tilisation of the
forces of nature, not merely could he live at ease, but there would be
room in the world for milliards of additional human beings. When
compared with this splendid struggle, how puny seems the great war! What
has that war to do with the real struggle for existence? It is a product
of degeneration. War is justifiable. Not war between human beings. But
creative war for man's mastery over natural forces, the young war of
which hardly a millionth part has yet been waged. In this war we can
foresee victories such as no human being has ever yet won.

Nicolai, contrasting this creative struggle with the destructive
struggle, symbolises them in the persons of two German men of science.
One of these is Professor Haber, who has turned his knowledge to account
for the manufacture of asphyxiating bombs, and who will doubtless not be
forgotten. The other is Emil Fischer, the brilliant chemist who has
achieved the synthetic production of sugar, and who will perhaps achieve
the synthesis of albumen. Fischer is the founder, or at any rate the
forerunner, of the new era of humanity. Future generations will
gratefully refer to him as one of the supreme conquerors in the
victorious struggle for the sources of life. He is in very truth a
practitioner of the "divine art" of which Archimedes spoke.

* * * * *

Nicolai's arguments, showing that war is antagonistic to human progress,
are confronted with an indisputable fact, a fact which has to be
explained--the actual existence of war, and its monstrous expansion.
Never has war been more powerful, more brutal, more widespread. Never
has war been more glorified. In an interesting chapter (Chapter
Fourteen), which introduces a number of debatable points, Nicolai shows
that in earlier days apologists for war were exceptional. Even among the
epic poets of war, those whose song was of heroism, the direct
references to war convey fear and disapproval. Delight in war
(Kriegslust), love of war for its own sake, is peculiar to modern
literature. We have to come down to the writings of Moltke, Steinmetz,
Lasson, Bernhardi, and Roosevelt, to find apotheoses of war, paeans of
war whose jubilation is quasi-religious. Nor was it until the outbreak
of the present struggle that such huge armies as those of to-day were
witnessed. The Greek armies in classical antiquity did not exceed
20,000. Those of imperial Rome, ranged from 100,000 to 200,000. In the
eigh