nobles and knights and into the, hands of mob-orators,
money-lenders, and atrocity-mongers. To recreate one's self with
war in the grand manner, as Prince Eugene, Marlborough and the
Old Dessauer knew it, one must now go among barbarian peoples.


Women are nearly always against war in modern times, for the
reasons brought forward to justify it are usually either transparently
dishonest or childishly sentimental, and hence provoke their scorn.
But once the business is begun, they commonly favour its conduct
outrance, and are thus in accord with the theory of the great
captains of more spacious days. In Germany, during the late war,
the protests against the Schrecklichkeit practised by the imperial
army and navy did not come from women, but from sentimental
men; in England and the United States there is no record that any
woman ever raised her voice against the blockade which
destroyed hundreds of thousands of German children. I was on
both sides of the bloody chasm during the war, and I cannot recall
meeting a single woman who subscribed to the puerile doctrine that,
in so vast a combat between nations, there could still be categories
of non-combatants, with aright of asylum on armed ships and in
garrisoned towns. This imbecility was maintained only by men,
large numbers of whom simultaneously took part in wholesale
massacres of such non-combatants. The women were superior to
such hypocrisy. They recognized the nature of modern war
instantly and accurately, and advocated no disingenuous efforts to
conceal it.