Evils of War?

[Zeno]

One of the evils of war is the fact that all gradations of opinion are abolished. Every imaginable act becomes either right or wrong. Thus war greatly prospers the natural imbecility of man. Its real drawback is not that it kills a few poor fellows, wounds a few more and destroys a great deal of property, for all these things can be replaced very quickly: indeed, Napoleon I once said that his veterans could replace all the dead soldiers of France in one night. The real drawback of war is that it makes clear and honest thinking impossible. Even when the time of patriotic hallucination ends there is no return to sound logic, but simply to some new form of imbecility. Thus after the first and second World Wars the American people took to believing that No. 3 and 4 could be prevented by signing treaties. This idea was quite as idiotic as those it displaced, and a great deal less appetizing.

- H. L. Mencken, Minority Report