y that the heroism of
war is heroism in "its rudest form." May we not also say, perhaps, that
heroism of war is heroism in its easiest and therefore least
extraordinary form? For there are certain circumstances surrounding the
conduct of campaigns and the fighting of battles, which make heroism as
simple and natural as, under other circumstances, it is difficult and
unnatural. I am even tempted to go so far as to assert that a man can be
a hero in war and still be a coward at heart. He can at least meet the
test of heroism amid the fury of armed combat, with some degree of
success, when he would crumple up before this test, like a rotten lance
against a shield, under every other condition. Indeed, we have only to
strip away the trappings, the artificial characteristics of militarism,
in order to see how the heroism produced by war, even at its highest and
best, is of an inferior type, as compared with the purer and nobler type
of heroism produced by the ordinary and therefore more moral experience
of peace. From this point of view, it seems to me that there are at
least three circumstances, altogether peculiar to warfare, which make
the heroism of the soldier to be easy, and therefore of a type
distinctly lower than that manifested by men in other, more commonplace,
less dramatic, but no less terrific crises of experience.

In the first place, let me point out that there is a pageantry about
war, which makes even the meanest heart to beat with a deeper throb and
thus feel a loftier courage than is its wont. There are the uniforms in
which the soldiers are clad, the gleaming swords and rifles which they
carry, the brilliant flags which flutter over their heads, the crashing
music which marks the time for their marching feet. Everywhere, in camp,
on the march, on the battlefield, there is color, glitter, glory, beauty
of sight and sound, the whole paraphernalia of "pomp and circumstance."
And all this has the inevitable effect of making it easy for the
ordinary man to forget his fears and throw himself like a hero into the
stress and strain of combat. Even those who hate war the worst and are
therefore subject the least to its artificial glamor are swept away in
spite of themselves. Richard Le Gallienne has written of this very
experience in his famous poem, The Illusion of War. He starts out by
confessing that he abhors war. "And yet," he says, "How sweet

"The sound along, the marching street
of drum and fi