Kant’s suggestion was closely kin to Rousseau’s ideas of the state, but he wrote at a time when the world, stampeded by the excesses of the Jacobins, was turning away from all the political theories that underlay the French Revolution. It had no use for the idea that government was the outcome of a social contract; and if this idea was not accepted for the state itself, how much less would it be accepted as a means of organizing the international state! The world suffered too much at the hands of Napoleon to like ideas that were responsible for the very beginning of the letting out of the waters. And this was especially true in Prussia, where the foot of the French conqueror was extremely heavy. At the moment when Kant’s ideas were at the height of unpopularity came the young philosopher, Hegel, who announced a philosophical view of war that pleased the governing class of Prussia, bent on establishing a system of military training that would be sufficient for a redeemed country. He taught that war through action burns away moral excrescences, purifies the health of society, and stimulates the growth of manly virtue. This idea became the basis of much German reasoning, and it is not improbable that its defenders in trying to discern the virtues they argued for, were led to develop them. But in their enthusiasm they came to exaggerate these virtues into habits that were often mere manifestations of an exalted egoism. As to the claim that war burns up the effete products of society, it may be met by the undeniable assertion that it also burns much that is best. One does not burn a city to destroy the vermin that are in it. The next attempt to bring about a system of coöperation to secure peace among the nations was the formation of the Holy Alliance, a futile attempt to apply principles like those just described, made by Alexander I, of Russia, at the close of the Napoleonic wars. It is considered at length in the chapter following this, where it finds its proper setting. The extremely religious spirit in which it was conceived was a drawback to success, but it is not likely that it would have fared better than it did fare, even if stripped of all its pious fantasy, since the world was not educated to its acceptance as a purely political idea. At this stage one must notice the development of peace societies. Organized at first as local bodies they were drawn together into national organizations in the early decades of the nineteenth century. It was in 1816 that such a society was created in Great Britain, and in 1828 that the American Peace Society was formed out of local societies in the United States. In the same year was established at Geneva the first peace society on the Continent, the second being organized at Paris in 1841. The influence of such societies was weak for a long time; but within the past twenty years it has been much stronger.