WAR. A war is a fight between human societies—in primitive conditions between savage tribes, in the civilised world between states. Its explanation involves the analysis of the terms of this definition and requires the aid of the sciences that treat of its several elements; of biology to account for the fight, of sociology to explain the State, and of the historical sciences to trace the evolution, in connection with that of the State, of armed forces and of the modes of their employment.
Fighting appears to be part of the order or disorder of nature. Life is the self-realising or self-asserting energy of a countless multitude of organisms, each of which approximates by growth to the type of its kind, reproduces that type and dies. The con dition of growth is nutrition, the assimilation by the organism of extraneous matter. Reproduction multiplies every species. There is therefore a perpetual competition for the means of sub sistence. Plants in any given area crowd each other out and organisms capable of movement feed either upon plants or upon one another. In this competition, through countless generations, is accomplished the evolution of constantly higher types, which survive in virtue of increased fitness for the environment.
The environment is always changing, by geological process, by the incessant accumulation of dead organisms, and by modifica tions of the species that survive, whose existence conditions each other's.
Every higher organism has its systems of nutrition and circula tion, regulated by their own nervous system, as well as its limbs, working under the direction of the brain. It is usually equipped with organs of attack and of protection or of evasion. Of these the variety is endless; on the one hand teeth, tusks, paws, claws, electricity and even poison ; on the other hand, shells, hides, scales and devices for camouflage. The attack aims at the vital organs, those of nutrition, circulation and direction; the blows struck are met •by parry and counter-blow. The response to attack is sometimes counter-attack, sometimes flight or evasion. An injury
to one of the limbs sufficient to paralyse it exposes the vital organs, which are then liable to damage that must be fatal. The survival of any given creature in conflict with another depends on its fighting power; that of a species partly on the evolution of organs of combat and partly on adaptability to the geographical environment, climate and land, sea or air. Gregarious animals rely on co-operation, on the swarm, the herd or the pack.
Man is not only gregarious but social. Everything that is dis tinctively human is the product of the common life. The special characteristic of man is thought, expressed in the spoken word, and in the work of the constructing hand. Among the oldest monuments of thought are the flint arrow head, the beginning of man's ascendancy in the animal world, and the pictures scratched on bone or stone, his earliest attempts to represent the environment. Speech conveys the thoughts common to the group, and is at once the medium of understanding between the members of the group and a barrier separating them from other groups speaking other languages. The armed man is master not only of the wild beast but of the unarmed man. The group of men who co-operate is stronger than the same number without the power of co-operation, which comes from direction, given by the leader's word of command, of which the name is order. These are the elements of man's self-realisation, which takes the form not merely of his adapting himself to his environment but of his effort to shape it to his own purposes.
All these elements are found in the most primitive societies, which when they have found a region where they can subsist with out wandering about, seek safety by establishing themselves in a cave, in a lake-dwelling or a high place surrounded by a ring fence. Eventually the home becomes a walled town with a ruler and a body of armed men. This is the beginning of the State and of what is the same thing, civilisation.