178 The Evolution of Arms and Armor. 



these, gradually, to all the employments needed for social 

 nourishment, while a third part were trained specifically 

 as soldiers. Thus inside the nation were started the soft 

 industrial arts, the fluid, nutritive, growing, organizable 

 parts of the body, and, on its outside, the hard military 

 protective shell, precisely the same state of things that 

 existed in the earliest forms of individual life. And 

 along these two lines, away up into the civilization of to- 

 day, has been all national development, these as methods 

 of protection distinguishing countries in precisely the same 

 way that they do animals and plants. On the one hand is 

 outward military encasement, as with all the great nations 

 of Europe, Orthocerates and Glyptodons that stretch 

 over vast territories ; Megalosaurs and Machairoduses whose 

 dimensions are those of States. Forts and frigates are 

 their shells and scales ; long rows of sharp sabres and glit- 

 tering bayonets their teeth ; vast armies their ponderous 

 jaws ; Krupp-cannon and Gatling-guns their talons and 

 claws, and 



"The bursting shell, the gateway rent asunder, 

 The rolling musketry, the clashing blade, 

 And ever and anon in tones of thunder 

 The diapason of the cannonade," 



the wild-beast cries with which they leap upon their foe. 

 On .the other hand is interior development, as, in some de- 

 gree, with our own land, the skeleton of a better social 

 organization for the uniting and upholding of the body as 

 a whole, the nerves and arteries of telegraphs and railroads 

 for the quicker and closer communication of part with 

 part, the muscles and ligaments of industry and business 

 lor the obtaining of better nourishment, and the eyes, ears 

 and brain of more schools, more arts and sciences and more 

 cliurclies, for the gathering of knowledge and the growth 

 of mind. 



AYhich of these methods is it the part of true statesman- 

 ship to empliasize and use ? There is a tendency even in 

 t)ur own land to fall back on tlie method of outward force. 

 "We get alarmed ever and anon at what we call our de- 

 fenseless condition, at oiir small army, our rotting gun- 

 boats, and our dilapidated forts. We picture to ourselves 

 what a terrible thing it would be if some little country 

 witli a big cannon should declare war against us ; and follow 

 with boyish pride the excursions of our costly show-frigates 



