fe" * * *

And he continues--

"* * * even my peace-abiding feet
Go marching with the marching street,
For yonder, yonder, goes the fife,
And what care I for human life!
The tears fill my astonished eyes
And my full heart is like to break."

And then, recovering himself again, he points out how wicked it is to
clothe such a monstrous thing as war in pageantry:

"* * * like a queen
That in a garden of glory walks";

and brings against art the charge of "infamy" for hiding in music this
"hideous grinning thing,"

"Till good men love the thing they loathe."

Now if all this tinsel glory of war has this effect on the mind of such
a pacifist as Mr. Le Gallienne, what shall we say to its effect on the
minds of men who have no particular convictions upon the subject? The
fact of the matter is, there is no accident about all the artificial
splendor which has been thrown about the conditions of warfare from time
immemorial. The flags, the uniforms, the marching, the "heady music,"
have all attached themselves to war for the good and sufficient
psychological reason that they exercise a transforming influence upon
the human heart. Napoleon understood this when he issued his famous
bulletins to his soldiers before going into battle. General Hancock
understood this at Gettysburg when, in the fateful moments just
preceding Pickett's charge, he rode along the crest of Cemetery Ridge
clad in his dress uniform and mounted on a white horse with golden
trappings. The Germans understood this when they sent their men into the
conflict with the music of military bands and with the choral chants of
Luther on their lips. Every humblest subaltern officer in any army
understands this when he places the flag at the head of the moving
regiment. Such appeals to the senses change men on the instant--make the
best of them into saints and the worst of them into momentary heroes.
They become stimulated as by some strange intoxicant, transformed as by
some mystic conversion of the soul. They forget the horrors of the
struggle, the peril of disaster, the chances of life and death. They are
conscious only of glory and delight. Their eyes gleam, their hearts
throb, the earth changes to beauty, the heavens break into song. And
straightway deeds of valor become easy, heroism commonplace, and
sacrifice the order of the day.

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim,