at there is something in this view one can hardly deny;
and it is one which I have already touched upon. Still, I cannot help
thinking that there is something even deeper--something that connects
War with the amatory instinct; and that this probably is to be found in
the direction of a physiological impact and fusion between the two (or
more) peoples concerned, which fertilizes and regenerates them, and is
perhaps as necessary in the life of Nations as the fusion of cells is in
the life of Protozoa, or the phenomena of sex in the evolution of Man.

And while the Nations fight, the little mortals who represent them have
only the faintest idea of what is really going on, of what the warfare
means. They _feel_ the sweep of immense passions; ecstasies and horrors
convulse and dislocate their minds; but they do not, cannot, understand.
And the dear creatures in the trenches and the firing-lines give their
lives--equally beautiful, equally justified, on both sides: fascinated,
rapt, beyond and beside themselves, as foes hating each other with a
deadly hatred; seized with hideous, furious, nerve-racking passions;
performing heroic, magnificent deeds, suffering untold, indescribable
wounds and pains, and lying finally side by side (as not unfrequently
happens) on the deserted battlefield, reconciled and redeemed and
clasping hands of amity even in death.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] H.M. Tomlinson, in the _Daily News_.

XIV

THE OVER-POPULATION SCARE

Some cheerful and rather innocent people insist that because of the
over-population difficulty wars must go on for ever. The population of
the world, they say--or at any rate of the civilized countries--is
constantly increasing, and if war did not from time to time reduce the
numbers there would soon be a deadlock. They seem to think that the only
way to solve the problem is for the men to murder each other. This says
nothing about the women, who, after all, are the chief instruments of
multiplication. It may also be pointed out that even the barbaric method
of slaughter is not practicable. Although wars of extermination may have
now and then occurred in the past among tribes and small peoples, such
wars are not considered decent nowadays; and the numbers killed in
modern campaigns--horribly "scientific" and "efficient" as the methods
are--is such a small fraction of the population concerned as to have no
appreciable result. The population of Germany is about seventy millions,