<h2><SPAN name="VI" id="VI"></SPAN>VI</h2>
<h3><span class="smcap">War</span></h3>
<p>In shaping anticipations of the future of war there arises a certain
difficulty about the point of departure. One may either begin upon such
broad issues as the preceding forecasts have opened, and having
determined now something of the nature of the coming State and the force
of its warlike inclination, proceed to speculate how this vast
ill-organized fourfold organism will fight; or one may set all that
matter aside for a space, and having regard chiefly to the continually
more potent appliances physical science offers the soldier, we may try
to develop a general impression of theoretically thorough war, go from
that to the nature of the State most likely to be superlatively
efficient in such warfare, and so arrive at the conditions of survival
under which these present governments of confusion will struggle one
against the other. The latter course will be taken here. We will deal
first of all with war conducted for its own sake, with a model army, as
efficient as an imaginative training can make it, and with a model
organization for<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></SPAN></span> warfare of the State behind it, and then the
experience of the confused modern social organism as it is impelled, in
an uncongenial metamorphosis, towards this imperative and finally
unavoidable efficient state, will come most easily within the scope of
one's imagination.</p>
<p>The great change that is working itself out in warfare is the same
change that is working itself out in the substance of the social fabric.
The essential change in the social fabric, as we have analyzed it, is
the progressive supersession of the old broad labour base by elaborately
organized mechanism, and the obsolescence of the once valid and
necessary distinction of gentle and simple. In warfare, as I have
already indicated, this takes the form of the progressive supersession
of the horse and the private soldier—which were the living and sole
engines of the old time—by machines, and the obliteration of the old
distinction between leaders, who pranced in a conspicuously dangerous
and encouraging way into the picturesque incidents of battle, and the
led, who cheered and charged and filled the ditches and were slaughtered
in a wholesale dramatic manner. The old war was a matter of long dreary
marches, great hardships of campaigning, but also of heroic conclusive
moments. Long periods of campings—almost always with an outbreak of
pestilence—of marchings and retreats, much crude business of feeding
and forage, culminated at last,<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></SPAN></span> with an effect of infinite relief, in
an hour or so of "battle." The battle was always a very intimate
tumultuous affair, the men were flung at one another in vast excited
masses, in living fighting machines as it were, spears or bayonets
flashed, one side or the other ceased to prolong the climax, and the
thing was over. The beaten force crumpled as a whole, and the victors as
a whole pressed upon it. Cavalry with slashing sabres marked the
crowning point of victory. In the later stages of the old warfare
musketry volleys were added to the physical impact of the contending
regiments, and at last cannon, as a quite accessory method of breaking
these masses of men. So you "gave battle" to and defeated your enemy's
forces wherever encountered, and when you reached your objective in his
capital the war was done.... The new war will probably have none of
these features of the old system of fighting.</p>
<p>The revolution that is in progress from the old war to a new war,
different in its entire nature from the old, is marked primarily by the
steady progress in range and efficiency of the rifle and of the
field-gun—and more particularly of the rifle. The rifle develops
persistently from a clumsy implement, that any clown may learn to use in
half a day, towards a very intricate mechanism, easily put out of order
and easily misused, but of the most extraordinary possibilities in the
hands of men of courage, character, and high intelligence. Its precision
at long range<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></SPAN></span> has made the business of its care, loading and aim
subsidiary to the far more intricate matter of its use in relation to
the contour of the ground within its reach. Even its elaboration as an
instrument is probably still incomplete. One can conceive it provided in
the future with cross-thread telescopic sights, the focussing of which,
corrected by some ingenious use of hygroscopic material, might even find
the range, and so enable it to be used with assurance up to a mile or
more. It will probably also take on some of the characters of the
machine-gun. It will be used either for single shots or to quiver and
send a spray of almost simultaneous bullets out of a magazine evenly and
certainly, over any small area the rifleman thinks advisable. It will
probably be portable by one man, but there is no reason really, except
the bayonet tradition, the demands of which may be met in other ways,
why it should be the instrument of one sole man. It will, just as
probably, be slung with its ammunition and equipment upon bicycle
wheels, and be the common care of two or more associated soldiers.
