Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/306

302 of the reversed selection of fratricidal war. And the angle of divergence between what might have been and what has been, will be determined by the percentage of strong men slain on the field of glory.

And all this applies, not to one nation nor to one group of nations alone, but in like degree to all nations, which have sent forth their young men to the field of slaughter. As with Greece and Rome, as with France and Spain, as with Mauritania and Turkestan, so with Germany and England, so with all nations who have sent forth "the best they breed" to the foreign service, while cautious, thrifty mediocrity filled up the ranks at home.

In his charming studies of "Feudal and Modern Japan," Mr. Arthur Knapp, of Yokohama, returns again and again to the great marvel of Japan's military prowess after more than two hundred years of peace. This was shown in the Chinese war. It has been more conclusively shown on the fields of Manchuria since Mr. Knapp's book was written. 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 unimpaired. 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. "What won the battles on the Yalu, in Korea or Manchuria," says the Japanese, Nitobe, "was the ghosts of our fathers guiding our hands and beating in our hearts. They are not dead, these ghosts, those spirits of our war-like ancestors. Scratch a Japanese, even one of the most advanced ideas, and you will find a Samurai." If we translate this from the language of Shintoism to that of science we find it a testimony to the strength of race-heredity, the survival of the ways of the strong in the lives of the self-reliant.

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 war-like 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.

As Americans we are more deeply interested in the fate of our mother country than in that of the other nations of Europe.

What shall we say of England and of her relation to the reversed selection of war?

Statistics we have none, and no evidence of tangible decline that Englishmen will not indignantly repudiate. When the London press in the vacation season fills its columns with editorials on English