306 THE KEGULATION OF NUMBERS 



It has, however, to be remembered that warfare takes a place 

 among the factors of ehmination and that the greater the amount 

 of ehmination through war, the less need there is for the practices 

 of abortion and infanticide. But this is quite a different thing 

 from saying that warfare results from over-population or from 

 the pressure of population. It merely implies that, given the 

 power of increase, warfare is a factor which may perform to a 

 small degree the elimination necessary in order that numbers 

 should not exceed the desirable limit and is therefore tolerated — 

 other things being equal — as a factor in social life by the natural 

 selection of customs. 



It has nevertheless to be allowed that, when war breaks out, 

 the position as regards population may form an element in the 

 situation — ^just as the passions which have been aroused may 

 do so though they cannot be regarded as the cause of modern 

 war. Let us consider the late war. Broadly speaking in all 

 European countries increase in population was in response to 

 economic requirements. Yet there were what we have called 

 minor fluctuations away from the desirable economic density. 

 France and Germany represented two opposite tendencies — 

 towards under- and over-population respectively. These relatively 

 slight differences were greatly exaggerated in popular opinion 

 owing to the attention paid to the birth-rate. The Germans were 

 thinking and talking of expansion whereas the French were stay-at- 

 home people. The Germans looked across the frontier and thought 

 they saw a half-empty country which they could well develop 

 with their ' surplus ' population, while the French thought they 



but also that it is a custom of relatively late origin (Perry, ' Ethnological Study of 

 Warfare ', 3Iem. and Proc. Mayi. Lit. and Phil. Soc, vol. Ixi). It is suggested 

 that it is bound up with organization under kings and chiefs, and that it was 

 introduced at a more or less definite time by a certain race. The evidence adduced 

 would seem not to be adequate. The theory belongs to a series of attempts to 

 show that very many customs and social institutions now widespread evolved in 

 some one centre and spread thence. Though Professor Elliot Smith and his school 

 may with justice insist on the fact that the multiple origin of similar customs has 

 been too lightly assumed, it is equally unreasonable to insist upon tracing all 

 similar customs and institutions to the same source. Those who are acquainted 

 with the numerous and wonderful examples of convergence in the animal kingdom 

 — the independent evolution of tracheae in the Arachnids and in the Insects, to 

 take only one example — will have little difficulty in accepting the view that, 

 in response to similar environmental conditions, similar customs may from 

 time to time have been independently evolved. Other authors have urged 

 that the apparent absence of weapons among the cultural remains of early races 

 is evidence that they did not practise warfare (Havelock Ellis, Philosophy of 

 Conflict, p. 49). But when so much doubt surrounds the question as to how the 

 most common implements were used, it is dangerous to attribute much weight 

 to this argument. 



