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1
1

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,DA\TD STARR JORDAN

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[ELfroSTANFORDj?

UNIVERSITV

JORDAN PEACE LIBRARY
DAVID STARR JORDAN

Ca^.

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V :•'

WAR AND THE

BREED

The Relation of War to the
Downfall of Nations

DAVID STARR JORDAN

BOSTON

THE BFACON PRESS
25 BEACON STREET

.J 82_. i/m^

222565

o ►
»

» • •«

V c »

ANDREW DICKSON WHITE

who taught me to see in

HISTORY

not a succession of events,
but a segment of human life.

c'va«>cfv. (Sophocles: the Phrygians)

Since individuals pass away, parenthood is
the supreme factor in the destiny of nations.

(Saleeby)

PREFATORY NOTE

This book is written to show the relation of
war to the downfall of nations. The certainty
that war leads toward racial decadence by the
obliteration of the most virile elements, these
being thereby left unrepresented in heredity, is
becoming widely accepted as the crucial argu-
ment against the War System of the world,
standing second only to the final argument of
the human conscience that murder remains mur-
der even when done on a gigantic scale under
the sanction of the state and the blessing of the
church.

The same topic is treated in two previous
essays, the one originally delivered at Stanford
University in 1899 and reprinted by the World
Peace Foundation under the title The Blood of
the Nation; the other read at Philadelphia in
1906, before the American Philosophical So-
ciety, at the two hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Benjamin Franklin, and bearing the
tide The Human Harvest. This last Is pub-
lished by the Beacon Press of Boston,

The present volume has been entirely rewrit-
ten. In it the author has corrected some errors
and has tried to bring the subject-matter up to
date by the use of results of recent studies, es-
pecially those of Professor Vernon Lyman Kel-

PREFATORY NOTE

logg, Dr. Caleb William Saleeby of London,
and M. Vacher de La Pouge of Paris. When
the first essay was written its thesis was almost
unknown to the general public. Only Darwin,
Spencer, Novicow, La Pouge, Seeck, and
Haeckel of modern writers, so far as known,
had then laid any stress on the effects of military
selection. There is now a large and growing
literature on the subject, scattered In periodicals
in various languages.

At the close of the book the writer has
permitted himself a digression or two as to past
and future world-movements.

He is under special obligation to his col-
league. Professor Vernon Lyman Kellogg, for
valuable materials, and to his wife, Jessie
Knight Jordan, for much helpful collaboration.
D. S. J.

Stanford Univenity, Calif otniB.
March lo, 1915-

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION i

n. FACTORS IN ORGANIC EVOLUTION . . 3

Organic Evolution 3

Variation 4

Heredity 5

Selection 7

Segregation . 9

Reversal of Selection 10

III. HUMAN GENETICS la

Nature and Nurture 12

Meaning of Human Progress 14

Blood Will Tell . 15

ARTinciAL Selection 16

Return of the Fairies 17

Value of Individual Initiative 19

Law of Quetelet zz

Workings of Primogeniture 23

Effects of Race Poisons 25

Racial Loss through Emigration .... 27

Racial Loss through Immigration .... 28

Racial Inequality 32

IV. THE WAR SYSTEM AND MILITARISM . . 34

The War System 34

Militarism 3S

Militarism and Industrialism 41

Militarism and Private Right . . , " . .42

mllitai^m and nationality 45

CONTENTS

V. THE WAR SYSTEM AND RACE SELECTION 47

Franklin's Views 47

Other Early Observations 49

novicow and richet s»

War ab Race Suicide 57

War and Stature 61

Amnion's Argument 67

Observations or La Pouce 69

Traumatic Neurosis 71

Hrblicka's Observations yj

Battlefield Infections 77

Losses in War 79

Are there Compensations? Sa

,___^Ruskin's Testimony 88 -

Social Darwinism 90

Do We Exaggerate P 98

VL MILITARY CONSCRIPTION ....

The Nation in Arms

CoMPULSORr Service

Military Drill as Physical Training .

The Boy Scouts

The Australian Plan

Eugenics of Conscription

VIL THE WAR SYSTEM AND WOMEN

Selection among Women

The Barbaric Drop

Womanhood and War

War Brides

Excess of Women after War , . .

