“And is this the way,” a would-be crusader asks me, “that you propose to abolish lying and thieving and foolishness from the world?” Why not? The most pusillanimous of all pusillanimities, the most detestable and pestilent sophistry of cowardice, is that of saying that it is no use denouncing a thief because others will go on stealing, that nothing is gained by calling a fool a fool to his face, for this will not lessen the sum of foolishness in the world. Yes, it has got to be repeated a thousand and one times--if you can finish once, only once, utterly and for ever, with only one liar, then you will have finished with lying for good and all. March then! And throw out of the sacred squadron all those who begin to pay too much attention to the step that has to be kept on the march, to its time and rhythm. Above all, out with those who are always talking about rhythm. They will turn your squadron into a quadrille and the march into a dance. Out with them! Let them go and sing to the flesh somewhere else. Those who would seek to turn your marching squadron into a quadrille call themselves and call one another poets. They are not. They are anything else you like. They only go to the sepulchre out of curiosity, to see what it is like, to get a new sensation, and to amuse themselves on the way. Out with them! They it is whose Bohemian tolerance contributes to the maintenance of cowardice and falsehood and all the other ignominies that overwhelm us. When they preach liberty, the only liberty they are thinking about is that of making free with their neighbour’s wife. They are compact of sensuality, and they have a sensual attitude even to the great ideas that they are enamoured of. They are incapable of marrying themselves to any great and pure idea and begetting a family upon it; they only intoxicate themselves with ideas. They make mistresses of them, and sometimes tire of them after a single night. Out with them! If when on the march anyone wants to pluck a flower that smiles by the roadside, let him pluck it, but in passing, without stopping, and let him follow the squadron, whose leader must not take his eyes off the bright and sounding star. And if he fastens the flower to his breastplate, not to look at himself but for others to look at, out with him! Let him go off, with his flower in his buttonhole, and dance somewhere else. Listen, my friend. If you wish to fulfil your mission and serve your country, you must needs make yourself hateful to all those sensible young men who see the world only through the eyes of the woman they love. Or worse still: your words must be strident and bitter in their ears.