THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 



Pestilence we now understand to be a microbe question. The 

 subject dealt with in terms of the microbe has allowed civilized 

 people to lose their feeling of helplessness in relation to epidemics 

 of disease. 



Warfare must remain because it is fundamental to the behavior 

 of our species. The idea of a League of Nations represents a con- 

 cept of high order, but Mr. L. P. Jacks reminds us that we cannot 

 have a durable league of nations because that would mean a league 

 of governments. Governments being political in nature are not 

 at all equally capable of obliging their people to fulfill obligations 

 placed upon them politically. Politicians who obtain control in 

 courts and in republics represent a class given to clan activities. 

 For their own purposes they make use of herd instinct which we 

 commonly call patriotism. They direct it into a kinetic of comba- 

 tive nationalism and then call out their gunmen of armies and 

 navies. "America first," "Deutschland ueber alles," "Britannia 

 rules the waves" are all fight-producing tools of the politician, to 

 say nothing of the later effect of the Treaty of Versailles which 

 will leave people of different nations looking forward to warfare 

 as rapidly as they can store up money to pay for it. 



An essential factor in population check not considered by so- 

 ciologists in general is what we may call cultural limitation. 

 Breeders of animals and of plants are familiar with the observa- 

 tion that varieties of plants or animals when subjected to processes 

 of cultivation reach cultural limitations and then run out. They 

 cease to become productive and a decadent variety is followed 

 by an ascendant variety. Man as a cultivated animal responds to 

 this natural law and the people of his various cultural periods run 

 out, to be replaced by others. 



Notwithstanding the checks furnished by warfare and by cul- 

 tural limitation, human population of this world is due to increase 

 enormously. We can take care of it all. From the circum-polar 

 regions we shall have new supplies of meat provender furnished by 

 reindeer, bison, mountain sheep, musk oxen, ptarmigans, and hares 

 as rapidly as man systematically removes the natural wild enemies 

 of this food supply. He will simply give the proper sort of at- 

 tention to predatory species. The tropics with their almost un- 

 touched riches in land for production of vast food supplies are 



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