Vin. WAR SELECTION IN
WORLD ....
The Fall of Rome . .
Seeck's Interpretation
Effects of Race Crossing

THE ANCIENT

■

IX.
X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

APPE

A
B
C
D
E

CONTENTS

,. "•

Macedonia

Samarkand

MILITARISM AND WAR SELECTION
WESTERN EUROPE

. 1*6
. i+B
N
.150

Spain

Paraguay

Germany

MILITARISM AND WAR SELECTION
GREAT BRITAIN

. .6j
. 164

. 17*

The Picked Half Miluon

Tommy Atkinb

The Non-resistants

Scotland

THE UNITED STATES AND WAR . .

War Selection and the Ripublcc . . .
War's Aftermath in Virginia ....

. 178
. r8j
. 184
. 18s
. igo
. 190

■ '94

. 199
. >M

■ "i

DOES HUMAN NATURE CHANGE? . .
How Human Nature Chamces ....
The Visionasy in History

AFTER WAR. WHAT?

The Long Cost of War: Saleeby ....
Military Training in the Schools: Impey .

Military Service in Germany: Villaro . .
Military Service IN France: GuiRARO . .
A DiCBESMON ON Uniforms: Gardiner . .

■ ZJQ

■ '3*

■ Hi

CONTENTS

PAGE

F The Queen's Daughters in India : Andrew and

BusHNELL 246

G SiMpLicius SiMPLicissiMUs: Grimmeuhausen . aso

H Decline of German Literature in the Thir-
teenth Century: Rendtorff 252

I Peace and Degeneracy: Irwin 264

WAR AND THE BREED

I. INTRODUCTION

This book is a study of the War System in
its relations to the human race and racial de-
velopment.

It is written in March, 1915, In the midst of
the most ruinous war the world has ever known,
a war in which the manhood of the race has
been wasted as never before in human history,
a war from which every nation concerned will
awaken exhausted and humiliated for genera-
tions to come, its people less courageous, less
wise, and feebler in body and spirit than they
were before this terrible and senseless sacrifice.
The lesson this book hopes to teach was stated
by Charles Darwin in 1871, in characteristic-
ally terse fashion. In the Descent of Man he
says:

" In every country in which a standing army
is kept up, the fairest young men are taken to
the conscription camp or are enlisted. They
arc thus exposed to early death during war or
are often tempted into vice, and are prevented
from marrying during the prime of life. On
the other hand, the shorter and feebler men with

2 WAR AND THE BREED

poor constitutions are left at home and conse-
quently have a much better chance of marrying
and propagating their kind."

It is apparent that armies demand men above
the average in physical efficiency. It is plain
that the most energetic and intelligent among
these make the best soldiers. It is recognized
that those who fight best suffer the most In ac-
tion, while the demands of battle and camp cut
off men in the prime of life from normal parent-
hood. This leaves the weaker elements of one
kind or another to be the fathers of the coming
generations. By the law of heredity, like the
seed is the harvest, and the future of the race
repeats the qualities of those war does not use.
This thesis is logically without flaw, but to de-
monstrate its actual validity through the results
of the experiments of nations is a task of the
most complex character. For a nation does not
miss that which it has not had, and all consider-
ations of value of strains of inheritance are
mixed inextricably with results of education, or-
ganization, commerce, industrialism, opportu-
nity and emigration, influences which may seem
to transform a nation in a manner quite indepen-
dent of the real capacity of its people. How-
ever, to show that the thesis is true in fact as
well as sound in theory, is the purpose of this
book.

FACTORS IN ORGANIC .
EVOLUTION

Organic Evolution

The term " Organic Evolution " applies to
the orderly changes which are now taking place,
or which have in the past taken place in living
fonns, from generation to generation. In this
movement the natural history of humanity, its
divergence into species, races and strains, forms
an integral part. For man is " part and parcel
of nature," governed by the same laws of birth,
growth and development as the higher animals,
laws shared in their degree by our other
" brother organisms, the plants," as well. Life
in its endless movement we may perhaps liken to
a great river, flowing continuously, dividing at
times into smaller streams, purifying itself as
it flows along and dropping to the bottom its
silt and mud.

