I suppose there has been no war that could not be interpreted
ultimately as a war of self-interest. The statesmen who make wars
always carefully reckon the probabilities of loss or gain; but the
lads who kiss their sweethearts good-bye require reasons more vital
than those of pounds, shillings and pence. Few men lay down their
lives from self-interested motives. Courage is a spiritual quality
which requires a spiritual inducement. Men do not set a price on their
chance of being blown to bits by shells. Even patriotism is too vague
to be a sufficient incentive. The justice of the cause to be fought
for helps; it must be proportionate to the magnitude of the sacrifice
demanded. But always an ideal is necessary--an ideal of liberty,
indignation and mercy. If this is true of the men who go out to die,
it is even more true of the women who send them,

"Where there're no children left to pull
The few scared, ragged flowers--
All that was ours, and, God, how beautiful!
All, all that was once ours,
Lies faceless, mouthless, mire to mire,
So lost to all sweet semblance of desire
That we, in those fields seeking desperately
One face long-lost to love, one face that lies
Only upon the breast of Memory,
Would never find it--even the very blood
Is stamped into the horror of the mud--
Something that mad men trample under-foot
In the narrow trench--for these things are not men--
Things shapeless, sodden, mute
Beneath the monstrous limber of the guns;
Those things that loved us once...