I have described it as a characteristic of our age that we are rising above the stream of traditions which flows from civilisation to civilisation, and are discovering that some of its sources are tainted. Now in the case of warfare this scrutiny of the origin and course of our traditions is comparatively easy. What we have discovered is so well known, and so little disputed, that it need hardly be related. It may be useful to state, at least, that very early man was probably not a combative and bloodthirsty savage. He lives to-day in such lowly peoples as the Veddahs and the Yahgans, and they are generally peaceful and averse from brawling. In this primitive man, however, there slumbered all the impulsive passion of earlier ancestors, and it was inevitable that a cultural rise should awaken it. When men became organised in tribes, when they became hunters and tillers of the soil, when they increased and wandered far afield, quarrels arose over women and hunting grounds and other necessaries, and the institution of warfare was established. Within the tribe there was already some kind of court, as a rule, before which a man could bring his neighbour for wrong-doing. For the quarrel between tribe and tribe there was no judge: the verdict lay with the heavier weapon and the stouter arm. Hence, the higher the intelligence of the tribe, the more deadly and widespread became the carnage. Ferocity became a useful social quality--a virtue, indeed, the supreme virtue, or _virtus_ (manliness)--and the primitive genius was expended in making more cruel and lacerating the barbs of the arrow and the spear. The administration of justice advanced, and a time came when private vengeance, and even family feuds, were strictly forbidden and regarded as crimes. But, while ten men might not go to war against ten men, ten thousand would march out, with the sonorous blessing of their priests, to the more barbaric butchery of war against ten thousand. The mind had to grow larger, the heart more human, before the reign of justice would be acknowledged in the relations of masses of men to each other as well as in the relations of individuals.