Evening star., 1942-05-31

| existence, out of the fear and hatred OF
| strangers and competitors, and 1t has
expanded as the means Of communica-
| ton between human beings has expand
ed. from a war Of families to war OF
clans, to tribal wars, to national wars, to
wars of conquest and wars of empires.
Disregarding a few exceptional cases,
mountain Businesses or islands for ex-
ample, everything has favored this ex-
pansion through the ages; the bigger the
unified community. the stronger the
army. The outline of history resolves
itself into a growth OF communities
obeying this obvious law.
But it is not merely that the scope OF
war has changed until now every war
becomes world war. but all the time,
with the invention Of new weapon and
a new method, the nature and social con-
sequences of warfare change. Any one
who saws There always has been war
and there always will be" is either an
ienoramus or an idiot. He is the victim
of a word. But If we call war with flint
hand-axes, War A. and If we call war
with bows and arrows War B, and war
with repeating firearms-I am thinking
of the Colts revolver in TeXas-War Z,
we realize that War B can abolish War
A and War C War B.
1t is not simply the war that changes
into something else; the community
changes with it, and has to change with
it. The Texan. with a social structure be-
hind him that could produce revolver,
reduced the previously invincible Com
anche nomad, with his horses and ar
rows to an anachroniSm.
Wars Are Unequal.
The science of history is still in its in
fancy. The histories upon which we
were brought up were intended mainly
to make us good and useful citizens for
the government to which we belonged;
nevertheless the truth has a way of seep-
ing through, and. if the reader will run
his mind back through the record, he
will realize that through the whole course
of history, except for local pickering,
there are very few cases of fair and
square war on equal terms. What Is
generally happening is that War G is
giving way to War H or War H to WarsI
with all the associated social changes.
Drilled and disciplined men drove
through the Homeric scrapping and
swagger of undisciplined heroes: the
war-chariot broke the locked formations
of the drilled men; the mounted men of
the Macedonian cavalry chased the Per-
sian chariots of the face of the earth;
the Mongols substituted enlistment for
massacre and swept triumphantly from
Karakorum to Silesia with an ever more
miscellaneous host; the Parthian cavalry
rode round the Roman legions and shot
them to pieces; the Arab chivalry
thought Mohammed the dirtiest cad who
ever spoilt war by digging in at Medina.
One could go on assembling instance
after instance to verify this generaliza-
ton of the progressive Transformation of
war and of the world by novelties, by new
material and new methods. We should
come to gunpowder, artillery, railroads,
rifled guns iron shipping, machine guns
and so forth and so on. Each altered the
problems of war, each evoked different
sort of soldier and varied the quality of
the ensuing peace. Each, in fact, altered
the rules of the war game and made it,
to the extent Of that alteration, a new
game. And as we come up through his
tory to the past century we should find
the transformations of war more and
more fundamental and revolutionary, and
clustering closer and closer together in
the record.
Now the changes tread so closely upon
each others heels that the war game we
shall be playing next year will certainly
be altogether different from the war
game our generals and war Offices learned
to play when they were still learners.
1t will be new game; the scoring will
be different and the outcome will be
different-I had almost written totally
different. so great is the difference likely
to be-from anything ever heard of be-
fore in the whole history of mankind.
New Weapons Evolve.
Let us run over some of the more fun
damental phases in this final transfor-
nation of war We need not go back
earlier than 1900 to apprehend the broad
first of all the new weapons that have
come into action since that date. Chief
among them are the tank and airplane.
Both of these were the realization of
very ancient human dreams. They are
social products, to which hundreds of
thousands of minds have contributed.
Recently one or two ill-advised old gen.
Lo, 81 ,aI IN ha ho iy,r
of the tank or the inventor of the air.
plane. We have even been told of the
precise turning point in history when
the tank was conceived"
Such claims are as foolish and prepos-
ferrous as itswould be to talk of the
inventor of the city, State or of the
plowed field or Of music. But human
invention advances upon a broad 'front.'
and, because of that neck and-neck ad-
vance, the history of science is dis
figured by countless petty squabbles for
priority. The reality of almost all fun
damental human progress is gradual
approximation of experiment to practical
application on the part of great numbers
of people. Imaginative men anticipate
the result and keep up the courage of
the research worker, by believing in him
and sustaining him when he seems most
impracticable.
The tank idea, for example, the idea
OF an advance of troops under some
sort Of portable cover (the Roman
testudo) is almost as old as walled cities
and men have been experimenting with
gliders and similar devices since the