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Militarism   Listen
noun
Militarism  n.  
1.
A military state or condition; a military system; reliance on military force in administering government.
2.
The spirit and traditions of military life.
3.
The view that military strength, efficiency and values should dominate the country's public policy choices and take precedence over other interests.
4.
The policy of maintaining a large military force, even in peacetime; a term usually used by opponents of such a policy on the assumption that such a large force is unnecessary for national defense.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Militarism" Quotes from Famous Books



... everybody else has seen it,—that, up to the present time, the returned soldier is a disappointment. He is not turning out as he ought. According to all the professors of psychology he was to come back bloodthirsty and brutalised, soaked in militarism and talking only of slaughter. In fact, a widespread movement had sprung up, warmly supported by the business men of the cities, to put him on the land. It was thought that central Nevada or northern Idaho would do nicely for him. At ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... campaigns that somehow always ended to the advantage of the British, and have utterly forgotten the civilians who really kept the game going, and who would have been twice as formidable to their enemies if the military had been subordinate to them. The curse of the French East India Company was Militarism, whilst fortunately for the English our greatest military hero in India, Lord Clive, was so clear-minded that ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill

... last; and these men who might have shot him like a man were going to spare him like a dog. His mind was a tumbled muddle of old and new ideas. He had been brought up in an atmosphere of the foulest and fiercest militarism; he had been trained to relentlessness, ruthlessness and so forth; war was war and the bitterer the better, frightfulness was your way to victory over every enemy. But these people had found a better ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... taking Alsace and a part of Lorraine, his idea was that no reconciliation with the French would be possible. He intended that the German people should believe itself in permanent danger of war, that the new Empire should remain armed to the teeth, and that Germany, instead of dissolving Prussian militarism into her own life, should reinforce it ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson

