Page 146 - The Social Weapon: Darwinism

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War became the symbol, the image, the inducement, the reason,
and the language of all human doings on the planet. No one who

has not waded through some sizable part of the literature of the
period 1870-1914 has any conception of the extent to which it is
one long call for blood... The militarists of the second half of the
century poeticized war and luxuriated in the prospect of it. With
relative impunity for themselves, they took it for granted that all
struggles in life must be struggles for life, and the death of the
loser its “natural” goal. 82
In the same book, Barzun described how Europe in particu-

lar fell under the influence of Darwinism's racist, militaristic
tenants:
In every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a
war party demanding armaments, an individualist party de-
manding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a

free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding
the conquest of power, and a racialist party demanding internal
purges against aliens—all of them, when appeals to greed and
glory failed, or even before, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which
was to say, science incarnate. ... Race was biological, it was socio-
logical; it was Darwinian. 83
These deceptions, identified and described by many acade-
mics, account for the 20th century's history of war, slaughter and

genocide.

Social Darwinist ideas that encouraged conflict afflicted
millions all over the world. Babies crying over the body
of their dead mother are just a part of the great suffering
inflicted by war.