p. 533 | The Fighting Instinct

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1885

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 34

The Fighting Instinct.

There is not the slightest certainty that any invention, however terrible, would put an end to war; while there is almost a certainty that if such an invention were perfected, it would grievously increase the miseries of mankind. Taken in large numbers, men will face any means of destruction whatever, if they also possess it themselves. Give two men pistols, and they will fight across a handkerchief. They are not afraid of death, but only of death without a chance of victory. King Theodore, of Abyssinia, asked his courtiers, when the rocket-sticks fell at his feet, if he could be reasonably expected to face things like those, and ultimately, in pure despair of defeating science with unscientific weapons, killed himself; but if he also had possessed rockets, he would have fought on. No men, not even Prussian soldiers or English sailors, will face shells without shells to throw back, but when they have shells they face the enemy's shells as bravely as they did the old round shot.

The methods of war are changed by science, but war is not extinguished. Suppose it true that able chemists and mechanicians could invent a method of throwing an asphyxiating vapor on a sleeping army, what would be the result? First, the adoption of some protective covering, such as ironclad huts for sleeping in; next, the adoption of a method of encamping which spread the army over a surface too great or too uneven to be reached, and next, the use of similar mechanicians and chemists as the assailing force. Huxley would march with his fishermen to choke Tyndall with his Alpine climbers. War would then consist mainly of efforts to obtain advantageous positions, from which showers of death would be thrown, but war would not cease. Forlorn hopes would be organized among chemists or mechanicians as easily as among soldiers; enormous rewards would be paid to the new warriors, and nations would fight each other as briskly as ever.—London Spectator.