A few men, fighting each other, do not make a war. A hundred, five hundred, ten thousand men, fighting each other, make at most a riot. Only a government can make war. So long as any large group of persons, anywhere on this earth, believes the ancient superstition that some Authority is responsible for their welfare, they will set up some image of that Authority and try to obey it. And the result will be poverty and war.
Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane, 1886-1968
http://mises.org/books/discovery.pdf
