WARFARE AS NATURAL HISTORY 



337 



the Jews are to supplant Aryan stock 

 here he may ride down Broadway for 

 five cents, and read the signs. 



J n dying- from a basis of biologic 

 history Slavs are to succeed the Jews. 



Odd folks belonging to some strange 

 new nation will come and sit npon the 

 rock at the foot of my garden two 

 thousand years from this coming Jnne. 



\\ arfare between the more impor- 

 tant civilized countries will be longer 

 and longer postponed, because of the 

 development of Dr. Butler's "Interna- 

 tional mind." Primitive plants gradu- 

 ally developed a system of sap channels 

 which enabled them to become greater 

 and more complex plants. In the same 

 way nations will gradually develop 

 sap channels of trade. Negative and 

 positive pressures under varying con- 

 ditions of light and of temperature 

 serve to keep the nutrient sap flowing 

 through the widely distributed channels 

 of a plant. Among nations the pos- 

 itive and negative pressures of debt 

 and credit will serve to keep inter- 

 national mind flowing freely through 

 the trade channels of nations. 



We are to hope that socialism and 

 capitalism will never gain any great 

 number of points over each other, be- 

 cause they represent two necessary 

 opposing forces, belonging to the 

 "warfares of peace." We must be 

 allowed to read our newspapers and 

 smoke our pipes comfortably while 

 finding interest and amusement in the 

 hot words which pass between fairly 

 well balanced forces of socialism and 

 of capitalism. Warfare by arms will 

 exercise a certain degree of control 

 over population in the future as in the 

 past. Control of population however 

 is chiefly given over to one of nature's 

 agents, the microbe. During times of 

 peace the microbe is chief regulating 

 agent. Even during times of war it 

 kills more people than are killed by 

 missiles. In one of the South Ameri- 

 can countries two species of microbe 

 carry off thirty per cent of the entire 

 population, and there are other coun- 

 tries in which three or four species of 

 microbes claim a still larger proportion 

 for their prey. 



Nature is presumably quite as much 

 interested in her favorite microbe 

 agents as she is in man, and this fea- 

 ture of warfare between the two is 



commonly overlooked, although of 

 greater importance than warfare by 

 arms between men of different nations. 

 Among the warfares of peace which 

 exert influence over population, femin- 

 ism in its present crude stage is not to 

 be omitted from the factors in our 

 equation. To-morrow's nations may 

 take charge of that particular subject 

 in another way. In former days feudal 

 barons actively lessened population, 

 and to-day it is passively lessened by 

 feudal barrennesses. 



In ancient Egypt and Greece women 

 came to have practically all of the free- 

 dom of men in matters of government. 

 Breeding came to a pause and the state 

 fell. These were not cause and effect 

 phenomena, but collateral phenomena 

 belonging to the history of a variety 

 of nation, and similar to the history of 

 a cultivated variety of plant. When 

 the sex cells go over to make soma 

 cells, a plant may make beautiful dis- 

 play with double flowers, and thus end 

 its lineage in a blaze of glory. 



Herod set an example of economical 

 method in warfare when he ordered 

 the slaughter of infants. Taxpayers at 

 some time in the future may revolt 

 against the high cost of dying in mod- 

 ern wars, and we shall perhaps find 

 simpler method displayed in something 

 like The Ammonia War. Each sol- 

 dier will be equipped with -a tube of 

 liquid ammonia, and a back load of 

 handcuffs. A little biff of ammonia in 

 the face of an enemy will render him 

 helpless for a long enough time to 

 allow of the adjustment of a pair of 

 handcuffs. The side which succeeds 

 in handcuffing the largest number of 

 opponents will be triumphant, but the 

 winners will find themselves to be 

 losers because of the cost of mainte- 

 nance of a large body of idle prisoners. 

 This outcome will not be very differ- 

 ent on the whole from the outcome of 

 less thriftily conducted wars, because 

 both sides must necessarily be losers 

 according to well established princi- 

 ples in economics. The Ammonia 

 War will have the advantage of being 

 a more polite war than any which is 

 now conducted by us murderers. 



Different nations engaged in warfare 

 pray to one God who is therefore a 

 garbled God. Prayers are based upon 

 the justice of respective causes. In 



