"Before the French Revolution, wars scarcely affected the masses. They were fought out between sovereigns — the emperor, the kings, or the aristocratic republics which were still numerous in the eighteenth century — between ruling classes few in numbers, homogeneous, cultured, and refined. These classes could fight each other without excessive animosity; they could recognize that the enemy's cause was as righteous as their own; they could wage war as a game, respecting its rules even when it would be more advantageous to break them; and admit defeat as soon as it became too dangerous to keep on. Today it is the people who fight. . . . This mass cannot keep up the efforts of a war unless it is fired by some passion common to it all. A nation at war must therefore hate the enemy, which means that it must be convinced that it is defending the most righteous of causes against the most infamous aggression; that it represents innocent Right fighting against Evil armed with the most diabolical of long-premeditated designs."