Barrack life is bad. Barrack life will always be bad. It is never good for a lot of men to live together apart from home influences and feminine. It is not good for women to live or work in communities of women. The sexes react upon each other; each provides for the other a natural restraint, a wholesome incentive.... The barracks and the garrison town are not good for young men. The young soldier, fenced and hemmed in by a discipline unnecessarily severe, and often stupid, has at the same time an amount of license which is dangerous to all but those of strong good sense and strong will. I have seen clean, good, nice boys come into the Army and go to the devil in less than a year. I am no Puritan. I am a man of the world; but any sensible and honest man who has been in the Army will know at once that what I am saying is entirely true, and is the truth expressed with much restraint and moderation. A few hours in a barrack-room would teach a civilian more than all the soldier stories ever written. When I joined the Army I was unusually unsophisticated for a boy of twenty. I had been brought up by a mother. I had attended Sunday-school and chapel. I had lived a quiet, sheltered life, and I had an astonishing amount to learn. The language of the barrack-room shocked me, appalled me. I could not understand half I heard; I could not credit much that I saw. When I began to realize the truth, I took my courage in both hands and went about the world I had come into with open eyes. So I learnt the facts, but I must not tell them.[86] CHAPTER V THE DIMINISHING FACTOR OF PHYSICAL FORCE: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESULTS Diminishing factor of physical force--Though diminishing, physical force has always had an important rôle in human affairs--What is underlying principle, determining advantageous and disadvantageous use of physical force?--Force that aids co-operation in accord with law of man's advance: force that is exercised for parasitism in conflict with such law and disadvantageous for both parties--Historical process of the abandonment of physical force--The Khan and the London tradesman--Ancient Rome and modern Britain--The sentimental defence of war as the purifier of human life--The facts--The redirection of human pugnacity. Despite the general tendency indicated by the facts dealt with in the preceding chapter, it will be urged (with perfect justice) that, though the methods of Anglo-Saxondom as compared with those of the Spanish, Portuguese, and French Empires, may have been mainly commercial and industrial rather than military, war was a necessary part of expansion; that but for some fighting the Anglo-Saxons would have been ousted from North America or Asia, or would never have gained a footing there.