How many examples of nobility, of
abnegation, of voluntary martyrdom has not the War given us? But in
persons disposed to evil actions, in rude and violent spirits (and
these are always in the majority), the spirit of violence increases.
This spirit, which among the intellectuals takes the form of arrogance
and concupiscence, and in politics expresses itself in a policy of
conquest, assumes in the crowd the most violent forms of class war,
continuous assaults upon the power of the State, and an unbalanced
desire to gain as much as possible with the least possible work.
Before the War the number of men ready to take the law into their own
hands was relatively small; now there are many such individuals.
The various nations, even those most advanced, cannot boast a moral
progress comparable with their intellectual development. The explosion
of sentiments of violence has created in the period after the War in
most countries an atmosphere which one may call unbreathable. Peoples
accustomed to be dominated and to serve have come to believe that,
having become dominators in their turn, they have the right to use
every kind of violence against their overlords of yesterday.
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