"A world-history without war," he
declares, "would be a history of materialism and degeneration"; and
again: "The solution is not 'Weapons down!' but 'Weapons up!' With
pure hands and calm conscience let us grasp the sword." He dwells, of
course, on the supposed purifying and ennobling effects of war and
insists that, in spite of its horrors, and when necessary, "War is a
divine institution and a work of love." The leaders of the world's
peace movement are, thank God! not Germans, but merely English and
Americans, and he sums up, with Moltke, that war is a part of the
moral order of the world.
[8] William James, _Popular Science Monthly_, Oct., 1910.
[9] We still often fall into the fallacy of over-estimating the
advantages of military training--with its fine air of set-up manliness
and restrained yet vitalised discipline--because we are mostly
compelled to compare such training with the lack of training fostered
by that tame, dull sedentary routine of which there is far too much in
our present phase of civilisation. The remedy lies in stimulating the
heroic and strenuous sides of civilisation rather than in letting
loose the ravages of war. As Nietzsche long since pointed out (_Human,
All-too-Human_, section 442), the vaunted national armies of modern
times are merely a method of squandering the most highly civilised
men, whose delicately organised brains have been slowly produced
through long generations; "in our day greater and higher tasks are
assigned to men than _patria_ and _honor_, and the rough old Roman
patriotism has become dishonourable, at the best behind the times.
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