appeared a cartoon in any American newspaper tending to glorify
war, and no legislation has so far been enacted in preparation
for war. There is good reason to believe that the people have
not been infected by the contagion of blood.

As Professor Patrick argued in a recent issue of the Monthly,
man is by genetic inheritance a fighting and a playing animal,
not an animal delighting in steady work. The ape and the tiger
will be exterminated elsewhere in nature before they will be
suppressed in man. It is a slow process, but surely proceeding.

The writer of this note has determined the proportion of each
century in which the leading nations have been engaged in war.
The curve thus found has no great reliability; for it does not
take into account the percentages of the peoples concerned, but
its course clearly indicates that even under circumstances as
they have been, wars will come to an end. And there is good
reason to believe that the newer condition--universal education
and universal suffrage, democratic control, improved economic
conditions of living for the people, the scientific
attitude--will tend to bend the curve more rapidly toward the
base line of permanent "peace on earth and good will to men."

While man has inherited instincts which exhibit themselves in
playing and fighting, the same instincts may by social control
be diverted to playing the games of art or science, to fighting
disease and vice. It is rarely wise or feasible to attempt to
suppress instincts; they should be directed so as to provide
desirable conduct. Loyalty to family, to group, to neighborhood
and to nation can not be lightly cast away for an abstract