190:330-335, at 334.
[156].   Re this self-judging “honour” clause, see Instructions to the American Delegates to the Hague Peace Conferences and Their Official Reports, ed. James Brown Scott (New York, 1916), 78; Hudson, International Tribunals, 7, 77; Scott, Hague Peace Conferences, vol. 1:329; the formula applied, see Article 1, Arbitration Convention between France and Italy, 25 Dec. 1903, signed at Paris, in CTS, vol. 194:365; and in CTS, vol. 206, Article 1 of USA treaties with Mexico (288-289), Italy (354), Britain (360), Norway (363-364), Portugal (368-369), and Spain (418-419).
[157].  Bernard, “The Obligation of Treaties,” 200.
[158].  Woolsey, Introduction to the Study of International Law, § 228:407.
[159].  Ibid., § 18:17; see also §§ 81-82:123-125.
[160].  Bluntschli to Moltke, Heidelberg, Christmas 1880, in “Les lois de la guerre sur terre,” 84.
[161].  Elihu Root, “The Sanction of International Law,” American Journal of International Law, vol. 2 (1908), 451-457.
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