Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/25

 the barbarians had an invariable custom of killing strangers. Possibly by no other means than warfare could the rudiments of civilization have reached the outer fringe. When the wild Persians overwhelmed them, the peoples of the Mesopotamian Basin had a written language, an understanding of primitive mechanics, a system of star-measurement. Left alone, they might have gone on to advanced mechanics such as the steam engine, to the truth about sidereal space and the world in space. The Persians blew out all that bright promise; yet before they themselves were conquered, they had acquired what their captives had learned. So it went, the world over, except in those three or four rather abnormal centuries during which Rome held sway over the world; and not even Rome was wholly an exception. She conquered Greece; but intellectually she became so absorbed by the Hellenic people that every Roman gentleman must speak perfect Greek or he was no gentleman. The Goths came into Southern Europe unlettered barbarians; in a few centuries, they had in Ravenna the most advanced civilization of their time; and they learned it all from the conquered. The Northmen got their letters, their mathematics, their mechanics from subject peoples. The German Junkers professed that they waged the late war to spread their culture by conquering; the ancient peoples spread their culture by being conquered. He would be indeed a