Yet it must be granted that in great areas of life there is a struggle of life with life in which the weaker are elimin ated and the stronger survive. It is sufficiently co=on to be reckoned among the facts of natural history which powerfully affect its course. Leaving for the present purely biological considerations, it may be granted that it has always been a serious feature in human life. Can it be said that such struggle has beeu an instrument of progress? We need not here discuss the

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... on as to whether or not the bloody encounters of individuals did insure the survival of the most fit. Let us pass at once to those forms of community warfare where one group of persons bound together in a certain solidarity of life and interest comes into conflict with another similar com munity. This warfare goes back to the dawn of history; co=unity has been warring with community from the beginning. How has this affected the progress of the race? Has it been analagous to the process of natural selection which has insured real progress? Advocates of the natural history theory of morals assure us that it is in this way the race has learned the rudiments of morality and made such progress in morals as we have. In cases where co=unity came into conflict with co=unity among primitive men, Leslie Stephen assures us that other things being equal, the co=unity with highest development of "social tissue" won. In those co=uni ties where individual members had learned to subordi nate their individual and immediate interests to the interests of the community there was a superiority over the communities where these features of life were less marked, a superiority which warfare vindicated. "Social tissue" in the long run won the day. Co=unities in which it was weak soon disappeared in the primitive con dition of universal war and communities with the finest "social tissue" survived and perpetuated themselves. Just as rotifers of infusoria poorly adapted to the forces of nature among which they lived died off, and those more perfectly adapted survived, so it is said, communities of weak social tissue were unable to adapt themselves to that most serious feature in their environment, the pres sure on all sides of hostile communities bent on fighting, and were eliminated while others of stronger "social tissue " were able to adapt themselves and survive. In an examination of this argument it is well at the outset to remind ourselves that it is very easy for a theorist who writes natural history in an a priori fashion to greatly magnify the fighting propensities of primitive communities. There is no reason for believing that war fare was universal among such. In the first place com munities are not clearly defined like individual organ isms. A faInily is a co=unity, but so is a clan or a tribe including many families, and in later social develop ments we have larger co=unities, such as the nation and the empire including many races. There is no reason for believing that among primitive men there was a con stant warfare among the smallest co=unities, i. e., faInilies. Such warfare as we know was among tribes. 'But such co=unities included smaller co=unities among which there was co-operation rather than warfare. Thus we may say that the earliest wars we know were based upon co-operation, the co-operation of smaller co=unities within the larger. Again, in tribal wars it was not the rule that one exter minate the other. Among the warring tribes of the North American Indians, Algonquins, Hurons and Iro quois were for centuries mortal enemi.es, but no tribe was • Reproduced from Queen ', Quo.rterl'U. exterminated. One tribe might be smaller and another larger, one possessing a better territory than another, one flushed with victory, the other stinging with defeat; but Algonquin, Huron and Iroquois was each as much a real tribe with its only peculiar tribal life and characteristics after two centuries of the fiercest tribal wars as before. Such tribal warfare has issues far less disastrous to the life of these co=unities than extermination; it lessens their numbers, changes their locality or perhaps breaks the vanquished into lesser bands. In any of these cases the characteristics of the tribal life are not ne\leS sarily obliterated or suppreR�ed. It cannot then be said that in tribal walS there is a process analogous to natural selection since the vanquished in war are not eliminated. One of these effects of tribal warfare applies to all war fare among communities no matter how large or highly organized, and because of its important bearing upon the question of progress and war deserves some considera tion. While it is not the rule of war to exterminate one of the contending co=unities, it is the invariable rule that both co=unities suffer in the loss of many of their individual members. If tribal war does not eliminate tribes it does eliminate many individuals. The same is true of all warfare. We must ask how this elimination of combatants affects the progress of the type of life. Is this a case of the survival of the fit such as ministers to the evolution of the species? On the contrary, whereas in the case of individuals engaged in mortal conflict it is the rule that the weaker and less resourceful are elimi nated; in the case of co=unities at war it is the rule that the individuals who are eliminated are above the average in their respective communities. The fighting men of all