Some Annual United States ExpendituresSome Annual United States Expenditures
There is no branch of insurance so important as insurance against war. There is no other thing insured, of which the loss is so vital as that of one's country, and there is no kind of insurance where the cost of security is so small in comparison with the value of the thing insured. Mr. Stockton puts this very clearly in his book, "Peace Insurance":—
"For insurance against loss by burglary, the nation expends $2,850,000 annually; for insurance against crime in the form of municipal, county, and state police we expend $110,000,000 annually; making a total of $112,850,000 expended for premiums on crime insurance alone.... A total annual amount on fire and crime insurance combined is $594,186,104, or about 350 million more than for all our military forces. Considering these figures we may conclude that our military expenditures are by no means greater than the probable loss by a war; that they are small compared with the amounts spent for fire and crime insurance, and that the insurance rate is low compared with that for other kinds of insurance in effect in the business world."
During periods of peace, there tends to be established an equilibrium of supply and demand between our developed industries and our undeveloped resources. Consequently, when war comesand stimulates enormously all our developed industries—arts, sciences, and manufactures—a correspondingly greater demand is placed upon our natural resources, and their development is proportionately increased.
The result is that the nation as a whole is not impoverished in the least by the burden of armaments, but is rather benefited by their support. Also, a nation may likewise be economically benefited by actual war, so long as it has such resources, number of population, industrial arts and sciences, and naval and military equipment as to prevent subjugation and the humiliation and degradation of being forced to pay ransom or tribute in the shape of a large war indemnity to a foreign Power.
The fact that a war indemnity takes gold out of the country, and gives it to another people, makes the indemnity a national calamity. But when money is spent within the country, as it is for armaments, the condition is entirely different.
The following excerpt from "The Valor of Ignorance," by General Homer Lea, admirably presents this:
"Budgets are but the sums total of the symbols of wealth. Whether they are great or small, the wealth of the nation varies not one potato. An individual measures his wealth by coinage, but a nation only by that which coinage represents.
"As a man squanders his money, he becomes impoverished; but it is only when the resources and means of producing that which money represents are destroyed or diminished that the wealth of a nation is lessened. The armament of a nation, instead of being indicative of its impoverishment, is rather an indication of its capacity."
It is a law of psychology that, when we are subjected to a supreme test, we develop unrealized resources within ourselves; resources that never would be developed, nor could be, except through such trial. By consequence, it is evident that supreme trial is an indispensability to the best development of either individuals or nations. However severe may be the trial that results in the supreme development of the natural resources of the nation, and of the dormant resources in its people, it is essentially beneficial to the nation.
Herbert Spencer said that, just as it is impossible to get a five-fingered hand into a three-fingered glove, with a separate finger in each pocket, so it is impossible to get a complex thought into a mind not sufficiently complex to receive it. It is doubtless impossible, therefore, to prove to the pacifist mind that the money spent in building warships cannot be counted as so much loss to the nation.
The money spent by the government in building fighting-ships could not be esteemed so muchmoney lost, even if the ships were useless. The government taxes the people for the money to build the ships, and then pays the money back to the people again for the ships. The people get their money all back, and the government gets the ships. The people lose nothing, and the government is the gainer to the value of the ships. It may be argued that the labor of the people is lost, but what of it? Labor is neither money nor wealth; it merely represents time. It does not hurt the laborers to do the work; on the contrary, it does them good. They pay but an infinitesimal part of the tax for building the ships. Their occupation constitutes them a market for manufactured articles and farm produce, which pays the manufacturers and the farmers a profit far in excess of their part of the tax for the ships, since by the increased demand they both get better prices and sell more goods. The farmer exerts additional effort to supply the demand, for the laborers who build the ships, and the manufacturers who supply their wares, call upon the farmer for greater supplies of produce than they could call for if the fighting-ships were not built. The farmer, always glad to get more out of the ground when he can sell to advantage, is stimulated to extra effort to get the greater profit, and he is made richer for it. The manufacturer is made richer for it, and the laborer is helped by higher wages and by more continuous occupation.
The result is that the fighting-ships have cost nothing. On the contrary, their production has benefited all. Everybody is made better and richer through the building of them.
It is especially significant and pertinent that the added employment of labor in the construction of armaments adds greatly to the number of taxpayers. Consequently, the burden of taxation is thereby borne by a larger number of persons, with a corresponding lessening of the burden on each individual. This is one of the reasons why poverty is not increased by increased government expenditures in the employment of labor.
The enjoyment of life being derived entirely from exercise of our faculties, the more useful exercise we get within our strength, the happier we are. The building of battleships, by putting us more to use, serves the double purpose of getting more wealth out of the ground and making us happier. It may be argued that this would not be true if our economic institutions were not slack, and that, by perfecting these institutions, every one would receive his due amount of normal stimulus, and would be getting out of the ground his normal amount of wealth. This is all very true, but our economic institutions are not yet perfected, and the cost of building battleships comes out of the slack in our institutions. The work merely helps take up some of the slack.
When we have looked upon our Navy, remembering what the pacifists have told us about its enormous cost, we are strongly impressed with the colossal expenditure, not realizing that the Navy has actually cost nothing. Its production has been a source of profit and benefit to the people.
That which determines the size of a burden is the ability to bear it. Our burden of armaments, borne upon the united backs of a hundred million people, with an aggregate wealth of more than a hundred and thirty billion dollars, with an annual increase of wealth of over four billion dollars, becomes insignificant compared with the ability to support it. Size, like distance and time, has no meaning, except in a relative sense, for space and time are limitless. As compared with space, a mustard seed is exactly as large as the sun.
We hear much about the tremendous burden of the present conflict upon the warring nations. The pacifists tell us that they are destined so to exhaust themselves that, when the war is over, we need have no fear of any one of them, or of a coalition of them, because they will have neither men nor money with which to fight.
Enormous Resources of the Warring NationsEnormous Resources of the Warring Nations
The first six months of the war cost about six billion dollars. Now, assuming that the first year of the war should cost even as much as fifteen billion dollars, this would be only five per cent. of the wealth of the warring Powers. But, it must be remembered, that the same thing largely holds true in the case of war that holds true in the case of armaments in time of peace. The cost comes out of the ground, for the most part. In short, the wealth created by the added stimulus in great measure compensates for the loss, especially when the money spent is chiefly returned to the people themselves. The actual out-of-pocket loss to the nations in the present war, taking into account its economic advantages, even during the war, will probably not exceed two and a half per cent., and I doubt if it will amount to that much.
