Minimize the Study of War.
The better text-books are admirable in their restraint in dealing with such topics as the Peloponnesian War. One fine book gives only six pages to it, and omits all trivial details. Another good book gives only about eight pages. This is as it should be. That war, and the later attempts at control by Thebes are to be taken, not as studies of heroic endeavor, but as melancholy examples of human foolishness. The bitter costs and heavy losses of war can find no more striking illustration than in the period of the great struggle for control in Greece. These were essentially civil wars from our point of view. It is true there was no political unity in Greece, save of the fleeting federations; but for all that the wars of the fifth century and the first half of the fourth were wars among peoples who should have been brothers. Historians tell us that there are no “lessons” to be drawn from past occurrences. But, spite of that dictum, the political fate of Greece points plainly to the evils of unnecessary war. Some wars are unavoidable race conflicts; others center about the struggle for freedom from tyranny; others come from the clash of older and newer ideas. But fratricidal war, such as the internal conflicts of Greece, is only horrible. The recent ebullition of temper between England and Germany, peoples of the same stock, is an illustration of the sort of thing that the Greek example may well warn against.