Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/208

 of Clovis, something of the Crusader of Saint Louis."

The essence of truth distilled in that last sentence will more and more impose itself. If soldiers will not fight on an empty stomach, still less will they fight on an empty soul. A shrug, a sensualism, an epigram, and the "lie of religion" is shattered beyond repair: so far, so good. But with religion there has gone the whole category of the ideal. In a world from which all values have been expelled, except the values of appetite, there remains no principle of sacrifice. The only maxim which it is capable of evolving from its own resources is that of egotism, enlightened by prudence; for that credo men will do many things, but they will not die. Such a gospel may for a time be expounded, and even practised, by the noisy minorities who make laws and write books: the anonymous shoulders of the common people are strong enough to carry that and heavier burdens. But the peculiar weakness of any such philosophy is that it has only to be generally accepted in order to become impossible. Egotism and the pleasure-calculus will procure a brief, if not very respectable, ecstasy for the masters, as they loll in their carved and curtained litters, turning over with a languid hand the latest bibelot of selfishness. But let that point of view infect the bearers of the litter, and they will set it down with disturbing roughness. Morality begins where hedonism ends.