The total number of killed and wounded in the European War during the first six months is estimated at about two million. Most of those wounded will suffer very little permanent injury.
The population of the warring nations is more than four hundred millions, taking into account only such part of the vast Indian population in proportion to the percentage of troops furnished by them as compares with the percentage furnished from the United Kingdom to the number of its inhabitants. Consequently, the total loss in killed and wounded during the first six months of the war was less than a half of one per cent. of the population, and as the number of killed does not exceed ten per cent. of the total number of killed and wounded, the loss during the first six months was about a tenth of half of one per cent.; inother words, only about a twentieth of one per cent.
After the war has run for a year, the total loss in killed and wounded will not exceed one per cent. of the inhabitants, and the total in killed will not exceed a tenth of one per cent.
When the war is over, any one of the warring Powers, unless Germany is exceedingly humbled, will be in better condition in every way to fight us than it would have been before the war broke out.
"If you will study history you will find that freedom, when it has been destroyed, has always been destroyed by those who shelter themselves under the cover of its forms, and who speak its language with unparalleled eloquence and vigor."—Lord Salisbury.There is a no more consistent thing in its constancy than human inconsistency.
"If you will study history you will find that freedom, when it has been destroyed, has always been destroyed by those who shelter themselves under the cover of its forms, and who speak its language with unparalleled eloquence and vigor."—Lord Salisbury.
There is a no more consistent thing in its constancy than human inconsistency.
Many of those who are most pretentious about the virtue of a meek and lowly spirit manifest characteristics the exact opposite of their self-vaunted pretensions. Often the most enthusiastic and devout workers for a principle are themselves, when put to trial, most pronounced violators of that principle.
Some years ago, while on ship for England, I formed the acquaintance of Sir William Wyndeer, of Australia. He told me that there was a famous woman pacifist on board, who wanted to meet me. She was a notorious militant moral reformer—the Carrie Nation of England. I went with him to where she was sitting on the deck in a steamerchair, and, on being introduced, sat down beside her.
She opened the conversation with the remark: "Do you know that men like you ought to be hanged; that hanging is too good for you; that men like you, who invent and make explosives and guns to kill people, ought to be killed with them yourselves? That would give you a dose of your own medicine."
I replied by asking her what she thought of the Armenian atrocities, which were at that time being perpetrated.
"What do I think of them?" she answered. "I think just this—that, if I were the Queen of England, I would put an end to that business pretty quick."
"How would you do it?" I asked.
"Why," she responded, "I would go there with an army, and exterminate those beastly Turks."
"If you were to do that," said I, "surely you would need some of the tools for killing people, like those you blame me for inventing, would you not?"—She would not speak to me after that.
In the Dark Ages, they who were responsible for inflicting upon heretics the most exquisite tortures, were the foremost good-intentionists of their time. They believed they were following the teachings of Christ, and applying them in their business and social relations. Their aim was topractise what they preached: "Love one another," "Love thy neighbor as thyself," "On earth peace, good will toward men."
So imbued were they with what they conceived to be divine principles that it was self-evident to them that there was no excuse for any one holding any other opinion than theirs, and that any one who held a different opinion was an enemy of God and man, and should be punished accordingly. They called difference from their opinion heresy, which was branded as the most heinous of all crimes. Those good-intentionists of the Torquemada type racked, flayed, and burned, with a meek and lowly spirit, for the love of God. The horror of St. Bartholomew was to them merely a frolic of brotherly love.
Advocates of disarmament, non-resistance, and the subversion of the military spirit are themselves most militant creatures. They fail to see that, if retiring, non-resistant pacifism is the best policy for a nation to adopt in order to get what it wants, they themselves should adopt such pacifism to get what they want. While they decry every manner of aggression, still they undertake to enforce their doctrines by most aggressive practices.
Never in all human history has any person or class of persons attempted to proselyte others to a doctrine of mildness, meekness, self-sacrifice, and lowly-spiritedness without attempting to enforce the doctrine. In so doing, the practice has been the exact opposite of the preachment.
Robespierre and Marat notably exemplified this truth. Before the French Revolution, Robespierre was noted as a pacifist of the most pretentious cheek-turning type, and Marat was a pacific moralist dyed in the wool. When raised to dictatorial power, however, Robespierre became the wickedest and most venomous of all the fanged monsters of cruelty in the history of mankind; while bloody Marat, clothed with authority, used murder as the sole means of reform. The actions of Robespierre and Marat were the exact opposite of their code for the conduct of others.
The advocates of non-resistance may be perfectly conscientious. It is not to be doubted for one moment that the majority of them are actuated by the best intentions and the kindliest of motives. Torquemada sincerely hoped to do a great good by torturing heretics in the Spanish Inquisition. He is notable among those who have paved broad highways of Hell with good intentions.
The hyper-sentimental pacifists are today actively engaged in paving a broad highway through this country, over which the hell of war is invited by them.
Devotion to the end justified the means to such a well-meaning fanatic as Torquemada. The same was doubtless true of Catherine de' Medici, who mothered the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Thebloody Duke of Alva, Executioner Extraordinary to Philip II of Spain, who undertook the task of killing the entire population of the Netherlands, because their religious opinion differed from the Spanish brand, could not have been so enthusiastically devoted to the monstrous villainy had he not been inspired by what was to his mind the best of intentions.
It is remarkable what an influence a very little thing may sometimes have in shaping the policy of a people or the fate of a nation. Religious sects have been formed upon the various interpretations of a single phrase; a difference of opinion about the meaning of a word has set them at one another's throats.
Millions upon millions of dollars have been spent in the United States in peace propagandism, and eloquent lungs have hoarsed themselves to defeat Congressional appropriations for defense, simply because the phrase,preparation for war, has been used instead of the phrase,preparation against war.
An organization of American women, under the head, Woman's Peace Party, has lately been created. The main resolution adopted by the organization is the following:
"Resolved:
"That we denounce with all the earnestness of which we are capable the concerted attempt nowbeing made to force this country into still further preparedness for war. We desire to make a solemn appeal to the higher attributes of our common humanity to help us unmask this menace to our civilization."
They have made the grave mistake of using the expression forwarin place of the expressionagainst war.