... discipline or so-called militarism; they were merely the necessary adjuncts to a life where unhesitating obedience is the only thing which prevents a catastrophe. It was not even tradition and playing the game, though it seemed to him he was getting nearer the answer. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... than others have done on the apparent relapses of history, as the overthrow of Greek civilisation, the long night of the Dark Ages, the spread of the Russian power during the last century, or of continental Militarism in the present. In applying the tests of success or failure we must bear in mind that success is from its very nature conspicuous. We only know that brave men have failed when they have had a "sacred bard." The good that is lost is, ipso facto, forgotten. We can rarely ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... question is, What is that which he has tried to say? Perhaps the best way of stating this fairly will be to begin with that element which has been most insisted by himself and by his opponents—I mean his interest in militarism. But when we are seeking for the real merits of a man it is unwise to go to his enemies, and much more foolish to go ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... municipal employes who extort these tributes. God alone knows from what classes of the populace they are recruited; certain it is that their physiognomy reflects their miserable calling. One can endure the militarism of Germany and the bureaucracy of Austria; but it is revolting to see decent Italian countryfolk at the mercy of these uncouth savages, veritable cave-men, whose only intelligible expression is one of malice striving to break through a crust ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... position now has changed in much, but still the new continues to contend with the old. With the innumerable voices which are now bound up in our public opinion, and the many different representatives of its interests, naturally appear very different views on militarism and its object—war. The propertied classes are inclined to confuse even the intellectual movement against militarism with aspirations for the subversion of social order; on the other hand, agitators, seeking influence ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... Grotius! Perished the paintings of Rubens! Ruined is Louvain. Where the wheat waved, now the hillsides are billowy with graves. But let us believe that God reigns. Perchance Belgium is slain like the Saviour, that militarism may die like Satan. Without shedding of innocent blood there is no remission of sins through tyranny and greed. There is no wine without the crushing of the grapes from the tree of life. Soon Liberty, God's dear child, will stand within the scene and comfort the desolate. Falling upon the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... lesson was a difficult one to learn, and the people hated the teacher. In the Jerusalem of Jeremiah's day, as in other places and at other times, a love of country which is not blind to its faults and protests against a blatant militarism, was scoffed at as 'unpatriotic,' 'playing into the hands of the enemy,' 'seeking peace at any price,' whilst an insane eagerness to rush to arms without regard to resources or righteousness was called a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... He was a strange mixture of the old world and the new. Took me to see the grave of Bajo Radovitch, who fell in 1876 after having cut off fifteen Turkish heads; admired the bloody feat, but blamed Germany for keeping up militarism. He had no opinion at all of the Montenegrin Government, and poured out a torrent of plans for its reform. He was all for peace, he said, and wanted to rearrange all the world—which badly needed it. I little thought what would be his fate when I wished him goodbye, and promised ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... are judged in Germany from the one standard only. This may be a Teutonic failing, but it is quite in keeping with the Teutonic spirit of militarism. Commercialism is a secondary factor. To the German Emperor an airship is much what a new manufacturing process or machine is to the American. Whereas the latter asks, "How much will it save me on the dollar?" to the War Lord of Germany—and ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... reason is not far to seek, especially when we consider the impossible demands of the poet's extravagant idealism. The conditions in Germany which had called forth the terrible arraignment of petty despotism, crushing militarism, and political rottenness generally, in the works of Lenz, Klinger and Schubart, had not abated. Schubart was one of Hoelderlin's earliest favorites, so that the latter was doubtless in this way imbued with sentiments which could ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... Roscoe Bent, Second Infantry, U. S. A., who intended to help roll the Teuton lines back and smash militarism once and for all, who would go over the top with all the fine frenzy of his impulsive nature and send the blond beast reeling, slipped his arm farther over Tom's shoulder until Tom Slade could feel the warmth from ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... Don't be angry with me. In spite of my uniform I am an enemy of militarism; but we are ordered to strike—and we strike. There could not be ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... Provincial Assembly (in the Municipal Buildings of Sulaco), with its portraits of the Liberators on the walls and an old flag of Cortez preserved in a glass case above the President's chair, had heard all these speeches—the early one containing the impassioned declaration "Militarism is the enemy," the famous one of the "trembling balance" delivered on the occasion of the vote for the raising of a second Sulaco regiment in the defence of the reforming Government; and when the provinces again displayed their old flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento's time) there was another of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... he declared, "we may be thankful to those responsible for the destruction of militarism. Industrial triumphs were never possible under its shadow. An era of prosperity will also be an era ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... is a sensational novel, a legend containing not much more truth than the legend of Atrides. The family of Caesar, placed in the centre of the great struggle going on in Rome between the old Roman militarism, and the intellectual civilisation of the Orient, between nationalism and cosmopolitism, between Asiatic mysticism and traditional religion, between egoism over-excited by culture and wealth, and the supreme interests of the species, had to injure too many ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... slower but for the invisible and immutable power which propelled them. On arriving in New York, one's first thought is of riches; in Washington, of glory. What a difference between this capital and those he had seen abroad! There was no militarism here, no conscription, no governmental oppression, no signs of discontent, no officers treading on the rights and the ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... in fourteen chapters, among other questions, the Territorial Adjustments which seem necessary to the permanent peace of Europe, the problem of German Autocracy and Militarism, and the proposals of Retaliation; and makes, in the spirit of an optimist tempered by experience, practical suggestions for the future organization of peace. A feature of the book is the historical ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... his daughter, both for her desertion of his business and her criminal folly in abandoning it so as to help mend the shattered bodies of fools and knaves who, by joining the forces of militarism, had betrayed the Sacred Cause of the International Solidarity of Labour. His first ground for complaint was scarcely tenable; with his dwindling business the post of clerk had dwindled into a sinecure. To sit all day at the receipt of imaginary custom is not a part fitted ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... hurrying out into the rain, hurriedly putting on their overcoats; the great arched gateway filled up at once with men seeking its shelter, and the sentry who had received his half-crown came to roughly order the English intruders to go elsewhere; but it was only outside militarism, for he said in a ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... Queen, a Boer bullet, and other curios, S. Cohn displayed them in his window, and the crowd and the business they brought him put him more and more in sympathy with Simon and the Empire. In conversation he deprecated the non-militarism of the Jew: 'If I were only a younger man ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... approaching Jubilee rejoicings a spirit in some sense martial filled the air, and Grimbal with his yeomanry was destined to play a part. A transient comet-blaze of militarism often sparkles over fighting nations at any season of universal joy, and that more especially if the keystone of the land's constitution be a crown. This fire found material inflammable enough in the hearts of many Devonshire men, and before its warm impulse John Grimbal, inspired by a particular ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... men in the District of Columbia are not conscious of lower wages and industrial ostracism. Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "The share of women in political rights and life—imperfect and deferred during the predominance of militarism— has become natural, has become inevitable, with the advent of industrialism, in which they so ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... 3, "is lost upon yonder survival of the old school of stereotyped militarism. The hour for initiative ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various

