Popenoe : Is War Necessary ? 



261 



ample. x\ year of this, not wholly de- 

 void of hardship, ought to put iron into 

 the soul of a young man, and conversely, 

 take the light out of him. At the same 

 time, the stimuli to war must be re- 

 duced by a more rational system of edu- 

 cation, which will show the horrors as 

 well as the glamor of war, and will give 

 more time to Pasteur and Darwin than 

 it does to Napoleon and Marlborough. 



SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH NEEDED 



Much research will be required before 

 the question of dealing with this instinct 

 can he fully settled, but several men of 

 science have given attention to it, since 

 William James blazed the way, and 

 have made suggestions that deserve 

 consideration. Major Crile, as de- 

 scribed above, points out that many of 

 the activities of normal life give vent 

 to the bellicose disposition. If the most 

 satisfactory of these are extended and 

 intensified, they would still further 

 meet the need of human nature. 



Captain Cannon, whose researches on 

 the emotions are already classic, points 

 out^ that modern warfare no longer sat- 

 isfies the emotional nature of man as it 

 once did. The exhilaration of a charge 

 across No INlan's Land is undeniable; 

 but charges nowadays are few and far 

 between, and most of warfare is of a 

 routine, mechanical nature. War as a 

 psychological instrument for giving 

 "tone" to a nation has been developed 

 too far, he says, and something else is 

 now required. From the physical point 

 of view, he thinks greater extension of 

 competitive athletics would be valuable, 

 and he cites the case of the Igorrot 

 head-hunters of the Philippines, who 

 were turned from the warpath by the 

 Americans and now find an outlet for 

 their energies in sports. From the 

 moral point of view, he thinks the 

 fighting spirit of men should rather be 

 turned against the environment. The 

 great battle should be against pain, dis- 

 ease, poverty and sin, and international 

 warfare of the present kind should 

 rather be regarded as dissension in the 

 ranks. 



Professor Russell's discussion of the 

 substitutes for war has been more thor- 

 oughgoing than that of anyone else. 

 The first thought that naturally occurs, 

 he says, '"is that it would be well if men 

 were more under the dominion of rea- 

 son. ... If impulses were more 

 controlled, if thought were less domi- 

 nated by passion, men would guard 

 their minds against the approaches of 

 war fever, and disputes would be ad- 

 justed amicably. This is true, but it is 

 not by itself sufficient. It is only those 

 in whom the desire to think truly is it- 

 self a passion who will find this desire 

 adequate to control the passions of war. 

 Only passion can control passion, and 

 only a contrary impulse or desire can 

 check impulse. Reason, as it is 

 preached by traditional moralists, is too 

 negative, too little living, to make a 

 good life. It is not by reason alone that 

 wars can be prevented, but by a posi- 

 tive life of impulses and passions an- 

 tagonistic to those that lead to war. It 

 is the life of impulse that needs to be 

 changed, not only the life of conscious 

 thought." 



REDIRECTION OF IMPULSES 



"Blind impulses sometimes leads to 

 destruction and death," he points out 

 again, "but at other times they lead to 

 the best things the world contains. 

 Blind impulse is the source of war, but 

 it is also the source of science, and art, 

 and love. It is not the weakening of 

 impulse that is to be desired, but the 

 direction of impulse toward life and 

 growth rather than toward death and 

 decay." 



"There are three forces on the side 

 of life which require no exceptional 

 mental endowment, which are not very 

 rare at present, and might be very com- 

 mon under better social institutions. 

 They are love, the instinct of construc- 

 tiveness, and the joy of life." All three 

 of these, he thinks, are checked and en- 

 feebled by the present organization of 

 society, and such social reorganization 

 as will give them freer play will help 

 to make war unnecessary. Professor 



^Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage, by W. B. Cannon. New York: 

 D. Appleton & Co., 1915. 



