It is strange that our historians have for the most part taken leave of the New Model without a tinge¹ of regret, without estimation of its merits or enumeration² of its services. Mountains of eulogy⁴ have been heaped on the Long Parliament, but little has been spared for this famous Army; nay⁵, even military historians by a strange perversity⁶ begin the history of the Army not from its foundation but from its dissolution. Much doubtless besides the creation of a standing⁷ Army dates from the great rebellion, though few things more important in our history, unless indeed it be the cant⁸ that denies its importance. The bare thought of militarism or the military spirit is supposed to be unendurable to Englishmen. As if a nation had ever risen to great empire that did not possess the military spirit, and as if England herself had not won her vast dominions⁹ by the sword. We are accustomed to speak of our rule as an earnest for the eternal furtherance of civilisation¹⁰; but we try to conceal¹¹ the fact that the first step to empire is conquest. It is because we are a fighting people that we have risen to greatness, and it is as a fighting people that we stand or fall. Arms rule the world; and war, the supreme¹² test of moral and physical greatness, remains¹³ eternally the touchstone of nations.

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