Recently I have noted the use of a Latin phrase Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori in several articles. It originated with the Roman writer Horace and translates in English to "It is sweet to die for the homeland." As might be expected that philosophy doesn't have universal appeal. College students in the 19th century added to it by saying "It is sweet to die for the homeland, but it is sweeter to live for the homeland, and the sweetest to drink for it. Therefore, let us drink to the health of the homeland."
The first time I remember coming in contact with the phrase was as the title of a poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" written by Wilfred Owen during World War I. It describes a gas attack. Toward the end of the poem he says of Horace's poem that it is "the old Lie." From what I've read of the horrendous killing and suffering on the battlefields of World War I, I would guess there were few of those soldiers who thought it was sweet to die for the cause. After telling of one who got gassed, Owen writes in his last stanza:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
