Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-06-20
Humanity's Final and Grim
NEST Battle for Existence.
CELL AGAINST CELL
RESOLVES INTO A STRUGGLE
WITH THE BACILLI.
Closing Act in q World Drama-Who
Will Be the
TictorP

| Written for The Evening Star by Prof. Wilhelm
| Boelsche.
In our generation we behold a gigantic
| spectacle. Only few on this dark and
restless earth grasp 1t in its full greatness
And in truth one should be on another
planet in order to see it it is. mon
strous, yet sublime in its very terror.
Let US imagine a perspective.
Instead of humanity we see a single vast
man. And this man. a Hercules. Is wrest-
| ling with a Hydra.
The Hydra of the old tales was an animal.
patterned after the octopus, the polyp or
| the cutie f1sh-an animal that has been
placed in the first rank Of the mollusks by
modern science-therefore an animal OF
| relatively high development.
| But this man that we see battles with a
thing that is not animal. not plant. 1t is
| merely alive 1t is without organs with
| out inner structure. 1t is not gigantic. like
| the stored Hydra in the sense of having
| a single huge animal-body. But it is gil
| gantic in another sense that goes far be-
| You'd that old Hydra
| In the Hydra a new head grew at once
| in place of every one that was cut off.
| The monster to which l refer tears apart
| under the hands of the fighting man into
miliards of new horrors. Where one
| threatened now, countless masses threaten
| in the next moment.
And in this expanding mass the creatures
spread over the earth and heaven till Il
new. still more dreadful whole is formed
/ again of them, and drives like black
| killing fog, from all sides upon the Her
| cules. He strains. gasps-will he conquer?
! No mythology has created anything like
| that.
| 1t is man-humanity fighting the bacillus.
Highest and Lowest Meet.
! most wonderful thing has, indeed de-
veloped on our old planet. The highest
and the lowest form of organic life have
met at last in fight for existence.
| The fight against the bacillus is naked.
defensive battle Of the geological species
man" 1t is the last decisive war between
| the eliminating point of all life-develop-
| ment and the Oldest most primitive, most
simple existence that life has produced.
with which life began millions of years ago.
| and which life has dragged upward with it
| as an undigested primordial remnant, side
| by side with the mighty development at
| whose pinnacle stands man.
The full earth-mastery of man, strictly
speaking, did not begin before the nine
| tenth century.
Man appeared on earth in an epoch in
1 which it already was possible to reckon
| backward millions of years during which
| the vertebrates had become the superior
! creatures of the world.
These vertebrates, mans nearest an
| cestors and relatives, man had to destroy
| first. They faced him in three groups, and
] in each group was a history of time.
The smallest and least important group
| remained as the vanishing rest Of an epoch
| in whose highest period man did not exist.
We call this the secondary epoch now. 1t
| was the day of the ichthyosaurians. This
| strange world had lasted through intermin-
! able spaces of time. Then it broke down.
| Probably the slowly strengthening world
| of mammals helped to force 1T under. 1t
| happened long before the coming of man.
| 70 no the ichthyOSaurianS Onlv
| here and there did he find a relic of the
| epoch.
Mans Slaughter Begins.
Australia had preserved the most singu-
| lar survivors. The few wild men there
hardly disturbed them: our advancing Eu-
| ropean culture is doing 1t radically. The
| duck-bill is disappearing. Soon they will
| have shot the last kangaroo-one of the
| earliest and oldest of mammal FORMS the
| great lizard-fish Ceratodus. whose ances-
| tors formed the link between fish and liz
| ard in the Devonian period. vegetables still
| in only two tiny rivulets: the mysterious
| lizard Hatteria in New Zealand. the one
| surviving arch-reptile. which linked the
reptiles with the amphibians and perhaps
even with the mammals. has become SO
rare, only one hundred years after its dis
| covery, that only the protection of the
| government and it's isolated habitat a
! few rock islands in Cook sound check it's
| extinction temporarily.
On this same New Zealand the Maoris
ate up race of immense wingless birds.
| the moas. For all this great world of
survivals. man became the eXecutioner in
| the beginning and remains so.
| OF quite different Importance to man in
| his infancy was a second group of large
| vertebrateS In North America. Europe and
| north Asia there came a change at this
| time that altered or destroyed the animals
| of tertiary time the ichthyosaurianS
| marsupials and billed mammals of second
airy time had been swept away.
| However much man may have witnessed
| of this change, it certainly occurred with
| out his help. When he had become strong
| the entire. still monstrously large remnant
| of the tertiary world dwelled in south Asia
| and in Africa. small distant remnant
| also lived in South America-grotesQue
| mammoth sloths and mammoth armadillos
| The latter evidently became extinct early.
and We have evidence that man ate
| megatherium and glyptodon in prehistoric
| days, it Is likely that he was the hangman
of this animal world also.
Battle Against the Tertiary World.
| In other places the battle was not so
| easy. For two thousand years and more
| the African and Indian tertiary animal
world with its elephants. rhinocerii. hip
| popotamii. huge Carnivora and manlike
| monkeys. such gorilla and orang, con-
| fronted even civilized humanity like a de-
! moniac specter surrounded with fables
/
lands and threatene humanity.
| But as early as Carthage man learned
| to subdue the beast. The Carthagian en-
! shaved the elephant and made war material
| of him. The Roman dragged the jungle
| brutes into his arenas in armies. And when
| the musket was invented the final hour
| struck for this bit of primeval and ances-
| trail life. The tertiary world of giants went
| tumblirg headlong after the secondary
| world and culture" became the execu-
| toner of historical decree.
But man had to do with another group
| Of animals. The great force that drove the
| tertiary mammals out of the north CONT
nents, before man became strong, was the
ice. A certain percentage of mammals not
thus driven south consisted of some that
had adjusted themselves to the cold So
there came the red-wooled mammoth, the
fuIred rhinoceros, the cave lion the musk
OK and the reindeer.
This is the so-called diluvial animal world.
And man had to do directly with it-man,
whose plainest remnants show that he lived
on the edges of the glaciers of the ice pc
Rod, and who perhaps had to thank the
stress of the ice-time for his greatest early
progress. such as the discovery of the way
to kindle fire.
Man Ate the Diluvial World.