The pacifist propagandists, the army and navy men, and all their friends and supporters, are alike agreed that it is wise to make efficient preparationsagainstwar. None of us wants war, but when we, who believe in armaments, speak of them as preparationsforwar, then the pacifists are in immediate disagreement with us. Let us, therefore, in future substitute the phraseagainst warfor the phrasefor war.
Among the organizers of this so-called party are women of national prominence. They are sincere in their purpose, their aim is high. They are emulating the dictum of Emerson, for they have hitched their wagon to a star—Dr. David Starr—(never mind the Jordan). They solemnly make this pledge:
"We do hereby band ourselves together to demand that war should be abolished."
"We do hereby band ourselves together to demand that war should be abolished."
It is well to note that they have used the wordshouldinstead ofshall.
The greatest difficulty in teaching truth is to remove the bias of false learning; for a firm conviction, once established in the mind, gives the mind a fixed set in a certain direction. This is strongly exemplified by the fact that persons who have been proselyted to a certain religious creed can seldom be made to change their faith.
We are what our opinions are. Our opinion shapes our destiny to its own bent. In short, a man is absolutely at the mercy of his opinion.
We have very little to do, however, with the shaping of our own opinion. That is mostly shaped by others. We go to church to have our opinion bent, or its present bent stiffened. We attend a lecture and get a new kink put into our opinion; we converse with our friends, and they dent our opinion; we read books and newspapers, learn something, and are swerved in the direction of our learning, especially in the direction of public opinion. Always and always, while we think that we are shaping our own opinion, we are having it shaped by others.
The estimable ladies of the Woman's Peace Party are merely parading like sandwich men, disporting a legend written on a board by the man higher up, with whom they believe it is most creditable to agree.
At the present time, the false teachings of the peace-propagandists have so proselyted public opinion that every public speaker, aspiring topopular favor, finds it easy, even with a weakling voice and a halting speech, to get his audience with him, and to win a reputation for eloquence and wisdom by prating the bromidial spielings of the peace-propagandists.
A great many men and women in this country hold the same false opinion that the ladies of the Woman's Peace Party hold. Possibly something besides the humiliation of this country by war may lead them into the light of understanding. War, however, will do it, and by their able co-operation with the forces of the future enemies of the country, they are hastening the advent of that war.
If we were to disarm, as these ladies advise, war would come upon us with consternate suddenness. Then, when they saw the desolation and the waste; saw their homes in flames; when they saw innocent citizens clumped in open spaces and shot down with machine-guns; when they saw little children, lean as shadows, starving everywhere; when they encountered insult and maltreatment at every turn; then all their womanhood would revolt and rise up with an altered mind.
Like the light that descended from Heaven on Saul of Tarsus, the light of the truth would descend on those ladies through the smoke of their burning homes—that armed preparedness against such a dread eventuality as war is the supreme of virtue, and its neglect the worst of crimes.
By their help that war is very likely to come, and if it does come, we shall find them, as the women of England, ministering angels in the hospitals of the wounded. We shall find them at the recruiting stations, urging enlistment. We shall find them fitting out their sons, husbands, and brothers for the front. We shall find them, as in England, training in the use of arms as a last emergency reserve. We shall find them, as in England, doing police duty, that the city guardians may go to the front. As the women of Carthage cut the hair from their heads to make bow-strings, so these very women of the Peace Party, as the women of England are doing, as the women of Germany are doing, will sacrifice their jewelry, and all their most precious possessions, to supply the sinews of war.
It is a mistake to suppose that, because men bear arms in war, they are the chief sufferers in war, or make the chief sacrifices. The sexes suffer equally, for to win victory they make mutual and equal sacrifices, and in defeat they suffer mutually every conceivable and every inconceivable laceration of body, pride, and honor.
The supposition is erroneous that woman is less brave or less militant in war than man. In times of peace, when her help is not needed in the sterner affairs of life, she may be as gentle as a dove and as kind as a purring kitten; but, when her help is needed in stern affairs, she is neverfound wanting. When the cubs are in danger, "the female of the species is more deadly than the male."
The abject condition of Belgian women and children since the German invasion is merely typical of what women and children must inevitably suffer at the hands of invaders. It matters not whether a country be invaded by Germans, Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or by Americans. The stern exigencies of war require that the invaders shall bend every energy and employ every resource to the attainment of the main purpose—victory. The invaders themselves are compelled to make extreme sacrifices, and to bear extreme suffering and privation, and are not in a mood to take on more burden or to suffer extra privations, and, above all, to risk success, in order to alleviate the suffering of the enemy's women and children. Sympathy and mercy, however, do often lead them to be far kinder than would best suit the demands of stern necessity.
It was when Sherman found himself compelled to drive out the civil inhabitants of Atlanta, to prepare for his march to the sea, that in reply to protests on behalf of the women and children, he made his world-famous declaration, "War is hell; and we cannot civilize it or refine it."
The supreme duty of a nation is to safeguard its people from such a crisis and such a calamity. It is useless to lament the miseries of our womenand children, after we have, through neglect of national defenses, brought the calamities of war upon them.
With strange inconsistency, the women of the Woman's Peace Party, though they bemoan the lot of the poor women and children of Belgium, are by their own acts inviting the same calamity to fall upon themselves and on their children.
Herbert Spencer observed that individual life is a tendency to establish an equilibrium between internal and external forces. This observation applies also to the life of social organizations, except that, when applied to nations, it should be differently stated, as follows—the life of a nation is the tendency to establish an equilibrium between internal forces, and also between those forces and external forces.
Opposing forces separately tend toward instability of equilibrium, but collectively, by operating against one another, they tend to the establishment of an equilibrium. Individual action in a group of individuals tends to heterogeneity, aggregated action to homogeneity. One of the mainsprings of progress is the pertinacity of enthusiasts and faddists. Even the self-appointed ego-fanatic moral reformers are often useful, because they tend to throw society out of balance. This rouses the great mass of the people to inquiry and raises them to a broader understanding, with the result that, in the end, pernicious propagandists, whohave overshot the mark, are brought back nearer the mark, and the sane mass of the people brought nearer the mark. A fanatic reformer sometimes injects dynamic force into a static condition. It seems to be a rational assumption, therefore, that, in all things where organized feminist fanaticism of both men and women is today working evil, the great body of sane and normal men and women ought to exert their united influence to the full as a stabilizer, or equilibrator of the social organization.
