528 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sioned considerable expenditures, not to speak of the indirect losses, 

 which were immense. We are, unfortunately, absolutely without 

 data concerning the cost of civil wars, and shall have to satisfy our- 

 selves with what we have been able to obtain concerning foreign wars. 

 $80,156,800,000 used up in two centuries! We need not go outside 

 of this for a solution of the social question. Without this unre- 

 stricted waste the earth would now have ten times more wheat, 

 sugar, linen, cotton, meat, wool, etc.; there would be ten times as 

 many houses on the globe, and they would be more spacious, better 

 warmed, and better ventilated; a network of roads, with frequent 

 mails, would cover Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. In short, 

 if conquest had been considered an evil, even during only two cen- 

 turies, our wealth would have been infinitely superior to what we 

 now possess. But if the ctesohedonic fallacy had been seen through 

 by the civilized societies of the Roman period, the face of the earth 

 would have been very different from what it is. Our planet would 

 have been completely appropriated to the satisfaction of our wants. 

 Waste lands would have been tilled and swamps dried; everywhere 

 that a drop of water could be made to serve for irrigation it would 

 have been applied to that use. Magnificent cities, inhabited by 

 active and industrious populations, would have arisen in numerous 

 places where now are found only briers and stones. In short, we 

 should have been able to see men now, in the year of grace 1894, 

 as we expect to see them in three or four thousand years. 



The past can not be changed. We have laid bare the unhappy 

 consequences of our ancient errors simply in order to show how we 

 can assure our welfare in the future. As long as the spirit of con- 

 quest rages among men, misery will be the lot of our species. Our 

 savage and barbarous ancestors did not know what we know. Attila, 

 Tamerlane, and even Matabele, a chief of our own times, might 

 be excused for fancying that conquest increases the wealth of the 

 conquerors; but a Moltke and a Prince Bismarck can not. The 

 masses are still too deeply imbued with military vainglory. Hap- 

 pily, they are beginning to open their eyes. — Translated for the 

 Popular Science Monthly from the hook Les Gaspillages cles Societes 

 Modernes (The Wastes of Modern Societies), Paris, 1894. 



Until within a few years the field for the study of glaciers and their 

 action has been the Alps; but now, as Prof. H. L. Fairchild said in his 

 address as chairman of the Geological Section of the American Associa- 

 tion, the North American continent is recognized as a field of the greatest 

 activity, both in the past and at the present time; and, moreover, it pre- 

 sents types of glaciers not known in Europe. It must therefore become 

 the Mecca of foreign students of glaciers. 



