The Docility of the Fighter

Abstract

IN SPEAKING with thoughtful men concerning the present war, one hears of the place which fighting holds in human nature. War it is said is bred into men, never to be removed, part of their blood and bone and marrow. And such a creed is widespread, in books and in the living words of those who are far from cynical. Among my neighbors are men of outlook and generous impulse, yet one of them believes that human nature is essentially homicidal, and that any who are unwilling to accept war, which is the expression of this nature, must seek an abode upon some other planet. Another friend, holding with Hobbes that the compelling power of life is selfishness, believes that nations, driven as they forever are by this spirit, can be met and held only by force of arms. War, then, must be looked upon leniently, even in our abhorrence, as the appropriate utterance of an instinct whose fibres reach into the very heart and are not to be touched by drug or surgery. Such are the convictions of men versed in the world's life, candid, willing to face unflattering truth, asking that in equal candor we judge the conduct of nations by the grim standard of reality. One might give even a juster view of the springs of human conduct without changing their conclusion, save to strengthen it. For fighting is indeed an instinct bred in by milleniums of savage ancestry and by an endless brute inheritance beyond, and it is still sustained in many ways. Not only is the fighting-spirit seconded by greed, but often no external object of desire-no ponderable good to be gained-is in mind, and men fight in a red and improvident anger, as well as from the sheer lust of conflict, feeling toward their destructive effort something of an artist's love of art for art's sake. Sober human nature