KROPOTKIN'S "MUTUAL AID" 109 



proved that "Man lias never been so ferocious 

 or so stupid as to submit to such an evil as 

 war without some kind of an effort to prevent 

 it." And he has shown how exceedingly great 

 IS "the number of ancient institutions which 

 bear the marks of a design to stand in the way 

 of war, or to provide an alternative to it." 



A pregnant suggestion is offered as to the 

 causes of that great migration of barbarians 

 which resulted in the overthrow of the Roman 

 empire. "It is desiccation, a quite recent desic- 

 cation continued still at a speed which we for- 

 merly were not prepared to admit. Against it 

 man was powerless. When the inhabitants of 

 North- West Mongolia and East Turkestan 

 saw that water was abandoning them they 

 had no course open to them but to move 

 down the broad valleys leading to the low- 

 lands, and to thrust westward the inhabitants 

 of the plains." And so the one great war 

 recorded of the barbarians, was thrust upon 

 them by absolute physical necessity. 



The barbarians had no social problem, for 

 that private property in the means of life 

 which constitutes the foundation of modern 

 individualism, and from which tbe degrada- 

 tion and poverty of modern civilization results, 

 was unknown among them. They were com- 

 munists. The interest of one was the care of 