... "arising out of" Newlands, which I should like to have written, would have been on my work as Chief of the Surrey Guides. My readers need not be afraid of some burst of amateur militarism. I should have treated the Surrey Guides simply as a kind of "new model" version of Cobbett's Rural Rides. It was my duty to explore all the paths and roads of the county, and delightful work it was. My experiences must certainly be put on record somewhere and sometime, for, alas! the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... whole series of events which produced this war: but in the situation of July, 1914, produced as it was by various sinful acts, I am quite sure it was our duty to fight, and that it is our duty to fight on till German militarism is crushed. And I certainly can't believe we ought not to have made such a treaty with Belgium as we did. You've got to face the fact that the spirit which produces war is still dominant. Fight that spirit by all means: but while it exists don't suppose your own duty ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... should be disliked as a militarist. Many a servant girl loves a score of soldiers, she may even write odes to her pet sergeant, but she is not necessarily a militarist. Rudyard Kipling likes soldiers and writes of them. He does not, as Chesterton lays to his charge, 'worship militarism.' He accuses Kipling of a want of patriotism, which is about as absurd as accusing Chesterton of a love of politics. But when he says that Kipling only knows England as a place, he is on safe ground, because England ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... starting-point of the future. The Peace Terms are no final solution—how could they be? On their practical execution, on their adaptation year by year to the new world coming into being, all will depend. German militarism has met its doom. The triumph of the Allies is more absolute than any of them could have dreamed four years ago. Nor can the German crime ever be forgotten in this generation, or the German peril ignored. The whole civilised world must be—will be—the shield of ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of peace had served as a text for innumerable well-meaning but muddle-headed politicians of a certain type, who made a specialty of keeping the nation upon the alert against the insidious encroachments of—Heaven help us!—Militarism! ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... such a state of affairs was a disgrace to the House. He had just been made a colour-sergeant, and determined to wake things up. He made a long speech to the House, pointing out the necessity for National Service, the importance of militarism, and its effect on citizenship. He finished by a patriotic outburst, telling them that they were wearing the King's uniform, and that it must be kept clean, with the brass badges polished. The House was mildly interested; its attitude was summed ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... far-seeing upholders of the present system are keenly conscious of this danger. And this danger (even though most of the expansionists may not realize it), is one of the most potent causes of the Imperialism, Militarism, and Jingoism which are at present disgracing the civilized world. England in Africa, and America in the Philippines are pursuing their present criminal policies, not solely to open new markets for English and American goods, but also to secure new fields ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... ruler of the people to whom they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts." Both defined this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, "Benevolence—Benevolence is Man." Under the regime of feudalism, which could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter surrender of "life and limb" on the part of the governed would have left nothing for the governing but self-will, ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... how little the world has changed since Shelley's time, and how horribly relevant to the present hour are his outcries against militarism, capitalism and privilege. If evidence were wanted of the profound moral value of Shelley's revolutionary thought, one has only to read the proclamations of any international school of socialistic propaganda, and find ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... Victorian Whig, whose chief ambitions were to reform the criminal law and abolish slavery. Well, this dull, estimable man in his leisure moments was Emperor of Byzantium. He fought great wars and built palaces, and then, when the time for fancy was past, went into the House of Commons and railed against militarism and Tory extravagance. That particular king from Orion had a rather odd ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which everyone feels that the race should never cease to ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... Marx's predictions concerning the evolution of historical and economic forces have been contradicted by events, culminating in the great war. Most of his followers, the "revolutionary" Socialists, were swept into the whirlpool of nationalistic militarism. Nevertheless, this "Bible of the working classes" still enjoys a tremendous authority as a scientific work. By some it is regarded as an economic treatise; by others as a philosophy of history; by others as a collection of sociological ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... shores of a lake, for the supply of water, and so on; and the country is covered with societies of archers, sharpshooters, topographers, footpath explorers, and the like, originated from modern militarism. ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... 'criminal aggression' against the Filipinos entailing an annual expense of many millions has already cost more than any possible profit that could accrue from the entire Philippine trade for years to come.... We oppose militarism. It means conquest abroad and intimidation and oppression at home. It means the strong arm which has ever been fatal to free institutions. It is what millions of our citizens have fled from in Europe. It will impose upon our peace-loving people a large ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... is a frenzied revolt against the criminal militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Goober defense. But Peter was patient and tactful; he did not try to defend himself, nor did he ask any questions about Donald and Donald's activities. He simply announced that he had been studying the subject of militarism, and had come to a definite point of view. He was a Socialist and an Internationalist; he considered America's entry into the war a crime, and he was willing to do his part in agitating against it. He was going to take his stand as a conscientious objector; they might send him to ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... Mahomets. Of these the mightiest in modern times were the man whose name was Ahmed, and whose more famous title was the Mahdi; and his more ferocious successor Abdullahi, who was generally known as the Khalifa. These great fanatics, or great creators of fanaticism, succeeded in making a militarism almost as famous and formidable as that of the Turkish Empire on whose frontiers it hovered, and in spreading a reign of terror such as can seldom be organised except by civilisation. With Napoleonic suddenness and success the Mahdist hordes had fallen on the army ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton

