I. Science and Warfare

Abstract

It has always pleased man in his humanity to set forth more or less periodically and kill a number of his fellow humans. History shows that there has usually been a good reason for this - generally the other country has taken the first hostile step, particularly of later years, when it has appeared necessary to justify warfare as being waged for self-protection. As we know ourselves from our small daily disputes, the other man is always in the wrong, though he seldom, if ever, annoys us so much that we want to kill him: individual murder is discouraged, even appears to the Britisher as being silly and undignified, so that instead of sneaking on him in the dark, or killing him in a duel, we tell our sympathetic family just what we think of him and his actions. In the same way the other country is always wrong, but there is no sympathetic family external to the nation to which the group of individuals can unburden themselves. Just as one man, compelled to keep to himself the wrongs, real or imaginary, done to him by someone he dislikes may eventually burst out and attack the person he imagines to be hostile to him, so may an entire nation go mad.