GRASSLAND AND FARMLAND—SMITEH 383 
Asia and all its horsemen right down to the mountain walls of Persia, 
Afghanistan, and the outer provinces of the old Chinese Empire. 
The tables were turned. The mobile grassland horseman found 
himself dominated by a machine-using sedentary man from beyond 
the grassland border. 
It is interesting to contemplate the almost unchanging continuity 
of two culture types: East of the Great Wall, in the good farmland 
of the Chinese plain, the man with the hoe, the mud village, the brick 
temple. This man was, and is, a peace-loving creature untempted by 
the lure of conquest, praying to be let alone in his garden. Instead 
he has been the victim of oft-repeated pillage. 
West of the Great Wall the grassland man, riding a horse, living in a 
tent, menaced by perennial uncertainty of supplies of grass and water. 
His temptation to maraud was strong and oft-repeated. The mobile 
existence of the grassland man made it easy for him to raid and pillage. 
The grain bags of the man with the hoe offered an easy objective. 
Thus, for 4,000 years grassland culture changed but little and the raid- 
ing nomad never ceased his attacks. Almost any year cavalry could 
muster on the plains and in irresistible numbers appear unannounced 
in the farmland beyond the mountain. Thus civilization after civil- 
ization and empire after empire developed in the farmlands and fell 
before the man from the grassland. 
Grassland society permitted and encouraged military power, often 
unlimited except by the whim and fancy of him who wielded it. Temp- 
tation to yield to the power lust was more frequent in the grasslands 
than in other environments. The power lust is unique among man’s 
desires. The gratification of the desire for food, drink, sex, the pleas- 
ures of the chase, of workmanship, of the intellect, of creative art—the 
exercise of all these leads to satiety and sleep. But in terrible contrast, 
the lust for power grows by gratification. It runs away with the 
human spirit. At times it unbalances the mind. The Romans with 
the pitiful record of emperors before them had a word for it—“Impe- 
rial Madness.” 
History furnishes overabundant illustrations. To read “Mein 
Kampf” and contemplate the actions of the Nazis proves the present 
and continuing menace of unchecked power. The dangerous thing is 
that the power lust is born in all individuals. It is even shared by 
some of the quadrupeds. 
If the turbulent history of the Eurasian grassland has any message 
for this generation of men it is an imperative command to so organize 
our affairs that no race, nation, or group can get into a position of 
unlimited power over other large groups. 
Gunpowder and the railway reduced grassland man to impotence. 
They made him the vassal of the man from outside whose machinery 
could outrun the horse and outshoot the horseman’s bow or rifle. 
