The Great Illusion; a study of the relation of military power to national advantage

Excerpt: ...sections of Turkey, Arabia, and Albania, and then, perhaps, comes Morocco. On the Western Hemisphere we can draw a like Pg 227 table as to the "warlike, adventurous, manly, and progressive peoples" as compared with the "peaceful, craven, slothful, and decadent." The least warlike of all, the nation which has had the least training in war, the least experience of it, which has been the least purified by it, is Canada. After that comes the United States, and after that the best-(excuse me, I mean, of course, the worst-i.e., the least warlike)-of the Spanish American republics like Brazil and Argentina; while the most warlike of all, and consequently the most "manly and progressive," are the "Sambo" republics, like San Domingo, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Venezuela. They are always fighting. If they cannot manage to get up a fight between one another, the various parties in each republic will fight between themselves. Here we get the real thing. The soldiers do not pass their lives in practising the goose-step, cleaning harness, pipeclaying belts, but in giving and taking hard pounding. Several of these progressive republics have never known a year since they declared their independence from Spain in which they have not had a war. And quite a considerable proportion of the populations spend their lives in fighting. During the first twenty years of Venezuela's independent existence she fought no less than one hundred and twenty important battles, either with her neighbors or with herself, and she has maintained the average pretty well ever since. Every election is a fight-none of your "mouth-fighting," none of your craven talking-shops for them. Good, honest, hard, manly knocks, Pg 228 with anything from one to five thousand dead and wounded left on the field. The presidents of these strenuous republics are not poltroons of politicians, but soldiers-men of blood and iron with a vengeance, men after Mr. Roosevelt's own heart,...