There is a heroism of peace comparable in every way to the heroism of war. Nay, we would go further and say that there is a heroism of peace superior in many ways to the heroism of war. The true soldier, as we have seen, is necessarily a hero; but the true hero is by no means necessarily a soldier. On the contrary, there have been thousands of men who have ascended to heights of heroic endeavor and achievement, to which the soldier from the very nature of his profession has never been able to attain. Emerson declares in his great essay that the heroism of war is heroism in "its rudest form." May we not also say, perhaps, that heroism of war is heroism in its easiest and therefore least extraordinary form? For there are certain circumstances surrounding the conduct of campaigns and the fighting of battles, which make heroism as simple and natural as, under other circumstances, it is difficult and unnatural. I am even tempted to go so far as to assert that a man can be a hero in war and still be a coward at heart. He can at least meet the test of heroism amid the fury of armed combat, with some degree of success, when he would crumple up before this test, like a rotten lance against a shield, under every other condition. Indeed, we have only to strip away the trappings, the artificial characteristics of militarism, in order to see how the heroism produced by war, even at its highest and best, is of an inferior type, as compared with the purer and nobler type of heroism produced by the ordinary and therefore more moral experience of peace. From this point of view, it seems to me that there are at least three circumstances, altogether peculiar to warfare, which make the heroism of the soldier to be easy, and therefore of a type distinctly lower than that manifested by men in other, more commonplace, less dramatic, but no less terrific crises of experience. In the first place, let me point out that there is a pageantry about war, which makes even the meanest heart to beat with a deeper throb and thus feel a loftier courage than is its wont. There are the uniforms in which the soldiers are clad, the gleaming swords and rifles which they carry, the brilliant flags which flutter over their heads, the crashing music which marks the time for their marching feet. Everywhere, in camp, on the march, on the battlefield, there is color, glitter, glory, beauty of sight and sound, the whole paraphernalia of "pomp and circumstance." And all this has the inevitable effect of making it easy for the ordinary man to forget his fears and throw himself like a hero into the stress and strain of combat. Even those who hate war the worst and are therefore subject the least to its artificial glamor are swept away in spite of themselves. Richard Le Gallienne has written of this very experience in his famous poem, The Illusion of War. He starts out by confessing that he abhors war. "And yet," he says, "How sweet