Equipped with such a weapon, a single couple of marksmen even, by reason
of smokeless powder and carefully chosen cover, might make themselves
practically invisible, and capable of surprising, stopping, and
destroying a visible enemy in quite considerable numbers who blundered
within a mile of them. And a series of such groups of marksmen so
arranged as to cover<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></SPAN></span> the arrival of reliefs, provisions, and fresh
ammunition from the rear, might hold out against any visible attack for
an indefinite period, unless the ground they occupied was searched very
ably and subtly by some sort of gun having a range in excess of their
rifle fire. If the ground they occupied were to be properly tunnelled
and trenched, even that might not avail, and there would be nothing for
it but to attack them by an advance under cover either of the night or
of darkness caused by smoke-shells, or by the burning of cover about
their position. Even then they might be deadly with magazine fire at
close quarters. Save for their liability to such attacks, a few hundreds
of such men could hold positions of a quite vast extent, and a few
thousand might hold a frontier. Assuredly a mere handful of such men
could stop the most multitudinous attack or cover the most disorderly
retreat in the world, and even when some ingenious, daring, and lucky
night assault had at last ejected them from a position, dawn would
simply restore to them the prospect of reconstituting in new positions
their enormous advantage of defence.</p>
<p>The only really effective and final defeat such an attenuated force of
marksmen could sustain, would be from the slow and circumspect advance
upon it of a similar force of superior marksmen, creeping forward under
cover of night or of smoke-shells and fire, digging pits during the
snatches of cessation obtained in this way, and so coming nearer and
nearer and<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></SPAN></span> getting a completer and completer mastery of the defender's
ground until the approach of the defender's reliefs, food, and fresh
ammunition ceased to be possible. Thereupon there would be nothing for
it but either surrender or a bolt in the night to positions in the rear,
a bolt that might be hotly followed if it were deferred too late.</p>
<p>Probably between contiguous nations that have mastered the art of war,
instead of the pouring clouds of cavalry of the old dispensation,<SPAN name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</SPAN>
this will be the opening phase of the struggle, a vast duel all along<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></SPAN></span>
the frontier between groups of skilled marksmen, continually being
relieved and refreshed from the rear. For a time quite possibly there
will be no definite army here or there, there will be no controllable
battle, there will be no Great General in the field at all. But
somewhere far in the rear the central organizer will sit at the
telephonic centre of his vast front, and he will strengthen here and
feed there and watch, watch perpetually the pressure, the incessant
remorseless pressure that is seeking to wear down his countervailing
thrust. Behind the thin firing line that is actually engaged, the
country for many miles will be rapidly cleared and devoted to the
business of war, big machines will be at work making second, third, and
fourth lines of trenches that may be needed if presently the firing line
is forced back, spreading out transverse paths for the swift lateral
movement of the cyclists who will be in perpetual alertness to relieve
sudden local pressures, and all along those great motor roads our first
"Anticipations" sketched, there will be a vast and rapid shifting to and
fro of big and very long range guns. These guns will probably be fought
with the help of balloons. The latter will hang above the firing line
all along the front, incessantly ascending and withdrawn; they will be
continually determining the distribution of the antagonist's forces,
directing the fire of continually shifting great guns upon the apparatus
and supports in<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></SPAN></span> the rear of his fighting line, forecasting his night
plans and seeking some tactical or strategic weakness in that sinewy
line of battle.</p>
<p>It will be evident that such warfare as this inevitable precision of gun
and rifle forces upon humanity, will become less and less dramatic as a
whole, more and more as a whole a monstrous thrust and pressure of
people against people. No dramatic little general spouting his troops
into the proper hysterics for charging, no prancing merely brave
officers, no reckless gallantry or invincible stubbornness of men will
suffice. For the commander-in-chief on a picturesque horse sentimentally
watching his "boys" march past to death or glory in battalions, there
will have to be a loyal staff of men, working simply, earnestly, and
subtly to keep the front tight, and at the front, every little isolated
company of men will have to be a council of war, a little conspiracy
under the able man its captain, as keen and individual as a football
team, conspiring against the scarcely seen company of the foe over
yonder. The battalion commander will be replaced in effect by the
organizer of the balloons and guns by which his few hundreds of splendid
