If I have made of war a hideous thing--unredeemed, repulsive--the picture is not consciously exaggerated. As far as in me lies I have drawn the thing as I have seen it.
But after the lean years, the fat; after the hideous sowing, the glorious aftermath.
The more one thinks of it, the more amazing does the paradox become--the paradox of cause and effect. To fit these civilians of Britain for all the dirty details which go to make winning or losing, to fit them for the business of killing in the most efficient manner, the tuition must include the inculcation of ideals--more, the assimilation of ideals--which are immeasurably superior to any they learned in their civilian life. At least so it seems to one who makes their acquaintance when they first join up. In their civilian life self ruled; there, each individual pawn scrambled and snarled as he pushed the next pawn to him under--or went under himself as the case might be--in his frenzied endeavour to better himself, to win a little brief authority! The community was composed of a mass of struggling, fighting units, each one all out for himself and only himself.
But from the tuition which the manhood of Britain is now undergoing, there must surely be a very different result. Self no longer rules; self is sunk for the good of the cause--for the good of the community. And the community, realising that fact, endeavours, by every means in its power, to develop that self to the very maximum of which it is capable, knowing that, in due course, it will reap the benefit. No longer do individual pawns struggle one against the other, but each--developing his own particular gift to the maximum--places it at the disposal of the community who helped him in his development. And that is the result of so-called militarism--_British_ militarism.
Surely what has been accomplished in the Army can be carried into other matters in the fullness of time. I am no prophet; I am no social reformer to speak of ways and means. All I can say with certainty is that I have seen them come in by hundreds, by thousands--these men of our country now fighting in every corner of the globe--resentful, suspicious, intolerant of authority. I have seen them in training; I have seen the finished article. And the result is good: the change for the better wonderful.