ed, but there
is a longing to tempt fate and also to experience death itself, and
this desire may become ecstatic. Here we see in effect one of the most
important functions of the aesthetic, which is to carry on a _drama of
the will_ in which something that is in itself painful becomes
pleasant and desired. The desire for war is to some extent a desire
for death, a longing for a form of euthanasia in which the individual
dies but in a sense lives--lives as glorified in death, and also in
the continuance of the life of the group and of the country into which
he has been absorbed. It is of course its relation to death that more
than anything else has made it necessary that war should appeal to
art, and take an aesthetic form, and without the aid of the aesthetic,
war could not maintain itself in the world. As a sheer fulfillment of
duty war could not survive. By the strength of its aesthetic appeal
war must control and overcome the instinct of self-preservation.

War appeals to the human mind as the great adventure of life. To the
healthy normal man this appeal, under certain circumstances, may be
compelling in its power. Man feels the call of adventure in his blood.
War may seem at times the natural expression of what is most real and
most essentially masculine in human nature. War is the essence of all
the dramatic and heroic story of the world. The past lives most
vividly in this theme of war, and the sense of remoteness in time
lends an aesthetic coloring to all the story of war, and is in part
its fascination. The dead heroes of to-day are glorified by linking
their names with the great heroes of the past.

To the glory of the individual, which is an aesthetic appeal, is added
the still stronger appeal of the ideal of national glory. The image
created in the mind which sustains the devotion of the individual is
also an aesthetic form. It is the idea of a nation transformed by
story, symbol and eloquence that is established. The dimness and
mysticism of the long ago, all dramatic scenes of the national life,
the forms of royalty are used in transforming reality into an ideal.
The consciousness of a nation is indeed an artist which creates an
ideal nation, glorifying and transforming the past, and painting a
vivid picture of the empire that is to be. No little part in the
German idea of the fatherland has been taken by the revived image of
the old German Empire, and the story of Charlemagne, the Ottonides,
the Hohens