Nature has resources for her protection far beyond our ken. Some of them have, by our inquiry, been discovered. We have discovered that not only do we immunize ourselves to withstand repeated attacks from the same disease, but also our children to some extent inherit that immunity.
When syphilis, the most abominable disease that ever afflicted mankind, was brought to Europe by the sailors of Columbus, the Europeans, possessing no immunity against it, died by hundreds of thousands. It afflicted equally all classes, from peasant to king. This disease among the West Indian tribes was slow-moving, and comparatively mild; but it became exceedingly virulent, rapid, and almost always fatal, in the blood of the unimmunized people of the Old World. This disease alone has been more harmful to the human race than all the wars of the world since the dawn of human history.
Although today the Old-World races have acquired considerable immunity to that affliction and although science has discovered a rational and comparatively successful treatment, it is still the greatest single degenerative influence with which the race has to contend. Its evil potency is greatly enhanced by the facility with which it weds alcoholism, and breeds tuberculosis, cancer, and paranoia.
The old pioneers sowed the western continent and the islands of the sea with the germs of smallpox and measles. Smallpox, terrible anywhere, was tenfold more so with the newly discovered peoples. Measles was more fatal with the Indians than smallpox with the Europeans. Only recently, in Alaska, whole communities have been wiped out by the measles. Even chicken-pox, harmless with us, was nearly always fatal to the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands.
The races, however, gradually but surely, developed immunity, and the great world-scourges are now largely robbed of their terrors. Similarly has mankind developed powers of recuperation that largely tend to immunization against such degenerative effects as are of war.
When a large limb is lopped from a tree, the mother-stem puts out a new shoot, and grows another strong limb in its place; similarly, when limbs are lopped from the human family tree, new limbs are stimulated to growth. This peculiarity of living things is strangely manifested in certain species, particularly among the lower orders of animals. Certain animals have no way of seeking self-preservation except by breeding in such large numbers as to supply the appetites of all enemies, and glut the demand. A big salmon sometimes lays a gallon of small eggs, often numbering as high as 27,000,000. Certain species of polyp are provided no means whatever, either by speed or powers of resistance, to defend themselves, but they breed so rapidly that they cannot all be eaten.
Now that we have defended war against the charge of securing the survival of the unfit, and have proved that, on the contrary, war has, during all the ages, been instrumental in securing the survival of the fit, let us, without presuming against peace, see whether or not peace has a blameless record.
The long periods of peace during the past century have allowed the peoples time and opportunity to acquire wealth and luxury, and to develop peculiar tastes, especially along emotional lines.... Modern fiction is a universal love story. Art is largely a portrayal of sentimentality.
In olden times, when human suffering in every guise, born of war, was very common, the appeals of the poor, the weak, and the infirm were not much heeded, for there were ever present such severe and exacting concerns as to command the attention and to absorb the resources of the people.