individuals will be guided and reinforced. In the place of hundreds of
thousands of more or less drunken and untrained young men marching into
battle—muddle-headed, sentimental, dangerous and futile
hobbledehoys—there will be thousands of sober men<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></SPAN></span> braced up to their
highest possibilities, intensely doing their best; in the place of
charging battalions, shattering impacts of squadrons and wide
harvest-fields of death, there will be hundreds of little rifle battles
fought up to the hilt, gallant dashes here, night surprises there, the
sudden sinister faint gleam of nocturnal bayonets, brilliant guesses
that will drop catastrophic shell and death over hills and forests
suddenly into carelessly exposed masses of men. For eight miles on
either side of the firing lines—whose fire will probably never
altogether die away while the war lasts—men will live and eat and sleep
under the imminence of unanticipated death.... Such will be the opening
phase of the war that is speedily to come.</p>
<p>And behind the thin firing line on either side a vast multitude of
people will be at work; indeed, the whole mass of the efficients in the
State will have to be at work, and most of them will be simply at the
same work or similar work to that done in peace time—only now as
combatants upon the lines of communication. The organized staffs of the
big road managements, now become a part of the military scheme, will be
deporting women and children and feeble people and bringing up supplies
and supports; the doctors will be dropping from their civil duties into
pre-appointed official places, directing the feeding and treatment of
the shifting masses of people and guarding the valuable manhood of the
fighting<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></SPAN></span> apparatus most sedulously from disease;<SPAN name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</SPAN> the engineers will
be entrenching and bringing up a vast variety of complicated and
ingenious apparatus designed to surprise and inconvenience the enemy in
novel ways; the dealers in food and clothing, the manufacturers of all
sorts of necessary stuff, will be converted by the mere declaration of
war into public servants; a practical realization of socialistic
conceptions will quite inevitably be forced upon the fighting State. The
State that has not incorporated with its fighting organization all its
able-bodied manhood and all its material substance, its roads, vehicles,
engines, foundries, and all its resources of food and clothing; the
State which at the outbreak of war has to bargain with railway and
shipping companies, replace experienced station-masters by inexperienced
officers, and haggle against alien interests for every sort of supply,
will be at an overwhelming disadvantage against a State which has
emerged from the social confusion of the present time, got rid of every
vestige of our present distinction between official and governed, and
organized every element in its being.</p>
<p>I imagine that in this ideal war as compared with<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></SPAN></span> the war of to-day,
there will be a very considerable restriction of the rights of the
non-combatant. A large part of existing International Law involves a
curious implication, a distinction between the belligerent government
and its accredited agents in warfare and the general body of its
subjects. There is a disposition to treat the belligerent government, in
spite of the democratic status of many States, as not fully representing
its people, to establish a sort of world-citizenship in the common mass
outside the official and military class. Protection of the non-combatant
and his property comes at last—in theory at least—within a measurable
distance of notice boards: "Combatants are requested to keep off the
grass." This disposition I ascribe to a recognition of that obsolescence
and inadequacy of the formal organization of States, which has already
been discussed in this book. It was a disposition that was strongest
perhaps in the earliest decades of the nineteenth century, and stronger
now than, in the steady and irresistible course of strenuous and
universal military preparation, it is likely to be in the future. In our
imaginary twentieth century State, organized primarily for war, this
tendency to differentiate a non-combatant mass in the fighting State
will certainly not be respected, the State will be organized as a whole
to fight as a whole, it will have triumphantly asserted the universal
duty of its citizens. The military force will be a much ampler<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></SPAN></span>
organization than the "army" of to-day, it will be not simply the fists
but the body and brain of the land. The whole apparatus, the whole staff
engaged in internal communication, for example, may conceivably not be
State property and a State service, but if it is not it will assuredly
be as a whole organized as a volunteer force, that may instantly become
a part of the machinery of defence or aggression at the outbreak of
war.<SPAN name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</SPAN> The men may very conceivably not have a uniform, for military
uniforms are simply one aspect of this curious and transitory phase of
restriction, but they will have their orders and their universal plan.