"Probably the most curious feature of the naval program is the regularity with which the sky clouds over as the day for the consideration of naval appropriations approaches. Year after year, after a long spell of pleasant weather, all at once storm clouds have drifted across the heavens, international relations have become suddenly strained, and the whole land has lain in the shadow of an impending conflict. Fortunately, the storm blows over as soon as the votes are counted, and in the beautiful sunlight which follows the storm, workmen are seen constructing additional battleships. Suspicious persons have occasionally imagined they saw a connection between the international weather and the Navy League."Dr. Charles E. Jefferson."It is criminal that we should expend vast sums on warships and armament on the advice of interested parties alone....""War scares are heard the world over. The world over they are set going by wicked men for evil purposes."Dr. David Starr Jordan, "War and Waste."
"Probably the most curious feature of the naval program is the regularity with which the sky clouds over as the day for the consideration of naval appropriations approaches. Year after year, after a long spell of pleasant weather, all at once storm clouds have drifted across the heavens, international relations have become suddenly strained, and the whole land has lain in the shadow of an impending conflict. Fortunately, the storm blows over as soon as the votes are counted, and in the beautiful sunlight which follows the storm, workmen are seen constructing additional battleships. Suspicious persons have occasionally imagined they saw a connection between the international weather and the Navy League."
Dr. Charles E. Jefferson.
"It is criminal that we should expend vast sums on warships and armament on the advice of interested parties alone...."
"War scares are heard the world over. The world over they are set going by wicked men for evil purposes."
Dr. David Starr Jordan, "War and Waste."
The pacifists have delved out of the infinite latency a very startling alleged truth, which they are effulging in language of lavish luminosity, to the effect that it is necessary only for a man to have a pecuniary interest or personal advantage involved in order to commit any kind of crime. They have discovered thatroom for a motive establishes the motive and proves the crime. They have discovered that those things which we call integrity and honor and conscience are no deterrents whatsoever to the commission of the most heinous offense against one's fellow men, so long as there is profit in it. They believe that, if only there is money in the game, an inventor or manufacturer or merchant will scheme for the commission of wholesale poisoning, maiming, and murder. They believe that the inventors and manufacturers of guns necessarily foster war in order to promote the sale of their wares. They surmise that inventors and manufacturers of smokeless powders and high explosives are capable of standing with the "black hand," capable of being gladdened at the dynamite outrage, at the street riot, at the slaughter of song-birds—anything that will consume dynamite or burn gunpowder.
According to the pacifists, the principal lay of makers of war-materials is to connive with the officers of the Army and Navy to stir up international dissension and foment war, in order to create a demand for their products. The pacifists believe that army and navy officers are only too willing to co-operate in the nefarious business, because war brings higher pay and rapid promotion. They believe that it matters not to these "interested parties" how many of their countrymen are sacrificed on the firing line, or how many widowsand orphans are made. The groans of the wounded and dying on the battle-field, and the lamentations in the desolated home, are music to the ears of those who supply the war-materials; for, with every shot from a rifle, fifty grains of gunpowder are burned, while bullets enough miss their mark to equal the weight of each man they kill. Consequently, there is substantial profit to the cartridge-maker and the gunpowder-manufacturer for every man killed with a rifle ball.
But it is in shrapnel and the ammunition for the big guns that the greatest profit lies. Field-guns fire away ammunition costing from ten to twenty dollars a shot, at the rate of from twenty to forty shots a minute. This costs a lot of money. At the battle of Mukden, in the Russo-Japanese war, one battery of eight guns fired 11,159 rounds, or 1,395 rounds per gun. Think of the expense of that ammunition, and the profit to the manufacturers! It is estimated that when the big naval guns are fired, the cost of the smokeless-powder charge, the projectile and bursting charge, together with the wear and tear of the gun, amounts to more than $2,000 a shot, and the damage done to a warship hit may be many millions.
Look at it any way you will, war, according to the pacifist notion, is a real Klondike for manufacturers of war-materials. The peace sophists have been able to put two and two together, with the conclusions that such an opportunity for profitis too strong for human nature to resist, and that, as they have found room for the motive, they have proved the crime.
Of course, their accusation is a pretty severe arraignment of human nature, after all these years of civilization and Christian enlightenment.
It is strange how human nature can have improved so much lately, as claimed by the pacifists, and how the spirit of brotherhood and good-will can have suddenly become so dominant that the peoples of the earth now despise war, and are so afflicted with the horrors of it that, just as soon as the great European War is over, they are not going to fight any more, while still the makers of war-materials remain in the primitive savagery of the stone age. It seems to me that, if human nature has so improved as to be an efficient bar to a nation against waging war for plunder, regardless of the advantage and the profit, it ought also to be a similar bar to inventors and manufacturers of war-materials, and to army and navy officers, against precipitating war for pecuniary or personal advantage.
But, according to pacifist reasoning, those "interested parties" are more endowed with the spirit of the hyena than with the spirit of brotherhood. Perhaps, however, the manufacturers of war-materials, and army and navy officers, were not home when the great improvement in human nature knocked at their door.
If considerations of mere personal profit are sufficient to make the best of us foster war, which the peace fanatics esteem wholesale murder, it is strange that the inventors and manufacturers of drugs and medicines, the proprietors of drugstores, and the medical profession and undertakers, do not form a league and co-operate in spreading infectious diseases, in order to create a greater demand for their wares and for their services.
Of course, the reason may be that they have not yet thought of it, and it may be wrong for me to suggest the thing to them. Still, it is queer that it has not been suggested to them by what the pacifists have said concerning the conduct of our army and navy officers and of the inventors and manufacturers of war-materials.
Let us see what the facts actually are:
The inventors and manufacturers of war-materials, and our army and navy officers, by virtue of the study and experience that qualify them for their business or profession better than others, are also qualified better than others to judge what are our actual needs for national defense.
If the manufacturers of war-materials, and our army and navy men, are to be convicted of inciting war on the evidence that by so doing they create a demand for their services, then necessarily others benefited by a like demand may be convicted on the same evidence.
Mr. Andrew Carnegie himself is the greatest of all American armorers. He it was who introduced the Bessemer steel process into the United States, from which all our gun-makers and all our armament-makers have greatly benefited. It is his name and that of Herr Krupp which Neptune reads graven in the walls of fighting-ships. He still draws an income from his interests in the great armor-making steel corporation—an annual income big enough to pay the combined salaries of all the four thousand officers of the United States Army.
