Chapter 19

Of the many forms of business and financial relation among men, none is more important than those included under the name of insurance. Insurance is a form of mutual help. By its influence the effects of calamity are spread so widely that they cease to be felt as calamity. The fact of death can not be set aside, but through insurance it need not appear as economic disaster, only as personal loss. Its essential nature is that of social cooperation and it furnishes some of the most effective of bonds which knit society together. As insurance has become already an international function, its influence should be felt continuously on the side of peace. That it is so felt is the justification of our meeting together to-day, as underwriters of insurance and as workers for peace. The essence of insurance, as Professor Royce observes, is that

'it is a principle at once peace-making in its general tendency and business-like in its practicable special application.... As a result of insurance, men gradually find themselves involved in a social network of complicated but beneficent relations of which individuals are usually very imperfectly aware but by means of which modern society has been profoundly transformed.'

For life insurance, in general, is not personally selfish in its motive. It is essentially altruistic, the effort of the benefit of some person beloved who is designated as the beneficiary. For the benefit of this surviving person, the efforts involved in the payment of premiums are put forth, and the insurance companies and their underwriters constitute the machinery by which this unification is given to society.

To all the interests of insurance, the lawlessness of war is wholly adverse and destructive. Insurance involves mutual trust and trust thrives under security of person and property. Insurance demands steadiness of purpose and continuity of law. In war, all laws are silent. War is the brutish, blind, denial of law, only admissible when all other honorable alternatives have been withdrawn--the last resort of "murdered, mangled liberty."

In its direct relation, war destroys those who to the underwriter represent the "best risks," the men most valuable to themselves and thus most valuable to the community. Those whom war leaves behind, to slip along the lines of least resistance into the city slums, are the people insurance rarely reaches. War confuses administration of insurance. Policies, in war time, can be written only on a sliding scale. This greatly increases the premium by reducing the final payments. Increase of rate of premium must decrease business. War means financial anarchy, inflated currency and depreciation of bonds. A currency which fluctuates demoralizes all business and war leaves no alternative. The slogan "business as usual" in war time deceives nobody. If it did, nobody would gain by the deception. Enforced loans from the reserve fund of insurance companies to the state mean the depreciation of reserves. The substitution of unstable government bonds means robbery of the bond holders. The yielding to the state, by enforced "voluntary action," of reserves of savings banks and insurance companies represents a form of state robbery. This is now in practice on the continent of Europe. Such funds are probably never actually confiscated but held in abeyance until the close of the war. This is another form of the everpresent "military necessity," which seizes men's property with little more compunction than it shows in seizing men's bodies. War conditions mean insecurity of investment. In war, all bonds are liable to become "scraps of paper," and no fund can be made safe. The insurance investments in Europe have been enormously depleted in worth, a reduction in market value estimated at 50 per cent.

Experts in insurance tell me that in war time certain policies are written so as to be scaled down automatically when the holder goes under the colors. Some are invalid in time of war, and some have the clause of free travel greatly abridged. A few are written to apply to all conditions, but on these the rates of premiums would naturally increase. Companies generally refuse to pay under conditions not nominated in the bond, and in general all policies are automatically reduced to level of war policies when war begins.

I am told that some American companies issue group policies as for any or all of a thousand men, these not subject to a physical examination. The war claims in Great Britain have been very heavy, because such a large proportion of clerks, artisans, students and other insurable or well-paid men have been first to volunteer. Some insurance companies have been much embarrassed by the general enlistment of their employees.

In fire insurance, conditions are much the same. All contracts in foreign nations are held in abeyance until the close of war. Such companies doing business in America are now mostly incorporated as American.

In every regard, the business of insurance is naturally allied with the forces that make for peace. War brings ruin, through increase of loans, through the exhaustion of reserves and the precarious nature of investment. The same remark applies in some degree to every honorable or constructive business. If any other form of danger threatened a great industry, its leaders would be on the alert. They would spare no money and leave no stone unturned for their own protection.

Towards war, business has always shown a stupid fatalism. War has been thought "inevitable," coming of itself at intervals with nobody responsible.

