Shattering the Old Lie: General Patton’s War Wisdom and the True Duty of a Warrior

Poets and propagandists have long clung to the ancient Latin phrase: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”—“It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.” But by the time the industrial slaughterhouses of World War I had chewed through millions of lives, that “old lie,” as poet Wilfred Owen called it, rang hollow.