Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/41

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THE MILITARY SHAM
25

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.

With the dawn of civilisation a terrible paradox occurred. Warfare was not abolished, but made more destructive. Again we find this a natural and intelligible development. Each early civilisation found itself surrounded by barbaric tribes, with which no compact of justice could be established or trusted. The great Stoic humanitarians of