Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/40

4 of conquest or battle. Their fights do not lead to slaughter or spoils or other consequences of victory. Sometimes a fight takes the form of a friendly trial of wit ill with weapons between two parties who, one by one, cast their weapons at each other. Quarrels between tribes are sometimes settled by a single combat between chiefs. "Real fighting rarely takes place unless the women arouse the men," and even then it is only carried on by taunts and wrestling. "The first wound ends the combat." It is often followed by a war of words, hair-pulling, and blows with yam-sticks between the women. The Australians have no war because they have no property that is worth pillaging; no tribe has anything to tempt the cupidity of another. They have no political organization, so there can be no war for power. Each group appropriates hunting grounds, and over these war arises only with the increase of population. An Englishman who knew them well said that he knew of serious wounds, but he had known of but one death from their affrays.

Neither are the Papuans of New Guinea warlike in all parts of the island. Like other men on the same grade of civilization, they may be assassins, but they are not warriors, and if two bodies of them meet in hostility, we are told that "there is a remarkably small death-roll at the end of the battle." Of another group of them we are told that they have no offensive weapons at all, but live without disturbance from neighbors and without care for the future. Their children rarely quarrel at play, and if they do, it ends in words. We are told