Tennyson’s agonizing line “Nature red in tooth and claw” tends, especially in the days of world-wide human carnage, to make one see the whole animal kingdom with blood-dripping claws and jaws. But it is not so. At its worst this “tooth and claw” business applies only to a fraction of wild life. The vast army of the seed-eaters, the plant-eaters, the fruit-eaters, upon which the flesh-eaters subsist, and which they help keep in check, is greatly in the ascendancy. The whole truth of this matter of the cruelty of Nature may be put in a nutshell: Nature as seen in animal life is _sanguinary_, but only man is _cruel_. Only man deliberately and intentionally inflicts pain; only man tortures his victims, and takes pleasure in their agony. No other creature goes out of its way to inflict suffering; no other creature acts from the motive of cruelty or the will to give pain. Nature kills, but does not torture. The biological laws are neither human nor inhuman; they are _un_human. If in following the rule that might makes right, the Germans sought justification by an appeal to biological laws, they fell below the beasts of the fields, because they are moral beings, and know good from evil. Biological laws are not concerned about the moral law. Not till we reach man’s moral nature does this law have any validity; then it becomes a biological law, because it has survival value. Could the race of man ever have developed as we now see it without the conceptions of right and justice and the spirit of mutual helpfulness? As time passes, other things being equal, the most righteous and humanitarian nation will be the most powerful and the most progressive. The great strength of the Allied cause in the World War was that it was founded upon an ideal conception of international justice and comity. President Wilson set this forth in such wonderful completeness that it will shine in our political firmament for all time like a star of the first magnitude. And the weakness of the German cause was that it was based upon the spirit and the aims of the pirate and the highwayman. When we speak of Nature’s cruelty we are obsessed with the idea that blood and death necessarily mean cruelty, whereas cruelty, as I have said, means an intentional infliction of pain or suffering. Is the surgeon cruel when he performs an operation? Do our own carnivorous habits imply cruelty? The slaughter-house is not a pleasant object to contemplate; the sight of blood disturbs most of us; its sight and smell excite even the unreasoning brutes. But it is the wanton shedding of blood that reacts unfavorably upon ourselves, and makes us indifferent to the suffering which blood so often implies. Life is a wonderful and precious gift, and we do not like to see it wantonly destroyed.