Truly, if the discovery of room for a motive proves both the motive and the crime, and is sufficient to convict these four thousand men of being willing to sell their souls in order to raise their salaries a few dollars, Mr. Carnegie himself is at least open to suspicion.
Likewise, the varied and many institutions—incubators of the doves of peace—born of the great armor-maker's generosity, which continue to be his beneficiaries, cannot escape the suspicion that taints their pedigree.
Even the leading man—the principal star on the stage whereUncle Sammy unter Allesis being played—Dr. David Starr Jordan, is paid from the Carnegie Peace Foundation with money equally tainted by the sweaty hands of the grimy men who are forging armor-plate in the Smoky City.
But we all know that Mr. Carnegie is above anysuch suspicion. We know that the pacifist method of reasoning must be false.
The education of our army and navy officers teaches them not alone military science, but also national devotion and personal honor. Devotion to duty is necessary in order to keep them in the service, under the altogether inadequate pay they receive. The pay of the American army and navy officers is smaller, in proportion to their knowledge and the value of their services, than that of any other class of men in the country. If every army and navy officer should abandon the service for a position in civil life when he could get a raise of wages for so doing, there would not be a corporal's guard left in the service.
Whenever a public work is placed in charge of an army or navy officer, there is nosub-rosarake-off, or divvy with civilian contractors. There is absolutely no graft of any kind in their service, and the government is sure of getting the maximum amount of work for the minimum cost. Not one cent of graft has fallen upon the palms either of Colonel Goethals or of any other army officer in the whole course of construction of that mighty work—the Panama Canal. New York City tried to get Colonel Goethals as Police Commissioner. He has received scores of offers of positions in civil life at many times his present salary, because of the military capacity and honor that make the Goethals sort of service very valuable.
I know many army and navy men intimately. I have had opportunities of hearing their off-guard conversations and interchange of ideas on all manner of subjects, and have thereby been enabled to see their character revealed to the naked soul, and I have never yet discovered any other attitude or tendency among them than the emulation of exactly that type of honor, efficiency, and manhood which is Colonel Goethals'.
I cannot award this same high praise to the politicians I have known.
An army or navy officer always drives just as close a bargain as he can on behalf of the government when doing business with civilians, although the economics of the transaction is of no personal concern to him.
When a politician makes a bargain, his first consideration is: "Where do I come in?" His next consideration is: "Where does the party come in?" Duty to the government is a minor consideration.
It is the demand for a thing that leads to its invention, just as it is the demand for a thing that leads to its manufacture. The demand must precede the production.
When the inventor designs a gun, or invents a new explosive, he does not simultaneously try to invent ways and means of creating a market. He may, on the contrary, be inspired with a spirit of patriotism, and feel that in the event of warhis work will be of signal service to his country, both by killing his country's enemies and by saving the lives of his own people.
The manufacturers of war-materials are much more likely to be actuated by honorable motives, and to make large sacrifices from a spirit of patriotism, than are the manufacturers of soap, agricultural machinery, or automobiles.
The builders of Ericsson'sMonitorwere not able to get the government either to approve or to back the enterprise. They were, however, fortunately inspired by a high spirit of patriotism, and by a strong belief in Ericsson's invention; consequently, they built it at their own expense. It was completed just in the nick of time. The terribleMerrimacappeared before theMonitorwas quite ready. She could laugh at forts, and the projectiles from the guns of our wooden navy glanced off her mailed sides like raindrops off a duck's back. Whether she would be able to run up the Potomac and bombard Washington, was a question only of the depth of water.
The little coterie of bureaucrats in Washington, who had ridiculed the fantastic innovation of Ericsson, were now on Uneasy Street, and sent urgent appeals for theMonitorto be made ready and sent to Hampton Roads with all speed. The peculiar craft did arrive on the morning of the second day of the naval fight. The result is oneof the good stories of history—a story that has never been quite equaled in fiction.
TheMonitorhad not yet been accepted by the government when she fought theMerrimac; she had not yet received the government's approval.
A country Reuben, who saw a giraffe for the first time at a circus, looked the animal over, and, finding that it did not conform to his ideas of what an animal ought to be, remarked, "By gum, there ain't no sich critter!" Likewise, the naval experts at Washington did not believe that there could be any such fighting-ship. After that fight, however, theMonitorwas quickly purchased, and hurried orders were given for moreMonitors.
The patriotism and pluck of the warship-builders saved the country.
The pacifists are strongly urging what they term the nationalization of all manufacture of war-materials; that is to say, that all such materials should be made at government plants. Their object is to have the work done by disinterested persons, who will not be tempted to promote war in order to make a market for those materials. By admirable inconsistency, the pacifists would, in so doing, place the manufacture of war-materials in the hands of army and navy officers, whom they pronounce the most pernicious of all promoters of war.
Before Congress acts upon the suggestion ofthe pacifists to nationalize the manufacture of all war-materials, it would be well to see what would have happened in the past, had the thing been done sooner. We can judge from that concerning the advisability of adopting the measure now.
If it had been adopted at the time of the Civil War, Ericsson'sMonitornever would have been built, because its building depended upon private personal patriotism and private enterprise.
If the measure had been adopted twenty-five years ago, then naturally, during that period, private invention and private enterprise would have been eliminated, and the government would not have profited from civilian genius and energy. Let us see, then, what private invention and private enterprise have done for the government for the past quarter-century, since the advent of smokeless powder.
Colonel E. G. Buckner, vice-president of the du Pont Powder Company, in an article inHarper's Weekly, of June 27, 1914, places the credit for the four most important inventions in the development of smokeless powder—first, to Vieille, of France, who produced gun-cotton; second, to Mendeléeff, of Russia, who told us how to colloid it; third, to Francis G. du Pont, who eliminated danger in the manufacture; and, fourth, to Hudson Maxim, who invented the multi-perforated grain that gave absolute control over the burning.
It will be seen that two of the most important steps in the development of smokeless powder were made by American civilian inventors. The alcohol replacement invention of Francis G. du Pont and my own invention of the multi-perforated grain, rendered possible the use of a colloid of pure nitro-cellulose as a smokeless cannon-powder. It would be absolutely impossible successfully to make a pure nitro-cellulose cannon-powder without these two inventions. If the manufacture of smokeless powder had been nationalized twenty-five years ago, this government would not stand, as it stands today, ahead of all other governments, in the excellence of its smokeless powder.
