PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 385 



materialism." Much more has been written in the same strain. 

 Professor Stanley Hall, from the stand-point of the educator, 

 deals with the subject of war and military service very compre- 

 hensively in his encyclopaedic work on Adolescence, commending" 

 the training as eminently serviceable in giving exercise to the best 

 of our human faculties. On the other hand, much has been 

 written on the horrors of war, its uselessness, its evil effect alike on 

 the conquerors and the conquered, the race deterioration that arises 

 from it, and the evil passions which it lets loose. 



But others make comparisons and draw a contrast between war 

 and commercialism. One says — " National diseases due to peace 

 are far worse than those due to war. War is hell because its 

 destruction is more evident, but the destruction of peace is 

 immeasurably more infernal." Witchell, in The Cultivation of 

 Man, draws a picture of the surviving type of man — the business 

 type, the man who now has, on the average, the best chance of 

 physical life on earth. It is so painful that the ordinary reader 

 wonders if a tithe of it can be true. I have thought that if 

 patriotism in time of national strain and stress is a test of indivi- 

 dual or class morality, the subject of army contracts during almost 

 any modern British war would furnish an interesting text for a 

 comparison of military with commercial integrity of character. 



The fact is there is no such thing now among civilized peoples 

 as war — in the abstract. There are only individual wars, each 

 differing from another in numerous respects. And the question 

 arises whether in this country we cannot so train our lads in play, 

 sports, physical exercises, camping out, swimming, horse riding, 

 and such like exercises as to make them healthy, alert, self-reliant, 

 unselfish, mutually helpful, co-operative — in short, skilled in all 

 that pertains to war should war be unavoidable. And in peace 

 these qualities can always be exercised to their fullest extent; and 

 such exercises v/ill help to preserve our youths from those forms 

 and effects of commercialism that would sap the foundations of our 

 individual and social life. 



Twenty-five years ago Oliver Wendell Holmes said — 



" The attitude of modern Science is erect, her aspect serene, 

 her determination inexorable, her onward movement 

 unflinching; because she believes herself in the order of Pro- 

 vidence, the true successor of the men of old, who brought 

 down the light of heaven to men. She has reclaimed 

 astronomy and cosmogony, and is already laying a firm hand 

 on anthropology, over which another battle must be fought, 

 with the usual result, to come sooner or later." 

 6117. N 