There could not be a greater error. War does not come of itself, nor without great and persistent preparation. A few hundred resolute men, bent on war, led by unscrupulous leaders brought on this war. The military group of one nation plays into the hands of like groups in other nations. To keep up war agitation long enough, whether the cause be real or imaginary, seems to hypnotize the public mind. The horrors of war fascinate rather than repel, and thousands of men in this land of peace are ready to fight in Europe to one who dreamed of such a line of action a year or two ago.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The interests involved should put honest business on its guard. The insurance men could afford to maintain a thousand observers, men wise in business as well as in International Law, and in the manners and customs of the people of the world. A few dozen skilful politico-military detectives--men like W. J. Burns for example employed in the interest of finance might save finance a billion dollars. These should watch the standing incentives to war. Such men should stand guard against the influences that work toward conflict. Those who work for peace should be not "firemen to be called in to put out the fire" already started through the negligence of business men but agents for "fireproof building material" in our national edifice, to stand at all times for the security of business, the sanctity of law, order and peace. This kind of "preparedness for war" would involve no risks of conflict, of victory or defeat.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE STARS AND THE FORMATION OF THE EARTH. II

BY WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL

DIRECTOR OF THE LICK OBSERVATORY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF SEQUENCE PROPOSED

THERE are several lines of evidence in support of the order of evolution which we have outlined.

1. The close relationship of the bright-line nebular spectrum, the bright-line stellar spectrum and the spectra of the simplest helium stars; the practically continuous sequence of spectra from the helium stars to the red stars.

2. In the long run, we must expect the stars to grow colder, at least as to the surface strata. What the average interior temperatures are is another question; the highest interior temperatures are thought to be reached at an intermediate or quite late stage in the process, in accordance with principles investigated by Lane and others; but the temperatures existing in the deep interiors seem to have little direct influence in defining the spectral characters of the stars, which are concerned more directly with the surface strata.[1] We should therefore expect the simpler types of spectra, such as we find in the helium and hydrogen stars, in the early stages of the evolutionary process. The complicated spectra of the metals, and particularly the oxides of the metals, should be in evidence late in stellar life, when the atmospheres of the stars have become denser and colder.

[1] This important point seems not to have been realized by all theorists.

3. The velocities of the Orion nebula, the Trifid nebula, the Carina nebula, and of several other irregular nebulae, have been measured with the spectroscope. These bodies seem to be nearly at rest with reference to the stellar system. The helium stars have the lowest-known stellar velocities, and the average velocities of the stars are higher and higher as we pass from the helium stars, through the hydrogen and solar stars, up to the red stars. The average velocities of the brighter stars of the different spectral classes, as determined with the D. O. Mills spectrographs at Mount Hamilton and in Chile, are as in the following table:

Spectral No. of Class Stars Average Velocity in Space B 225 12.9 km. per Sec. A 177 21.9 F 185 28.7 G 128 29.9 E 382 33.6 M 73 34.3

We can not place the irregular nebulae after the red stars: their velocities are too small, and their spectra have no resemblances to the red-star spectra.

4. Wherever we find large irregular gaseous nebulae we find stars in the early subdivisions of the helium group. They are closely related in position. This is true of the Orion and other similar regions. The irregular, gaseous nebulae are in general found in and near the Milky Way, and so are the helium stars. The yellow and red stars, at least the brighter ones, do not cluster in nebulous regions.

5. The stars are more and more uniformly distributed over the sphere as one goes from the helium stars through the hydrogen and solar stars, to the red stars. The Class M stars show little or no preference for the Milky Way. Of course, I am speaking here of the brighter and nearer stars which we have been able to study by means of the spectroscope, and not at all of the faint stars which form the unstudied distant parts of the Milky Way structure. The helium stars are young, their motions are slow, and they have not wandered far from the place of their birth. Not so with the older stars.

6. The visual double stars afford strong evidence that the order of evolution described is correct. The 36-inch refractor has shown that one star in 18, on the average, brighter than the ninth visual magnitude, consists of two or more suns which we can not doubt are in slow revolution around each other. The number of double stars observable would be very much greater than this if they were not so far away. Of the 20 stars which we say are our nearest neighbors, 8 are well known double stars; one double in each two and one half, on the average. Aitken has made a specialty of observing the double stars whose components in each case are very close together and are in comparatively rapid revolution. His program includes 164 such systems whose types of spectra are known, as in the following table:

Spectrum Number of Double Stars Bright-line 0 Class B 4 Class A-F 131 Class G-N 28 Class M-N? 1

