ual or greater than the single host, or the
fewer hosts, of previous centuries which were more united. Taken as a
whole, and allowing for possible exceptions, the aggregate fighting
power of mankind has grown immensely, and has been growing continuously
since we knew anything about it.

[4] Mr. Bruce

Again, this force has tended to concentrate itself more and more in
certain groups which we call 'civilised nations.' The literati of the
last century were for ever in fear of a new conquest of the barbarians,
but only because their imagination was overshadowed and frightened by
the old conquests. A very little consideration would have shown them
that, since the monopoly of military inventions by cultivated states,
real and effective military power tends to confine itself to those
states. The barbarians are no longer so much as vanquished competitors;
they have ceased to compete at all. The military vices, too, of
civilisation seem to decline just as its military strength augments.
Somehow or other civilisation does not make men effeminate or unwarlike
now as it once did. There is an improvement in our fibre--moral, if not
physical. In ancient times city people could not be got to
fight--seemingly could not fight; they lost their mental courage,
perhaps their bodily nerve. But now-a-days in all countries the great
cities could pour out multitudes wanting nothing but practice to make
good soldiers, and abounding in bravery and vigour. This was so in
America; it was so in Prussia; and it would be so in England too. The
breed of ancient times was impaired for war by trade and luxury, but
the modern breed is not so impaired.

A curious fact indicates the same thing probably, if not certainly.
Savages waste away before modern civilisation; they seem to have held
their ground before the ancient. There is no lament in any classical
writer for the barbarians. The New Zealanders say that the land will
depart from their children; the Australians are vanishing; the
Tasmanians have vanished. If anything like this had happened in
antiquity, the classical moralists would have been sure to muse over
it; for it is just the large solemn kind of fact that suited them. On
the contrary, in Gaul, in Spain, in Sicily--everywhere that we know
of--the barbarian endured the contact of the Roman, and the Roman
allied himself to the barbarian. Modern science explains the wasting
away of savage men; it says that we have diseases which we c