Leading American Soldiers Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from Leading American Soldiers The study of history leaves many students firmly per suaded that although war in excess, war as a habit, is brutalizing and degrading, the occasional war that has a right cause behind it, a struggle for religion, for principle, for national existence, marks the healthy and vital stage in a people's development, While the long periods of peace are invariably attended by materialism and moral loss And is not materialism at the present day more closely associated with the outcry against war than is generally realized materialism now busy constructing a new civilization, but that will later turn to the mere enjoyment of it? There is doubt less an exaggeration in the indifference to death displayed by so many Asiatics; is it not possible, however, that there is some excess of materialism in our present extreme fear of it? The battle-field takes life, it is true, but it does not take that which otherwise we would retain. The hour is advanced, and that - why hesitate to say it - is often best. Would it not have been better to have stood among our soldiers on the banks of the Rappahannock furiously cheering our great Opponent Stonewall Jackson as he inspected his pickets on the further side, than to have lived twenty years longer to mingle with football mobs hurrahing at the disablement of a successful adversary? Or to have followed Sherman to the sea among waves of uplifted slave faces fondly dreaming liberty and righteousness had come, rather than Spend a lengthened life in the lucrative but dubious routine of mer cantile affairs? Which is the better part? 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.