wounds and pains, and lying finally side by side (as not unfrequently
happens) on the deserted battlefield, reconciled and redeemed and
clasping hands of amity even in death.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] H.M. Tomlinson, in the _Daily News_.




XIV


THE OVER-POPULATION SCARE

Some cheerful and rather innocent people insist that because of the
over-population difficulty wars must go on for ever. The population of
the world, they say--or at any rate of the civilized countries--is
constantly increasing, and if war did not from time to time reduce the
numbers there would soon be a deadlock. They seem to think that the only
way to solve the problem is for the men to murder each other. This says
nothing about the women, who, after all, are the chief instruments of
multiplication. It may also be pointed out that even the barbaric method
of slaughter is not practicable. Although wars of extermination may have
now and then occurred in the past among tribes and small peoples, such
wars are not considered decent nowadays; and the numbers killed in
modern campaigns--horribly "scientific" and "efficient" as the methods
are--is such a small fraction of the population concerned as to have no
appreciable result. The population of Germany is about seventy millions,