WARRIOR ANTS, AND THEIR EQUIPMENT 



The writer accepts this view. He has had personal 

 experience in two wars the American Civil War and the 

 Spanish-American, in Cuba. He knows well its worst 

 features and its best. He believes that universal peace 

 and fraternity ought to be the ultimate aim of our race, 

 and that armies and navies are justified simply as na- 

 tional police forces for the administration of those be- 

 nevolent functions for which governments should exist 

 among men. Nevertheless, he recognizes that to many 

 minds the force of the facts, as seen in nature, is not 

 readily put aside; and that the universal war habit of or- 

 ganized beings, as it appears to have existed in all time, 

 seems to place upon a higher plane, as in harmony with 

 natural laws, those war-like habits and acts that have 

 dominated human history. This, at least, gives an ex- 

 ceptional interest to a study, for the sake of comparison, 

 of the war methods of those lower orders of living beings 

 whose social organizations strongly suggest our own. 



Among the foremost of these are ants, and ants, as an 

 order, are war-like insects. The foragers carry their 

 natural pugnacity into the field as isolated individuals, 

 and show decided courage in the quest of food. Therein 

 they are freebooters. Whatever falls in their way and 

 they are able to possess, they take. This, as in the case 

 of human brigands, often requires an appeal to force. 

 An ant commune is as fair a scene of peaceful industry 

 as a beehive; but everywhere in its vicinage "doth 

 dogged war bristle his angry crest, and snarleth in the 

 gentle eyes of peace." 



This readiness for hostilities and ferocity in attack 

 have been noted and recorded often of the hosts of 

 true ants that swarm along the pathways of travellers 

 in the tropics. For example, Stanley speaks of the 



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