1 878.] 
Economy of Nitrogen. 
155 
These considerations seem to us to supply a new argu- 
ment against war, to which we would call the attention of 
such Peace Societies — if any there be — whose hatred of 
war is logically consistent, and is not merely assumed at 
times to suit the purposes of faction. Hitherto political 
economists and social reformers, especially of the Mal- 
thusian school, have looked upon war as one of the “ positive 
checks ” upon the increase of population. Whilst deploring 
the other evils brought on by international conflicts, they 
have regarded it as a set-off that every battle must decrease 
the proportion of eaters to the total amount of food. Had 
they, before advancing such opinions, taken counsel of the 
chemist, he would have told them that although their view 
might have been correct in the olden time, when men shot 
each other with the grey-goose shaft or cleft each other’s 
skulls with the battle-axe, yet since 
“ That villainous saltpetre hath been digged 
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth ” 
the case is totally altered. Our modern battles, how san- 
guinary soever, reduce the supply of food along with the 
demand. Every rifle and every cannon discharged may 
destroy adtual life, but certainly must destroy the means of 
life. Each ounce of powder burnt means so much more 
nutriment withdrawn from our crops, so much less bread or 
beef producible, and so much less human life rendered pos- 
sible in the future. Speculators on the population question 
must henceforth cease to regard war as one of their “ posi- 
tive checks.” Indeed these same “ positive checks ” are 
becoming somewhat abridged. War, as we have seen, 
though waged upon a larger scale than ever, has been con- 
verted into an agency of an opposite nature. Pestilence is 
to be abolished by “ sanitary reforms.” What remains, 
then, but famine ; and, unless we cease our systematic 
waste of the elements of food, that we shall certainly 
experience. 
We shall, perhaps, understand more clearly the essential 
antagonism between food-raising and gunpowder-making if 
we consider the process by which saltpetre was formerly 
obtained in most countries of Europe. If we, in England, 
saw less of this operation than did most of our neighbours, 
it was because we imported the nitre from other parts of 
the Empire, where it was produced substantially on the 
same principle, even though without the conscious and in- 
tentional intervention of man. So-called nitre-beds were 
