CHAPTER X 

 WARRIOR ANTS, AND THEIR EQUIPMENT FOR WAR 



"VVJT AR, it is said, is a brutal way of settling differences 

 T T among men. That is true; and therein lies the 

 fact which gives most serious pause to one who would 

 study the subject philosophically, with an outlook upon 

 nature at large. War is brutal a natural habit of 

 brutes, and of the whole realm of organized life below 

 them, that wage war upon one another instinctively. 

 Their natural life is one of endless conflict. They who 

 justify war do so on the ground of its universal preva- 

 lence among creatures in a state of nature. It is brutal 

 but natural, arid man, being of nature, has his physical 

 kinships with brutes and their lower allies. 



Doubtless those who base their opposition to war on 

 the divine precepts of the Prince of Peace have here no 

 difficulty. They admit the premise, but claim that 

 Jesus Christ, whose laws they obey, came to abrogate 

 the evil in the old, and to establish a new and spiritual 

 kingdom in Nature. He brought into human discipline 

 a new development, a higher stage of life, wherein war is 

 a discordant element. This is the new Nature, the spirit- 

 ual kingdom. It is the dawn of an ever-deepening Day 

 after a birth-Night wherein wild things ruled, but Life 

 and Light were born. The spiritual man, not the natural, 

 is now supreme, and under Christ the nations are to 

 learn war no more. 



190 