... at that moment. I had rehearsed it all once that morning already—ha, ha! Ask your Christianity if it may not be about time for it to interest itself a little in the monarchy? It seems to me that it scarcely ought any longer to allow monarchy, like a seductive harlot, to keep militarism before the people's eyes as an ideal—seeing that that is exactly contrary to the teachings of Christianity, or to encourage class divisions, luxury, hypocrisy and vanity. Monarchy has become so all-pervading a lie that it infects even ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... wished to get one; and my father volunteered to procure it for him. The rest of the letter has a more general interest as giving his views on the great struggle between France and Germany then in progress, his distrust of militarism, and above all, his hatred of lying, political as much as ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... are such things as the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Serajevo, the consequent Austrian ultimatum to Servia, the hasty and intemperate action of the Kaiser in forcing war, and—from a more general point of view—the particular form of militarism prevalent in Germany. Ulterior antecedent conditions are to be found in the changing history of European States and their mutual relations in the last quarter of a century; the ambition of Germany to create an Imperial fleet; the ambition of Germany to have "a place in the sun" and become ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... discord between Julia and Tiberius. Tiberius had many enemies among the nobility, especially among the young men of his own age; partly because his rapid, brilliant career had aroused much jealousy, partly because his conservative, traditionalist tendencies toward authority and militarism disturbed many of them. More and more among the nobility there was increasing the desire for a mild and easy-going government which should allow them to enjoy their privileges without hardship and which should not be too severe in imposing ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... extent previously undreamt of, of the British fighting resources ashore. That was primarily the handiwork of Lord Kitchener. His country can fairly claim that he accomplished more than did any other individual—French, American, Italian, Russian, British—to bring German militarism to ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... that his own bayonets were his authority. No soldier could possibly say that he came in the name of his own bayonets. It would be as absurd as if a postman said that he came inside his bag. I do not, as I have said, underrate the evils that really do arise from militarism and the military ethic. It tends to give people wooden faces and sometimes wooden heads. It tends moreover (both through its specialisation and through its constant obedience) to a certain loss ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... Were Hebrew and Greek Women Coy? Masculine Coyness Shy but not Coy Militarism and Mediaeval Women What Made Women Coy? Capturing Women The Comedy of Mock Capture Why the Women Resist Quaint Customs Greek and Roman Mercenary Coyness Modesty and Coyness Utility ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... discovered in him his own ideal, the strong man, and set him on his legs. And when the army which he created, which had been remodelled by Frederic, Scharnhorst, Roon, and Moltke, became the greatest of all armies, Germany remembered its founder and was grateful for his militarism. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... of a hundred and fifty thousand Austrians, and Brusiloff had just said: "This is only the beginning." Lastly the close prospect of the resistless Allied Western offensive which would deracinate Prussian militarism was ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... exigencies of the aristocratic social structure of Viennese society, Napoleon finds it possible to be irresistible without working heroic miracles. The world, however, likes miracles and heroes, and is quite incapable of conceiving the action of such forces as academic militarism or Viennese drawing-roomism. Hence it has already begun to manufacture "L'Empereur," and thus to make it difficult for the romanticists of a hundred years later to credit the little scene now in question ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw

