us hero who fought with Talbot at
Agincourt, and also, as the unearthing of obscure documents shows, at
other times indulged in housebreaking, and in wounding with intent to
kill, and in "procuring the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut to
pieces while on his knees begging for his life." There, evidently, was a
state of society highly favourable to the warlike man, highly
unfavourable to the unwarlike man whom he slew in his wrath. Nowadays,
however, there has been a revaluation of these old values. The cowardly
and no doubt plebeian Thomas Page, multiplied by the million, has
succeeded in hoisting himself into the saddle, and he revenges himself
by discrediting, hunting into the slums, and finally hanging, every
descendant he can find of the premier gentleman of Agincourt.

It must be added that the advocates of the advantages of war are not
entitled to claim this process of selective breeding as one of the
advantages of war. It is quite true that war is incompatible with a high
civilization, and must in the end be superseded. But this method of
suppressing it is too thorough. It involves not merely the extermination
of the fighting spirit, but of many excellent qualities, physical and
moral, which are associated with the fighting spirit. Benjamin Franklin
seems to have been the first to point out that "a standing army
diminishes the size and breed of the human species." Almost in
Franklin's lifetime that was demonstrated on a wholesale scale, for
there seems little reason to doubt that the size and stature of the
French nation have been permanently diminished by the constant levies of
young recruits, the flower of the population, whom Napoleon sent out to
death in their first manhood and still childless. Fine physical breed
involves also fine qualities of virility and daring which are needed for
other purposes than fighting. In so far as the selective breeding of war
kills these out, its results are imperfect, and could be better attained
by less radical methods.

(5) _The Growth of the Anti-Military Spirit._ The decay of the warlike
spirit by the breeding out of fighting stocks has in recent years been
reinforced by a more acute influence of which in the near future we
shall certainly hear more. This is the spirit of anti-militarism. This
spirit is an inevitable result of the decay of the fighting spirit. In a
certain sense it is also complementary to it. The survival of
non-fighting stocks by the destruction of