THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION, 15 
hunger, and suffering on a scale so intense that no other situa- 
tion in life can equal. ‘War is hell,’’ said one who had experi- 
enced its horrors, and we instinctively feel that the description 
is none too vivid. 
We are naturally led from these considerations to ask, ‘Is 
it necessary’’? An answer to this question can only be given 
by a consideration of three things—man’s nature, the evidence 
of history, and the results produced. First, then, when we con- 
sider man’s nature, we find universally present a pugnacious 
quality which leads us to resent wrongs, to give blow for blow, 
‘ insult for insult. This is illustrated in the lives of children, of 
adults, and of nations. I am speaking of the natural tendency 
unregulated by the higher part of our nature. So amongst na- 
tions we find the tendency to fight, practically unrestrained, 
amongst savage nations, and amongst civilized nations the in- 
fluences opposed to the spirit of war increase with the advance 
.towards a higher civilization. This will account for the almost 
inhuman ferocity and delight with which the North American 
Indians nounced upon a neighboring tribe, and the fiendish in- 
genuity they displayed in torturing their prisoners. We could 
readily understand their makine war on the English or French, 
who were dispossessing them and inflicting wrongs upon 
them, but find it difficult to understand their savage 
attacks on one another, which were not inspired’ by 
lust of conquest, for there was plenty of room and to spare 
for the 200,000 Indians scattered over the continent of North 
America. With them war was a tribal occupation. It and the 
chase being the only employment befitting the men of the 
tribe. — 
The history of the English nation, with which we are all 
sist the distressed Britons against their foes, these bold sea-rob- 
familiar, will show us how that the advance of a country ’s eivil- 
ization puts a check on the readiness with which that country 
plunges into war. When, for example, our Saxon forefathers 
were invited over from their forest homes in Germany to as- 
bers proceeded to seize upon their pay in the shape of the 
country itself, and helped themselves so forcibly that during the 
