Note 117 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal (continued 2)

Ernest Psichari, Terres de Soleil et de Sommeil. And, in L’Appel des armes, through the mouth of a character who obviously has all the author’s sympathies; ‘I think it necessary that there should be in the world a certain number of the men who are called soldiers and who place their ideal in fighting, who have a taste for battle, not for victory but for the contest, as hunters have a taste for hunting, not for game!... The part we have to play, or otherwise we lose our reason for existing and have no more meaning, is to maintain a military ideal, not a nationally military ideal, but a militarily military ideal, if I may so express it.’ The religion of this moralist is, according to his own expression, integral militarism. ‘Big guns,’ he says, ‘are the most real realities which exist, the sole realities of the modern world.’ And obviously these realities are divinities for this ‘spiritual’ person and his followers.