From the Bornean savage, who until he has a certain number of skulls
to hang about his waist may not marry or take share in deliberations
of state, and the Zulu who must first wet his spear in human blood to
be accounted a full man, on to many of our so-called civilized states,
where in pageants and pastimes preference always is given to the man
who slays or overthrows over the man who creates or produces, war is
continually surrounded with a certain meretricious tinsel which ends by
making the thing attractive for its own sake. It is to increase this
artificial charm and render war attractive, that the savage hangs cats'
tails round his waist, sticks cock-feathers in his hair, and beats on
his tom-tom, when he is working himself up for battle, and that the
so-called civilized man wears red stripes on his trousers, struts with
his chin high in the air and his shoulders well held back and padded,
and that he wears feathers, tails, or portions of metal, whatever is
believed to make his appearance more striking and important. It is
this which makes war and the warrior so attractive to the ignorant
youth of both sexes. The soldier, dressed and holding himself as other
men, would not be so eagerly sought after by the idle woman of the
ball-room, nor would her cook be so anxious to walk about with the
private if he walked as other human creatures walk and had the same
kind of hat; and the peasant boy who enlists does so, in nine cases
out of ten, because of the drums and the marches and the flags. It is
not generally really the desire to feel the blood and the brain of a
fellow-creature, dismembered by your hand, start out, and still less
to lie with one slug in the stomach and another in the lungs, while
the blood rises in mouthfuls and there is a rattle in the throat, that
tempts the majority of men to become soldiers. It is, in nine cases
out of ten, not the desire to kill or be killed, but a hunger for the
tinsel with which war is surrounded, that influences men who affect a
love for it; it is the hope of fame, metal stars, gilt crosses, the
glitter and glare of the parade-ground, and the possibility of title
and honours, which make the youth to enlist and maiden to say, "How
beautiful is war!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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