tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of
skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their
choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back
into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would
have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human
warfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the
women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and
teachers of the following generation.
Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have
required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in
the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the
military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should
get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal
cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is
temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of
one's life. I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. So far, war has
been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an
equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its
way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames
of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of
organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other
just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a
question of time, of skilful propagandism, and of opinion-making men
seizing historic opportunities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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