The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
tl;dr:<p>War has been the natural state of man for millions of years, our short stint of civilization will not breed it out of us any time soon. There&#x27;s obviously a terrible price to war, but it does have the upside of keeping a community disciplined and strong. It also has an equalizing aspect: rich and poor are shoved next to each other; identical in the trenches. Removing war without replacing its disciplining&#x2F;strengthening&#x2F;equalizing aspects would cause a degeneration of society.<p>However, war is unsustainable in the long run, and so the author&#x27;s solution is to create conscription not to fight other nations, but to fight nature. What this means: have everyone spend a couple years doing laborious tasks: construction, mining, fishing, dishwashing, etc. This can breed the &quot;martial type of character&quot; that would be lacking without war.<p>I&#x27;m pretty in favor of the idea. I can definitely recommend the full read.