The World in Chains | Page 8

course modern warfare so far from improving
the race must sensibly exhaust it. In ancient Sparta, and generally
whenever the conditions of warfare approximated to those of personal
combat, courage and the allied characteristics of mental as well as of
physical nobility must have had a survival value; whereas in modern
warfare which makes for the indiscriminate extermination of all
combatants, the result is exactly reversed. Our semi-scientific
militarists forget that the "survival of the fittest"[13] is in nature
essentially a process of selective elimination; and modern war is a
process of inverted selection which eliminates the brave, the
adventurous and the healthy; precisely those members of the
community who are best fitted to survive, that is to propagate their kind,
in the ordinary environment of political life. Conscription, indeed,
spreading a wider net than the voluntary system, may be described as
an institution for exposing the best citizens of a state to abnormal risks
of annihilation. As a matter of historic fact we are told, though I don't
know on what authority, that the Napoleonic wars, how much less
deadly than our own, reduced by an inch the average height of the
French nation.
So much, in brief, for the "scientific" justification of war. It is evident
that by the eugenic argument war could be defended only if we agreed
to send into battle precisely those men whom our recruiting officers
disqualify. A good deal might be said, from the sociologist's point of
view, in favour of a system of cathartic conscription which would
rejuvenate England with a watchword of "The Unfit to the Trenches."
FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: They usually add to their mental confusion the
elementary blunder of using the word "fittest" in a moral instead of in
its biological sense.]
§ 3
Patriotism
If again there were any evidence to show that war and war alone kept
alive the spirit of true patriotism, it would be less easy to denounce its
manifold wickedness. For true patriotism, although like all passionate
emotion it involves a certain mental distortion, a slight disturbance of
the rational orbit, is yet one of those happy diseases which relieve the
colourlessness of strict normality. It is a magic, a glamour, of the nature
of personal affection, which only great poetry can fully express, and
volumes of bad poetry cannot quite destroy. It has besides a real
political value, binding the State together, and giving it a stronger
moral coherence than can be attained by any legal or constitutional
authority; a fact that is illustrated by those distressful countries in
which its limits are not conterminous with the political boundaries of
the State. I am inclined to think that just because true patriotism is of
the nature of a personal affection, it is an emotion that cannot be
inspired by an empire, any more than personal affection can be inspired
by a corporation or a joint-stock company.[14] Certainly Imperialism
more often gives rise to a sentimental worship of force and a certain
promiscuous lust for mere extension of territory which are quite alien
to the steady devotion of the patriot to the land he knows.[15]
Unless one be a poet, it is difficult, as may perhaps be gathered from
the preceding paragraph, sufficiently to praise genuine patriotism
without falling into vague rhetoric. But I submit that there is nothing to
show that this political emotion is created, stimulated, or even
discovered by war. Actually it seems that the reverse is the case, if one
may judge by the fact that war is invariably accompanied by an
overwhelming outbreak of every spurious form of patriotism that was
ever invented by the devil to make an honest man ashamed of his
country. True patriotism is a calm and lovely orientation of the spirit
towards the vital beauty of England. It has no noisy manifestations and

consequently one may not be able to find it among the crowds who
shout most loudly for war.
One finds instead a sort of violent fever and calenture which not merely
deflects, as any emotion may, but totally inhibits the rational operations
of the mind. The newspapers supply a legion of witnesses.
Thus the Evening Standard perorates against some pacificist lecturer
(who had attempted to clear his views from all sorts of
misrepresentations) with the magnificent comment that he had not
"repudiated his remarks as to the pleasure which the tune of the
Austrian National Anthem gave him."[16] But I should weary you were
I to transcribe a tithe of the stupid remarks made by persons in
authority under the influence of war. The record, I believe, in England
is held at present by Mr. Bodkin, K.C.
It may be said of course that men, and newspapers, are equally stupid in
time of peace; and I fear that fundamentally this is true. War