ding capacity of
man--by scientific progress and technological invention--that the checks
have been overcome. And so in the last century the population of Europe
increased more than it had increased in several centuries before.
Impoverished soil, excessive heat or cold, excessive moisture, the lack of
rain-fall, and many other factors are hostile to life. It is evident,
therefore, that human life must especially struggle for existence; it must
carry on a perpetual contest for self preservation. It seems obvious that,
if there is perpetual war in every-day life, war methods must be applied.

We have just passed through a tremendous world-wide _military_ war and we
developed special ways of producing power to overcome the enemy. We were
thus driven to discover some of the hidden sources of power and all of our
old habits and ideas were bent toward military methods and military
technology. The war of every-day life against hostile elements is war for
the subjugation of physical nature and not for the conquest of people. It
is a war carried on by the time-binding power of men pitted against
natural obstacles, and its progressive triumph means progressive
advancement in human weal.

The lesson of the World War should not be missed through failure to
analyse it. When nations war with nations, the normal daily war of
millions and millions of individuals to subjugate natural resources to
human uses is interrupted, and the slow-gathered fruits of measureless
toil are destroyed.

But peaceful war, war for the conquest of nature, involves the use of
methods of technology and, what is even more important, technological
philosophy, law and ethics.

What I want to emphasize in this little book, is the need of a
thoroughgoing revision of our ideas; and the revision must be made by
engineering minds in order that our ideas may be made to match facts. If
we are ill, we consult a physician or a surgeon, not a charlatan. We must
learn that, when there is trouble with the producing power of the world,
we have to consult an engineer, an expert on power. Politicians,
diplomats, and lawyers do not understand the problem. What I am advocating
is that we must learn to ask those who know how to produce things, instead
of asking those whose profession is to fight for the division of things
produced by nature or by other human beings.

As a matter of fact our civilization has been for a long time disorganized
to the point of disease. Lately t