This idea, that the proof of the necessity of war is to be found in two expressions of Maistre and Darwin, two great thinkers according to his opinion, pleases Vogüé so much that he repeats it.
“Dear Sir,” he writes to the editor of the Revue des Revues :
“You ask for my opinion in regard to the success of the Universal Congress of Peace. I believe, with Darwin, that a violent struggle is a law of Nature, by which all beings are ruled. > > “Like Joseph de Maistre, I believe that it is a divine law—two different appellations for one and the same thing. If, past all expectation, some particle of humanity, say the whole civilized West, succeeded in arresting the action of this law, other, more primitive nations would apply it against us. In these nations the voice of Nature would vanquish the voice of human reason, and they would act with success, because the assurance of peace—I do not say ‘peace’ itself, but the ‘full assurance of peace’—would evoke in men corruption and fall, which