IS WAR NECESSARY? 



War a Normal State — Cannot be Abolished by Appeal to Reason or to Sentiment 

 — Problem One of Biology — Bearing of Recent Researches on It. 



Paul Popenoe 



'A' 



S I reflected,"' says Major George 

 W. Crile, of the Medical Reserve 

 .Corps, "upon the intensive appli- 

 cation of man to war in cold, 

 rain, and mud ; in rivers, canals, and 

 lakes ; under ground, in the air, and un- 

 der the sea; infected with vermin, cov- 

 ered with scabs, adding the stench of 

 his own filthy body to that of his de- 

 composing comrades; hairy, begrimed, 

 bedraggled, yet with unflagging zeal 

 striving eagerly to kill his fellows ; and 

 as I felt within myself the mystical 

 urge of the sound of great cannon I 

 realized that war is a normal state of 

 man." 



The history of the race has left its 

 mark in every man and woman. 

 Through millions of years mankind 

 fought its way upward. Every indi- 

 vidual had to fight to avoid becoming 

 the food of some carnivorous beast. He 

 had to fight against the forces of Na- 

 ture. He had, further, to fight with his 

 own fellows, to some extent, for food, 

 shelter, and a mate. Any male who 

 could not and would not fight when 

 necessary had small chance of leaving 

 any offspring. It is natural, then, that 

 every human male should still have an 

 inborn disposition to war that, once it 

 has been aroused by the appropriate 

 stimuli, "the impulse to war is stronger 

 than the desire to live." As an organ- 

 ism, man is probably better organized 

 to fight than to do anything else. 



War being instinctive in its origin, 

 being an expression of man's inherited 

 nature, it cannot be reasoned out of 

 existence. ''If men's actions sprang 

 from desires for what would in fact 

 bring happiness," Bertrand Russell 



points out^ in his notable book. Why 

 Men Fight, "the purely rational argu- 

 ments against war would long ago have 

 put^ an end to it. What makes war 

 diflicult to suppress is that it springs 

 from an impulse, rather than from a 

 calculation of the advantages to be 

 derived from war." 



Militarists have long recognized this 

 fact and made the most of it. The 

 fighting instinct being the strongest that 

 men possess, militarists think that it is 

 Utopian to talk of suppressing it. War 

 is not only natural, but inevitable; the 

 only rational course for a nation to 

 pursue is to recognize this biological 

 fact and prepare to meet war when it 

 comes. 



So far as the immediate future is 

 concerned, this is certainly true. But 

 it is the function of science to take a 

 long look ahead, and without hindering 

 the present preparation for war, it may 

 well submit this very important instinct 

 to as searching an analysis as possible. 



SIMILARITY OF WAR AND PEACE 



It is sometimes supposed that war 

 and peace are distinct states, but as a 

 fact peace is, for most people, simply 

 war under a different guise, and the 

 transition to war is merely the transi- 

 tion from indirect to direct combat. 

 "Pursuing, escaping, and fighting, the 

 brute adaptations, have been gradually 

 modified during the rise of man, until 

 now in the complicated machinery of 

 modern life the human energy expended 

 by the savage in pursuit and escape and 

 fight is expended in the shop, in trans- 

 porting commodities on land and sea, in 



iWhy Men Fight, by Bertrand Russell, sometime fellow and lecturer in Trinity College, 

 Cambridge (Eng.). New York: The Century Co., 1917. 



257 



