370 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ing when new educational or social laws are proposed; but when a re- 

 duction of military expenditure is mooted, they prove conclusively that 

 the country is marvelously prosperous, and could afford a few more 

 army corps and a dozen super-Dreadnoughts. 



Beside the spirit of mutual diffidence which centuries of hostility 

 have fostered, and which the recent attitude of Germany has revived, 

 the strong point of militarism remains its sentimental appeal. Dreary 

 barrack life is still linked in popular imagination with the sombre but 

 grandiose epic of ancient wars. Men serve their time when they are 

 young and buoyant, when no hardship is unendurable, when even the 

 memories of unnecessary fatigue, squalor, petty tyranny, are transfig- 

 ured by the general glow of youth and hope. I for instance look back 

 upon these days of servitude with a sort of pleasure. I remember the 

 fun, the marching at the sound of bugles and band, or singing away on 

 the highroad; the mock guerilla warfare around Norman farms in the 

 early morning ; the incontestable grandeur of a division in battle array. 

 Soldiering is a pretty game, although murdering is an ugly business. 

 It is possible that wars will be abolished generations before armies are 

 suppressed. 