... recover freedom men must be always ready for the appeal to arms. Here is a principle that has been vindicated through all history and needs vindication now. But in our time the question of rightful war has been crossed by the evil of militarism, and in our assertion of the principle, that in the last resort freemen must have recourse to the sword, we find ourselves crossed by the anti-militarist campaign. We must dispose of this confusing element ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... has worked his way up like any other officer and has a firm grasp on all the multifarious details of the military establishment of the great country. He believes in militarism, or in force to use a more common expression, but in this he is right, for it has taken two hundred and fifty years to bring Prussia to the position she now holds, and what she has gained at the point of the sword must be retained in the same way. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... wore a gold-rimmed monocle on his grey check waistcoat and occasionally in his left eye. His face was of that brick-red which spoke of a life spent under tropical suns, and when erect he conveyed a momentary impression of a departed militarism. ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... the revolution. And when, at last, German socialism was captured by those who desired a less impracticable policy, the modification which occurred was of exactly the wrong kind: acquiescence in bad policies, such as militarism and imperialism, rather than advocacy of partial reforms which, however inadequate, would still have been steps in ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... all his life in America, and like Smith did not thoroughly agree with the philosophy of German militarism—before which everything ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... elementary principles of hygiene defied, have their consequences to-day in much of the unmated and handicapped womanhood of Great Britain. It may be noted that polygamy as a historical phenomenon has commonly and necessarily been associated with militarism. Large destruction of manhood by war leads to a numerical excess of women, and polygamy is a consequence. If the consequences in our modern civilization are less decent than polygamy, which would affront the beautiful minds that are unconcerned for Regent ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... turmoil of preparation for the Titanic struggle on the fields of France. People were becoming alive to the fact that even a democracy has its obligations to the State which guarantees it freedom; for freedom can only depend upon victory over autocracy and militarism. Private property was commandeered for the needs of the Army; public buildings became hospitals; motor cars and horses were requisitioned and carried off. Self-sacrifice became the order of the day. For weeks, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... not a rash people; we are not filled with the spirit of militarism. We are not anxious to get into trouble, but if anybody thinks that the spirit of service and sacrifice is lost and that we have not the old sentiment of self-respect, he doesn't understand the United ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... Belgians had always been stubbornly opposed to conscription; it will be remembered that they resisted all attempts at enforcing it in the past and that it was the main cause of the War of Peasants (1798) against the "Sans Culottes." To a people which, by tradition, was strongly adverse to militarism and centralization, it was only too easy to misrepresent measures of self-defence, urgently required by the European situation, as the first step towards autocracy and oppression. The partisans of military safeguards found ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... bells and waved flags and took holidays for joy of the murder of innocent women and children, we were not deceived by apologists who explained that your only defect was that you were the slaves of a brutal militarism (though you were that, all right). We knew that you must have something of the beast in your hearts. How it got there was another matter; we only knew that it was there and that while it remained you were not fit for intercourse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... although he accepted the necessity of war, was wholly incompetent to conduct it efficiently. The inadequacy of our national organization and our lack of national cohesion was immediately and painfully exhibited. The Republican superstition about militarism had prevented the formation of a regular army at all adequate to the demands of our national policy, and the American navy, while efficient so far as it went, was very much too small to constitute an effective engine ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... that maintain armies or military policies: and accordingly those virginal minds that think things originated in the uses they may have acquired, have frequent cause to be pained and perplexed at the abuses and over-development of militarism. An insurance capitalised may exceed the value of the property insured, and the drain caused by armies and navies may be much greater than the havoc they prevent. The evils against which they are supposed to be directed are often evils only in a cant and conventional ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... have lived in Germany to realize the absolute control of the State over the individual—the incessant surveillance, the petty regulations, the constant interference with private life. It was to escape just this vexatious control, with the arduous militarism in which it culminates, that so vast a multitude of Germans left their native land and came to the United States—not all of whom have shown appreciation and loyalty to the free ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... glorify war—the only health-giver of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the anarchist, the beautiful ideas that kill, the contempt for woman. They wish to destroy the museums, the libraries (unlucky Mr. Carnegie!), to fight moralism, feminism, and all opportunistic and utilitarian ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... a more direct bearing on war as we now know it than any of his other sayings. They show his belief in the inevitability of war. Apparently he did not feel himself competent to counteract general mass militarism. He offered no program for arbitration of international disputes, no substitute for war between nations, no ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... Cross an error? To say so would be an outrage in this age of militarism. And what would all the Queens of Beauty think, from Sir Wilfred Ivanhoe's days to ours, if mighty warriors ceased to poke each other in the ribs, and send one another's souls untimely to the 'viewless shades,' for the sake of their 'doux yeux?' Ah! who knows how many ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... with keen appreciation to the president's address, during which she said: "If I were asked what are the great obstacles to the speedy enfranchisement of women I should answer: There are three; the first is militarism, which once dominated the entire thought of the world and made its history. Although its old power is gone and its influence upon public thought grows constantly less, it still molds the opinions of millions of people and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... Lion de Paris and registered. I waited across the street in the shadow of the Empress Palace. Mac soon came out, and we went to dine in a large cafe. We enjoyed the novelty of the scene, and were never tired of marveling over the all-predominant militarism. Soldiers everywhere, all with good lungs and loud voices. We spent the evening seeing the town; at midnight we parted to meet and breakfast together at the cafe at 8. I then went to an obscure hotel and soon was in the land ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... toward militarism on this continent, but the reverse; in a few months it established permanent peace where peace had been a stranger. It was police work on the highest plane, substituting ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... naturalist has more to answer for than he ever dreamed of. His biological doctrine of the struggle for existence, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest, fairly intoxicated the Germans from the first. These theories fell in well with their militarism and their natural cruelty and greediness. Their philosophers took them up eagerly. Weissmann fairly made a god of natural selection, as did other German thinkers. And when they were ready for war, the Germans at once applied the law of the jungle to human affairs. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... out. The German rebuff over Agadir in 1911 was followed by a general election in 1912 at which the Social Democrats polled nearly a third of the votes and secured by far the largest representation of any party in the Reichstag. In 1913, after a particularly violent expression of militarism called "the Zabern incident," the Reichstag summoned up courage for the first time in its history to pass a vote of censure on the Government. The ground was slipping from under the feet of Prussian militarism; it must either fortify its position by fresh victories or take the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... enormous gravity which he did not really feel that "The German Fleet was a deliberate menace to our naval supremacy," or joining in the chorus of "We want eight and we won't wait," or expressing his utter contempt for "all this militarism," and his belief in the "international solidarity" of the new democracy. But there never entered his inmost convictions that the day might come during his own lifetime when he—a citizen of Suburbia—might have to fight for his own hearthside and suffer the intolerable horrors of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... business; others social problems or militarism. We meet only an embarrassment of choice when we start to unstring the chaplet of our carking cares. Suppose we set out in pursuit of pleasure. There is too much pepper in our soup to make it palatable. Our arms are filled with a multitude ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... can ride on a horse, or fire off a gun, makes him better rather than worse than any man like Sidney Webb or Philip Snowden, who attempt the same slavery by much less manly methods. The Liberal Party will try to divert the whole discussion to one about what they call militarism. But the very terms of modern politics contradict it. For when we talk of real rebels against the present system we call them Militants. And there will be none in ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... signs of the times in literature, not of one country but of all, is a grim change in its attitude towards war. The era of pomp and circumstance, as of genial make-believe, is gone by; more and more are our writers beginning to give us militarism stripped of romance, a grisly but (I suppose) useful picture. I have nowhere found it more horrible than in a story called The Secret Battle (METHUEN), written by Mr. A.P. HERBERT, whose initials are familiar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various