The message which this table brings is clear. The double stars whose spectra are of the Bright-Line and Class B varieties have their components so close together that only 4, of Class B, are visible. The great majority fall in Classes A to K; 159 out of 164. The component stars in these classes are far enough apart to be visible in the telescopes, and yet are close enough to be revolving in periods reasonably short. In the Class M double stars, this program contains not more than one star, and I believe the explanation is this: double stars of Class M are in general so far apart, and therefore their periods of revolution are so long, that they do not get upon programs of rapidly revolving stars. Also, the fainter components in many red stars must have cooled off so far that they are invisible. The distances between the components of visual double stars are in general the greater as we proceed from the helium stars through the various spectral classes up to Class M. There are reasons for believing that two stars revolving around their center of mass have gradually increased their distance apart, and therefore their revolution period. If this is true, the Classes G and K; double stars are effectively older than Classes A and F double stars, and these in turn are effectively older than Class B double stars.

7. The spectrograph has great advantages over the telescope in discovering and observing double stars whose components are very close together, by virtue of the facts that the spectrograph measures, velocities of approach and recession in absolute units--so many kilometers per second--and that the speeds of rotation in binary systems are higher the closer together the two components are. The observations of the brighter helium stars, especially those made at the Yerkes Observatory by Frost and Adams, have shown that one helium star in every two and one half on the average is a very close double. In beta Cephei, an early Class B star, the components are so close that they revolve around each other in 4 1/2 hours; many systems have periods in the neighborhood of a day, of two days, of three days, and so on. Similar observations made with the D. O. Mills spectrographs in both hemispheres have shown that about one star in every four of the bright stars, on the average, is a double star. In general, the proportion of spectroscopic doubles discovered to date is greatest in Class B and decreases as we proceed toward Class M. The explanation is simple: in the Class B doubles the components are close together, their orbital velocities are very high and change rapidly, and the spectrograph is able to discover the variations with little loss of time. As we pass toward the yellow and red spectroscopic binaries we find the components separated more and more, the orbital velocities are smaller and the periods longer, the variations of velocity are more difficult to discover, and in the wider pairs we must wait many years before the variations become appreciable. There is a very marked progression of the average lengths of periods of the spectrographic double stars as we pass from the Class B to the Class M pairs. Similarly, the eccentricities of the orbits of the binaries increase as we proceed in the same direction. Accumulating evidence is to the effect that the proportion of double stars to single stars may be as great in the Classes A to K as in Class B.

8. Kapteyn believes that he is able to divide the individual stars--those whose proper motions are known--into the two star streams which he has described; and he finds that the first stream is rich in the early blue stars, less rich relatively in yellow stars, and poor in red stars, whereas the second stream is very poor in early blue stars, rich in yellows, and relatively very rich in reds. His interpretation is that the stream-one stars are effectively younger than the stream-two stars, on the whole. Stream one still abounds in youthful stars: they grow older and the yellow and red stars will then predominate. Stream two abounds in stars which were once young, but are now middle-aged and old.

The eight lines of argument outlined are in harmony to the effect that there is a sequence of development from nebulae to red stars.

The extremely red stars are all faint, only a very few being visible to the naked eye, and these near the limit of vision. Our knowledge concerning them is relatively limited. That these, and all stars, will become invisible to our telescopes, and ultimately be dark unshining bodies, is the logical conclusion to which the evolutionary processes will lead. As I have already stated, both Newcomb and Kelvin were inclined to believe that the major part of gravitational matter in the universe is already invisible.

It should be said that a few astronomers doubt whether the order of evolution is so clearly defined as I have outlined it; in fact, whether we know even the main trend of the evolutionary process. We occasionally encounter the opinion that the subject is still so unsettled as not to let us say whether the helium stars are effectively young or the red stars are effectively old. Lockyer and Russell have proposed hypotheses in which the order of evolutionary sequence begins with comparatively cool red stars and proceeds through the yellow stars to the very hot blue stars, and thence back through the yellow stars to cool red stars.

I think the essentially unanimous view of astronomers is to the effect that the great mass of accumulated evidence favors the order of evolution which I have described. We are all ready to admit that there are apparent exceptions to the simple course laid down, but that these exceptions are revolutionary in effect, and not hopeless of removal, has not yet, in my opinion, been established.

