quality they value
most in it is the competency and security which attend it: their whole
notion of the future rests upon the certainty of this little provision,
and all they require is peaceably to enjoy it. Thus not only does a long
peace fill an army with old men, but it is frequently imparts the views
of old men to those who are still in the prime of life.

I have also shown that amongst democratic nations in time of peace the
military profession is held in little honor and indifferently followed.
This want of public favor is a heavy discouragement to the army; it
weighs down the minds of the troops, and when war breaks out at last,
they cannot immediately resume their spring and vigor. No similar cause
of moral weakness occurs in aristocratic armies: there the officers are
never lowered either in their own eyes or in those of their countrymen,
because, independently of their military greatness, they are personally
great. But even if the influence of peace operated on the two kinds of
armies in the same manner, the results would still be different. When
the officers of an aristocratic army have lost their warlike spirit and
the desire of raising themselves by service, they still retain a certain
respect for the honor of their class, and an old habit of being foremost
to set an example. But when the officers of a democratic army have
no longer the love of war and the ambition of arms, nothing whatever
remains to them.

I am therefore of opinion that, when a democratic people engages in
a war after a long peace, it incurs much more risk of defeat than any
other nation; but it ought not easily to be cast down by its reverses,
for the chances of success for such an army are increased by the
duration of the war. When a war has at length, by its long continuance,
roused the whole community from their peaceful occupations and ruined
their minor undertakings, the same passions which made them attach so
much importance to the maintenance of peace will be turned to arms.
War, after it has destroyed all modes of speculation, becomes itself
the great and sole speculation, to which all the ardent and ambitious
desires which equality engenders are exclusively directed. Hence it is
that the selfsame democratic nations which are so reluctant to engage
in hostilities, sometimes perform prodigious achievements when once
they have taken the field. As the war attracts more and more of public
attention, and is seen to create high repu