We hear much, perhaps too much, at the present time of the horrors of war; I wish to-day to speak to you of its blessings. Far be it from me to minimize the dark side of war. Only those who have actually experienced warfare can form an adequate idea of the horrors of campaigns and battlefields. But I wish to impress on you to-day the fact that war has compensations, and that it is by no means an unmitigated evil.
The Power Who manifests Himself to us in the phenomena of this Universe has apparently decreed that war should be the supreme test of both the nation and the individual. Biologically, struggle and self-sacrifice by one generation on behalf of the next are the conditions of the perpetuation of a species. A similar law of competition seems to hold for those aggregates of men which we call nations. History teaches that once a nation ceases to struggle or to be prepared to struggle for its existence, once it loses its military spirit and the willingness to fight to the death, if need be, for its national honour, its greatness invariably declines, and its growth ceases.
Of course, competition among nations may be carried on by other means than by war. Commercial rivalry, diplomatic rivalry, artistic rivalry, are all important means of progress, but war is the one supreme, the only entirely adequate test of a nation's spiritual quality.
Readiness for war is a token of national righteousness. In the sense in which I use the words, readiness for war does not mean a national spirit of militarism and aggressiveness, the spirit which has so often proved the downfall of great military powers. It is a readiness which is the result of a clean and vigorous national life during times of peace; a readiness which springs not so much from direct military training as from a high national idea of physical and mental fitness. The ideal soldier is not he who has been drilled into a military machine in times of peace, but he who is physically and mentally fit to become an efficient soldier, if need be, on short notice in time of war.
Self-sacrifice, self-denial, temperance, hardihood, discipline, obedience, order, method, organizing power, intelligence, purity of public life, chastity, industry, resolution are some only of the national and individual attributes which go towards producing the efficiency of modern armaments.
The broad rule which one deduces from a general survey of the history of human progress—a rule to which, no doubt, some exceptions can be found—is that the failure of nations to meet the test of war has always been the result of the decay of national morality, and that success in war has been an indication of national virtue. Right has not, indeed, always been might, but right has always tended to create might.
Rome conquered Greece because her sons were hardier, stronger, and more imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice; Rome herself, centuries later, fell a victim to the inroads of the Goths because of the corruption of her national virtue and the decay of her military spirit through self-indulgence and immorality. The refined sensuality of the Roman could not withstand the rude virtue of the barbarian. "And generally," to quote Harold Wyatt, "history has repeatedly proved that efficiency in war, or for war, is God's test of a nation's soul. By that test it stands, or by that test it falls. This is the ethical content of competition. This is the determining factor of human history. This is the justification of war."
The terrible punishment provided by war for national depravity has been, perhaps, the chief stimulus in the progress of mankind. Behind the horror and havoc of the field of battle, therefore, is working a Power which makes for righteousness, and which has ordained that the nation which, from the righteousness of its cause and its fitness to defend that cause, best deserves the victory, shall win it.
Such is apparently the law of human progress, and we must accept it as we accept other seemingly unpleasant facts of our present existence; as we accept, for example, the fact of death. It is only by death that life is possible; it is only by struggle and self-sacrifice that national progress is possible.
Do not, therefore, be lulled into a sense of false security by the talk of universal peace, or by assertions that the present war must be the last in human history; but determine that, should you have the opportunity, you will do your part to make the nation to which you belong fit for its supreme test, the test of war. If you do not, you are a traitor to the past generations who won by struggle and self-sacrifice the heritage which you now enjoy, and to the future generations, who demand that you shall pass on that heritage, not diminished, but increased.