arkable for the way in which it neglects
them.[220] War and adventure assuredly keep all who engage in them
from treating themselves too tenderly. They demand such incredible
efforts, depth beyond depth of exertion, both in degree and in
duration, that the whole scale of motivation alters. Discomfort and
annoyance, hunger and wet, pain and cold, squalor and filth, cease to
have any deterrent operation whatever. Death turns into a commonplace
matter, and its usual power to check our action vanishes. With the
annulling of these customary inhibitions, ranges of new energy are set
free, and life seems cast upon a higher plane of power.

[220] "When a church has to be run by oysters, ice-cream, and fun," I
read in an American religious paper, "you may be sure that it is
running away from Christ." Such, if one may judge by appearances, is
the present plight of many of our churches.

The beauty of war in this respect is that it is so congruous with
ordinary human nature. Ancestral evolution has made us all potential
warriors; so the most insignificant individual, when thrown into an
army in the field, is weaned from whatever excess of tenderness toward
his precious person he may bring with him, and may easily develop into
a monster of insensibility.

But when we compare the military type of self-severity with that of the
ascetic saint, we find a world-wide difference in all their spiritual
concomitants.

"'Live and let live,'" writes a clear-headed Austrian officer, "is no
device for an army. Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of
the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are
what war demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to be too
savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much
sentimentality and human reasonableness.

If the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he must be
exactly the opposite of a reasoning and thinking man. The measure of
goodness in him is his possible use in war. War, and even peace,
require of the soldier absolutely peculiar standards of morality. The
recruit brings with him common moral notions, of which he must seek
immediately to get rid. For him victory, success, must be EVERYTHING.
The most barbaric tendencies in men come to life again in war, and for
war's uses they are incommensurably good."[221]

[221] C. V. B. K.: Friedens-und Kriegs-moral der Heere. Quoted by
Hamon: Psychologie du Militaire prof