em gave him."[16] But I should weary you were I
to transcribe a tithe of the stupid remarks made by persons in authority
under the influence of war. The record, I believe, in England is held at
present by Mr. Bodkin, K.C.

It may be said of course that men, and newspapers, are equally stupid in
time of peace; and I fear that fundamentally this is true. War does not
change their nature, but only brings to the bubbling surface the dregs
and vileness and scum. War does not change any one's nature; and that is
why it is vain to expect that under its influence those crowds will love
their country who never loved anything before. But if war cannot create
it may at least be supposed to discover and test the existent patriotism
of the nation. And this supposition is corroborated at first sight by
the realisation that hundreds of thousands, that actually millions of
previously ordinary young men have implied by enlisting their
willingness to die for England. One might, of course, reason that no
individual recruit really believes he is going to be killed, that each
boy thinks he will be one of the lucky ones who escape all the bullets
unhurt to enjoy an honoured return, that recruiting would have failed
entirely if the barracks were explicitly a grave and enlistment the
certainty of violent death or mutilation. But somehow I don't think that
would be a fair argument. It is more pertinent if less easy to remember
that a readiness to die for one's country is not the highest form of
political virtue. If it be, as it is, a solemn and wonderful thing to be
willing to die for the salvation (_ex hypothesi_) of England, it must be
much more wonderful and solemn to be willing to die in order slightly to
increase the income of one's family. And every schoolboy knows that the
Chinaman of the old regime was willing to have his head cut off for the
payment of a few dollars to his next of kin. Let no one ever deny our
soldiers the honour of their courage and nobility; but the fact remains
that the readiness to die for England is a less adequate test of
patriotism than a readiness to live for England; and if the readiness to
live for the State rather than for private interests had been for a
hundred years a social virtue whose votaries could be numbered by the
million, then indeed England would be to-day a nation worth dying for.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: If anyone were to suggest that this is disproved by the
unparalleled nobility of Austra