... should be unnecessary to invoke financial reasons. But national debts have increased so enormously as to have become unbearable and the world must disarm or face universal bankruptcy. The reaction against militarism is more advanced, but the reaction against navalism is just as sure to come—one cannot survive without the support of the other. Rivalry in the building of battleships will not long be tolerated after rivalry in land forces has ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... less frequent in the Middle Ages than we might expect, and were usually waged on a small scale. Their comparative infrequency, in an age of militarism, must be explained by reference both to current morality and to economic conditions. For an attack upon a Christian power it was necessary that some just cause should be alleged. Public opinion, educated by the Church to regard Western Christendom ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... the risk of ruining one's country. It must be remembered that through all these years the existence of Prussia was at stake. If the Prussian Government insisted on the necessity for a large and efficient army, they were accused of reckless militarism. People forgot that the Prussian Monarchy could no more maintain itself without a large army than the British Empire could without a large navy. In all the secret diplomatic negotiations of the time, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... about? No one seems to know, or if any one does know, he has not taken the public into his confidence. We have been told, in a general way, that the Allies are fighting against "militarism" and in defense of "popular government," and that Germany is fighting in defense of "German culture" and for the nation's right to "a place in the sun." But these generalities are so differently interpreted as not ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the influence of modern Western art, was making to the solution of political and social questions[113]. The interest of the younger generation in Post Impressionism was "quite disharmonious with the ordinary attitude towards militarism." European art broke down barriers in the Japanese mind. When the younger generation, nourished on higher ideals, grew up, it would be the State, and there would be a more hopeful condition of affairs. People generally supposed that social questions were the most ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... advised me to summon requires a little explanation. Also, I am obliged to give him a name not his own; for it is not often that brigadier- generals of the United States army can openly lend their names to anything so far removed apparently from militarism as ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... be left to chance or to the promise of others, or to the fair-weather relations of to-day; that we should be as well prepared, and as well organized on land as Switzerland, a nation without a trace of militarism, and yet so thoroughly prepared and so thoroughly ready and able to defend herself that to-day her territory is inviolate, although she ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... heart-rending yells followed me, and I dare not think of them or I shall go mad. There is no God, there is no morality and no ethics any more. There are no human beings any more, but only beasts. Down with militarism!" ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... places. The German Emperor, for example, is neither a tyrant nor a lunatic, as used to be absurdly represented; he is simply a minor poet; and he feels just as any minor poet would feel if he found himself on the throne of Barbarossa. The revival of militarism and ecclesiasticism is an invasion of politics by the artistic sense; it is heraldry rather than chivalry that is lusted after. Amid all this waving of wands and flaunting of uniforms, all this hedonistic desire to make the most of everything, there is something ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... cast a cloud upon the social life of Canada. For if Quebec was not what it had been in the days of Sir Guy and Lady Carleton, the sterner regime of Haldimand had deeper influences behind it than the militarism of a rigid soldier. Nevertheless, Nelson and his gay company helped to lighten the heavy cloud, and for the space of a few weeks dinners and dances, on shore and on board the Albemarle, enlivened the autumn season in the capital. Southey's Life of Nelson contains ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... Muhammad began his career as a prophet. It is no part of Church history to trace the origin of his opinions or his power, to tell how he learnt from Jews and Nestorians, or how he established a marvellous organisation on a basis of theocratic militarism. The migration from Meccah to Medinah in 622 was the beginning of his active ministry, of religious teaching carried forward by sword and fire. The capture of Meccah, the submission of Arabia, the extinction of the Christian (Monophysite) communities in the peninsula, ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... the spreading flame of resentment. None was needed, but it was supplied all the same—and from a most unexpected quarter, namely, the Diamond Fields' Advertiser! It was a startling denouement. The chains that bound the "mighty engine" were burst asunder. The spell of militarism was broken; the people's paper was itself again, and the people took it to their hearts as the champion of their rights and privileges. Its leading article on Saturday summarised the situation in a nutshell. It is too good ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... cross the Meuse into Belgium the Emperor had been assured by his foreign office that Great Britain would not take part in the war. There were the disturbing questions of Home Rule for Ireland, Socialism and anti-Militarism, and the Colonies had grown in wealth and population to such an extent that they were ready to drop from the parent stem if ever they would do so. Would Great Britain risk civil war at home and the loss of her Colonies abroad ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... prosperous. This means export of capital, hence, plans for colonies, closed doors, preferential markets, and demands for the protection of citizens abroad and political stability in backward areas. Partition of Africa, Asia, and Near East. 10. Militarism. Expansion and colonial acquisition by one country exclude another, thus unsettling the balance of power. Therefore rival nations depend on force and go in for military and naval programs. F. The conflict between reactionary ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... economic force. His essay on America, published in 1835, pointed out that British policy should be more concerned with economic relations with America than with European politics. As Professor Dunning says, "Cobden made the United States the text of his earliest sermon against militarism and protectionism." ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane

... no reply, only stiffening up, if it were possible to give any more of that quality of German militarism to a ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... their extremest peril from France and Russia. I see both nations duped, but alas! not quite unwillingly duped, by their Junkers and Militarists into wreaking on one another the wrath they should have spent in destroying Junkerism and Militarism in their own country. And I see the Junkers and Militarists of England and Germany jumping at the chance they have longed for in vain for many years of smashing one another and establishing their own ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... harangued the House for three-quarters of an hour on militarism, The Daily Mail, Suvla ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various

