Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/144

134 cantons who sent forth mercenary troops from those who kept their own for their own upbuilding. Perhaps for other reasons than this Lucerne is weaker than Graubünden, and Unterwalden less virile than little Appenzell. In any event, the matter is worthy of consideration, for this is absolutely certain: just in proportion to its extent and thoroughness is military selection a cause of decline.

XXXV. Holland has become a nation of old men, rich, comfortable and unprogressive. Her sons have died in the fields of Java, the swamps of Achin, wherever Holland's thrifty spirit has built up nations of slaves. It is said that Batavia alone has a million of Dutch graves. The armies of Holland to-day are recruited in every port. Dutch blood is too precious to be longer spilled in her enterprises.

XXXVI. Spain died of empire centuries ago. She has never crossed our path. It was only her ghost which walked at Manila and Santiago. In 1630, the Augustinian friar La Puente thus wrote of the fate of Spain: "Against the credit for redeemed souls I set the cost of Armadas and the sacrifice of soldiers and friars sent to the Philippines. And this I count the chief loss, for mines give silver, and forests give timber, but only Spain gives Spaniards, and she may give so many that she may be left desolate and constrained to bring up strangers' children instead of her own." "This is Castile," said a Spanish knight; "she makes men and wastes them." "This sublime and terrible phrase," says Lieutenant Carlos Gilman Calkins, from whom I have received both these quotations, "sums up Spanish history."

The warlike nation of to-day is the decadent nation of to-morrow. It has ever been so, and in the nature of things it must ever be.

XXXVII. In his charming studies of 'Feudal and Modern Japan,' Mr. Arthur Knapp returns again and again to the great marvel of Japan's military prowess after more than two hundred years of peace. It is astonishing to him that after more than six generations in which physical courage has not been demanded, these virile virtues should be found imimpaired. We can readily see that this is just what we should expect. In times of peace there is no slaughter of the strong, no sacrifice of the courageous. In the peaceful struggle for existence there is a premium placed on these virtues. The virile and the brave survive. The idle, weak and dissipated go to the wall. If after two hundred years of incessant battle Japan still remained virile and warlike, that would indeed be the marvel. But that marvel no nation has ever seen. It is doubtless true that warlike traditions are most persistent with nations most frequently engaged in war. But the traditions of war and the physical strength to gain victories are very different things. Other things being equal, the nation which has known least of war is the one most likely to develop the 'strong battalions' with whom victory must rest.