134 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cantons who sent forth mercenary troops from those who kept their own 

 for their own upbuilding. Perhaps for other reasons than this Lucerne 

 is weaker than Graubiinden, and Unterwalden less virile than little 

 Appenzell. In any event, the matter is worthy of consideration, for 

 this is absolutely certain: just in proportion to its extent and thor- 

 oughness is military selection a cause of decline. 



XXXV. Holland has become a nation of old men, rich, comfort- 

 able and unprogressive. Her sons have died in the fields of Java, the 

 swamps of Achin, wherever Holland's thrifty spirit has built up nations 

 of slaves. It is said that Batavia alone has a million of Dutch graves. 

 The armies of Holland to-day are recruited in every port. Dutch 

 blood is too precious to be longer spilled in her enterprises. 



XXXVI. Spain died of empire centuries ago. She has never 

 crossed our path. It was only her ghost which walked at Manila and 

 Santiago. In 1630, the Augustinian friar La Puente thus wrote of 

 the fate of Spain: "Against the credit for redeemed souls I set the 

 cost of Armadas and the sacrifice of soldiers and friars sent to the 

 Philippines. And this I count the chief loss, for mines give silver, and 

 forests give timber, but only Spain gives Spaniards, and she may give 

 so many that she may be left desolate and constrained to bring up 

 strangers' children instead of her own." ''This is Castile," said a Spanish 

 knight; "she makes men and wastes them." "This sublime and ter- 

 rible phrase," says Lieutenant Carlos Gilman Calkins, from whom I 

 have received both these quotations, "sums up Spanish history." 



The warlike nation of to-day is the decadent nation of to-morrow. 

 It has ever been so, and in the nature of things it must ever be. 



XXXVII. In his charming studies of 'Feudal and Modern Japan,' 

 Mr. Arthur Knapp returns again and again to the great marvel of 

 Japan's military prowess after more than two hundred years of peace. 

 It is astonishing to him that after more than six generations in which 

 physical courage has not been demanded, these virile virtues should 

 be found imimpaired. We can readily see that this is just what we 

 should expect. In times of peace there is no slaughter of the strong, 

 no sacrifice of the courageous. In the peaceful struggle for existence 

 there is a premium placed on these virtues. The virile and the brave 

 survive. The idle, weak and dissipated go to the wall. If after two 

 hundred years of incessant battle Japan still remained virile and war- 

 like, that would indeed be the marvel. But that marvel no nation has 

 ever seen. It is doubtless true that warlike traditions are most persistent 

 with nations most frequently engaged in war. But the traditions of 

 war and the physical strength to gain victories are very different things. 

 Other things being equal, the nation which has known least of war is the 

 one most likely to develop the 'strong battalions' with whom victory 

 must rest. 