... this question is very momentous, and affects profoundly our whole morality. The worship of Force, to which Carlyle and Nietzsche and the creed of Militarism have accustomed us, is the result of failure to maintain our own ideals against a hostile universe: it is itself a prostrate submission to evil, a sacrifice of our best to Moloch. If strength indeed is ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... wrongly, I am a Democrat. Rightly or wrongly, I am for the rights of the masses as against the privileges of the classes. Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to Godship, Kingship, Lordship, Priestship. Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to Imperialism, Militarism, and Conquest. Rightly or wrongly, I am for universal brotherhood and universal freedom. Rightly or wrongly, I am for union against disunion, for collective ownership against private ownership. Rightly or wrongly, I am for reason against dogma, for evolution against ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... America and the World's Peace America's Mission in the Peace Movement America's Mission to Mankind America's Obligation The Arbiter of the World Arbitration versus War The Challenge of Thor The Conflict of War and Peace A Congress of Nations The Cost of Militarism The Cost of Peace The Crucial Parallelism The Dawn of Peace The Dawn of Universal Peace Democracy and Peace Diplomacy and Peace Disillusionment The Dominant Ideal The End; and the Means The Evolution ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... Century—that is to say, after the final victory of Prussian Reactionism over German Liberalism in 1849 (a victory which has lasted to the present time)—and still more, after the great military victories of Prussia from 1864 to 1870 had put Prussian militarism in the saddle and had made it the dominating force in the Russian court ...
— The Shield • Various

... to see the case in its present terms. One may abhor war fully, despise militarism absolutely, deplore all of the impulses in human nature which make armed force necessary, and still agree that for the world as we know it, the main hope is that "peace-loving nations can be made obviously capable of defeating nations which are willing to wage ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... this murder rests upon Prussian militarism and not upon the German people, for it should not be forgotten that possibly the most chivalrous act which has happened since the beginning of the war, was the erection by a German community, where a detention camp was maintained, of a statue to the French and English ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck

... than from public spirit, reasonableness, humanity, generosity, tenderness, delicacy, pity and kindness. The confirmation of that doubt, at which our newspapers have been working so hard for years past, is the morality of militarism; and the justification of militarism is that circumstances may at any time make it the true morality of the moment. It is by producing such moments that we produce violent and sanguinary revolutions, such as the one now in progress ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... alertness in Athens. It contacted then the crest of the Persian wave, and received from the impact huge accession of vigor. It blossomed in the Age of Pericles on the plane of mind and creative imagination. It came down presently on to the plane of militarism, and swelled out under Alexander as far as to the eastern limits of the Persian Empire he overthrew. Where it met a tide beginning to rise in India; and receded or remained stationary before that. And at last it was spent, and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... better war than the utter crushing-out of liberty and civilisation under the heel of Prussian or any other militarism. ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham

... young especially that the war is being waged, young boys and young girls like the motherless child in the picture, in order that they may inherit a Europe which shall be free from the horrible burden of German militarism, and be able to live useful lives in peace and quietness. No, little girl, mother did no wrong! But we should be guilty of the deepest wrong if we did not avenge her death and that of other similar victims by making ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... inevitably to separation from the Empire. It was also attacked by the Nationalists of Quebec, the ultra-colonialists or provincialists, as they might more truly be termed, under the vigorous leadership of Henri Bourassa, as yet another concession to imperialism and to militarism. In November, 1910, by alarming the habitant by pictures of his sons being dragged away by naval press gangs, the Nationalists succeeded in defeating the Liberal candidate in a by-election in Drummond-Arthabaska, at one time Laurier's own constituency. In the general election which ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... outbreak of the present World War is epoch-making because it is at bottom a fight between the principle of democratic and constitutional government and the principle of militarism and autocratic government. The three new points in the present demand for ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... that applies to the affairs of nations. No municipal law anywhere in the world gives countenance to a compromise with a criminal. International law could be no less moral than municipal law. Prussian militarism made the world unsafe for Democracy, and for that reason, on April 6th, 1917, the United States ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... Islands, because she could not raise a loan till she promised peace. The growing international financial network, and the revolt of the taxpayers against the incessant draining of their pocketbooks, promise a change for the better in European militarism before very long. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... this, fully admits the first part of the criticism, although he dislikes the audacious comparison with the venerated classical works. Language of this sort, he says, "encourages a ruler's bent towards unrelenting warfare and reckless militarism." ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... by many unconnected with the army. But I remember that in these days it is necessary for every one, who means to be well informed, to have a superficial knowledge of every one else's business. Encouraged also by what Mr. Gladstone has called "the growing militarism of the times," I hope that, avoiding technicalities, it may be of some general interest to glance for a moment at the frontier war from a purely professional point of view. My observations must be taken as applying to the theatre of the war I have described, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... MINISTER and his colleagues gone to the country on a cry of "No Conscription"? The Member for Derby was particularly emphatic in his denunciation; but Mr. CHURCHILL effectively countered him by quoting Mr. THOMAS'S own translation of the pledges in question as meaning "Militarism ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various

