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“Page 229: The great modern fact is the huge standing army that is a severe custodian of the law, is obedient to the orders of a civil authority and has very little political influence, exercising indirectly at best such influence as it has. Virtually invariable as that situation is in countries of European civilization, it represents a most fortunate exception, if it is not absolutely without parallel, in human history. Only a habit of a few generations standing, along with ignorance or forgetfulness of the past, can make such a situation seem normal to those of us who have lived at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, and so find it strange when we chance upon exceptions.” — Gaetano Mosca
Page 229:
The great modern fact is the huge standing army that is a severe custodian of the law, is obedient to the orders of a civil authority and has very little political influence, exercising indirectly at best such influence as it has. Virtually invariable as that situation is in countries of European civilization, it represents a most fortunate exception, if it is not absolutely without parallel, in human history. Only a habit of a few generations standing, along with ignorance or forgetfulness of the past, can make such a situation seem normal to those of us who have lived at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, and so find it strange when we chance upon exceptions.