VI 
PLANTS THAT KEEP A STANDING ARMY AND NAVY; 
PLANTS THAT EMPLOY AN AERIAL SQUADRON ; 
PLANTS THAT KEEP SERVANTS AND 
LIVE STOCK 
VERY great power or nation has found it 
necessary to keep a standing army; and, usu- 
ally, the greater the nation, the larger the army. 
It has been learned that the armed-nation system 
is an incentive to peace; while war means waste 
and general disaster. Hence the value of the stand- 
ing army. 
This moral effect of keeping a standing army is 
as apparent to plants as to men. There are some 
plants which wage warfare; others, being rich, pay 
“blackmail” to their enemies, rather than fight 
against them; some actually hire soldiers and main- 
tain an armed protective system. This is especially 
true of certain plants growing in the tropics, which 
are besieged by so many kinds of enemies, of both 
the flying and the crawling type, that without their 
armies they would be totally destroyed. 
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