ABSTRACT
Richet attributed his “abhorrence of war” to the influence of his grandfather, Charles Renouard, who had been a determined and vocal opponent of the Napoleonic Wars. Since age twenty, when he served as a hospital aide and ambulance attendant during the disastrous Franco-Prussian war, Richet had realized that war brings not only great suffering and destruction but disrupts productive intellectual intercourse among nations. Nevertheless in that war of 1870-71, during the Commune and even during World War I when he was in his late sixties, Richet, as a patriot, did not hesitate to expose himself to danger. Despite his record of valor, Richet, between the wars, committed himself to work for peace. As early as 1884 he had become a member of the Société de la Paix. He was also very active in the Société de l’Arbitrage entre Nations, later becoming its president. In 1900 he presided over the World Congress of Peace in Paris. He urged that ordinary citizens be given a greater voice in world affairs in order to moderate the vainglorious ambitions of rulers, politicians, and governments, and to counteract the chauvinistic, excitable, and often inflammatory writings that appeared in the press. As a man dedicated to the idea of “rights,” he held the view that serious disputes among nations should be settled by the World Court at The Hague or by a similar body that had appropriate international representatives. He had dedicated his book, Le Passé de la guerre et Vavenir de la paix, published in 1907, to his grandfather Charles Renouard: “It was he who inspired my thoughts and consequently this book. It is he who taught me the two faces of war, ferocity and stupidity. It is he who from my earliest years gave me a love for blessed justice which nothing can suppress. What the elderly man has taught the child, the man in his prime should, in his turn, teach the young people.” R 488