As the bells ring and the recording telephones click into every house
the news that war has come, there will be no running to and fro upon the
public ways, no bawling upon the moving platforms of the central urban
nuclei, no crowds of silly useless able-bodied people gaping at
inflammatory transparencies outside the offices of sensational papers
because the egregious idiots in control of affairs have found them no
better employment. Every man will be soberly and intelligently setting
about the particular thing he has to do—even the rich shareholding sort
of person, the hereditary mortgager of society,<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></SPAN></span> will be given something
to do, and if he has learnt nothing else he will serve to tie up parcels
of ammunition or pack army sausage. Very probably the best of such
people and of the speculative class will have qualified as cyclist
marksmen for the front, some of them may even have devoted the leisure
of peace to military studies and may be prepared with novel weapons.
Recruiting among the working classes—or, more properly speaking, among
the People of the Abyss—will have dwindled to the vanishing point;
people who are no good for peace purposes are not likely to be any good
in such a grave and complicated business as modern war. The spontaneous
traffic of the roads in peace, will fall now into two streams, one of
women and children coming quietly and comfortably out of danger, the
other of men and material going up to the front. There will be no
panics, no hardships, because everything will have been amply
pre-arranged—we are dealing with an ideal State. Quietly and
tremendously that State will have gripped its adversary and tightened
its muscles—that is all.</p>
<p>Now the strategy of this new sort of war in its opening phase will
consist mainly in very rapid movements of guns and men behind that thin
screen of marksmen, in order to deal suddenly and unexpectedly some
forcible blow, to snatch at some position into which guns and men may be
thrust to outflank and turn the advantage of the ground against<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></SPAN></span> some
portion of the enemy's line. The game will be largely to crowd and
crumple that line, to stretch it over an arc to the breaking point, to
secure a position from which to shell and destroy its supports and
provisions, and to capture or destroy its guns and apparatus, and so
tear it away from some town or arsenal it has covered. And a factor of
primary importance in this warfare, because of the importance of seeing
the board, a factor which will be enormously stimulated to develop in
the future, will be the aerial factor. Already we have seen the captive
balloon as an incidental accessory of considerable importance even in
the wild country warfare of South Africa. In the warfare that will go on
in the highly-organized European States of the opening century, the
special military balloon used in conjunction with guns, conceivably of
small calibre but of enormous length and range, will play a part of
quite primary importance. These guns will be carried on vast mechanical
carriages, possibly with wheels of such a size as will enable them to
traverse almost all sorts of ground.<SPAN name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</SPAN><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></SPAN></span> The aeronauts, provided with
large scale maps of the hostile country, will mark down to the gunners
below the precise point upon which to direct their fire, and over hill
and dale the shell will fly—ten miles it may be—to its billet, camp,
massing night attack, or advancing gun.</p>
<p>Great multitudes of balloons will be the Argus eyes of the entire
military organism, stalked eyes with a telephonic nerve in each stalk,
and at night they will sweep the country with search-lights and come
soaring before the wind with hanging flares. Certainly they will be
steerable. Moreover, when the wind admits, there will be freely-moving
steerable balloons wagging little flags to their friends below. And so
far as the resources of the men on the ground go, the balloons will be
almost invulnerable. The mere perforation of balloons with shot does
them little harm, and the possibility of hitting a balloon that is
drifting about at a practically unascertainable distance and height so
precisely as to blow it to pieces with a timed shell, and to do this in
the little time before it is able to give simple and precise
instructions as to your range and position to the unseen gunners it
directs, is certainly one of the most difficult and trying undertakings
for an artilleryman that one can well imagine. I am inclined<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></SPAN></span> to think
that the many considerations against a successful attack on balloons
from the ground, will enormously stimulate enterprise and invention in
the direction of dirigible aerial devices that can fight. Few people, I
fancy, who know the work of Langley, Lilienthal, Pilcher, Maxim, and
Chanute, but will be inclined to believe that long before the year <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>
2000, and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have
soared and come home safe and sound. Directly that is accomplished the
new invention will be most assuredly applied to war.</p>
<p>The nature of the things that will ultimately fight in the sky is a
matter for curious speculation. We begin with the captive balloon.
