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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 192. 



the attention of this Association. I hear 

 already a protest against the thought that 

 men of science can have any special inter- 

 est in war — war, the supreme savagery, the 

 legalization of robbery and murder, the as- 

 semblage of all cruelties, crimes and horrors 

 set up as an arbiter of international justice. 

 But the man of science has another view of 

 war. He regards it as the worst survival 

 of savage life, still occasionally unavoidable 

 because of other survivals of the savage 

 state, such as superstition, jsassion uncon- 

 trolled, and lust of wealth and power. He 

 recognizes the fact that war makes a tem- 

 porary and local hell on earth, and that all 

 its characteristic activities are destructive ; 

 whereas all the normal activities of a free 

 government should be constructive, and in- 

 tended to promote the good of its citizens 

 and general civilization; but he does not 

 accept Sumner's dictum in his oration of 

 1845 on the ' True Grandeur of Nations ' — ■ 

 " there can be no war that is not dishonor- 

 able." He recognizes that occasional war, 

 and therefore constant preparedness for 

 war, are still necessary to national security, 

 just as police, courts, prisons and scaffolds 

 are still indispensable to social order and 

 individual freedom in the most civilized 

 and peaceful States. Moreover, the man of 

 science perceives that, while the imme- 

 diately destructive objects in war are sav- 

 age and barbarous, the instrumentalities 

 and forces used in modern warfare are 

 closely akin to the great constructive agen- 

 cies and forces in human society. The ap- 

 plications of Bessemer steel in war are not 

 its primary uses ; its peaceful constructive 

 applications give it its primary value. The 

 application of compressed air for the trans- 

 mission of power was not invented for the 

 dynamite gun, but for tunnelling and min- 

 ing. No nation can now succeed in war 

 which has not developed in peace a great 

 variety of mechanical, chemical and bio- 

 loo'ical arts. Now, the normal activities of 



these arts must and do tend to advance 

 human civilization. Their application to 

 the destructive cruelties of warfare is ab- 

 normal. Yet, inasmuch as they are applied 

 in war with a prodigious energy and inten- 

 sity, it may well be that the acute horrors 

 of even the shortest war may have a lesson 

 for the long normal periods of peace. 



Men of science, so far as I have observed, 

 do not consider the martial virtues — cour- 

 age, endurance, loyalty and the willingness 

 to subordinate self-interest to the interest 

 of clan, tribe or nation— to be the supreme 

 and ultimate objects towards which the 

 h uman race must struggle on . They regard 

 these virtues as the elementary, funda- 

 mental, preliminary virtues, which can be 

 cultivated in man's savage state, and so be- 

 come the stepping-stones of his moral ad- 

 vance ; but they know, on the demon- 

 strative evidence of both history and natural 

 history, that these virtues may co- exist with 

 cruelty, rapacity and lust, and an almost 

 complete indifference to both truth and jus- 

 tice. Civilization, in their eyes, means the 

 adding of justice, truth and gentleness to 

 the martial virtues, an addition which does 

 not necessarily involve any countervailing 

 subtraction. Truly, it is not war which 

 prepares men for worthy and successful 

 lives in times of peace. On the contrary, 

 it is worthy life in time of peace on the part 

 of individual men, or a nation of men, 

 which prepares for success in war. Do we 

 not all believe that the normal activities of 

 peace under free institutions are the best 

 possible, though not the only necessary, 

 preparation for inevitable war, and that 

 such normal activities never need to be, and 

 never can be, purified or uplifted by avoid- 

 able war ? Nevertheless, we may believe 

 that some lessons for times of peace can be 

 drawn from the prodigiously stimulated 

 activity of the government and the sacri- 

 fices of the people in time of war. 



The first important inference which may 



