Nature's processes of destruction work slowly but surely. In Mesopotamia they have gone forward to the ultimate end. An entire people who once constituted one of the greatest empires of the world have succumbed to and been annihilated by the Desert.
Nature's forces have worked the same complete destruction in many other places in Persia and Asia Minor, and on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
Northern Africa was once a fertile and populous country. Its wooded hillsides and timbered mountains gave birth to the streams by which it was watered. It is another region of the earth that has been conquered by the destroying forces of nature. The resources of vast areas of that country, its power to sustain mankind, have been finally destroyed by those blighting forces as completely as the city of Carthage was obliterated by the Romans.
If the fertility of the lands of Northern Africa had been as indestructible by Nature's forces as the fertility of the lands of Central Europe, a new nation would have arisen in Northern Africa, nursed into being by that indestructible fertility. Wherever the natural resources are destroyed the human race becomes extinct.
A battle with an invading army may lead to temporary devastation. A battle with the Desert, if the Desert triumphs, means the perpetual death of the defeated nation.
Which conflict should call for the greatest patriotic effort for national defense?
Patriotism exerted for the intelligent protection of any country from the destruction of its basic natural resources, is aimed at a more enduring achievement when it fights the destroying powers of Nature than when it fights against a temporary devastation by an invading army.
The complete deforestation and denudation of the mountains of China and the floods caused thereby resulted from the intensive individualism of her people, and from their utter lack of any systematic organization of governmental machinery to protect the resources of the country.
An organized system of forest preservation and flood protection, based upon and springing from a spirit of patriotic service to the nation as a whole, would have saved China from the destruction of resources of incalculable value to her people, and it would have saved millions from death by famine.
Is death by war any worse than death by famine?