as performing for
civilization some noble good. Even Hegel said that wars invigorate
humanity just as the storm preserves the sea from putrescence.

But this praise of war, we say, is by no means exclusively German.
Thucydides thought war a noble school of heroism, the exercise ground
of the nations. To Mohammed and his Arabs war seemed not only in
itself a heroism, we are told, but a divine act. This belief in war as
divine is an idea that is very wide-spread among primitive peoples.
Cramb, the English writer, says that it is very easy to demonstrate
that the glory of battle is an illusion, but by the same argument you
may demonstrate that all glory and life itself is an illusion and a
mockery. Redier says that the war has brought us all the noble joys so
necessary to stimulate mankind, and one no longer finds happiness,
therefore, in sleeping comfortably, but only in living bravely.

There is no lack, indeed, of recognition of the heroic motive in war.
Sometimes the argument appeals to religion, sometimes to art,
sometimes to morality. Sometimes the advocates of war are thinking of
war as the great adventure. War and the thought of war induce an
ecstasy, a glow of the feelings. War is thought of as an expression of
normal, healthy life, as making life more abundant and more beautiful.
War brings out fundamental virtues in the individual; it also destroys
the weaker and the meaner race and leaves the strong and the virtuous.
Struggle, they say, is the method of civilization. Again, it is urged
that war is always just in its issues. Like the old ordeal which
always registered the decrees of heaven, war is the just arbiter of
fate. The saving of the world through bloodshed, the uniting of the
world through war, war as the great teacher of mankind, war as the
creator of great personalities--all these are persistent themes in the
literature of war. There is no place for the pacifist in the minds of
these apologists of the heroic order. The crises of war are historic
necessities; they come when it is time to release people from the
bondage of the past and to bring individualistic generations back to
the sense of duty and of loyalty to great causes. This is the belief
of many, even now.

On the other side we find the great variety of pacifistic minds. War
to the pacifists is wrong, unholy, morally sinful, biologically and
economically and in every other way evil. The conscientious objector's
point of view is very simple.