... statement as unimpeachable. Indeed, he lived long enough to see the beginning of the deadliest wars in which France ever engaged. The French were then the most military people in Europe. Now they are the leaders in the great modern civilising movement of Anti-Militarism. To what predominant influence are we to attribute that movement? To Christianity? Most certainly not. To Humanitarianism? There is not the slightest reason to believe it. The ultimate and fundamental ground on which the most civilised nations of to-day ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... priest of Individualism and the high priest of Socialism—cannot be acquitted of a similar charge. If the appeal has been made in a less crude and brutal form, and if the instrument of domination has been commercial and industrial rather than military, it is because Militarism is not the besetting sin of the English-speaking peoples. Let us beware, therefore, at this moment, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... left, the detained prisoners, he explained, were formed up on the quay, and surrounded by an imposing guard with fixed bayonets, were marched off. It was a sad party. All that was dearest in life to them had been torn away at a few minutes' notice through the short-sightedness of Prussian militarism or the desire of the Road-hog of Europe to display his officialism and the authority he had enjoyed for but a few days. Many of these tourists, as one might naturally expect, were sorely worried by the thoughts as to what would become of their loved ones upon ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... end of the old governmental and clerical world, of militarism, of officialism (this new editor seems fond of words ending in ism), of exploitation, of commission, of monopolies, and of privileges to which the proletariat owes his thralldom, and the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... we support Japan's claim, we abandon the democracy of China to the domination of the Prussianized militarism ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... afterward became in this country, it never had a twentieth part of the influence on our life that the same institution had in Spanish lands. The result is history. The industrial civilization which had beaten militarism on its own ground in the old world, outstripped it with ridiculous ease in the new. Spain had a century's start, yet to-day two-thirds of the white people on the Western continent speak the English language and live within the ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott

... furnaces by the force of that passion. From the first no man in the world sounded so ringing a trumpet note of moral indignation and moral aspiration. Examine his earlier speeches and in all of them you will find that his passion to destroy Prussian militarism was his passion to recreate civilization on the foundations of morality and religion. He was Peace with a sword. Germany had not so much attempted to drag mankind back to barbarism as opened a gate through which mankind might march ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... military conquest increased the influence of the military at the expense of the civilian administrators. The consequent burdens of militarism reached from the bottom to the top of Roman society. Eventually, under the Caesars, the military selected emperors from among the rivals for the purple of imperial authority, and used the legions under their command to protect and promote their own political ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... it would be necessary that a hundred wagons of foodstuffs should be coming in daily. At present there are seldom more than twenty. I asked Kamenev about the schools, and he explained that one of their difficulties was due to the militarism forced upon them by external attacks. He explained that the new Red Army soldiers, being mostly workmen, are accustomed to a higher standard of comfort than the old army soldiers, who were mostly peasants. They objected to the planks which served ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... was elected colonel of the Philadelphia regiment, "but considering myself unfit, I declined the station and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine person and man of influence, who was accordingly appointed." In spite of his militarism, Franklin retained the position which he held as Clerk of the Assembly, though the majority of the members were Quakers opposed to ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... guessing. "Think of the men who have walked here!" said a tourist in the Roman Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: "Think of the men who will." It is surely as interesting that presently some founder of the World Republic, some obstinate opponent of militarism or legalism, or the man who will first release atomic energy for human use, will walk along the Via Sacra as that Cicero or Giordano Bruno or Shelley have walked there in the past. To the prophetic mind all history is and will continue to be a ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... whistle salutes of river craft, the former German liner dropped down the bay and started for France with the young soldiers who were to do their part in ending barbarous militarism forever. ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... liberties and to acknowledge ourselves slaves. It is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities to self-determination, which even the Prime Minister of England—now preparing to employ naked militarism and force his Act upon Ireland—himself announced as an essential condition for peace at the Peace Congress. The attempt to enforce it is an unwarrantable aggression, which we call upon all Irishmen to resist by the most ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... We are accused of militarism. What is this new and terrible crime? Since the years of the wars of liberation against France and Napoleon we have had what amounts practically to universal conscription. Only two generations later ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... official discouragement, the Union Jack is hoisted on thousands of schools and saluted by millions of children. To the suggestion that the public offices should be similarly adorned the Government, under the erroneous belief that patriotism and militarism were identical, has hitherto maintained an unflagging opposition. But to-day Lord CREWE admitted that the proposal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various

... altogether the same place as in Pagan antiquity, it is at least certain that in a democratic age public interests are enormously prominent in the lives of men, and there is a growing and dangerous tendency to aggrandise the influence of the State over the individual, while modern militarism is drawing the flower of Continental Europe into its circle and making military education one of the most powerful influences in the formation of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Revolution in France. Within the space of ten and a half years from the assembling of the Estates-General at Versailles, parliamentary and popular government fell beneath the sword. The predictions of Marat and Robespierre were realized: militarism had ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes



Words linked to "Militarism" :   hawkishness



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