When the government first ordered a pure nitro-cellulose powder, large quantities of solvents were consumed in its preparation. Private manufacturers introduced new processes to overcome this difficulty, resulting in a material reduction in the cost of the powder, which has already effected a saving to the government of more than $2,000,000.
It is a peculiarity of smokeless powder that, regardless of however stable it may be when first made, it gradually begins to decompose after long standing, which, until recently, necessitated its destruction. Several years ago, however, Mr. Francis I. du Pont, son of the Francis G. du Pont above-mentioned, invented a process for the successful reworking of smokeless powder that has begun to decompose, at a mere fraction of the original cost, making it just as good as ever. This invention alone will hereafter save the government more than a million dollars a year.
When the new army rifle was developed, it was found that the smokeless powder then used by the army, containing nitro-glycerin, was so erosive as to destroy the accuracy of the arm when only 1,600 rounds had been fired. The government obtained from abroad some smokeless powder, which enabled 3,000 rounds to be fired before the gun was destroyed, but after that number of rounds, the rifling was practically obliterated.
A private manufacturer invented a new smokeless rifle-powder, with process and apparatus for its manufacture. With this powder, it is now possible to fire as high as 20,000 rounds before the accuracy of the gun is destroyed. This invention easily multiplies the life of the army rifle by six. As the army rifle will now last six times as long by the use of this powder as it would by the use of any other powder, the value of the invention to the government is by far the chief value of the gun itself. Consequently, it is estimated that this invention alone represents a value for the guns that the government now has on hand of more than $15,000,000.
Not only does our small-arms powder effect a great saving in the wear and tear of our shoulderrifles, but also our pure nitro-cellulose cannon-powder effects a similar saving in the life of our big guns. Our big guns, using pure nitro-cellulose powder, last, with equal accuracy, more than twice as long as British guns, which use cordite.
It will be seen from the foregoing considerations and figures that private genius and private enterprise alone have saved the government very many millions of dollars. Of course, it may be argued that, since guns and ammunition and all kinds of military implements and engines have been perfected, there is not now room for civilian inventors to be so useful to the government during the next twenty-five years as they have been in the past twenty-five.
A similar attitude of the average mind would have existed had the same question been raised twenty-five years ago. When our Patent Office was first established, the Commissioner of Patents predicted that within fifty years everything possible of invention would have been invented and that then the Patent Office would have to be abolished for lack of business. The number of inventions received by the Patent Office, however, has rapidly increased, and is still rapidly increasing. More inventions are received now each year at the Patent Office than were received during the first fifty years of its existence. The reason for this is that every invention, either directly or indirectly, creates a demand for other inventions.The inventor is still working in virgin soil, and the room for invention is infinite.
If the manufacture of war-materials were to be nationalized, not only would the government rob itself of the aid of large quasi-government manufactories, but also it would rob itself of the benefits of the inventive genius of the whole people. The value of that genius may be approximated by recalling what citizen inventions have done since the outbreak of the American Civil War.
Breech-loading guns of all kinds, the percussion cap, cartridges for small-arms, fixed ammunition for quick-firing guns, the breech mechanism for all guns, the built-up gun, the great improvements in steel manufacture, the revolving turret and theMonitortype of fighting-ship, the steam turbine, the internal-combustion engine, all of the great inventions in smokeless powders and high explosives, and their adaptability to use in ordnance, the submarine torpedo-boat, the self-propelled torpedo, the aëroplane and the dirigible, and any number of other inventions indispensable to modern warfare, have been the invention of civilians. Of course, army and navy officers have invented a great many important things themselves, and have rendered great service in the development of civilian inventions. But it must be remembered that army and navy officers constitute but a very small part of the population. Even were armyand navy men ten times more proficient in the invention of war-materials than civilian inventors, the number and value of civilian naval and military inventions would preponderate enormously over those of government officers.
We have been assured all along by the peace sophists that, if war should come, the great American genius would rise to the occasion and spring to our rescue, with all manner of destructive contrivances, capable of annihilating armies and sweeping fleets of fighting-ships off the seas.
If the beautiful nationalization plan of the peace sophists, however, were to be carried out, the great American genius would get no opportunity to fructify the prophesied militant cataclysmic ogerism to the discomfiture of our enemies.
No other government has nationalized the manufacture of armaments and war-materials to the exclusion of private manufacturers. On the contrary, other governments strongly encourage private manufacture, for they realize the vast importance of drawing upon the inventive genius of the whole people, and of enlisting private energy, private enterprise, and private capital in government work.
The French government for more than a hundred years has made all its own gunpowder, but its chief gun-works are private enterprises. Possibly, if the French smokeless powder had been perfected by private enterprise to meet government requirements, those requirements would have been more exacting with private manufacturers than with government manufacturers, and the battleshipsJénaandLa Libertéwould not have been blown up by the spontaneous combustion of bad gunpowder. If this government were to nationalize the manufacture of its war-materials, we know, by what has been done in the past, through private enterprise and private inventive genius, that the government would suffer enormously.
In this era of Congressional investigations, it would be well to have a government inquiry made as to whether or not there should be a new classification of acts of treason. It should be inquired whether or not, in time of peace, public preachments should be allowed advocating the disbanding of our Army and the destruction of our Navy—acts which in time of war might be interpreted as treason, and the offenders backed up against a wall and shot. It should be inquired whether or not foreign emissaries, and possibly spies, have not for years been collaborating with American advocates of disarmament. It should be inquired whether or not the Washington lobby that has been operating against governmental appropriations for the Army and Navy, has not received foreign support. If these things have not been done by representatives of foreign countries, with such a wide-open opportunity, then the diplomatsand strategists of foreign nations ought to be sent to a kindergarten for instruction. Could anything be more likely than that foreign Powers should possess the sagacity to grasp such an opportunity to weaken our defenses?
"All states are in perpetual war with all. For that which we call peace is no more than merely a name, whilst in reality Nature has set all communities in an unproclaimed but everlasting war against each other."Plato.
"All states are in perpetual war with all. For that which we call peace is no more than merely a name, whilst in reality Nature has set all communities in an unproclaimed but everlasting war against each other."
Plato.
So much has been said based on ignorance and false premise about the good and evil of war, and the good and evil of peace, that a few cold, relevant facts will not be out of place here.
