pause to say that I
would not of myself found an argument either for war or against it on
the analogies of the struggle for existence. Man has responsibilities
quite apart from the conditions that obtain in the lower creation. Man
is a moral agent; animals and plants are not moral agents. But the
argument for war is so often founded on this struggle in nature, that
the question must be considered.

It has been persistently repeated for years that in nature the weakest
perish and that the victory is with the strong, meaning by that the
physically powerful. This is a false analogy and a false biology. It
leads men far astray. It is the result of a misconception of the
teaching of evolution.

Our minds dwell on the capture and the carnage in nature,--the hawk
swooping on its prey, the cat stealthily watching for the mouse, wolves
hunting in packs, ferocious beasts lying in wait, sharks that follow
ships, serpents with venomous fangs, the vast range of parasitism; and
with the poet we say that nature is "red in tooth and claw." Of course,
we are not to deny the struggle of might against might, which is mostly
between individuals, and of which we are all aware; but the weak and the
fragile and the small are the organisms that have persisted. There are
thousands of little and soft things still abundant in the world that
have outlived the fearsome ravenous monsters of ages past; there were
Goliaths in those days, but the Davids have outlived them, and Gath is
not peopled by giants. The big and strong have not triumphed.

The struggle in nature is not a combat, as we commonly understand that
word, and it is not warfare. The earth is not strewn with corpses.

I was impressed in reading Roosevelt's "African Game Trails" with the
great extent of small and defenseless and fragile animal life that
abounds in the midst of the terrible beasts,--little uncourageous things
that hide in the crevices, myriads that fly in the air, those that ride
on the rhinos, that swim and hide in the pools, and bats that hang in
the acacia-trees. He travelled in the region of the lion, in the region
that "holds the mightiest creatures that tread the earth or swim in its
rivers; it also holds distant kinsfolk of these same creatures, no
bigger than woodchucks, which dwell in crannies of the rocks, and in the
tree tops. There are antelope smaller than hares and antelope larger
than oxen. There are creatures which are the embodiment of grace; and
other