go on maintaining war as a sort of theatrical entertainment? Has such a thing ever happened in the past, when our impulses and "sporting" instincts came into conflict with our larger social and economic interests?
All this, in other words, involves a great deal more than the mere change in the character of warfare. It involves a fundamental change in our psychological attitude thereto. Not only does it show that on every side, even the military side, conflict must become less impulsive and instinctive, more rational and sustained, less the blind strife of mutually hating men, and more and more the calculated effort to a definite end; but it will affect the very well-springs of much of the present defence of war.
Why is it that the authorities I have quoted in the first chapter of this section—Mr. Roosevelt, Von Moltke, Renan, and the English clergymen—sing the praises of war as such a valuable school of morals?61 Do these war advocates urge that war itself is desirable? Would they urge going to war unnecessarily or unjustly merely because it is good for us? Emphatically no. Their argument, in the last analysis, resolves itself into this: that war, though bad, has redeeming qualities, as teaching staunchness, courage, and the rest. Well, so has cutting our legs off, or an operation for appendicitis. Whoever composed epics on typhoid fever or cancer? Such advocates might object to the efficient policing of a town because, if it was full of cut-throats, the inhabitants would be taught courage. One can almost imagine this sort of teacher pouring scorn upon those weaklings who want to call upon the police for protection, and saying, "Police are for