 what you believe now about something isn't something that people have always believed about that. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense. I've been thinking about this recently because we live in this era where we have a very nihilistic or I think nihilistic is probably the best word to use, nihilistic view of warfare. And it wasn't always that way. The current view of warfare by most people is that the war is hell quote, which I think was William Tecumseh's Sherman. I think he said that war is hell and its glory is all moonshine. And really that idea that war is hell, that it's this brutal, dark, destructive, horrible thing, which by the way in general I'm going to agree with, is really an idea that's only been in vogue for the last 100 or so years, really with the rise of World War One. World War One is a super interesting time in history because if you go back and look at it, we call it the first modern war with planes and tanks and machine guns and artillery. And it was really the first modern war to bring all those things together. People went into that war fighting on horseback and they leave with fighter planes and tanks and artillery and all this other kind of interesting stuff that we still use today. Going into World War One in general, the view of warfare was the very romantic view of warfare, right? Where you will win glory and honor and this band of brothers mentality and this whole idea of wonderful, amazing, glorious things happening in warfare. And yes, obviously, you know, people die. However, you know, it's this grandiose adventure really. And that view of war has been common throughout human history. Whenever you look at poetry about war, especially pre World War One, you know, if you look at stuff by like Kipling, for example, who's a British poet writing before and after World War One, or if you were to read some Shakespeare like Henry V, or you go back to the Greek days, right? And the ancient Romans, the ancient Greeks. This idea of warfare is this kind of grand adventure where glory is won and fortunes are lost and history is altered has kind of been the pervasive view of war ever since. World War One, of course, grinds that entire idea to a halt because after four plus years of just a brutal machine that chews up bodies and spits them out, it's kind of hard to maintain that romantic view of warfare when, you know, you're literally sleeping on fighting on corpses because you're fighting over the same ground over and over and over again. So that, of course, kind of killed this idea of warfare. I don't necessarily have what, how we should view war here or what the real picture of war is. That's not necessarily the point in making this video. I just want you to understand that if you ever feel the allure of the romantic call of warfare, I don't know that that's entirely incorrect, shall we say. And you could say, well, Dylan, you've never been to combat. And I would say, hey, that's totally fine. I get it. I've never seen anybody that I really care about, right? Or had to bury one of my buddies due to flying bullets and stuff like that. However, people who have have written romantic poetry about warfare. So while you're not going to find me arguing that warfare is this beautiful romantic adventure and we're all going to go have a jolly good time, I definitely lean towards the warfare sounds like a terrible place to be and isn't exactly fun. And, you know, watching your friends die of dysentery, never even getting to see the front line sounds like a miserable experience. That all being said, because I have a historical view of things, I understand where I fit in the historical context of how we currently view war. And we currently view it very nihilistically. And whether that's good, bad, or correct, I'm not necessarily sure. And I'm not necessarily going to make try to make a definitive statement at this time. But I do want you to understand there are changing views on how we look at warfare, right? And when you start to read old historical books like Gavon Klauswitz, for instance, right, who is writing pre-World War One, you can read his book and you can say, oh, this sounds kind of naive. However, he was one of the main Prussian theorists on warfare. The impression reorganized their entire army based on Klauswitz and came into World War One with the best army hands down. So it's not that people who held this romantic view of warfare were somehow ignorant or stupid or lesser than or whatever, or even inexperienced. That's not necessarily the case. It's just that there were different cultural ideas and pervasive thoughts at the time about how we view warfare. And how you end up choosing to view it is of course your decision to make. Let's just understand that we live in a cultural context and time that looks upon things like that in a certain manner. So that was kind of meandering. Thanks for sticking around with me. Do brave deeds and endure.