Mill demonstrated a deep appreciation for the military, noting in his essay "The Contest In America":
"But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other."
Simply put, what he means is that war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
I find his articles and essays exceptional, full of original thought and expression. His deeds speak a lot about his vision and strength of character. He was the first person in British Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote. Mill became a strong advocate of women rights and such political and social reforms as proportional representation, labor unions, and farm cooperatives.
Under the guise of having gained gender equality and liberation and all the freedoms which humans being humans deserve, women shouldn't forget the contributions of men like John Mill in giving a direction to women's movement and equality. It was because of such visionary men like Raja Ram Mohan Roy & John Stuart Mill that women got the direction to further their causes. It is but the nature of people to forget support and contributions. However with the rise of such movements as "feminism", there is a deliberate effort to undermine their contributions which i feel is far more outrageous than just ignoring them.
