Variable Ideals 205 



Therefore in the practical efforts for self-preservation the 

 resort to armed force is imposed, even upon those despising 

 it, so long as it is persisted in by others. But it is observable 

 that the results of the comparisons thus provoked, are 

 most amazingly in favor of the conduct most constructive 

 and least aggressive. It is not only to be seen now, but it 

 is recorded in all history, that the peoples who have best 

 cultivated their powers in industry and commerce, and in 

 mutual support and trust, have thereby secured for them- 

 selves elements of strength, enormously greater and more 

 enduring than the essentially aggressive qualities they have 

 relinquished. The savage disregard for suffering, which 

 is lost, is more than offset by the value of the civilized 

 alleviation of a soldier's hardships. The barbaric stoical 

 endurance of slaughter in defeat is balanced by the civilized 

 practice of surgery and medicine. The ignorance of arms 

 of the million workers, is made up by their skill, and by 

 their scientific equipment, and altruistic support, for the 

 specialized soldiers. And in the contests of nations when 

 reaction has measured strength with progression, that is to 

 say when a predatory people has engaged in contest with a 

 co-operative people, the higher principle has always pre- 

 vailed, other things being equal. Even in cases, which have 

 occurred, where the power of government and control of a 

 mixed nation has passed to a militant people by their con- 

 quest of an industrial people, it has often been done without 

 displacement of the civilization; and may in some cases be 

 regarded as an endowment of, or an adoption by, that civili- 

 zation, of a somewhat exotic piece of militant machinery for 

 its better protection, as happened in the Chinese acceptance 



