money, and material, and with means of organization and control which enable it, at the cost of some delay and friction, to exploit those resources to the last inch. When Babylon was captured by the Medes, we are told, there were parts of the city itself which were unaware of the fact for several days; and there must have been vast islands of population in the country which, so far as their personal experience went, never knew. But that sort of thing has passed. If we look into the history of warfare, we find that it has completed a cycle and is now returning to its starting-point. A nomadic horde of the barbarous ages was 'a nation in arms' in the full sense of the word. Having no fixed place of abode, it had no civil- as distinct from military-population. The whole people- old men, women, and children included-took part in the toils and perils of war. There were no places of security in which the weak and the defenseless could take refuge. Everyone's life was forfeit in case of disaster; therefore everyone took part in the common defense. Modern warfare, with its air-fleets, its submarines, and its 'big Berthas,' is more and more restricting the area of immunity from military peril, and reverting to these primitive conditions. Agricultural life and city settlements brought with them the distinction between combatants and non-combatants; but still, in the normal state, every able-bodied citizen was a soldier. The citizen took his place as a matter of course in the militia of his country, leaving to old men and women, or to slaves and captives, the guardianship of field and vineyard, flock and herd. Only when wealth and luxury had reached a certain pitch, did the habit of employing denationalized mercenaries creep in. Then came the time when the mercenaries encountered nomadic or thoroughly mobilized 'nations in arms,' and civilization went to the wall. In the Middle Ages, the feudal chief, the dominant, soldierly, often predatory personality, gathered his vassals ('Gesellen,' companions) around him for purposes of offense and defense, while the cultivation of the soil devolved on the villeins or serfs. Thus, war became the special function of a military caste, and, as in the Wars of the Roses, campaigns were often carried on with comparatively little disturbance to the normal life of the country. When the royal power crushed or absorbed that of the barons, the centralized monarchy everywhere recruited a standing army, often consisting largely of foreign mercenaries, as the bulwark of its security and the instrument of its will. It was quite natural that dynastic wars, and wars in which the common people of the contending nations had little or no interest, should be fought out on a restricted scale by these specialized military machines. Frederick the Great employed a mercenary army as the nucleus for a national militia; and so lately as the beginning of the last century, this system was celebrated as ideal by a noted military authority, Friedrich von der Decken, the immediate predecessor of Clausewitz. With Napoleon came the nation in arms; and the military history of the intervening years has consisted of the ever completer concentration upon warlike purposes of the whole powers and resources of the great European peoples. If it be asked why this logical evolution of the idea of war has taken so many centuries to work itself out, the main reason among many others- may be stated in two words: munitions and transport. Before the age of machines, it was impossible to arm and clothe immense multitudes of men: before the days of McAdam and Stephenson, it was impossible to move such multitudes, and still more to keep them supplied with food and munitions. Again we find ourselves insisting upon the vital importance of transit methods in this, as in nearly all questions of human interaction. The size of armies has steadily grown with the growth of means of communication. The German wars of 1863-70 were the first European wars in which railways played any considerable part, and the scale of operations in 1870-71 was quite unprecedented. What is the chief new factor since the days of St. Privat and Sedan? The aeroplane, most people would reply; possibly it may become so, but thus far a less picturesque invention has been of even greater influence the motor-lorry. No one can go anywhere near the Western Front without realizing that the gigantic scale of this struggle is almost wholly dependent upon motor-traction. Had not the internal-combustion engine been invented, the war would probably have been over long ago, and, at all events, millions of men would still be alive and well who now lie dead, or crawl mutilated over the face of the earth. Seen in this light, the invention of the motor may appear to have been due to a special interference of Satan in human affairs. But that is an unphilosophical view to take. Our race must perfect its power over matter before it can wisely select the ends to which it will apply that power. The idea of war had to work itself out to the full and demonstrate its own impossibility, before man could find the insight and the energy to put it behind him and have done with it. Thanks to Prussian ambition and Prussian philosophy, the demonstration has now been completed. The idea of