New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-07-11

a.
on the human race. These have long
been debated problems concerning which there
Is no complete agreement. But until we make
M our minds on these fundamental questions
we can gain no solid ground from which TO
face serenely, or at all events, firmly the
crisis through which mankind Is now passing.
Il has been widely held that war has played
an essential part in the evolutionary struggle
for survival among our animal ancestors, thal
war has been a factor Of the first Importance
in the social development of primitive human
races. and that war always will be an essen
tial method of preserving the human virtues
even in the highest civilization. 1t must be
observed that these are three separate and
quite distinct propositions. 1t is possible to
accent one. or even two, Of them without al
fr,ninr them all. If we wish to clear our
minds of confusion on this matter, SO vital TO
out civilization, we must face each Of the
questions by itself.
The Spacious struggle for Life"
It has sometimes been maintained-never
more theoretically than to-day, especially
among the nations which most eagerly en-
tered the present confict-that war Is a BIO
.lorical necessity. War, we are told, is a man
Hesitation of the Struggle for Life 1t is the
inevitable application to mankind Of the Oar
vinian law" Of natural selection. There are,
however. two capital and final objections to.
this view. On the one hand it is not supported
by anything that Darwin himself SAID and on
the other hand it is denied as a fact by those
authorities on natural history who speak with
most knowledge That Darwin regarded war
as an insigrifcant or even non-eXstent part
of natural selection must be clear to all who
have read his books. He was careful TO state
that he used the term struggle for existence
in a "metaphorical sense" and the dominant
factors in the struggle for existence, as Oar
win understood it, were natural SUITABILITY 10
the organic and inorganic environment and
the capacity for adaptation to circumstances;
one species fourishes while a less ethclent
species living alongside it languishes yet they
NAV never come in actual contact and there
is nothing in the least approaching human war
fare. The conditions much more resemble
what. among ourselves, we may see in business,
where the better equipped species, that is to
saw. the big capitalist, lOurshes, while the
less well equipped species, the small capitalist
succumbs. Mr. Chalmers Mitchell, Secretary
of the London Geological Society, and familiar
with the habits of animals, has lately empha-
sized the contention of Darwin and shown that
even the most widely current notions of the
determination of one species by another have
no foundation in fact. Thus the thylacne or
Tasmarian wolf the fiercest of the marsupials,
has been entirely driven out Of Australia and
its place taken by later and higher animal, OF
the dog family, the dngo. But there IS not
the slightest reason to believe that the dingo
ever made war on the thylacine.
Biological Struggles
If there was any struggle at all 1t was a
common struggle against the environment, IN
which the dingo. by superior intelligence IN
finding food and rearing young, and by greater
resisting power to climate and disease, was
able TO succeed where the thylacine failed
Again. the supposed war of determination
vaged in Europe by the brown rat against the
black rat is Gas Chalmers Mitchell points out)
pure fiction In England, where this war Is
said TO have been ferociousy waged both rats
exist and flourish, and under conditions which
do not usually even bring them into competi-
tion with each other. The black rat (nus rat
ius) is smaller than the other, but more active
and better climber; he is the rat of the barn
and the granary. The brown or Norway rat
(lfus dcc7unou1l) is larger but less active,
burrower rather than a climber, and though
both rats are omnjvorous the brown rat is