Against that the navigable balloon will presently operate. I am inclined
to think the practicable navigable balloon will be first attained by the
use of a device already employed by Nature in the swimming-bladder of
fishes. This is a closed gas-bag that can be contracted or expanded. If
a gas-bag of thin, strong, practically impervious substance could be
enclosed in a net of closely interlaced fibres (interlaced, for example,
on the pattern of the muscles of the bladder in mammals), the ends of
these fibres might be wound and unwound, and the effect of contractility
attained. A row of such contractile balloons, hung over a long car which
was horizontally expanded into wings, would not only allow that car to
rise and fall at will, but if the balloon at one end were<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></SPAN></span> contracted
and that at the other end expanded, and the intermediate ones allowed to
assume intermediate conditions, the former end would drop, the expanded
wings would be brought into a slanting condition over a smaller area of
supporting air, and the whole apparatus would tend to glide downwards in
that direction. The projection of a small vertical plane upon either
side would make the gliding mass rotate in a descending spiral, and so
we have all the elements of a controllable flight. Such an affair would
be difficult to overset. It would be able to beat up even in a fair
wind, and then it would be able to contract its bladders and fall down a
long slant in any direction. From some such crude beginning a form like
a soaring, elongated, flat-brimmed hat might grow, and the possibilities
of adding an engine-driven screw are obvious enough.</p>
<p>It is difficult to see how such a contrivance could carry guns of any
calibre unless they fired from the rear in the line of flight. The
problem of recoil becomes a very difficult one in aerial tactics. It
would probably have at most a small machine-gun or so, which might fire
an explosive shell at the balloons of the enemy, or kill their aeronauts
with distributed bullets. The thing would be a sort of air-shark, and
one may even venture to picture something of the struggle the deadlocked
marksmen of 1950, lying warily in their rifle-pits, will see.</p>
<p>One conceives them at first, each little hole with<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></SPAN></span> its watchful,
well-equipped couple of assassins, turning up their eyes in expectation.
The wind is with our enemy, and his captive balloons have been
disagreeably overhead all through the hot morning. His big guns have
suddenly become nervously active. Then, a little murmur along the pits
and trenches, and from somewhere over behind us, this air-shark drives
up the sky. The enemy's balloons splutter a little, retract, and go
rushing down, and we send a spray of bullets as they drop. Then against
our aerostat, and with the wind driving them clean overhead of us, come
the antagonistic flying-machines. I incline to imagine there will be a
steel prow with a cutting edge at either end of the sort of aerostat I
foresee, and conceivably this aerial ram will be the most important
weapon of the affair. When operating against balloons, such a
fighting-machine will rush up the air as swiftly as possible, and then,
with a rapid contraction of its bladders, fling itself like a knife at
the sinking war-balloon of the foe. Down, down, down, through a vast
alert tension of flight, down it will swoop, and, if its stoop is
successful, slash explosively at last through a suffocating moment.
