We have seen that in Europe but yesterday.
The predominance in the body of militarist practice will finally drive
out from the soul those unfathomable spiritual elements which are the
body's last source power in conflict, and it will in the end defeat its
own object, which is power. When nations at war call up their reserves
of humanity to the last man capable of bearing arms, their leaders begin
also to summon up those bodiless moods and national sentiments which are
the souls of races, and their last and most profound sources of
inspiration and deathless courage. The war then becomes a conflict of
civilizations and of spiritual ideals, the aspirations and memories
which constitute the fundamental basis of those civilizations. Without
the inspiration of great memories or of great hopes, men are incapable
of great sacrifices. They are rationalists, and the preservation of the
life they know grows to be a desire greater than the immortality of the
spiritual life of their race. A famous Japanese general once said it
was the power to hold out for the last desperate quarter of an hour
which won victories, and it is there spiritual stamina reinforces
physical power.
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