Link: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon_(1901)/Chapter_25

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts?

They're the words of Englishman, H. G. Wells, published in 1901 in The First Men in the Moon. This sentence completely blew my mind, it seems completely alien to me.

Here's the context:

The Grand Lunar was so incredulous that he interrupted the translation of what I had said in order to have my verification of my account. They particularly doubted my description of the men cheering and rejoicing as they went into (? battle).

"'But surely they do not like it!' translated Phi-oo.

"I assured them men of my race considered battle the most glorious experience of life, at which the whole assembly was stricken with amazement.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon_(1901)/Chapter_25

It seems completely alien to me.

Then Wells has done his job!

This is SF fulfilling it's role as satire. Wells is commenting on the Victorian heroic, imperial ideal that was sold as the ideal for manhood at the time.

He is holding it up to question by an outsider: the Selenites.

He us saying much the same here as Wilfred Owen did in his Dulce et Decorum est.

Yes. The satire mostly went over my head when I read this years ago, and it must have done for many readers in 1901 when this was presumably a more normal thing to say.

This led me to look this up: Wells identified as a socialist and influenced the start of human rights law, but he also had wacky ideas about eugenics among other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_H._G._Wells