Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/49

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WAR
13

tation." The writer was surprised that the Christians had not learned better manners amongst the Eskimo, and he proposed to send missionaries to them. A traveler in Formosa says that the Formosans thought foreigners barbarians, "civilization being solely within the dominion of the Celestial Emperor. All the rest of the world — if there was any poor remainder — was benighted, and but the home of 'barbarians,' not 'men.'"[1] This is the language of ethnocentrism; it may be read in the newspapers of any civilized country to-day.

We find then that there are two sentiments in the minds of the same men at the same time. These have been called militancy and industrialism. The latter term does not seem to be a good one and it is not apt until we reach high civilization; what we want is a term to express the peace sentiment in antithesis to militancy, but industrialism has obtained currency and it has this much justification, even for savage life, that, inside the group, the needs of life must be provided for by productive labor. Generally that is left to the women and the men practice militarism.

It would not be possible for neighboring groups to remain really isolated from each other. One has in its territory stone or salt, water or fuel, limited fruits, melons, nuts, fish, or perhaps other natural materials which the others need. They also take wives from each other, generally, but not always. Hence arise treaties of commercium and connubium, which bring about a middle state of things between war and peace. These treaties are the origin of international law. A comparison of modern municipal and international law will show that the difference between the relations of members of the in-group with each other, and of the groups with each other, still exists.

  1. Pickering, W. A.; Pioneering in Formosa, 136.