It is doubtful
if any large section of the men actually enlisted for fighting ever at
any time really hungered and thirsted for bloodshed and danger. That
kind of appetite was probably never very strong in the species after the
savage stage was past. The army was a profession, in which killing had
become a disagreeable possibility rather than an eventful certainty. If
one reads the old newspapers and periodicals of that time, which did
so much to keep militarism alive, one finds very little about glory and
adventure and a constant harping on the disagreeableness of invasion
and subjugation. In one word, militarism was funk. The belligerent
resolution of the armed Europe of the twentieth century was the
resolution of a fiercely frightened sheep to plunge. And now that its
weapons were exploding in its hands, Europe was only too eager to drop
them, and abandon this fancied refuge of violence.
For a time the whole world had been shocked into frankness; nearly all
the clever people who had hitherto sustained the ancient belligerent
separations had now been brought to realise the need for simplicity
of attitude and openness of mind; and in this atmosphere of moral
renascence, there was little attempt to get negotiable advantages out of
resistance to the new order.
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