war has revealed itself in its full hideousness. All the world has come to look upon it as a sort of mythological monster which, if left to itself, will periodically reemerge from hell, to devour the whole youth and the whole wealth of civilized mankind. It is useless to dream of clipping the wings or paring the claws of the dragon. It must be slain outright if it is not to play unthinkable havoc with civilization; and to that end the intelligence and the moral enthusiasm of the world are now, as we see, addressing themselves. The idea of paring the claws of the dragon and rendering him comparatively innocuous has long hovered before simple and idealistic minds. Many people have said to themselves, like Jeannette in the touching old ballad, — If I were King of France, or, still better, Pope of Rome, I'd have no fighting men abroad, no weeping maids at home; All the world should be at peace, or, if kings must show their might, But even Jeannette evidently realized that the idea of making the fate of a tribe or a nation depend upon the fortunes of one or two selected champions was but a pious aspiration, which not even the King of France or the Pope of Rome could translate into practical politics. Though the nations may not, until recent times, have learned how to bring their full strength to bear for purposes either of aggression or defense, the idea of a deliberate restriction of military effort, by mutual consent, with a view to minimizing the horrors of war, belongs rather to legend than to sober history. It is true that the story of the Horatii and the Curiatii meets every schoolboy in the first pages of his Livy; but it is manifestly a fable. On the other hand, the tale told by Herodotus concerning the Lacedæmonians and the Argives at Thyrea, seems to be accepted as historical; but it only shows us the breakdown of such an experiment. Thus it runs: The Argives collected troops to resist the seizure of Thyrea, but before any battle was fought, the two parties came to terms and it was agreed that three hundred Spartans and three hundred Argives should meet and fight for the place, which should belong to the nation with whom the victory rested. It was stipulated also that the other troops on each side should return home to their respective countries, and not remain to witness the combat, as there was danger, if the armies stayed, that either the one or the other, on seeing their countrymen undergoing defeat, might hasten to their assistance. These terms being agreed upon, the two armies marched off, leaving three hundred picked men on each side to fight for the territory. The battle began, and so equal were the combatants that at the close of the day, when night put a stop to the fight, of the whole six hundred only three men remained alive, two Argives, Alcanor and Chromius, and a single Spartan, Othryadas. The two Argives, regarding themselves as the victors, hurried to Argos. Othryadas, the Spartan, remained upon the field, and, stripping the bodies of the Argives who had fallen, carried their armor to the Spartan Next day the two armies returned to learn the result. At camp. first they disputed, both parties claiming the victory, the one because they had the greater number of survivors; the other, because their man remained on the field, and stripped the bodies of the slain, whereas the two men of the other side ran away. But at last they fell from words to blows, and a battle was fought, in which both parties suffered great loss, but at the end the Lacedæmonians gained the victory. Whether true or not, this story is illuminating. It shows that the Prussian theory of war, as a form of activity which cannot be subjected to contractual limits, is based on fundamental facts of human nature. Where the matter at stake is, or is conceived to be, of vital moment, no nation or tribe will ever accept a defeat which it knows, or hopes, that it can repair. Effort, no doubt, will generally be proportioned to the real or fancied importance of the point at issue. If England had been unable to live without her American colonies, she would probably have put forth her strength and quelled the revolt. She did not do so because her conscience was uneasy, her purpose infirm, and her interests not vitally involved - she could get on very well without the thirteen commonwealths. But it is one thing to sit down under a defeat because victory would not be worth its price; quite another thing to do so because the nation has contracted in advance to restrict its effort within certain definite limits. And the principle is the same whether the selected champions are three, or three hundred, or three hundred thousand. If the procedure were reasonable at all, it would be the more reasonable the smaller the force employed. There is one theory, indeed, which, if we accept its initial postulate, would make limited warfare logical. If battle be regarded as the trial of a cause before the judgment-seat of God, there is no sound reason for pouring huge armies into it. It is manifest that God can deliver his verdict in the result of a duel of one against one, quite as well as in the result of a war between whole nations in arms. On this theory, war would be an extension to politics of the 'wager of battle' between individuals a method |