strain of accumulating victory or disaster--and no smashed nor
sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country
sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and
embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every
gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to
remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. This
world is for ample living; we want security and freedom; all of us in
every country, except a few dull-witted, energetic bores, want to see
the manhood of the world at something better than apeing the little lead
toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for mankind--
splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more and more
and more--and so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a general
end; and let us put this prancing monarch and that silly scare-monger,
and these excitable "patriots," and those adventurers, and all the
practitioners of Welt Politik, into one vast Temple of War, with cork
carpets everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to
knock down, and cities and fortresses, and unlimited soldiers--tons,
cellars-full--and let them lead their own lives there away from us.

My game is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size.
Here is War, done down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way
of mankind, even as our fathers turned human sacrifices into the eating
of little images and symbolic mouthfuls. For my own part, I am _prepared_.
I have nearly five hundred men, more than a score of guns, and I twirl
my moustache and hurl defiance eastward from my home in Essex across the
narrow seas. Not only eastward. I would conclude this little discourse
with one other disconcerting and exasperating sentence for the admirers
and practitioners of Big War. I have never yet met in little battle any
military gentleman, any captain, major, colonel, general, or eminent
commander, who did not presently get into difficulties and confusions