is surmised that they were the brains of enemies killed in battle, but this remains a surmise.
8
Zaborowski, L'Homme Préhistorique, pp. 121, 139; Lapouge, Les Sélections Sociales, p. 209.
9
Revue d'Anthropologie, 1876, pp. 608 and 655.
10
In France it is almost unknown except as preached by the Syndicalist philosopher, Georges Sorel, who insists, quite in the German manner, on the purifying and invigorating effects of "a great foreign war," although, very unlike the German professors, he holds that "a great extension of proletarian violence" will do just as well as war.
11
The recent expressions of the same doctrine in Germany are far too numerous to deal with. I may, however, refer to Professor Fritz Wilke's Ist der Krieg sittlich berechtigt? (1915) as being the work of a theologian and Biblical scholar of Vienna who has written a book on the politics of Isaiah and discussed the germs of historical veridity in the history of Abraham. "A world-history without war," he declares, "would be a history of materialism and degeneration"; and again: "The solution is not 'Weapons down!' but 'Weapons up!' With pure hands and calm conscience let us grasp the sword." He dwells, of course, on the supposed purifying and ennobling effects of war and insists that, in spite of its horrors, and when necessary, "War is a divine institution and a work of love." The leaders of the world's peace movement are, thank God! not Germans, but merely English and Americans, and he sums up, with Moltke, that war is a part of the moral order of the world.
12
William James, Popular Science Monthly, Oct., 1910.
13
We still often fall into the fallacy of over-estimating the advantages of military training—with its fine air of set-up manliness and restrained yet vitalised discipline—because we are mostly compelled to compare such training with the lack of training fostered by that tame, dull sedentary routine of which there is far too much in our present phase of civilisation. The remedy lies in stimulating the heroic and strenuous sides of civilisation rather than in letting loose the ravages of war. As Nietzsche long since pointed out (Human, All-too-Human, section 442), the vaunted national armies of modern times are merely a method of squandering the most highly civilised men, whose delicately organised brains have been slowly produced through long generations; "in our day greater and higher tasks are assigned to men than patria and honor, and the rough old Roman patriotism has become dishonourable, at the best behind the times."
14
The Border of Scotland and England was in ancient times, it has been said, "a very Paradise for murderers and robbers." The war-like spirit was there very keen and deeds of daring were not too scrupulously effected, for the culprit knew that nothing was easier and safer than to become an outlaw on the other side of the Border. Yet these were the conditions that eventually made the Border one of the great British centres of genius (the Welsh Border was another) and the home of a peculiarly capable and vigorous race.
15
In so far as it may have been so, that seems merely due to its great length, to the fact that the absence of commissariat arrangements involved a more thorough method of pillage, and to epidemics.
16
Treitschke, History of Germany (English translation by E. and C. Paul), Vol. I., p. 87.
17
Von der Goltz, The Nation in Arms, pp. 14 et seq. This attitude was a final echo of the ancient Truce of God. That institution, which was first definitely formulated in the early eleventh century in Roussillon and was soon confirmed by the Pope in agreement with nobles and barons, was extended to the whole of Christendom before the end of the century. It ordained peace for several days a week and on many festivals, and it guaranteed the rights and liberties of all those following peaceful avocations, at the same time protecting crops, live-stock, and farm implements.
18
It is interesting to observe how St. Augustine, who was as familiar with classic as with Christian life and thought, perpetually dwells on the boundless misery of war and the supreme desirability of peace as a point at which pagan and Christian are at one; "Nihil gratius soleat audiri, nihil desiderabilius concupisci, nihil postremo possit melius inveniri … Sicut nemo est qui gaudere nolit, ita nemo est qui pacem habere nolit" (City of God, Bk. XIX., Chs. 11-12).
19
Contemporary Review, 1878.
20
It has been argued (as by Filippi Carli, La Ricchezza e la Guerra, 1916) that the Germans are especially unable to understand that the prosperity of other countries is beneficial to them, whether or not under German control, and that they differ from the English and French in believing that economic conquests should involve political conquests.
21
Ralph Thicknesse, A Year's Journey Through France and Spain, 1777, p. 298.
22
The last twelve words quoted are by Miss Ethel Elderton in an otherwise sober memoir (Report on the English Birth-rate, 1914, p. 237) which shows that the birth control movement has begun, just where we should expect it to begin, among the better instructed classes.
is surmised that they were the brains of enemies killed in battle, but this remains a surmise.
