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