Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the【31】of the year, or manured a field; but we know【32】about the killers and destroyers. People think a great deal of them, so【33】so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are【34】that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are,【35】they are not the most civilized. Animals fight; so do savages; hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in【36】an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and【37】them how to do it most efficiently — this, after all, is【38】conquerors and generals have done -- is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other【39】by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of other side, and then【40】that that side which has killed most has won.
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