Growing Opposition to the Fighting Emotions and Instincts as Displayed in War In spite of the teachings of history that wars have not grown fewer, and in spite of the militarist argument that war is a means of purging mankind of its sordid vices, and renewing instead the noblest virtues, the conclusion that the resort to arms is unavoidable and desirable is nowadays being strongly contested. The militarists show only part of the picture. No large acquaintance with the character of warfare is necessary to prove that when elemental anger, hate and fear prevail, civilized conventions are abandoned and the most savage instincts determine conduct. Homes are looted and burned, women and children are abominably treated, and many innocents are murdered outright or starved to death. No bland argument for the preservation of the manly virtues can palliate such barbarities. Even when fighting men are held within the rules, the devices for killing and injuring are now made so perfect by devilish ingenuity that by the pulling of a trigger one man can in a few seconds mow down scores of his fellow-creatures and send them writhing to agony or death. War has become too horrible; it is conducted on too stupendous a scale of carnage and expenditure; it destroys too many of the treasured achievements of the race; it interferes too greatly with consecrated efforts to benefit all mankind by discovery and invention; it involves too much suffering among peoples not directly concerned in the struggle; it is too vastly at variance with the methods of fair dealing that have been established between man and man; the human family has become too closely knit to allow some of its members to bring upon themselves and all the rest poverty and distress and a long heritage of bitter hatred and resolution to seek revenge. All these reasons for hostility to war imply a thwarting of strong desires in men--desires for family happiness, devotion to beauty and to scholarship, passion for social justice, hopes of lessening poverty and disease. As was pointed out in the previous chapter, the feeling of hostility has no definite object to awaken it. It is roused when there is opposition to what we ardently wish to get. And because war brings conditions which frustrate many kinds of eagerly sought purposes, war has roused in men a hostility against itself. There is then a war against war, a willingness to fight against monstrous carnage and destruction, that grows in intensity with every war that is waged. The Desirability of Preserving the Martial Virtues