France, notwithstanding her military aptitude, has always taken the pioneering part in the pacific movement of civilization. Even at the beginning of the fourteenth century France produced an advocate of international arbitration, Pierre Dubois (Petrus de Bosco), the Norman lawyer, a pupil of Thomas Aquinas. In the seventeenth century Emeric Crucé proposed, for the first time, to admit all peoples, without distinction of colour or religion, to be represented at some central city where every state would have its perpetual ambassador, these representatives forming an assembly to adjudicate on international differences (Dubois and Crucé have lately been studied by Prof. Vesnitch, Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique, January, 1911). The history of the various peace projects generally has been summarily related by Lagorgette in Le Rôle de la Guerre, 1906, Part IV, chap. VI.

The same points had previously been brought forward by others, although not so vigorously enforced. Thus the well-known Belgian economist and publicist, Emile de Laveleye, pointed out (Pall Mall Gazette, 4th August, 1888) that "the happiest countries are incontestably the smallest: Switzerland, Norway, Luxembourg, and still more the Republics of San Marino and Val d'Andorre"; and that "countries in general, even when victorious, do not profit by their conquests."