The law of the survival of the fittest led inevitably to the survival and predominance of the men who were effective in war and who loved it because they were effective.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail.
There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success.
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.
War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.
For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.
Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
The professed war-weariness among populations who have sent only a small percentage of their sons and daughters to fight in recent wars may derive from a failure to communicate effectively what is at stake in those wars and explain why the efforts are worthy of the risks, resources, and sacrifices necessary to sustain the strategy.
We were thus led to organize ourselves, as men who had fought the war together, in order to support those statesmen who had truly understood the lessons of that World War, thus attempting to prevent its recurrence.
Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed?