War & Peace Quote by Ludwig Quidde

Quidde’s sentence reads like a thought experiment, but it’s really a trap laid for his contemporaries: if you truly believe peace is possible, why are you still paying for weapons you admit you hope never to use? The opening—"Let us assume... let us imagine"—isn’t dreamy idealism so much as a courtroom setup. He grants the pacifist end-state for a moment, then forces the listener to confront the moral and fiscal absurdity of militarism once its main alibi (fear) is removed. The word "dare" is doing heavy work: he’s not describing a budget debate; he’s describing social shame. In Quidde’s imagined future, advocating armaments becomes an act you’d be embarrassed to propose in public, like asking taxpayers to subsidize a luxury no one needs.

The subtext is aimed at a late-19th/early-20th-century Europe drunk on security rhetoric and prestige spending, where armaments were sold as inevitability, insurance, even modernity. Quidde flips that logic. If weapons are "obviously completely superfluous" in a world without war, then today’s arms spending quietly confesses that leaders don’t actually intend to eliminate the danger; they intend to manage it, monetize it, and leverage it for power at home.

As a critic and peace advocate (and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate), Quidde is also waging a rhetorical campaign against fatalism. He treats "international life" like something designed, not destined. The line isn’t naive; it’s accusatory: peace fails not because it’s unimaginable, but because too many careers, industries, and political identities depend on never letting it fully arrive.