The real argument in favour of war welcomes horror, defies reason, and disregards expense.  There are certain military qualities and aspects of life, it says, that are worth preserving at the cost of all the horror, unreason, and waste of war.  The stern military character, brave but tender, is a type of human nature for which we cannot pay too much.  Consider physical courage alone, how valuable it is, and how rare.  With what speed the citizen runs at the first glimpse of danger!  With what pleasure or shamefaced cowardice citizens look on while women are being violently and indecently assaulted when attempting to vindicate their political rights!  How gladly everyone shouts with the largest crowd!  Consider how many noble actions men leave undone through fear of being hurt or killed.  “Dogs! would you live for ever?” cried Frederick the Great to his soldiers, in defeat; and most of us would certainly answer:  “Yes, we would, if you please!” Only through war, or the training for war, says the argument, can this loathly cowardice be kept in check.  Only by war can the spirit be maintained that redeems the world from sinking into a Pigs’ Paradise.  Only in the expectation or reality of war can life be kept sweet, strong, and at its height.  War is life in extremes; it is worth preserving even for its discipline and training.

“Manhood training [said Mr. Garvin, editor of the Observer, in the issue of January 22, 1911]—­manhood training has become the basis of public life, not only in every great European State, but in young democratic countries, like Australia and South Africa.  ‘One vote, one rifle,’ says ex-President Steyn....  As a means of developing the physical efficiency of whole nations, of increasing their patriotic cohesion, of implanting in individuals the sense of political reality and responsibility, no substitute for manhood training has yet been discovered.”

This kind of argument implies despair of perpetual, or even of long-continued, peace.  It is true that those who advocate a national training of all our manhood for war generally urge upon us that it is the best security for peace.  In the same way, peaceful Anarchists might plead that they maintained several enormous bomb-factories in order to impress upon rulers the advantages of freedom.  But if peace were the real and only object of Conscription, and if Conscription precluded the probability of war, military training, after some years, would almost certainly decline, and its supposed advantages would be lost.  When you breed game-cocks, they will fight; but if you forbid cock-fighting, the breed will decline.  You cannot have training for war without the expectation of war.  For many years I was a strong advocate of national service, even though I knew it would never be adopted in this country until we had seen the realities of war in our very midst, and had sat in morning trains to the City stopped by the enemy’s batteries outside Liverpool Street