In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

Mencken’s line is a sardonic comment on how war is narrated and remembered. He suggests that in the stories told afterward—by governments, newspapers, propagandists, and even veterans—“heroes” proliferate far beyond the actual number of ordinary soldiers who fought. The ratio “ten to one” is not statistical but rhetorical: it points to inflation in claims of bravery and to the cultural need to frame mass violence as noble and meaningful. The remark fits Mencken’s broader skepticism about patriotic mythmaking and public credulity, implying that heroism is often a postwar construction rather than a rare, verifiable reality.