THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 403 



writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic sentiment. 

 Patriotism no one thinks discreditable ; nor does any one deny that war 

 is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are the soul of 

 every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the soul of all ro- 

 mance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded everywhere, and 

 especially the professional military class, refuse to admit for a moment 

 that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social evolution. The 

 notion of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, they say, our higher imag- 

 ination. Where then would be the steeps of life? If war had ever 

 stopped, we should have to re-invent it, on this view, to redeem life 

 from flat degeneration. 



Eeflective apologists for war at the present day all take it relig- 

 iously. It is a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to the vanquished as 

 well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question of profit, it is 

 an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at its highest 

 dynamic. Its " horrors " are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the 

 only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-edu- 

 cation and zoophily, of " consumer's leagues " and " associated chari- 

 ties," of industrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed. No scorn, 

 no hardness, no valor any more ! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a 

 planet ! 



So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy minded 

 person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. Mili- 

 tarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life 

 with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or 

 prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a 

 type of military character which every one feels that the race should 

 never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority. The 

 duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military characters in stock 

 — of keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as 

 pure pieces of perfection — so that Roosevelt's weaklings and molly- 

 coddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the face 

 of nature. 



This natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the innermost soul of 

 army-writings. Without any exception known to me, militarist au- 

 thors take a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard war as a 

 biological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary psycholog- 

 ical checks and motives. When the time of development is ripe the war 

 must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded are in- 

 variably fictitious. War is, in short, a permanent human obligation. 

 General Homer Lea, in his recent book " The Valor of Ignorance," 

 plants himself squarely on this ground. Readiness for war is for him 

 the essence of nationality, and ability in it the supreme measure of the 

 health of nations. 



