SCIENCE AND THE WAR 123 



ships, destroy innocent villages and towns, ex- 

 terminate our weaker opponents in any way that 

 seems best to us. It was all summed up centuries 

 ago by the author of the Book of Wisdom : " Let 

 us oppress the poor just man, and not spare the 

 widow, nor honour the ancient grey hairs of the 

 aged. But let your strength be the law of 

 justice : for that which is feeble is found to be 

 nothing worth." That is Natural Selection in 

 operation in human life when human beings 

 have been stripped of all " mythical ideas of Sin : " 

 not a pretty picture nor a condition of affairs 

 under which we should like long to exist. Some 

 of the other resemblances are less dreadful, but 

 none the less instructive. Let us take the matter 

 of Mimicry. There is a form of protective 

 mimicry whereby the living thing is like unto its 

 surroundings, and thus escapes its enemy. We 

 find it in warfare in the use of khaki dress, in white 

 overalls in snow- time, in other such expedients. 

 But there is also a form of Aggressive Mimicry 

 in which a deadly thing makes itself look like 

 something innocent, as the wolf tried to look in 

 " Little Red Riding Hood." " The Germans were 

 beginning their attack on Haumont. Their 

 front-line skirmishers, to throw us into confusion, 

 had donned caps which were a faint imitation of 

 our own, and also provided themselves with Red 

 Cross brassards " (The Battle of Verdun. H. 

 Dugard). Not to be tedious on this point, 

 which really does not require to be laboured, let 

 me finish with one quotation from a vivid series 

 of war-pictures. Boyd Cable is writing of men 



