WAR AND BIOLOGY 



Militarism Can Not Be Justified by Appeal to Evolution and Natural S^lection- 

 The "Struggle for Existence" Misunderstood — The Present 

 Responsibility of the Rural People.' 



L. H. Bailey, Ithaca, X. Y. 



EVERY great crisis imposes special 

 obligations on the people; and 

 certain classes or groups of the 

 people may be met with separate 

 phases of the obligation. So it is said 

 that certain very definite responsibilities 

 now rest on the farmer because of the 

 upset of conditions produced by the 

 great war. 



In times of great stress, when the ac- 

 cessories of life and the unessentials are 

 stripped from us, we come back sud- 

 denly to the necessities and to the bare 

 problems of maintenance. If any dur- 

 able good is to come to us as a people 

 from the carnage in the Old World, one 

 of the gains will be a quickened apprecia- 

 tion of our dependence on the essentials 

 of the earth, and an accelerated de- 

 termination to return to them as to 

 the mother that gave us birth, and 

 to the things that were ordained 

 to us in the beginning. Every ex- 

 perience that brings us back to the 

 munificence of the earth and to a 

 conscious dependence on it, brings us 

 back necessarily to the farmer, and he 

 is elevated in the essential plan of any 

 enduring human society. When the 

 armies shall have killed each othet off, 

 when the supplies shall have been 

 exhausted; when the military organiza- 

 tions shall have tired of their vanities, 

 when vengeance has been spent, and 

 when society becomes ashamed of 

 itself, then we shall begin all over again 

 at a slow and laborious process of 

 reconstruction; and we must begin on 

 the earth. 



In these days of popular education, 

 and particularly in this country where 

 there are no organic social strata, the 

 farmer should gain in relative position 



in society after every u]jheaval or 

 devastation. He must make good the 

 fundamental supplies. And for this 

 reason, the farmer needs to prepare 

 himself very well, that he may be a 

 stronger citizen and better able to take 

 his place. This, it seems to me, is 

 the great message that you teachers are 

 now to take to your people. 



IMPROVING THE CROPS. 



Much is said about the necessity of 

 producing more crops and products be- 

 cause of the war. This is always the 

 farmer's obligation. If this interna- 

 tional slaughter quickens this obliga- 

 tion, as I think it will, the gain will be 

 good and it will be real. I hope it will 

 stimulate us all to do our best. There 

 is just now abroad amongst us a teach- 

 ing to the effect that the farmer cannot 

 afford to put much additional effort 

 into his crop-producing; there may be 

 much truth in it; but it is a weakening 

 philosophy: it is the farmer's ethical 

 responsibility to society to increase his 

 production ; and if he is not remunerated, 

 we must see to it, we all of us, that 

 society so regulates itself as to correct 

 the situation. It is specially important 

 that the man at the bottom and in the 

 background put forth his best efforts. 



I hope that this demoralization will 

 make us more self -resourceful. I hope 

 we shall have more appreciation of our 

 position on the planet, more care of our 

 natural' resources, more determination 

 to do things that will stand, more under- 

 standing of the things that are worth 

 while on the earth that is given to our 

 keeping. 



We are onlookers on the greatest 

 carnage and the most wretched destruc- 



^ Parts of an address delivered before the nineteenth annual meeting of the American Associa- 

 tion of Farmers' Institute Workers, Washington, D. C, November, 1914; and elsewhere. 



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