“If considered purely from the standpoint of the law of averages, one would expect to find more good brains if one searched the entire Army than in merely looking for material in one twenty-fifth of it.”
General Currie, who so ably commands all the Canadian Forces, was a Land Agent before the War. Neither Napoleon nor Wellington ever commanded a regiment. Marlborough never handled an army till he was fifty-two years of age. Clive was a Bank Clerk. Napoleon’s maxim was “La carrière ouverte aux talents.” Are we ever going to adopt it?
Peace
This truth is (and ever will be) the fact that the only pact that ever holds, and the only treaty that ever lasts is:
“COMMUNITY OF INTEREST!”
and we can only have Community of Interest in the masses of a People always being on the side of Peace, because it’s the masses who are massacred, not the Kings and Generals and Politicians (they are plentifully fed and comfortably housed, and have the best white bread—vide the American Dentist, Davies, when he stayed with the German Emperor).
Well! the only way the masses of the People can act effectively is by means of Republics. Because then no secret diplomacy ever answers, and no one man can make war, or no coterie of men. In a Republic we get “Government of the People, by the People, for the People.”
It’s a cheap sneer to ask how long the same Government ever exists in Republican France! Nevertheless, sooner millions of changes of Government and Peace than a stable Government with War! A Republic is always Peace-loving! except when righteous fury in a gust of popular rage sweeps it into war, as lately in America; but it took four years to move them! The People pushed the President. We are going to have Bolshevism unless we foster these German Republics, and it will spread righteously to England.
These Leagues of Nations and Freedoms of the Seas and all the other items are all d—d nonsense! When War does come, then “Might is Right.” “La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure!” and every treaty is a Scrap of Paper!
The Essence of War is Violence.
Moderation in War is Imbecility.
You hit first, you hit hard, and keep on hitting.
You have to be Ruthless, Relentless and Remorseless.
It’s perfect rot to talk about “Civilised Warfare!”
You might as well talk about a “Heavenly Hell!”