War's mutilations have never roused aught but horror, its waste of men and treasure are deplored. But the spirit of strife, of daring, and of heroism remains in human breasts. If war is outworn, if bloodshed and sacrifice of lives are to cease between civilized states, as they have long ceased within those states, it must be that better means have been found to satisfy the profound human need of expression and of conquest. The German Emperor, while keeping up the medieval pageantry of arms, has welded his nation into a militant power of industry and science. Their arts are not ignoble, their industries are not monotonous, but have taken on the aspect of imperial enterprise and daring. Their scientists are rescuing mankind from disease and freeing it from menial labors, while their merchants and traders are modernizing the orient, setting examples of method and discipline, incidentally, to their rivals in the civilized nations. It is by such means that civilization need no longer rear itself on human slavery; the very beasts of burden have been freed, and man has seized control of nature's forces. By them he is borne through cities, manners, climates, councils, governments, more swiftly than Ulysses went, and beyond the paths of all the western stars.
More distant horizons of science have been opened. The transmutation of the elements, but recently announced, is expected to realize more than the dreams of the alchemist. If we are to believe Professor Soddy, who with Sir William Ramsay obtained in 1903 the first direct proof that radioactive processes are veritable transmutations, this discovery in its consequences should "absolutely revolutionize the whole condition of existence." For of all processes, this alone accounts for the wealth of energy dissipated so prodigally throughout the universe over apparently endless periods of time. Once means are found to accelerate the transmuting rate of radioactive atoms, Professor Soddy believes the same means will suffice to break up the other elements now unchanging, releasing energy which man may harness a "million times greater than any at present utilized." In his masterly address in 1908 before the American Society of International Law, Elihu Root traced the development of the international spirit by the use of human inventions conquering space and time. Clans, communities, nationalities have lost their early function, and frontiers and territorial possessions are changing their political significance. Terrestrial pioneering is not ended, the continents are rediscovering each other in new relations.
Much has been done to open new channels for the play of men's energies away from war. War has had its uses to break up the old order, to let loose new and unknown forces in society, to set men free from tradition. That was the great work of the Crusades. Chivalry and knighthood are still needed, but of a new order. The martyrs for aerial navigation are the type. The machinery for peace that has been set up in the new palace at The Hague will not confine the adventurous spirit of mankind.
EN CASSEROLE
Tobacco and Alcohol
As to tobacco, since reading the article on it in this number, this Review has really thought more seriously than ever before about (not of) giving up smoking. But many doctors here and in Europe have told us to keep on, and but one has told us to stop. How is it with you? We wonder whether life with tobacco can seem to those who know only life without it, as bad as life without it seems to those who have known life with it! Perhaps each class should experiment in the other's field.
As to the outlay for mere pleasure, and the destruction of life involved, we wonder how those caused by tobacco would compare with those caused by travel—short trips as well as long, by carriage, automobile, vessel—and aeroplane? Our contributor has seen these paragraphs, and he says, very much to our edification and entertainment:
"It is a relief to know that the tobacco article is not going to interfere with the pleasure which 'This Review' derives from smoking. But the writer confesses to a little surprise at the precocity of an infant which in its first year has acquired the nicotine habit to such an extent as to lead it to consult several physicians on the subject."