Ritter: War, Science, Civilization 
portions of the primal resources of 
nature as are necessary to enable them 
to maintain the places they have won, 
without having to resort to war to 
secure them?”’ 
“Stating the matter still more 
pointedly, is an international arrange- 
ment possible whereby a nation might 
under certain circumstances give over 
to other nations portions of its territory 
or other economic advantages peace- 
fully, deliberately, and without im- 
mediate and definite compensation? 
The suggestion even in the form of a 
question will probably seem too absurd 
to merit a moment’s thought by 
practical men. My own categorical 
answer to the question is, no, as long as 
politics, national and international, rest 
on a philosophy of nature and human 
nature so defective as that on which 
they now do rest; but yes, if political 
practice could be based on a philosophy 
that should conform to the actual facts 
of nature and human nature.” 
Politics can never be scientific, Dr. 
Ritter thinks, because it is devoted to 
the meeting of exigencies, the dealing 
with matters of expediency, which are 
quite alien to the spirit of science. 
But if politics can not be a science in a 
strict sense, yet it cannot measure up to 
the real needs of modern civilization, 
unless it rests on a foundation a large 
part of which is science. 
An essential part of this foundation 
would be the recognition of those 
general principles of nature and human 
nature upon which man, the human 
animal, would base his efforts to ward 
off in effective fashion crises of national 
want, and thereby avoid being placed 
in the position of the hungry man who 
takes by force the loaf of bread. 
WAR DEFEATS OWN END 
From this point of view, it is of first 
importance to recognize that war de- 
feats its ownend. It is anomalous that 
a system of distributing the necessities 
of men’s existence among the political 
divisions of the earth, should be in 
vogue whereby in order that men may 
get that which they must have, they 
are obliged to destroy a large portion 
187 
of that for which they are striving. 
Those who defend war as a means of 
gaining territory or other economic 
advantage, and refer to the biological 
struggle for existence as a justification, 
forget the nature of the Sub-human 
struggle. That results in the destruc- 
tion or defeat of some of the combatants 
merely; while the struggle among human 
beings, especially those living under 
civilization, results in destroying not 
only some of the combatants, but much 
of the goods over which they fight. 
From this standpoint, so-called civilized 
warfare is far less scientific than the 
pillaging warfare among savages, which 
aims chiefly at capturing and carrying 
off the goods for which it is waged. 
Further, when politics invokes the 
support of biology to justify war, it 
must recognize that “‘Nature’s resources 
are actually limited for partly civilized 
man, but potentially unlimited for fully 
civilized man.” So far as nature and 
science are concerned, there is ample 
reason to believe that civilization might 
ensure its own progress indefinitely, 
even though “pressure of population 
upon means of subsistence’”’ be accepted 
as an inevitable concomitant of that 
progress. But an essential condition of 
continued progress would be the utiliza- 
tion of all the resources of nature to the 
fullest extent. 
In the way of doing this stands the 
stupendous obstacle of existing political 
ideas and practices relative to the 
ownership of its primal resources. “It 
seems unescapable that if science is to 
be enabled to do its best for civilization, 
some way will have to be found to 
overcome this difficulty. Nothing could 
be further from scientific than the way 
Africa and the Pacific islands are being 
allotted among the civilized nations. 
Perhaps there is little hope of early 
reaching a rational basis in this matter. 
Surely there would be none were it not 
for the fact that civilized men are 
ruled so largely by general theories held 
in the blindest way; but that these 
theories may undergo profound change 
when personal interests are seen to be 
at stake; and that, on the whole, right 
theories appeal more to normal men 
than wrong ones.” 
