antonp

"Whoever governs must consider it as much his duty to avoid war as it is that of a captain of a vessel to avoid shipwreck. When a captain has lost his ship, he is judged and condemned if found guilty of negligence or even of incapacity. Why should not governments be judged after the declaration of every war? If the people understood this, if they took the law into their own hands against the murdering powers, if they refused to allow themselves to be killed without reason, if they used their weapons against those who distributed them to slaughter with, that day war would indeed be a dead letter."

-Guy De Maupassant, from _Sur L'eau_