Like human beings, animals fight mainly for love, sometimes (as with the birds that defend their "terri• tory") for property, sometimes for social position. But they do not make war. War is quite definitely not a "law of nature." II Generals who inspect the O.T.C.'s of public schools are fond of telling their youthful audi• ences that "man is a fighting animal." Now, in the sense that, like stags, men quarrel for love, like white• throats, for property, and, like harndoor fowls, for position in society, this statement may he regarded as true. Like even the mildest animals-and it is probable that our pre-human ancestors were gentle creatures something like the tarsiers of to-day-men have 'always done a good deal of "scrapping.'' In some places and at some epochs of history this "scrapping" was a violent and savage affair; at others, relatively harmless: it has been entirely a matter of convention. Thus, in Europe, three hundred years ago, "the best people" were expected to fight a duel on the slightest provocation; now they are not expected to do so. Within tlte life-time of men still with us, games of rugby football ended, and were meant to end, in broken legs. On the modem football field broken legs are no longer in fashion. The rules for casual individual "scrap• ping" and for those organized group-contests which we call sport, have been changed, on the whole for the better. The rules of war, on the contrary, have changed in every way for the worse. In the eighteenth century Marlborough gave a day's notice before beginning the bombardment of a town. To-day even a formal declaration of war is coming to he regarded as un• necessary. (Italy, for example, dispensed with it completely when attacking Abyssinia.) "A declaration of war," writes General Ludendorff, "is a waste of time and also it sometimes unfortunately brands the 5 Bib'ioteca Gino Bianco
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