The principal
effect of this on "the average man" has been to produce the
impression that the friends of peace are ninnies, and to make him
smile over the earnestness with which everybody looks on his own
wars as holy and inevitable, and his neighbors' wars as
unnecessary and wicked. Any practical movement to put an end to
war must begin far away from the battle-field and its horrors. It
must take up and deal with the various influences, social and
political, which create and perpetuate the state of mind which
makes people ready to fight. Preaching up peace and preaching
down war generally are very like general homilies in praise of
virtue and denunciation of vice. Everybody agrees with them, but
nobody is ever ready to admit their applicability to his
particular case. War is, in our time, essentially the people's
work. Its guilt is theirs, as its losses and sufferings are
theirs. All attempts to saddle emperors, kings, and nobles with
the responsibility of it may as well be given up from this time
forward.
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