primitive tribes were the pick of the com munity. Every one of them who fell in battle was a distinct loss to the present life and the future blood of his community. Whether the tribe won its battle or lost it, its life and blood were so far impoverished. In after generations such tribes would miss the unborn children of the strong, resolute and daring men who perished in the forefront of battle. This has been the rule of all co=unity war from the begiuning and continues to be such. It has been a check on increasing population, but so has pestilence and famine. The question is, has it been such a check as serves the ends of real progress in the life of the race? Even when classed with pestilence and famine, war may be said to be decidedly inferior to either as a means of preventing over-population where such prevention has been neces sary. Pestilence and famine as a rule cut off the weak and less sturdy stock, but war takes its tribute from the best the nation can bring. The maimed and infirm, the scrofulous and neurotic. the cowardly and irresolute escape this scourge and make their contribution to the life and blood of the nation. It is the best blood of the nation that is lost in war. When we remember that war has been taking toll from the best blood of co=unities since the beginning it becomes evident that it has been a most serious detri ment to race-improvement, if it has not actually made for race-degeneration. Generation after generation losing its best blood on the field of battle has only to proceed far enough to mean the bankruptcy of the nation, and every step means its improvement. Serious his torians have found this process a prime factor in the downfall of the ancient empires. Dr. Otto Sieck attrib utes the downfall of Rome to this process of rooting out the best ("die Ousrottung der Besten"). Seeley says, "The Roman Empire perished for want of men;" the hardy stock from the foot of the Appenines whence the Empire had its vigor was drained by war. One historian of Greece discussing the Pelopounesian wars has said, "Only cowards remained and from their broods came the new generations." Speaking of the Greeks who a few years ago fled before the Turks, Dr. Starr Jordan says, "These never came from the loins of Leonidas and Mil tiades, they were the descendants of the scullions and the stable boys whom Greece could not use in her imperial wars." Those who were unfit for war became the pro genitors of succeeding generations, while little by little the best blood of the empire was spilled in battle. It has often been said that after the Napoleonic wars in which three millions of men of the best blood of Europe per ished, most of them young and many of them childless, the average height of Frenchmen fell abruptly by almost an inch. But what of the national valor and resolution and daring when such a drain was made upon its most valorous and resolute and daring blood? This effect of war is undeniable, even under present conditions. War still takes its toll from the best blood of the nation; and if it is true, as we have said, that the extermination of the weaker race is not the rule, it may be said that in modern national warfare the extermination of the weaker nation is unknown. Capital cities, forms of government, geographical areas, dynasties may be changed by war, but the life of the nation is not a matter of the situation of its capital city, or the personality of its ruler, or the outward form of government. The aspira tions of the people and their traditions, their point of view and temper, these are the essential qualities of a people's life, and so far as they are characteristic of the group included in the nation they are only slightly modi fied by war. The utmost modern war does is to take the name from the conquered nation, change its form of gov ernment and its social affiliations; the common life of the people in its depths moves on in its accustomed way re gardless of these surface movements. "There is," says Macaulay, "an empire exempt from all national sources of decay-that empire is the imperishable empire of our art and our morals, our literature and our law." In all the wars of the past century no national life has really been crushed. For more than fifty years Poland has ceased to figure as a nation in the councils of the nations. Partitioned as she is among the nations, hopelessly divided in government, the Poles are not German or Aus trian or Russian, their temper has not been appreciably modified, their traditions are as dear to them as in the days of their independence. There is yet a real solidarity of life and spirit among them notwithstanding the loss of their autonomy of government and national visibility. France was crushed, so the expression goes, in a swift and decisive war with Germany, but the French national life is as much a fact in Europe as it was before the war. Quite apart, then, from biological consideration, which we have seen to be irrelevant for our purpose, it seems evident that since the struggle between co=unities does not as a rule mean the extermination of the weaker com munity and its type of life, and that since it does invari ably mean a drain on the best blood of both co=unities, there is in such struggle nothing analogous to the progress of natUIal selection in which the fit survive and progress is insured. Rather it seems that such co=unity strug gle, by its loss of good blood to both co=unities, has been a most serious barrier to such progress.