In stating these facts, the writer is standing neither as sponsor for war nor as sponsor for peace. He is not posing as a judge qualified to pass sentence on peace or on war, but merely as one who understands the subject sufficiently to throw some new light upon it. In bearing witness to the cruelty and mercilessness of Nature, the writer assumes no responsibility for what Nature has done; he was not consulted. In bearing witness to the evils and benefits of war, and the evils and benefits of peace, the writer does not thereby either palliate the evils, or stand responsible forthem; neither does he assume credit for their benefits and blessings. He realizes, however, that the bearer of bad tidings is associated with the ill-feeling they inspire, although he may be wholly innocent of the ill.
While too much stress cannot be laid upon the horrors of war and the individual suffering incurred thereby, still it is not just to lay to the account of war or militarism every ill that flesh is heir to, as is done by many of the pacifi-maniacs. As a matter of fact, it would be as justifiable to attack peace because of the evils that develop in times of peace. We do not, however, on that account conceive peace to be a misfortune, but a blessing.
While our pacifists promote war by their teachings, they declaim against war and picture its horrors and calamitous results. One would naturally suppose that, appreciating what a terrible thing war is, they would take the most scientific and dependable means of safeguarding this country against such a calamity; but, as a matter of fact, they are doing everything in their power to abolish the one means that can safeguard us against war. With consistent inconsistency, they place the blame for war on the advocates of adequate armaments—the true peace-advocates and peace-makers and enemies of war, who are forefending us against war. The advocacy of armaments is construed by them as the advocacy ofwar; measures for peace are confounded with measures for breaching the peace.
A curious phase of the matter is that many friends of armaments themselves make a similar mistake, and think that in defending armaments they are called upon to defend war also. As a matter of fact, war has no defense, except as a last resort. But when there is no other way, and when the maintenance of peace would be a greater calamity than war, then war is to be recommended as the lesser evil. It is, nevertheless, undeniably an evil, though a necessary one, just as a surgical operation is a necessary evil—but one which, if successful, results in such good as far to outweigh the evil.
The peace sophists tell us that there has never been a good war or a bad peace; that always in war the best specimens of manhood have been slain, leaving the weak and unfit for breeding purposes. They tell us that the Napoleonic wars lowered the stature of the entire French nation by two inches. They tell us also that during all past ages war for plunder has been the principal business of mankind.
The following arraignment of war by General Hiram M. Chittenden is a very fair sample of this method of reasoning:
"Both in its restriction upon marriage and in its destruction of life war thus destroys the mostprecious seed and leaves the inferior from which to propagate. In proportion as wars are long continued, and draw heavily upon the population, these deleterious effects are apparent. The campaigns of Napoleon were a mighty drain upon the vigor of the French people. It has been held that the average stature of the French was thereby diminished by more than an inch. How much their intellectual and moral stature was shrunken by that debauchery of crime, who can say? The decadence of the Roman people was due more to the waste of its best blood in war than to the causes commonly accepted. War reverses the process of natural selection and, instead of producing the survival of the fittest, produces the survival of the most unfit."
According to statistics of the pacifists, from the year 1496b.c.to the year 1861a.d.—a period of 3,357 years—there were 227 years of peace and 3,130 years of war—thirteen years of war for every year of peace. Now, if what we are told about the degenerative effects of war is true, since we know that war has been prevalent in all ages, the natural conclusion is, what a lot of rapscallions we must be! If war, instead of tending to secure the survival of the fit, secures the survival of the unfit, then after a thousand centuries of strife we must be signally unfit.
The trouble with such statistics is that, insteadof leading us toward the truth, they lead us into error. It may be perfectly true that for every year of general peace there have been thirteen years when there was a war somewhere on the earth; but this does not imply in the least that peace was not more general than was war, even during those thirteen years when there was a war. We must remember that the history of nations does not tell us much about the affairs of the people in times of peace; it is their wars that have made history.
As we look back through time at the large number of wars, we clump them together in perspective. We place the wars, as it were, all on the map at once, instead of placing them years and centuries apart.
Just as there is always in human life more joy than sorrow, more pleasure than pain, more good than ill; so, in the history of the world, there has been more of peace and prosperity than there has been of war and calamity.
John Ruskin possessed the rare ability to perceive truth that pointed one way, while his feelings pointed in the opposite direction. Although he had an emotional nature and a highly artistic temperament, he was still a man of so broad views, with so comprehensive a mind at the other end of the optic nerve, that he could ratiocinate in spite of his emotions. The following is what he had to say on war:
"All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war; no great art ever rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers. There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on battle. When I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It was very strange for me to discover this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together I found to be utterly untenable. Peace and the vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, of peace and plenty, of peace and civilization; but I found that these are not the words that the Muse of History coupled together: that on her lips the words were peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and death. I found in brief that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted in peace; taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."
We must not conclude, from the above quotation from Ruskin, that he was an advocate of brutality versus humanity, for he was not. The thought he meant to convey was simply this—that only a supreme trial, a supreme responsibility,where country, life itself, and that which is dearer than life—home—are staked on the issue, can bring out the highest virtues. The struggle for inalienable human rights, whose observance is freedom, has been the greatest influence to stimulate the genius and the virtues of men, and these things have been accomplished, and could only have been accomplished, by war.
The humanity of Ruskin is well brought out in the following quotation:
"...Depend upon it, all work must be done at last, not in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered, soldierly, human way—a lawful or 'loyal' way. Men are enlisted for the labor that kills—the labor of war: they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Teach the plough exercise as carefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the officers of troops of life be held as much gentlemen as the officers of troops of death; and all is done: but neither this, nor any other right thing, can be accomplished—you can't even see your way to it—unless, first of all, both servant and master are resolved that, come what will of it, they will do each other justice."
Ralph Waldo Emerson held the same opinion about war as that held by John Ruskin. He quoted and approved the old Greek, Heraclitus,who said, "War is the father of all things." After quoting this expression, Emerson said, "We of this day can repeat it as a political and social truth." Also, he said, "War passes the power of all chemical solvents, breaking up the old cohesions, and allowing the atoms of society to take a new order."
As a matter of fact, social order, in time of peace, like a cultivated field, settles and solidifies, and it must be broken down into subsoil, to support a new and vigorous growth. The breaking by plough and dynamite, uprooting and submerging all undesirable growth, is rewarded by healthy and vigorous crops of a desirable growth.
