ABSTRACT
Every sane person knows that it is a greater thing to build a city than to bombard it, to plough a field than to trample it, to serve mankind than to conquer it. And yet once the armies get loose, the terrific noise and shock of war make all that was valuable seem pale and dull and sentimental. That is why civilization seems dull and war romantic to unimaginative people. It requires a trained intelligence to realize that the building of the Panama Canal by the American Army is perhaps the greatest victory an army ever won. Yet the victories of peace are less renowned than those of war. It is no wonder, then, that war, once started, sweeps everything before it, that it seizes all loyalties and subjugates all intelligence. War is the one activity that men really plan for passionately on a national scale, the only organization which is thoroughly conceived.
