This discovery regarding the meaning behind Your is No Disgrace has come as quite a shock to me.
According to Edward Macan, "Yours Is No Disgrace" "is generally recognized as Yes' first antiwar song" (though "Harold Land" from their debut album deals with the subject of war). Anderson has stated that the theme of the song was recognition that the kids fighting the war had no choice but to fight and that the war wasn't their fault. Author Bill Martin describes "Yours Is No Disgrace" as "a remarkable and subtle song about the Vietnam War." The lyrics make their point by contrasting the suffering of the soldiers in Vietnam with people partying in Las Vegas. The author Dave Thompson praises the line "On a sailing ship to nowhere" as "[conjuring] a mental image that the music cannot help but echo."
The original words "armies gather near" (confirmed in every recorded live version) have been misprinted as "armies scatter the earth" numerous times, suggesting this may have been a mis-transcription in the first published version, as the album cover itself did not include lyrics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yours_Is_No_Disgrace