r between Europeans in combination with their non-European
allies and subjects. If it takes the first form, and if we assume, as
Lord Ampthill probably does, that the North European racial type is
'higher' than any other, then the slaughter of half a million selected
Englishmen and half a million selected Germans will clearly be an act
of biological retrogression. Even if the non-European races are brought
in and a corresponding number of selected Turks and Arabs and Tartars,
or of Gurkhas and Pathans and Soudanese are slaughtered, the biological
loss to the world, as measured by the percentage of surviving 'higher'
or 'lower' individuals will only be slightly diminished.

Nor is that form of the argument much better founded which contends that
the evolutionary advantage to be expected from the 'struggle of empires'
is the 'survival' not of races but of political and cultural types. Our
victory over the German Empire, for instance, would mean, it is said, a
victory for the idea of political liberty. This argument, which, when
urged by the rulers of India, sounds somewhat temerarious, requires the
assumption that types of culture are in the modern world most
successfully spread by military occupation. But in the ancient world
Greek culture spread most rapidly after the fall of the Greek Empire;
Japan in our own time adopted Western culture more readily as an
independent nation than she would have done as a dependency of Russia or
France; and India is perhaps more likely to-day to learn from Japan than
from England.

Lord Ampthill's phrase, however, represents not so much an argument, as
a habit of feeling shared by many who have forgotten or never known the
biological doctrine which it echoes. The first followers of Darwin
believed that the human species had been raised above its prehuman
ancestors because, and in so far as, it had surrendered itself to a
blind instinct of conflict. It seemed, therefore, as if the old moral
precept that men should control their more violent impulses by
reflection had been founded upon a mistake. Unreflecting instinct was,
after all, the best guide, and nations who acted instinctively towards
their neighbours might justify themselves like the Parisian ruffians of
ten years ago, by claiming to be 'strugforlifeurs.'

If this habit of mind is to be destroyed it must be opposed not merely
by a new argument but by a conception of man's relation to the universe
which creates emotional force a