THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM"


I had a letter the other day from an Oxford friend. In it was this
phrase: "I loathe militarism in all its forms." Somehow it took me
back quite suddenly to the days before the war, to ideas that I had
almost completely forgotten. I suppose that in those days the great
feature of those of us who tried to be "in the forefront of modern
thought" was their riotous egotism, their anarchical insistence on the
claims of the individual at the expense even of law, order, society,
and convention. "Self-realization" we considered to be the primary
duty of every man and woman.

The wife who left her husband, children, and home because of her
passion for another man was a heroine, braving the hypocritical
judgments of society to assert the claims of the individual soul.
The woman who refused to abandon all for love's sake, was not only
a coward but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin of sacrificing her
soul, committing it to a prison where it would languish and never
blossom to its full perfection. The man who was bound to uncongenial
drudgery by the chains of an early marriage or aged parents dependent
on him, was the victim of a tragedy which drew tears from our eyes.
The woman who neglected her home because she needed a "wider sphere"
in which to develop her personality was a champion of women's rights,
a pioneer of enlightenment. And, on the other hand, the people
who went on making the best of uncongenial drudgery, or in any way
subjected their individualities to what old-fashioned people called
duty, were in our eyes contemptible poltroons.