Elie Ducommun

War, we are told, shapes character; it resolves the major questions of international politics, consolidates nations, and indeed, constitutes the principal factor in the progress of civilization through its successive stages.

I leave to the militarists the difficult task of trying to explain to us how these wars have served to shape character or to promote the progress of civilization or to achieve the reign of justice on earth. So far, they have not come forward with the explanation.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.