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS GOVERN APPEARANCES OF SPECTRA

A question frequently asked is this: if the yellow and red stars have been developed from the blue stars, why do not the thousands of lines in the spectra of the yellow and red stars show in the spectra of the blue stars? Indeed, why do not the elements so conspicuously present in the atmosphere of the red stars show in the spectra of the gaseous nebulae? The answer is that the conditions in the nebulae and in the youngest stars are such that only the SIMPLEST ELEMENTS, like hydrogen and helium, and in the nebulae nebulium, which we think are nearest to the elemental state of matter, seem to be able to form or exist in them; and the temperature must lower, or other conditions change to the conditions existing in the older stars, before what we may call the more complicated elements can construct themselves out of the more elemental forms of matter. The oxides of titanium and of carbon found in the red stars, where the surface temperatures must be relatively low, would dissociate themselves into more elemental components and lose their identity if the temperature and other conditions were changed back to those of the early helium stars. Lockyer's name is closely connected with this phenomenon of dissociation. There is no evidence, to the best of my knowledge, that the elements known in our Earth are not essentially universal in distribution, either in the forms which the elements have in the Earth, or dissociated into simpler forms wherever the temperatures or other conditions make dissociations possible and unavoidable.

The meteorites, which have come through the atmosphere to the Earth's surface, contain at least 25 known terrestrial elements. That they have not been found thus far to contain all of our elements is not surprising, for we should have difficulty in finding a piece of our Earth weighing a few kilograms which would contain 25 of our elements. We have not found any elements in meteorites which are unknown to our chemists. Our comets, which ordinarily show the presence of not more than three elements, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, give certain evidence of sodium in their composition when they approach fairly near to the Sun; and the great comet of 1882, when very close to the Sun, developed in its spectrum many bright lines not previously seen in comet spectra, which Copeland said were due to iron. That the comets do not show a greater number of elements is not in the least surprising: they are not condensed bodies, and we think that their average temperature is low, too low generally to develop the luminous vapors of the more refractory elements. If their temperatures, approximated those which exist in the stars, their spectra would probably reveal the presence of many of the elements which exist in the meteorites. Of course the proof of this is lacking.

DESTINY OF THE STELLAR SYSTEM

We have said that the evolutionary processes depend primarily upon the loss of heat. This is to the best of our knowledge a genuine loss, except as some of the heat rays happen to strike other celestial bodies. The flow of heat energy from a star must be essentially continuous, always in one direction from hotter bodies to colder bodies, or into so-called unending and heatless space. Temperatures throughout the universe are apparently moving toward uniformity, at the level of absolute zero. Now, this uniformity would mean universal stagnation and death. It is possible to have life and to do work only when there are differences of temperature between the bodies concerned: work is done or accompanied by a flow of heat, always from the hotter to the colder body. We are not aware that any compensating principle exists. Several students of the subject, notably Arrhenius, have searched for such a principle, a fountain of youth so to speak, in accordance with which the vigor of stellar life should maintain itself from the beginning of time to the end of time; but I think that nothing approaching a satisfactory theory has yet been formulated. The stellar universe seems, from our present point of view, to be slowly "running down." The processes will not end, however, when all the heat generable WITHIN the stars shall have been radiated into an endless space. Every body within the universe, it is conceivable, could have cooled down to absolute zero, but the system might still be in its youth. So long as the stars, whether intensely hot or free from all heat, are rotating rapidly on their axes or are rushing through space with high speeds, the system will remain VERY MUCH ALIVE. Collisions or very close approaches of two stars are bound to occur sooner or later, whether the stars are hot or cold, and in all such cases a large share of the kinetic energy--the energy of motion--of the two bodies will be converted into heat. A collision, under average stellar conditions, should convert the two stars into a luminous gaseous nebula, or two or more nebulae, which would require hundreds or thousands of millions of years to evolve again into young stars, middle-aged stars, old stars, and stars absolutely cold. So long as any of these bodies retain motion with reference to other bodies, they retain the power of rebirth and another life. Not to go too far into speculative detail, the general effect of these processes would be the destruction of relative motions and the gradual decrease in the number of separate bodies, through coalescence. Assume further, however, that all existing bodies, widely scattered through the stellar system, are absolutely cold and absolutely at rest with reference to each other: the system might even then be only middle-aged. The mutual gravitations of the bodies would still be operative. They would pass each other closely, or collide, under high generated velocities: there would be new nebulae, and new and vigorous stellar life to continue through other long ages. The system would not run down until all the kinetic energy had been converted into heat, and all the heat generable had been dissipated. This would not occur until all material in the universe had been combined into one body, or into two bodies in mutual revolution. However, if there are those who say that the universe in action is eternal, through the operation of compensating principles as yet undiscovered, no man of science is at present equipped to prove the contrary.

THE NOVAE