So, too, when men lose the capacity of gladly sacrificing the highest
material blessings--life, health, property, and comfort--for ideals; for
the maintenance of national character and political independence; for
the expansion of sovereignty and territory in the interests of the
national welfare; for a definite influence in the concert of nations
according to the scale of their importance in civilization; for
intellectual freedom from dogmatic and political compulsion; for the
honour of the flag as typical of their own worth--then progressive
development is broken off, decadence is inevitable, and ruin at home and
abroad is only a question of time. History speaks with no uncertain
voice on this subject. It shows that valour is a necessary condition of
progress. Where with growing civilization and increasing material
prosperity war ceases, military efficiency diminishes, and the
resolution to maintain independence under all circumstances fails, there
the nations are approaching their downfall, and cannot hold their own
politically or racially.

"A people can only hope to take up a firm position in the political
world when national character and military tradition act and react upon
each." These are the words of Clausewitz, the great philosopher of war,
and he is incontestably right.

These efforts for peace would, if they attained their goal, not merely
lead to general degeneration, as happens everywhere in Nature where the
struggle for existence is eliminated, but they have a direct damaging
and unnerving effect. The apostles of peace draw large sections of a
nation into the spell of their Utopian efforts, and they thus introduce
an element of weakness into the national life; they cripple the
justifiable national pride in independence, and support a nerveless
opportunist policy by surrounding it with the glamour of a higher