Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/144

. But the German ranks must have felt the same; else there would have been no German revolution. Read Philip Gibbs's “Now It Can Be Told” and Henri Barbousse’s “Under Fire”—tolerant observers of high intelligence and of wide experience these two—and learn how little exaltation of self-sacrifice there was in Armageddon.

Much propaganda was spilled during the war to show how, in the same manner, Armageddon profited the higher morals of the civilian population. We heard of the “flapper” who became a heroine; of the frivolous matron who put off her silks and chiffons, put on denim and went to work “in munitions”; of the selfish rich man who gave up servants and automobiles and shooting lodges to help finance the war. This was indeed a moral gain—a temporary one at least. It is good for the souls of the overfed that they fast; it is good for the souls of the idle that they go to work; it is good for the souls of the selfish that they feel the thrill of a generous, common emotion. But how large was this special moral gain? Only as large as the upper class. Every country has its submerged tenth and correspondingly its exalted tenth. The other eight-tenths do not sacrifice comfort or nourishment or leisure—at least not voluntarily. They have no margins of the kind to sacrifice. When the accidents of war drove a family ahead of an invading army to perish of hunger or hardship in the fields, when a whole population lived on reduced rations because of a