The very privations that have to be endured by large numbers of persons during a great war, stimulate economy, invention, and extraordinary endeavor, and serve to teach many useful lessons and to impart valuable experiential knowledge, which is applied both during the war, and, with greater advantage, when the war is over. When a country is at war, all its industries are not rendered stagnant or idle, but many of them are stimulated to extraordinary effort when cut off from import by blockade.
The legend about the stature of the French nation being lowered two inches as a result of killing off so many of the best men of France during the Napoleonic wars, is a very plausible one,and one that has been made great use of by the pacifists. But no one has thought to inquire whether or not, during the past century, the average stature of the Spaniards and the Italians also has been lowered. Perhaps, if we should inquire, we might learn that the color of the hair and eyes and skin of the French had somewhat darkened during that period. We might learn the truth that the effect upon the stature and the color of the eyes and skin and hair was mainly due to another kind of warfare—that of the southern blood of the Latin against the blood of the blond Norseman. We might learn that in Italy, Spain, and France, the posterity of the Norse giants, who long ago overran and conquered those countries, did not thrive well there, but slowly died down. We might learn that in those lands the blood of the blond is gradually overcome by the blood of the brunette; and that, as the blond races are larger in stature, the stature of the mixed Latin races is lowered in proportion to the disappearance of the blond type. The ancient Roman was much shorter in stature than even the present Italian or Frenchman.
Warfare has always subjected the weak, the puny, the poor, the ill, the indigent, and the incompetent to privations, trials, and strains of such severity that they have died in large numbers. They have not been so able as normal persons to escape the sword and to resist famine and disease;consequently, fewer of them have survived than of the more fit.
It is, however, argued by the peace sophists, that in modern warfare only the most able-bodied men are selected for military duty, and also that the weak and unfit who remain at home are not subjected to the same exterminating influences as formerly.
As a matter of fact, comparing the results of war today with those in former years, we find the percentage of deaths among the incompetent stay-at-homes far larger than among the soldiers at the front.
It is true that medical science secures the survival of a much larger percentage of stay-at-home incompetents than in former years, but medical science saves also a much larger proportion of those injured in battle than formerly, so that the ratio of survival between the fit and the incompetent is today in favor of the fit. The conditions that tend to secure the survival of the fittest are even more effective today than they were in old-time wars.
The unpleasant truth should be realized that invading armies must, with other luxuries, have women. As a result, they leave a large progeny—wrens in the nests of the doves of peace. Hence, inasmuch as soldiers are the pick of the manhood of their country, they are likely to do about as much toward securing the survival of the fit in anenemy's country as they would have in their own country.
There is another very important consideration, which is that war is a great mixer of races, and that usually mixed types benefit enormously from their compound blood.
Furthermore, the mingling of races and peoples has in all times served greatly to spread knowledge of one another, and they have always profited largely from the mingled knowledge. Soldiers visiting distant lands have brought home acquaintance with new arts and sciences and broader ideas of international usefulness. The soldiers of the North, who marched with Sherman through Georgia to the sea, returned years afterward and built cotton mills, iron foundries, and machine-shops all over the South, and stimulated the South with Northern energy and Northern capital.
We know that the inhabitants of the earth are constantly growing more fit; consequently, we know that they cannot be growing constantly more unfit, due to the degenerative influence of war. The history of nations is a history of wars; consequently we know as untrue the contention of the peace sophists that war secures the survival of the unfit. We know that exactly the opposite must be true; that war secures the survival of the fit.
There is yet another thing of which the peace sophists have never thought, and could not beexpected to think—the tremendous self-saving potentiality of the race.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, Nature seems to care little for individuals, but everything for a race or species; consequently, Nature has forefended herself by very ample measures to insure the survival of the fit.
If every able-bodied man in the world today were to be slain, and only the weak and puny left, although the injury would be incalculable and would make the whole race stagger, still the next generation of men would be almost as able-bodied and as fit as the present generation. Let us see why: It is because of that great potentiality—atavism. Children inherit not only directly from their parents, but their inheritance harks back to grandfather, great-grandfather, and even to remote ancestry.
Just as a stream of water burdened with impurities is self-purifying when it suns itself on the bright pebbles and on grass and moss that web and tangle it, so life is self-purifying and self-regenerative. Nature is constantly reaching higher and higher. The acquired characteristics of parents tend to become instinctive in their children. Instinct is largely inherited experience.
Nature strives to protect herself against degeneracy. Though bad conduct on the part of parents harmfully affects the child, yet such influences are less potent than those that are regenerative. Ifthis were not true, Nature's ends would not be so well secured.
There is in all animal organisms a certain innate power of resistance to germs of disease, and there is likewise in man a similar power of resistance to degeneracy.
The forces that operate to protect the individual operate also to shield the species by affording protection against evil inheritance.
Abnormal types are not always representative of diseased or degenerate conditions; other considerations must be weighed. Even some criminals may be atavic examples of a class of individuals who were better suited to live under the savage conditions that existed many generations ago.
Nature has resources for her protection far beyond our ken. Some of them have, by our inquiry, been discovered. We have discovered that not only do we immunize ourselves to withstand repeated attacks from the same disease, but also our children to some extent inherit that immunity.
When syphilis, the most abominable disease that ever afflicted mankind, was brought to Europe by the sailors of Columbus, the Europeans, possessing no immunity against it, died by hundreds of thousands. It afflicted equally all classes, from peasant to king. This disease among the West Indian tribes was slow-moving, and comparatively mild; but it became exceedingly virulent, rapid,and almost always fatal, in the blood of the unimmunized people of the Old World. This disease alone has been more harmful to the human race than all the wars of the world since the dawn of human history.
Although today the Old-World races have acquired considerable immunity to that affliction and although science has discovered a rational and comparatively successful treatment, it is still the greatest single degenerative influence with which the race has to contend. Its evil potency is greatly enhanced by the facility with which it weds alcoholism, and breeds tuberculosis, cancer, and paranoia.
The old pioneers sowed the western continent and the islands of the sea with the germs of smallpox and measles. Smallpox, terrible anywhere, was tenfold more so with the newly discovered peoples. Measles was more fatal with the Indians than smallpox with the Europeans. Only recently, in Alaska, whole communities have been wiped out by the measles. Even chicken-pox, harmless with us, was nearly always fatal to the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands.
The races, however, gradually but surely, developed immunity, and the great world-scourges are now largely robbed of their terrors. Similarly has mankind developed powers of recuperation that largely tend to immunization against such degenerative effects as are of war.