There is one case and one only in which a contract is not binding,
either on the state or on the private individual, and that is when the
signatory was forced to enter upon it with a knife at his throat.
Obligations which a victor imposes on his defeated and disarmed opponent
are by their very nature invalid. The old cry of Brennus: "_Vae
victis!_" is might and cannot constitute a right. Civil law calls this
kind of thing compulsion and decrees that it invalidates any contract.
Only a pedantic mind, stupid and depraved, immersed in hair-splitting
trickery and incapable of a straight thought, could complacently
maintain in the face of all common sense that might and compulsion, far
from doing away with right, are the source of all right. The silly
formula coined for this is: "Might is right." Might may be a fact, but
it is not right. The source of right is not might but Morality, which
might disavows and destroys. The necessary condition of any obligation
which is to be valid is freedom. Kant proved this, but his proof was
unnecessary, for it is self-evident. A forced treaty is no treaty, for
it is the victor's fist which has guided the hand of the vanquished, and
it is he who wrote the latter's signature under the document. The will,
the consciousness of the seeming signatory were absent at the time.