Rifles will crack, ropes tear and snap; there will be a rending and
shouting, a great thud of liberated gas, and perhaps a flare. Quite
certainly those flying machines will carry folded parachutes, and the
last phase of many a struggle will be the desperate leap of the
aeronauts with these in hand, to<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></SPAN></span> snatch one last chance of life out of
a mass of crumpling, fallen wreckage.</p>
<p>But in such a fight between flying-machine and flying-machine as we are
trying to picture, it will be a fight of hawks, complicated by bullets
and little shells. They will rush up and up to get the pitch of one
another, until the aeronauts sob and sicken in the rarefied air, and the
blood comes to eyes and nails. The marksmen below will strain at last,
eyes under hands, to see the circling battle that dwindles in the
zenith. Then, perhaps, a wild adventurous dropping of one close beneath
the other, an attempt to stoop, the sudden splutter of guns, a tilting
up or down, a disengagement. What will have happened? One combatant,
perhaps, will heel lamely earthward, dropping, dropping, with half its
bladders burst or shot away, the other circles down in pursuit.... "What
are they doing?" Our marksmen will snatch at their field-glasses,
tremulously anxious, "Is that a white flag or no?... If they drop now we
have 'em!"</p>
<p>But the duel will be the rarer thing. In any affair of ramming there is
an enormous advantage for the side that can contrive, anywhere in the
field of action, to set two vessels at one. The mere ascent of one
flying-ram from one side will assuredly slip the leashes of two on the
other, until the manœuvring squadrons may be as thick as starlings in
October. They will wheel and mount, they will spread and<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></SPAN></span> close, there
will be elaborate manœuvres for the advantage of the wind, there will
be sudden drops to the shelter of entrenched guns. The actual impact of
battle will be an affair of moments. They will be awful moments, but not
more terrible, not more exacting of manhood than the moments that will
come to men when there is—and it has not as yet happened on this
earth—equal fighting between properly manned and equipped ironclads at
sea. (And the well-bred young gentlemen of means who are privileged to
officer the British Army nowadays will be no more good at this sort of
thing than they are at controversial theology or electrical engineering
or anything else that demands a well-exercised brain.)...</p>
<p>Once the command of the air is obtained by one of the contending armies,
the war must become a conflict between a seeing host and one that is
blind. The victor in that aerial struggle will tower with pitilessly
watchful eyes over his adversary, will concentrate his guns and all his
strength unobserved, will mark all his adversary's roads and
communications, and sweep them with sudden incredible disasters of shot
and shell. The moral effect of this predominance will be enormous. All
over the losing country, not simply at his frontier but everywhere, the
victor will soar. Everybody everywhere will be perpetually and
constantly looking up, with a sense of loss and insecurity, with a vague
stress of<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></SPAN></span> painful anticipations. By day the victor's aeroplanes will
sweep down upon the apparatus of all sorts in the adversary's rear, and
will drop explosives and incendiary matters upon them,<SPAN name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</SPAN> so that no
apparatus or camp or shelter will any longer be safe. At night his high
floating search-lights will go to and fro and discover and check every
desperate attempt to relieve or feed the exhausted marksmen of the
fighting line. The phase of tension will pass, that weakening opposition
will give, and the war from a state of mutual pressure and petty combat
will develop into the collapse of the defensive lines. A general advance
will occur under the aerial van, ironclad road fighting-machines may
perhaps play a considerable part in this, and the enemy's line of
marksmen will be driven back or starved into surrender, or broken up and
hunted down. As the superiority of the attack becomes week by week more
and more evident, its assaults will become more dashing and
far-reaching. Under the moonlight and the watching balloons there will
be swift noiseless rushes of cycles, precipitate dismounts, and the
never-to-be-quite-abandoned bayonet will play its part. And now men on
the losing side will thank God for the reprieve of a pitiless wind, for
lightning, thunder, and rain, for any elemental disorder that will for a
moment lift the descending scale! Then, under banks of fog and<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></SPAN></span> cloud,
the victorious advance will pause and grow peeringly watchful and
nervous, and mud-stained desperate men will go splashing forward into an
elemental blackness, rain or snow like a benediction on their faces,
blessing the primordial savagery of nature that can still set aside the
wisest devices of men, and give the unthrifty one last desperate chance
to get their own again or die.</p>
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