262 WHAT IS LIFE? 



or is it that we are willing to regard it as a temporary 

 instrument of the present cultivated savage condition 

 of things, and in a higher civilization to let it 

 speedily become a thing of the past ? Look at the 

 inventive power of modern science, and see how 

 much of the human effort is to utilize the forces of 

 Nature for destructive purposes. The forces in Nature 

 are, in a sense, passive. When a discovery of a force 

 in Nature is made, it lies with us to a certain degree 

 whether we utilize that force for good or for evil. And 

 how comes it that these international jealousies, so 

 fruitful of war, exist ? The grand factors are : men do- 

 not know enough of each other internationally, and 



extend till it touches the boundaries of Russian dominion. Before 

 that time comes strange changes will have taken place changes that 

 must shake to their very foundations the Empires of the West 

 and decide the great question of the future : the contest among the- 

 nations of Europe for final supremacy, not only over India but also 

 over the further East a contest in which the East must inevitably 

 fall vanquished so long as physical force is to decide the pre- 

 eminence of the hardy dwellers in Northern climes over their effete 

 and perhaps more degenerate brethren in the enervating regions of 

 tropical lands. 



" At the present moment the whole world throbs to its centre with 

 eagerness to enter on the mighty contest a contest which all know 

 cannot be long delayed. So portentous appear to be the coming 

 changes that none seems to know whether it were wise to hope 

 that some solution may come speedily or that for a time the West 

 may be allotted opportunity to reconsider her position in the history 

 of the world's civilisation before her irresistible material resources- 

 are again sent forth to bend and mould to her ways the sedate and 

 placid peoples whose necks are already bent before their coming 

 conquerors." (" British India," E. W. Frazer, LL.B., 1896, 

 p. 351.) 



Much instructive information showing the horrors of war can be 

 obtained in this interesting book. 



