A war between Europeans is a civil war.

Hear, O listener, the thunderous wisdom of Victor Hugo, who gazed upon the nations of Europe not as strangers, but as brothers of one great family. He declared: “A war between Europeans is a civil war.” In these words he cast aside the illusion of borders and kings, and spoke to the deeper truth—that the peoples of Europe, though divided by languages and flags, share a common heritage, a shared destiny, and a single civilization. To raise sword against one another, he warned, was not the clash of foreigners, but the tearing apart of kin.

The origin of this saying lies in the nineteenth century, when Europe was shaken by revolutions, wars of empire, and the struggles between nations newly born and empires long established. Hugo, the poet and prophet of peace, envisioned a day when the nations of Europe would cease their endless rivalries and form instead a “United States of Europe.” To him, the divisions of the continent were petty quarrels in the house of one great family, and every war between European peoples was no different from a brother slaying his brother, a civil war within the same household of civilization.

History has proven the weight of his words. Consider the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when Germany and France, two pillars of European culture, bled each other in battle. The war left scars of bitterness that led directly to the First World War. And what was the First World War, if not a civil war of Europe, where the great nations of the continent destroyed themselves in trenches and firestorms, reducing centuries of cultural grandeur into heaps of corpses and ruins? The very flower of European youth perished not at the hands of distant barbarians, but at the hands of their neighbors.

And the Second World War bore this tragedy to its fullest. Germans, French, British, Italians, Poles, and Russians—all children of the same cultural soil—fell upon each other with a fury that consumed not only cities but the very soul of the continent. When at last the smoke cleared, Europe was divided, occupied, and humbled. Hugo’s words echo across this devastation: the wars that Europe waged against itself were not triumphs of nations, but suicides of a civilization.

The deeper meaning of Hugo’s teaching is not confined to Europe alone. It is a warning to all humanity that divisions of nation, race, or creed are but shallow lines compared to the deeper unity of mankind. To wage war against one another is to wage war against ourselves, for we are one species, one family, one shared destiny upon this earth. Hugo used Europe as his canvas, but his vision was universal. A war among brothers is civil war, whether those brothers dwell in Europe, Asia, Africa, or the Americas.

What lesson, then, must we carry into our own lives? It is this: do not be deceived by those who would divide humanity into “us” and “them.” See in your neighbor, even across oceans, a brother or sister of the same human family. Work to build bonds of peace, trade, art, and fellowship, not barriers of suspicion and hatred. When conflict arises, remember Hugo’s cry—that to harm another is to wound your own kin, and that no victory gained through fratricide is worthy of being called triumph.

Therefore, O listener, hold fast to Hugo’s vision: “A war between Europeans is a civil war.” Let it be a reminder that the boundaries of nations are fragile, but the bonds of humanity are eternal. In your dealings, in your judgments, in your politics, strive always for unity over division, peace over enmity. For the wars of brothers are the most tragic of all, and peace among brothers is the seed from which the future of humanity must grow.