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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: voluntarily retire, and spend at home the remainder of their
maturer years.
A long peace not only fills democratic armies with elderly
officers, but it also gives to all the officers habits both of
body and mind which render them unfit for actual service. The
man who has long lived amidst the calm and lukewarm atmosphere of
democratic manners can at first ill adapt himself to the harder
toils and sterner duties of warfare; and if he has not absolutely
lost the taste for arms, at least he has assumed a mode of life
which unfits him for conquest.
Amongst aristocratic nations, the ease of civil life
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