Dave Cowan, citizen of the world and student of its structure, physical and social, had proved that war, however regrettable, was perhaps never to be avoided; that in any event one of the best means to avoid it was to be known for your fighting ways.

Anyway, war was but an incident in human progress.
Dave's hair had thinned in the years of his wandering to see a man at Seattle or New Orleans, and he now wore spectacles, without which he could no longer have enlarged his comprehension of cosmic values, for his latest Library of Universal Knowledge was printed in very small type.

Dave said that since the chemicals had got together to form life everything had lived on something else, and the best livers had always been the best killers.

He did not pretend to justify the plan, but there it was; and it worked the same whether it was one microscopic organism preying on another or a bird devouring a beetle or Germany trying to swallow the world.

Rapp, Senior, said that was all very well, but these pacifists would keep us out of war yet.