THE WAR AGAINST WAR

connected with that decay of the warlike spirit due to selective breeding. It is the weak and timid woman who looks nervously under the bed for the burglar who is the last person she really desires to meet, and it is old, rich, and unwarlike nations which take the lead in laboriously protecting themselves against enemies of whom there is no sign in any quarter. Within the last half-century only have the nations of the world begun to compete with each other in this timorous and costly rivalry. In the warlike days of old, armaments in time of peace consisted in little more than solid walls for defence, a supply of weapons stored away here and there, sometimes in a room attached to the parish church, and occasional martial exercises with the sword or the bow, which were little more than an amusement. The true fighting man trusted to his own strong right arm rather than to armaments, and considered that he was himself a match for any half-dozen of the enemy. Even in actual time of war it was often difficult to find either zeal or money to supply the munitions of war. The Diary of the industrious Pepys, who achieved so much for the English navy, shows that the care of the country's ships mainly depended on a few unimportant officials who had the greatest trouble in the world to secure attention to the most urgent and immediate needs.