THE FRUITS OF WAR

"...it has often been said by pacifists...that war creates more criminals than heroes; that, far from developing noble qualities in those who take part in it, it brings out only the worst. If this were altogether true, the pacifist's aim would be, I think, much nearer of attainment than it is....our task is infinitely complicated by the fact that war, while it lasts, does produce heroism to a far greater extent than it brutalises.

"Between 1914 and 1919 young men and women, disastrously pure in heart and unsuspicious of elderly self-interest and cynical exploitation, were continually rededicating themselves...to an end that they believed, and went on trying to believe, lofty and ideal. When patriotism "wore threadbare," when suspicion and doubt began to creep in, the more ardent and frequent was the periodic re-dedication, the more deliberate the self-induced conviction that our efforts were disinterested and our cause was just. Undoubtedly this state of mind was what anti-war propagandists call it--'hysterical exaltation,' 'quasi-mystical, idealistic hysteria'--but it had concrete results in stupendous patience, in superhuman endurance, in the constant re-affirmation of incredible courage. To refuse to acknowledge this is to underrate the power of those white angels which fight so naively on the side of destruction." Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth, pp. 369-370.