CHAPTER IX
“THE TONIC OF NATIONS”
The moral value in peace, war and military preparation can of course be treated with less certainty than the racial and economic values. You cannot measure virtue with a yardstick nor establish by statistics the comparative virtue and vice, honor and dishonor, truth and falsehood in any man or any race. Here one must rely on general observation.
Up to the great struggle in 1914–18, the militarist and the aggressive patriot had somewhat the better of the moral argument. Obviously the man who offered up his life for the welfare or glory or whatsoever of his clan, tribe or nation is doing a fine, high thing. “Greater love than this hath no man.” But modern war is changing even that. Of the ten million killed in battle, the forty million under arms, comparatively few made the supreme sacrifice voluntarily. They were conscripts. They had to go and take the chance of being killed—or die with certainty against a wall. Most of these men had received their one, two or three years of military training. It had involved mental training,
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