The history of man is one of unending, unbending conflict. Us against the Other, us against ourselves. Man has fought for country, for city state, for city, for tribe, for clan, for family and for himself. The evidence of our senses is that man fights because he likes to. Maybe the anthropologists are right and man is a naked ape, born with aggression and built in bellicosity. Whatever, throughout history, men have fought and bled and died, sometimes for gold, sometimes for glory, and very often for honor. But thank the gods we are and were aggressive, for without warfare to stoke the fires of the mind we would probably not have yet emerged from the stone age, never to see the wonders and marvels of a technological society.

The chariots of Kadesh
And the bows of Agincourt
The triremes and the tracks of Panzer IIIs
The ponies of the Golden Horde
The doughty farmer Boer
The history of man is men like these
Cold Harbor where they lay in rows
The blood drenched Somme at flood
Black Cannae and the green of Flodden Field
The bomber contrails ‘gainst the blue
The khaki colored mud
The common theme is men who would not yield
So many times their lives were
Sacrificed by lesser men
Who led them by the divine right of birth
They lit the flame of duty and
Would light it yet again
Though lying ‘neath a sacred piece of Earth