The Human Drift | Page 4

getting
efficiency. Then, sixty years ago, came Commodore Perry, knocking

down her doors and letting in the knowledge and machinery of the
superior food-getting efficiency of the Western world. Immediately
upon this rise in subsistence began the rise of population; and it is only
the other day that Japan, finding her population once again pressing
against subsistence, embarked, sword in hand, on a westward drift in
search of more room. And, sword in hand, killing and being killed, she
has carved out for herself Formosa and Korea, and driven the vanguard
of her drift far into the rich interior of Manchuria.
For an immense period of time China's population has remained at
400,000,000--the saturation point. The only reason that the Yellow
River periodically drowns millions of Chinese is that there is no other
land for those millions to farm. And after every such catastrophe the
wave of human life rolls up and now millions flood out upon that
precarious territory. They are driven to it, because they are pressed
remorselessly against subsistence. It is inevitable that China, sooner or
later, like Japan, will learn and put into application our own superior
food-getting efficiency. And when that time comes, it is likewise
inevitable that her population will increase by unguessed millions until
it again reaches the saturation point. And then, inoculated with Western
ideas, may she not, like Japan, take sword in hand and start forth
colossally on a drift of her own for more room? This is another reputed
bogie--the Yellow Peril; yet the men of China are only men, like any
other race of men, and all men, down all history, have drifted hungrily,
here, there and everywhere over the planet, seeking for something to
eat. What other men do, may not the Chinese do?
But a change has long been coming in the affairs of man. The more
recent drifts of the stronger races, carving their way through the lesser
breeds to more earth-space, has led to peace, ever to wider and more
lasting peace. The lesser breeds, under penalty of being killed, have
been compelled to lay down their weapons and cease killing among
themselves. The scalp-talking Indian and the head- hunting Melanesian
have been either destroyed or converted to a belief in the superior
efficacy of civil suits and criminal prosecutions. The planet is being
subdued. The wild and the hurtful are either tamed or eliminated. From
the beasts of prey and the cannibal humans down to the death-dealing

microbes, no quarter is given; and daily, wider and wider areas of
hostile territory, whether of a warring desert-tribe in Africa or a
pestilential fever-hole like Panama, are made peaceable and habitable
for mankind. As for the great mass of stay-at-home folk, what
percentage of the present generation in the United States, England, or
Germany, has seen war or knows anything of war at first hand? There
was never so much peace in the world as there is to-day.
War itself, the old red anarch, is passing. It is safer to be a soldier than
a working-man. The chance for life is greater in an active campaign
than in a factory or a coal-mine. In the matter of killing, war is growing
impotent, and this in face of the fact that the machinery of war was
never so expensive in the past nor so dreadful. War-equipment to-day,
in time of peace, is more expensive than of old in time of war. A
standing army costs more to maintain than it used to cost to conquer an
empire. It is more expensive to be ready to kill, than it used to be to do
the killing. The price of a Dreadnought would furnish the whole army
of Xerxes with killing weapons. And, in spite of its magnificent
equipment, war no longer kills as it used to when its methods were
simpler. A bombardment by a modern fleet has been known to result in
the killing of one mule. The casualties of a twentieth century war
between two world-powers are such as to make a worker in an
iron-foundry turn green with envy. War has become a joke. Men have
made for themselves monsters of battle which they cannot face in battle.
Subsistence is generous these days, life is not cheap, and it is not in the
nature of flesh and blood to indulge in the carnage made possible by
present-day machinery. This is not theoretical, as will be shown by a
comparison of deaths in battle and men involved, in the South African
War and the Spanish- American War on the one hand, and the Civil
War or the Napoleonic Wars on the other.
Not only has war, by its own evolution, rendered itself futile, but man
himself, with greater wisdom and higher ethics, is opposed to war. He
has