I ran along. I guess he thought that settled it . . . and I suppose I did, too. Mars! And on my own! But I didn't tell Carl about it; I had a sneaking suspicion that he would regard it as a bribe . Well, maybe it was. Instead I simply told him that my father and I seemed to have different ideas about it.
“Yeah,” he answered, “so does mine. But it's my life.” I thought about it during the last session of our cla** in History and Moral Philosophy. H. & M. P. was different from other courses in that everybody had to take it but nobody had to pa** it— and Mr. Dubois never seemed to care whether he got through to us or not. He would just point at you with the stump of his left arm (he never bothered with names) and snap a question. Then the argument would start.
But on the last day he seemed to be trying to find out what we had learned . One girl told him bluntly: “My mother says that violence never settles anything.”
“So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn't your mother tell them so? Or why don't you?”
They had tangled before— since you couldn't flunk the course, it wasn't necessary to keep Mr. Dubois bu*tered up. She said shrilly, “You're making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”
“You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since you do know it, wouldn't you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea— a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue— and thoroughly immoral— doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Pa**enger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”
He sighed. “Another year, another cla**— and, for me, another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.” Suddenly he pointed his stump at me. “You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?”
“The difference,” I answered carefully, “lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.”
“The exact words of the book,” he said scornfully. “But do you understand it? Do you believe it?”
“Uh, I don't know, sir.”
“Of course you don't! I doubt if any of you here would recognize ‘civic virtue' if it came up and barked in your face!” He glanced at his watch. “And that is all, a final all. Perhaps we shall meet again under happier circumstances. Dismissed.”
Heinlein, Robert A. (1987-05-15). Starship Troopers (pp. 26-28). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.