Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/31

Rh since to see the absurdity of the cult of militarism, the childishness of cultivating ferocious moustaches and wearing spiked helmets in order to look dangerous. That sort of thing, which passes in Germany as impressive and up-to-date, is ridiculously behind the times. They know better even in China than to cling any longer to a hope of being able to terrify their opponents by wearing ugly masks. Another point in our favour, as a civilised race, is that we do not and never did devote our energies to acquiring the goose-step. Like sensible people we are contented to leave that style of locomotion to the bird that is naturally afflicted with it.

Anyhow, those manifestations of raw barbarism are obsolete; they are signs, in a modern community, of moral and mental degeneracy. German professors have confidently written us down as degenerates because the passion for militarism, the lust for conquest, has departed from us, and we are no longer moved to spend our lives in swaggering about in battle array, rattling sharp swords