Frederick the Great recognized the ennobling effect of war. "War," he
said, "opens the most fruitful field to all virtues, for at every moment
constancy, pity, magnanimity, heroism, and mercy, shine forth in it;
every moment offers an opportunity to exercise one of these virtues."

"At the moment when the State cries out that its very life is at stake,
social selfishness must cease and party hatred be hushed. The individual
must forget his egoism, and feel that he is a member of the whole body.
He should recognize how his own life is nothing worth in comparison with
the welfare of the community. War is elevating, because the individual
disappears before the great conception of the State. The devotion of the
members of a community to each other is nowhere so splendidly
conspicuous as in war.... What a perversion of morality to wish to
abolish heroism among men!" [H]

[Footnote H: Treitschke, "Politik" i., p. 74.]

Even defeat may bear a rich harvest. It often, indeed, passes an
irrevocable sentence on weakness and misery, but often, too, it leads to
a healthy revival, and lays the foundation of a new and vigorous
constitution. "I recognize in the effect of war upon national
character," said Wilhelm von Humboldt, "one of the most salutary
elements in the moulding of the human race."

The individual can perform no nobler moral action than to pledge his
life on his convictions, and to devote his own existence to the cause
which he serves, or even to the conception of the value of ideals to
personal morality. Similarly, nations and States can achieve no loftier
consummation than to stake their whole power on upholding their