304 THE EEGULATION OF NUMBERS 



favour of the view here advanced. Migration, in the first place, 

 takes place rather from vigorous communities than from countries 

 where social conditions have long been depressed by over-popula- 

 tion. In the second place, the migrations in question are suscep- 

 tible of another explanation. Regarding the only one of these 

 migrations of which we detailed knowledge — the Islamic — we 

 know that it was prompted by the currency of an idea, and why 

 should we not assume that the previous migrations were so 

 prompted rather than fall back on the theory of over-population 

 which raises so many difficulties ? 



20. It has often been said that war is a ' biological necessity '. 

 ' Wherever we look in nature ', says General von Bernhardi, 

 ' we find that war is a fundamental law of development. This 

 great verity, which has been recognized in past ages, has been 

 convincingly demonstrated in modern times by Charles Darwin. 

 He proved that nature is ruled by an unceasing struggle for 

 existence, by the right of the stronger, and that this struggle in 

 its apparent cruelty brings about a selection eliminating the weak 

 and the unwholesome.' ^ This has been a favourite contention of 

 German publicists.^ It is not necessary to show here that such 

 views rest upon a fundamental misunderstanding as to what is 

 implied by the term ' struggle for existence '. The error has been 

 recently exposed by Mr. Chalmers Mitchell, who in particular has 

 pointed out that there is nothing in the relationship between 

 species in a state of nature which can in any sense be called war 

 and further that modern nations are not units of the same order 

 as species .3 



It has also been held that war originates from the necessity 

 for the search for food. ' La guerre ', said Comte, * constitue 

 a I'origine le moyen le plus simple de se procurer les subsistances.' * 

 There is no foundation whatever for this view based either on 

 what we know of species in a state of nature or of the conditions 

 obtaining among primitive races. The same may be said of the 

 theory that ' eagerness to acquire property was originally the 

 cause and object of war '.^ 



The idea that over-population is the cause of war is sometimes 

 carried back to some such ' biological ' origin as that indicated 



1 Quoted by Mitchell, Evolution and the War, p. 3. ^ It is only fair to say 



that at least one German author has recently demonstrated the falsity of this view 

 (see Nicolai, Biology of War, p. 34). ' Mitchell, loc. cit., ch. i. * Comt«, 



Philosophic positive, vol. iv, p. 506. ^ Nicolai, loc. cit., p. 34. 



