4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



promptly, and if the estimated cost of the war were collected in taxes in 

 advance, there would not be many wars. 



We are still far from having a true political and social democracy. 

 The production of wealth has increased rapidly; but we have not 

 learned to distribute it justly or to use it wisely. The education sup- 

 plied by our schools is inadequate and inept. We may be confident that 

 a complete democracy will be the strongest force for peace that the 

 world has seen. Even now the great mass of the people, most of them 

 having some education and some property, are the true guarantees 

 against wanton war. A king can no longer summon his nobles and the 

 chiefs gather together their retainers to invade a foreign country. A 

 war which, with its accompanying pestilence and famine, would reduce 

 the population of a country to one half, as in the case of the thirty 

 years' war, is now almost inconceivable. And this we owe to social and 

 political democracy, which in turn we owe to science. 



As a result of scientific progress and invention, the law of Malthus 

 has been reversed. The means of subsistence increase more rapidly 

 than the population. The sinister voluntary limitation of childbirth, 

 which may give rise to racial deterioration and actual depopulation, is 

 unnecessary. As population increases under a given condition of cul- 

 ture, the number of men of genius and talent competent to make the 

 labor of each more efficient increases in proportion; as their inventions 

 are of benefit to all, the means of subsistence tend to increase as the 

 square of the population. As the level of education and culture is 

 raised, and as democracy is perfected, so that each is given opportunity 

 to do the work for which he is fit, the wealth and means of subsistence 

 increase still more rapidly. The law of Malthus and the law of dimin- 

 ishing returns, like the law of the degradation of energy, may ulti- 

 mately prevail, but not in any future with which we are concerned. 

 The population of a civilized country, in which science is cultivated, 

 need not be limited by famine, pestilence or war. Over-population and 

 the need of expansion by conquest are obviated by democracy and sci- 

 ence; the cause of war which may be regarded as inevitable and legiti- 

 mate is thus abolished. In providing adequately for the subsistence of 

 an increasing population, science has made a contribution to peace the 

 magnitude of which can not be easily overstated. 



x4-nother great service for peace to be credited to science is the de- 

 velopment of commerce, travel and intercommunication. Steam and 

 electricity are handmaids of peace. Trade disputes and the misad- 

 ventures of missionaries, travelers and immigrants may serve as causes 

 or pretexts of wars, but the balance of commerce, travel and immigra- 

 tion is large on the side of peace. With the existing commerce among 

 the nations, each dependent on every other, a war of any kind does in- 

 jury to all. A nation at war destroys its own property throughout the 

 world, and all the nations sufi^er. A neutral nation can no more afford 



