The devotion of the members of a community to each other is nowhere so splendidly conspicuous as in war....

What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men!" [H] [Footnote H: Treitschke, "Politik" i., p.

74.] Even defeat may bear a rich harvest.

It often, indeed, passes an irrevocable sentence on weakness and misery, but often, too, it leads to a healthy revival, and lays the foundation of a new and vigorous constitution.

"I recognize in the effect of war upon national character," said Wilhelm von Humboldt, "one of the most salutary elements in the moulding of the human race." The individual can perform no nobler moral action than to pledge his life on his convictions, and to devote his own existence to the cause which he serves, or even to the conception of the value of ideals to personal morality.