CHAPTER I. STATESMANSHIP IN ITS RELATION TO WAR. Under this head are included those considerations from which a statesman concludes whether a war is proper, opportune, or indispensable, and determines the various operations necessary to attain the object of the war. A government goes to war,— To reclaim certain rights or to defend them; To protect and maintain the great interests of the state, as commerce, manufactures, or... more...

INTRODUCTION THE Germans interpret their new national colours—black, red, and white—by the saying, "Durch Nacht und Blut zur licht." ("Through night and blood to light"), and no work yet written conveys to the thinker a clearer conception of all that the red streak in their flag stands for than this deep and philosophical analysis of "War" by Clausewitz. It reveals "War," stripped of all accessories, as the exercise of force for the... more...

CHAPTER I ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS Columella, the much traveled Spanish-Roman writer of the first century A. D., said that for successful farming three things are essential: knowledge, capital and love for the calling. This statement is just as true today as it was when written 1900 years ago by this early writer on European agriculture. Every man who loves the calling and has an ambition to become a successful farmer should understand that no... more...

CHAPTER I. THE POWER OF THE AIR. "That's it, Jack. Let her out!" "Suffering speed laws of Squantum, but she can travel!" exclaimed Dick Donovan, redheaded and voluble. "I tell you, electricity is the thing. Beats gasoline a million ways," chimed in Tom Jesson. Tom sat beside his cousin, Jack Chadwick, on the driver's seat of a curious-looking automobile which was whizzing down the smooth, broad, green-bordered road that led to Nestorville,... more...

FOREWORD We are not tied to a desk or to a bench; we stay there only because we think we are tied. In Montana I had a horse, which was hobbled every night to keep him from wandering; that is, straps joined by a short chain were put around his forefeet, so that he could only hop. The hobbles were taken off in the morning, but he would still hop until he saw his mate trotting off. This book is intended to show how any one can trot off if he... more...

THE FARMER AT HOME. The new towns, or suburbs which spring up every year in the neighbourhood of London, are all built upon much the same plan. Whole streets of houses present exact duplicates of each other, even to the number of steps up to the front door and the position of the scraper. In the country, where a new farmhouse is erected about once in twenty years, the styles of architecture are as varied and as irregular as in town they are prim... more...

MY EXCUSE My sixtieth birthday is a thing of yesterday, and I have, therefore, more than half descended the western slope. I have no quarrel with life or with time, for both have been polite to me; and I wish to give an account of the past seven years to prove the politeness of life, and to show how time has made amends to me for the forced resignation of my professional ambitions. For twenty-five years, up to 1895, I practised medicine and... more...

CHAPTER I WHAT GOES TO MAKE UP PERMANENT FERTILITY IT IS an old saying that "any fool can farm," and this was almost the truth when farming consisted chiefly in reducing the fertility of new, rich land secured at practically no cost from a generous Government. But to restore depleted soils to high productive power in economic systems is no fool's job, for it requires mental as well as muscular energy; and no apologies should be expected from... more...

PREFACE "Let posterity know, and knowing be astonished, that on the fifteenth day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in Tuscany, the first aerial traveller in Britain, mounting from the Artillery Ground in London, and traversing the regions of the air for two hours and fifteen minutes, on this spot revisited the earth. In this rude monument for ages be recorded this wondrous enterprise successfully achieved by the powers of chemistry... more...

THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES I MACHINES. AS SEEN FROM A MEADOW It would be difficult to find anything in the encyclopedia that would justify the claim that we are about to make, or anything in the dictionary. Even a poem—which is supposed to prove anything with a little of nothing—could hardly be found to prove it; but in this beginning hour of the twentieth century there are not a few of us—for the time at least allowed to... more...