atisfy his own emotions and is
often conscious that it does nothing else. But, whatever the inducing
cause or result, given a brain and nervous system and the material that
civilization furnishes for reflection, these and other important
subjects will be interesting topics of study and furnish material for
the reflective powers of man.

XXIX

WAR AND CRIME

All natural phenomena affect the activities of man. It has been
repeatedly observed that the number of crimes of assault and murder
increases in the summer months and fluctuates with extreme heat or a
cooler temperature. The nervous system of man is responsive to all sorts
of physical and psychological influences, and criminologists take these
into account in considering crime, as doctors take them into account in
treating disease. Man is influenced by substantially all the things that
affect other structures and by many things that do not. His nervous
system is more delicate, his emotional nature more complex, and his
brain permits the handling of impressions in a way not possible to lower
organisms.

The effect of war has always been manifest in human conduct. Man acts
largely from habit and custom; he does as others do, without reflection
as to why he should do it or why others do it. War is a sudden, violent
and spectacular destroyer of all established habits. In its conduct and
preparation it has rules of its own which have no analogy in civil
life. The battlefield is a reversion to the primitive; a reversion which
man finds it easy to make, for it appeals to fundamental instincts which
civilization holds in leash with great difficulty and never with entire
success. War especially appeals to the young. Their desire for activity,
their impatience with restraint, their love of the spectacular, their
untrained emotions, all find a ready outlet in war. Even those who are
too young to fight still read of it, talk of it, play at it to the
exclusion of other games. War is a profound and rapid maker of mental
attitudes and of complexes that are quick to develop and slow to pass
away. Both the quick development and slow decay are probably due to the
fact that war meets a decided response in the primitive nature of man.

Nearly all the newspapers of America are now calling attention to the
increase of crime since the close of the Great War. It is a topic of
pulpit and platform discussion. Wild appeals are made for convictions
and extreme penalties. Governors