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.
When a large limb is lopped from a tree, the mother-stem puts out a new shoot, and grows another strong limb in its place; similarly, when limbs are lopped from the human family tree, new limbs are stimulated to growth. This peculiarity of living things is strangely manifested in certain species, particularly among the lower orders of animals. Certain animals have no way of seeking self-preservation except by breeding in such large numbers as to supply the appetites of all enemies, and glut the demand. A big salmon sometimes lays a gallon of small eggs, often numbering as high as 27,000,000. Certain species of polyp are provided no means whatever, either by speed or powers of resistance, to defend themselves, but they breed so rapidly that they cannot all be eaten.
Now that we have defended war against the charge of securing the survival of the unfit, and have proved that, on the contrary, war has, during all the ages, been instrumental in securing the survival of the fit, let us, without presuming against peace, see whether or not peace has a blameless record.
The long periods of peace during the past century have allowed the peoples time and opportunity to acquire wealth and luxury, and to develop peculiar tastes, especially along emotional lines.... Modern fiction is a universal love story. Art is largely a portrayal of sentimentality.
In olden times, when human suffering in every guise, born of war, was very common, the appeals of the poor, the weak, and the infirm were not much heeded, for there were ever present such severe and exacting concerns as to command the attention and to absorb the resources of the people.