Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/148

 for war, taught to think from their infancy in terms of war; and we are dealing with a state of mind. Then what about the British? The island of Britain had protected herself by navies, not armies. Her small army was composed of volunteers. The average Englishman, Scotchman, Irishman or Welshman did not know the trigger of a rifle from the muzzle. He had never thought of war as a possibility of his life. When Britain took to the draft, she gathered in the last of these young men, ran them through four or five months of intensive training, sent them to the line. Generally such troops, as one might expect, were inferior to the veterans in military technique. They were little if any inferior in “hardness.” I saw a British draft-division once literally staggering back to the rest-station. It was a time of special stress, when relief divisions were hard to find. These men had been kept in the line until nearly seventy per cent of their original strength was gone and replaced. Yet they had held firm to the end. I have shown how modern warfare under the conscription system chooses the best, takes their activity from the existing generation, their strong blood from the next generation. That is your true softening process. Nations do not grow hard through wars and preparation for wars. This is another thing which is not so, but only seems so. Armageddon affords proof that the reverse is true.