Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/147

Rh that better men fell on both sides when 'Kentish Sir Byng stood for the King' than when the British arms forced the opium trade on China. No doubt, in our own country, better men fell at Bunker Hill or Cowpens than at Cerro Gordo or Chapultepec. The lofty cause demands the lofty sacrifice.

It is the shame of England that most of her many wars in our day have cost her very little. They have been scrambles of the mob or with the mob, not triumphs of democracy.

There was once a time when the struggles of armies resulted in a survival of the fittest, when the race was indeed to the swift and the battle to the strong. The invention of 'villainous gunpowder' has changed all this. Except the kind of warfare called guerrilla, the quality of the individual has ceased to be much of a factor. The clown can shoot down the hero and 'doesn't have to look the hero in the face as he does so.' The shell destroys the clown and hero alike, and the machine gun mows down whole ranks impartially. There is little play for selection in modern war save what is shown in the process of enlistment.

XLI. America has grown strong with the strength of peace, the spirit of democracy. Her wars have been few. Were it not for the mob spirit, they would have been still fewer, but in most of them she could not choose but fight. Volunteer soldiers have swelled her armies, men who went forth of their own free will, knowing whither they were going, believing their acts to be right, and taking patiently whatever the fates may hold in store.

The feeling for the righteousness of the cause, "with the flavor of religion in it," says Charles Ferguson, "has made the volunteer the mighty soldier he has always been since the days of Naseby and Marston Moor." Only with volunteer soldiers can democracy go into war. When America fights with professional troops, she will be no longer America. We shall then be, with the rest of the militant world, under mob rule. "It is the mission of democracy," says Ferguson again, "to put down the rule of the mob. In monarchies and aristocracies it is the mob that rules. It is puerile to suppose that kingdoms are made by kings. The king could do nothing if the mob did not throw up its cap when the king rides by. The king is consented to by the mob because of that which in him is mob-like. The mob loves glory and prizes. So does the king. If he loved beauty and justice, the mob would shout for him while the fine words were sounding in the air; but he could never celebrate a jubilee or establish a dynasty. When the crowd gets ready to demand justice and beauty, it becomes a democracy, and has done with kings."

It was at Lexington that the embattled farmers 'fired the shot that was heard around the world.' To them life was of less value than a