which nevertheless it aggravates. The German “Nation of Thinkers and Philosophers” had the greatest number of suicides, developed the completest militarism and caused the world war.
At the same time the psychological contrast between suicide and slaying, between the killing of self and the killing of others, explains why the number of suicides decreased everywhere during the war, especially in the victorious countries. Attention was riveted upon the actual fighting. Men became more objective, less subjective. Indeed, I believe that the moral significance of the world war stands out clearly as an effort to find, in objectivism, freedom from exaggerated subjectivism. The war and the way it was waged grew out of the ethical and mental condition of the modern man and of his whole culture, as I have briefly described it; and the modern antagonism between objectivity and subjectivity is a protracted historical process which was revealed in the war and in its long duration. The universality and the length of the war gave it its peculiar character.
It was, as I have said, a war of peoples, not between the standing armies of former days but between new armies formed on the basis of compulsory military service, armies of reservists. Professional soldiers were comparatively few, though the Kaiser and his Generals and a proportion of their men were soldiers of the old type. The war took on a visage of its own, and the characteristics of the belligerent nations came into play because it was a war of masses. The character of war depends upon the character of the soldiers. If, as pacifists tell us, war lets loose all evil impulses—rage, hatred, and blood-lust—it was not the war itself that engendered them; they were present in the belligerent nations before the war. The devils of 1914 were not angels in 1918. Besides, as I have said, the world war bore an abstract scientific impress. It was a war of position, not a war of movement; it was marked by anonymous and invisible killing until ultimately victory was won in great part by superiority in scientific war-industry and by the mathematical utilization of great masses. But post-war military literature upon the philosophical significance of the war proves conclusively that, on account of its long duration, the decisive factor in it was the general moral condition of the belligerent peoples and armies, not the military training and skill of their leaders. Modern men waged it. And it behoves us to recognize the good qualities of the fighters on both sides, for the very length of the war brought out their great moral strength, their heroism,
