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Book, page 10 / 192 We may be sure that wars will continue on the earth. War may be a biological necessity in the development of the human race--God's housecleaning, as Ella Wheeler Wilcox calls it. War may be a great soul stimulant meant to purge mankind of evils greater than itself, evils of baseness and world degeneration. We know there are blighted forests that must be swept clean by fire. Let us not scoff at such a theory until we understand the immeasurable mysteries of life and death. We know that, through the ages, two terrific and devastating racial impulses have made themselves felt among men and have never been restrained, sex attraction and war. Perhaps they were not meant to be restrained. Listen to John Ruskin, apostle of art and spirituality: All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war. No great art ever rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers. There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on battle. When I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It was very strange for me to discover this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together I found to be utterly untenable. We talk of peace and learning, of peace and plenty, of peace and civilisation; but I found that these are not the words that the Muse of History coupled together; that on her lips the words were peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and death. I found in brief that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted in peace; taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace. We know Bernhardi's remorseless views taken from Treitschke and adopted by the whole German nation: "War is a fiery crucible, a terrible training school through which the world has grown better." In his impressive work, "The Game of Empires," Edward S. Van Zile quotes Major General von Disfurth, a distinguished retired officer of the German army, who chants so fierce a glorification of war for the German idea, war for German Kultur, war at all costs and with any consequences that
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