Item 01: Malcolm Shore Stanley correspondence, 8 December 1916-28 October 1918 - Page 212
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[Page 212]
than this abdication of judgement, after careful reflection we desire in this manner of thought that of the fanatical inquisition which proclaimed murder just if it was accomplished for the greater glory of God, the most wicked profligate may wash himself of his crimes by protesting his good intentions, we have not only the right but still the task of killing in the name of love, to steal in the name of humility, to preach war up to the end that is to say up to the last gasp of the last man to the name of peace, what misery! & how easy it seems today to understand what the great evil must be which humanity has suffered and had for the just cause - the development of Sophism.
After 3 years we bind ourselves closer to the subject of the beginning of the war, the same empty phrase, they pretend that the fact that the war was declared by Germany proves sufficiently that she pushed for it & unchained it, without insisting on the contradiction which is permitted by the most ardent partisants of this theory, whom all - when there is question of the war of 1870 certainly declared by France on Germany - reject with a unanimous vote the responsibility of the latter. I will permit myself to say make a statement & that by a writer whom no person could qulify as a "Bosch agent", Montesquieu himself, that that fact signifys nothing.
Book 10 Chapter 11 Spirit of Lois the illustrious author expresses himself thus:-
"The life of States is like that of men they have the right to kill in the case of self defense, others have the right to make war for their own conservation" and further on :-
"But in the societies the right of self defense involves sometimes the necessity to attack, when people see that a longer peace would put another in a state to destroy them, attack at that moment is the only way to escape destruction."
Montesquieu assists to lay down the question as it should be placed. It is not necessary to know which State who attacked - I would say none - which State provoked the war but which was the State whose existence was menaced, all those who have