Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/745

Rh among the Sea Dyaks"; and St. John says that, in some cases, it was a custom, in order to settle who should be chief, for the rivals to go out in search of a head, the first in finding one being victor.

Moreover, the need for an efficient leader tends ever to reëstablish chieftainship where it is only nominal or feeble. Edwards says of the Caribs that, "in war, experience had taught them that subordination was as requisite as courage; they therefore elected their captains in their general assemblies with great solemnity," and "put their pretensions to the proof with circumstances of outrageous barbarity." Similarly, "although the Abipones neither fear their cacique as a judge, nor honor him as a master, yet his fellow-soldiers follow him as a leader and governor of the war, whenever the enemy is to be attacked or repelled."

These and like facts, of which there are abundance, have three kindred implications. One is that continuity of war conduces to permanence of chieftainship. A second is that, with increase of his influence as successful military head, the chief gains influence as political head. A third is that there is thus initiated a union, maintained through subsequent phases of social evolution, between military supremacy and political supremacy. Not only among the uncivilized Hottentots, Malagasy, and others is the chief or king head of the army—not only among such semi-civilized peoples as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans do we find the monarch one with the commander-in-chief, but the histories of extinct and surviving nations all over the world exemplify the connection. In Egypt, "in the early ages, the offices of king and general were inseparable." Assyrian records represent the political head as also the conquering soldier; as do the records of the Hebrews. Civil and military supremacy were united among the Homeric Greeks; and in primitive Rome "the general was ordinarily the king himself." That throughout European history it has been so, and partially continues so even now in the more militant societies, needs no showing.

How command of a wider kind follows military command we can not readily see in societies which have no records; we can but infer that, along with increased power of coercion which the successful head warrior gains, naturally goes the exercise of a stronger rule in civil affairs. That this has been so among peoples who have histories there is proof. Of the primitive Germans Sohm remarks that the Roman invasions had one result: "The kingship became united with the leadership (become permanent) of the army, and, as a consequence, raised itself to a power [institution] in the state. The military subordination under the king-leader furthered political subordination under the king. . . . Kingship after the invasions is a kingship clothed with supreme rights—a kingship in our sense." In like manner it is observed by Ranke that, during the wars with the English in the fifteenth century, "the French monarchy, while struggling for its very existence,