All petty private interests shrink into insignificance before the grave decision which a war involves.  The common danger unites all in a common effort, and the man who shirks this duty to the community is deservedly spurned.  This union contains a liberating power which produces happy and permanent results in the national life.  We need only recall the uniting power of the War of Liberation or the Franco-German War and their historical consequences.  The brutal incidents inseparable from every war vanish completely before the idealism of the main result.  All the sham reputations which a long spell of peace undoubtedly fosters are unmasked.  Great personalities take their proper place; strength, truth, and honour come to the front and are put into play.  “A thousand touching traits testify to the sacred power of the love which a righteous war awakes in noble nations.” [G]

[Footnote G:  Treitschke, “Deutsche Geschichte,” i., p. 482.]

Frederick the Great recognized the ennobling effect of war.  “War,” he said, “opens the most fruitful field to all virtues, for at every moment constancy, pity, magnanimity, heroism, and mercy, shine forth in it; every moment offers an opportunity to exercise one of these virtues.”

“At the moment when the State cries out that its very life is at stake, social selfishness must cease and party hatred be hushed.  The individual must forget his egoism, and feel that he is a member of the whole body.  He should recognize how his own life is nothing worth in comparison with the welfare of the community.  War is elevating, because the individual disappears before the great conception of the State.  The devotion of the members of a community to each other is nowhere so splendidly conspicuous as in war....  What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men!” [H]

[Footnote H:  Treitschke, “Politik” i., p. 74.]

Even defeat may bear a rich harvest.  It often, indeed, passes an irrevocable sentence on weakness and misery, but often, too, it leads to a healthy revival, and lays the foundation of a new and vigorous constitution.  “I recognize in the effect of war upon national character,” said Wilhelm von Humboldt, “one of the most salutary elements in the moulding of the human race.”

The individual can perform no nobler moral action than to pledge his life on his convictions, and to devote his own existence to the cause which he serves, or even to the conception of the value of ideals to personal morality.  Similarly, nations and States can achieve no loftier consummation than to stake their whole power on upholding their independence, their honour, and their reputation.

Such sentiments, however, can only be put into practice in war.  The possibility of war is required to give the national character that stimulus from which these sentiments spring, and thus only are nations enabled to do justice to the highest duties of civilization by the fullest development of their moral forces.  An intellectual and vigorous nation can experience no worse destiny than to be lulled into a Phaecian existence by the undisputed enjoyment of peace.