The Man‐Made World
accompany the wife‐lessness of the segregated males who are told off to perform our military functions.
The external horrors and wastes of warfare we are all familiar with; A. It arrests industry and all progress. B. It destroys the fruits of industry and progress. C. It weakens, hurts and kills the combatants.
D. It lowers the standard of the non‐combatants. Even the
conquering nation is heavily injured; the conquered sometimes exterminated, or at least absorbed by the victor.
This masculine selective process, when applied to nations, does not produce the same result as when applied to single opposing animals.
When little Greece was overcome it did not prove that the victors were superior, nor promote human interests in any way; it injured them.
The “stern arbitrament of war” may prove which of two peoples is the better fighter, but ft does not prove it therefor the fittest to survive.
Beyond all these more or less obvious evils, comes a further result, not enough recognized; the psychic effects of military standard of thought and feeling.
Remember that an androcentric culture has always exempted its own
essential activities from the restraints of ethics,—“All‘s fair in love and war!” Deceit, trickery, lying, every kind of skulking underhand effort to get information; ceaseless endeavor to outwit and overcome
“the enemy”; besides as cruelty and destruction; are characteristic of the military process; as well as the much praised virtues of courage, endurance and loyalty, personal and public.
Also classed as a virtue, and unquestionably such from the military point of view, is that prime factor in making and keeping an army,
obedience.
See how the effect of this artificial maintenance of early mental attitudes acts on our later development. True human progress requires elements quite other than these. If successful warfare made one nation unquestioned master of the earth its social progress would not be promoted by that event. The rude hordes of Genghis Khan swarmed over Asia and into Europe, but remained rude
hordes; conquest is not civilization, nor any part of it.