I did not say it was trivial, nor did I belittle his very real achievements. What I was attempting to say is this quote is needlessly cavalier with people's lives, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Voices from the past are guides, not masters.
I suspect that in a world where half of the kids died of banal diseases and even a strong young person could die from smallpox, rotten tooth or tuberculosis in a few weeks or months, human lives weren't valued as highly. War was just one of many ways to die young.
