It was
rather, as I have said, a refusal in their souls to be beaten in
manhood by all the devils of war, by all its terrors, or by its
beastliness, and at the back of all the thought that the old country
was "up against it" and that they were there to avert the evil.
Young soldiers of ours, not only of officer rank, but of "other
ranks," as they were called, were inspired at the beginning, and some
of them to the end, with a simple, boyish idealism. They saw no other
causes of war than German brutality. The enemy to them was the monster
who had to be destroyed lest the world and its beauty should perish--
and that was true so long as the individual German, who loathed the
war, obeyed the discipline of the herd-leaders and did not revolt
against the natural laws which, when the war had once started, bade
him die in defense of his own Fatherland. Many of those boys of ours
made a dedication of their lives upon the altar of sacrifice,
believing that by this service and this sacrifice they would help the
victory of civilization over barbarism, and of Christian morality over
the devil's law.
Pages:
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929