Excerpt from The R. P. An; Annual: And Ethical Review for the Year 1917 The war has proved that the European races are as capable of heroism as ever they were in the past. The physical courage of mankind has been most brilliantly demonstrated afresh. The war has also proved that the consciousness of national danger can still re-vitalize patriotism and make it a genuine virtue inspiring the patriot to great sacrifices. Further, it has shown that sloth may be turned into industry, and industry doubled where industry already was. But I doubt whether it has done much else to glorify humanity. The wonder is that it has done so much, seeing the outrageous idiocy of modern warfare; for those nations who are forced into it must suffer morally from its deleterious and shameful contacts as well as those who bring it about. Some people, however, claim that war has an improving effect on the intelligence, and that in especial it destroys illusions and bestows the sense of reality. If it did, it would perhaps be worth its price. But it does not. This particular war may have destroyed a particular British illusion about a particular foreign country, and it may have given to a large number of people a new sense of the reality of those ancient institutions - death, pain, and hunger; but on the general body of illusion the war has had no effect save perhaps to enlarge it, and assuredly the sense of reality has not as a whole been sharpened. Every nation involved in the war has patently and admittedly lived in the grossest illusions about the war, and no nation has showed a keen desire to envisage realities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.