The Myth of Male Aggression
THE "ADORABLE" WILLINGNESS TO THROW AWAY ONE'S LIFE
(From “The Soldier’s Faith,” Oliver Wendell Holmes)
 
From an address delivered on Memorial Day, May 30, 1895, at a meeting called by the graduating class of Harvard University:

"In the midst of doubt, the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use."
Oliver Wendell Holmes