Between Two Laws

The pacifism of American "ladies" (of both sexes!) is truly the most disgusting "cant" that (in perfectly good faith) was ever pronounced and advocated from the lofty heights of a tea table - with the pharisaism of the parasite who pockets his war profits and looks own on the barbarians in the trenches. Even the antimilitaristic "neutrality" of the Swiss and their repudiation of the power-state occasionally contains more than a bit of the truly pharisaical lack of understanding for the tragic dilemma involved in the historical duties of a nation that finds itself in the position of a power-state. Yet, in spite of this, we remain objective enough to see that behind this attitude there lies a sincere conviction which unfortunately, because of our peculiar destiny, we Germans of the Empire cannot accept as our own.

But the Gospel one should leave out of this controversy - or one should fully accept it. If one does this, there can be only Tolstoy's conclusion, no other. Whoever receives a single penny of rent that others have to pay (directly or indirectly), whoever possesses or consumes anything tainted with the sweat of another man's toil - he feeds his life from the spoils derived from that loveless and pitiless economic struggle for existence which in bourgeois language is called a "peaceful effort in the service of civilization." It is just another form of the struggle of man against man in which, year after year, not millions but hundreds of millions are stunted in body and soul, are wiped out, or, at least, are condemned to lead an existence that, alas, is infinitely more deprived of any recognizable "meaning" than the defense of the honor (and that means nothing but the inescapable historical duties) of one's own nation by all - the women as well as the men, for they, too, are "soldiers" if they do their duty. The attitude of the Gospels in this connection is in the decisive points absolutely unambiguous: the Gospels are in opposition not just to war (they do not even especially mention it), but ultimately to all and any laws of the social world in so far as it wants to be a world of secular "civilization," i.e., a world of strictly human beauty, dignity, honor, and greatness. Those who do not draw these consequences - Tolstoy himself has done so only when he was about to die - should know that they are bound to the laws of the secular world which include, for all forseeable future, the possibility and inevitability of wars for power, and that only within the framework of these laws they can fulfill the "demand of the hour."

Max Weber responding to an article by a Swiss pacifist entitled "The Laws of the Gospel and the Laws of the Fatherland"in the periodical Die Frau in Feb 1916