So too the stream of life diverges, throw-
ing off races and species as it flows, and purify-
ing itself through the process of " Natural Se-
lection," that is, through the survival of those
organisms adapted to their environment, while
at the same time the weak, the ill-begotten and
the unfitting are left without progeny. Thus a
rate of organisms, man, animal, or plant, comes

WAR AND THE BREED

^ ganii

to fit its environment as a river fits its bed.
The river is made up of simple molecules,
alike in structure and unchanging in space or
time. In the stream of life, on the contrary, no
."two individuals are quite the same. Each one
■'is plastic, molded by its environment. Each
has its reactions, by which it resists environ-
ment. Incessantly, the substance of each or-
ganism is being worn away, to be swiftly replen-
ished in endless round. In each appears the
miracle of birth and life and death; conception,
assimilation, growth, differentiation and disso-
lution. And in the human race, the most com-
plex of all organisms, we have all the phenom-
ena of life developed to the highest degree.

The process of evolution in man, as in the
lower animals and plants, represents a series of
relations of cause and effect. Plainly each
change from generation to generation must have
some efficient cause. These causes are known
as the Factors in Organic Evolution. There
may be many of these factors, acting and inter-
acting. Four of them there are, at least, potent
in the life of every animal and plant, and from
the operations of which no organism can es-
cape. These four are known as Variation,
Heredity, Selection and Segregation.

Variation

Variation is an attribute universal in the or-
ganic world. By its operation, no two indi-

viduals of any species, not even of one house-
hold, were ever exactly alike. No man, no
animal, no germ-cell even, was ever an exact
copy of any other. For, with scanty exceptions,
throughout nature every organism has two par-
ents, and this phenomenon of double parentage
is the leading agency in the promotion of varia-
tion. The hereditary traits of each individual,
" unit characters " as they are termed, are de-
rived half from one parent and from that par-
ent's ancestry, half from the other and from
his ancestry. Each thus begins life as a mosaic
of inherited characteristics, and the finished
combination can never be twice the same. Fur-
ther it must be noted that each individual arises
in the beginning from the blending of two germ-
cells, the male and the female. Each of these
germ-cells when matured and fit for concep-
tion, contains but half of the original hereditary
material of an ordinary cell. It needs union
with another half-cell of the opposite sex to
begin Its organic development. There are
many theories as to the origin of variation, but
in any event there is no question as to the fact.
And on the foundation of variation, the ramifi-
cations of species in the organic world take their
rise.

Heredity

Heredity is the element of continuity in life. -
Reproduction is one of the great cardinal

functions of living organisms. Heredity is the
force or law or fact by which the new organism
is like its parentage. Each organism passes
through its cycle of life, each made up of chang-
ing atoms, changing centers of energy, changing
tissues and changing organs, each at the same
time having the power to cast off cells which In
proper union with like cells and under proper
conditions, will develop organisms essentially
like the parents, differing only within the limits
of the play of variation. "Like produces like,"
but never quite alike. Heredity and Variation
are twins inseparable.

The more uniform the ancestry, the less varia-
tion in the progeny. Hence the crossing of two
strains within the same species produces less
variation than results from the crossing of dif-
ferent hut related species. Species widely dif-
ferent cannot be crossed at all.

Among men, individual differences may be
much greater than in the lower forms. Ani-
mals mate in their own localized groups,
whereas men may range widely. Thus it comes
about that each individual man or woman is in
some sense a hybrid, the result of a mingling
of different strains. The laws that govern
cross-matings are very complex and imperfectly
understood. And no one can tell from the
parentage exactly what the offspring will be.
But we may be sure of some things it will not be.
The stream of heredity will not rise above its

ORGANIC EVOLUTION

source. No child will exceed its ancestral po-
tentials on one side or the other. We shall
not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from
thistles. Moreover, in heredity, mediocrity is
prepotent over genius, and quality of talent over
intensity. And again, a well-marked trait may
sometimes lie latent or recessive for a genera-
tion or more. Still again virile traits, neces-
sarily recessive in the daughter, may reappear in
the grandson.

We cannot here take up in any detail the sub-
ject of heredity. Enough to say that its laws
are essentially the same throughout all living
things, the variations being dependent on dif-
ferences in life history. With the animal forms
nearest man in structure, the details of heredity
become more and more similar, or even identical
with those of man.

Selection

Variation and heredity are names for forces
resident within the organism. Heredity is
never unchecked by variation. Variation is an
integral part of heredity. Selection and segre-
gation on the other hand represent intrusions
of the environment. These shape the course
of evolution by determining the individual that
shall survive or by limiting the range of its mat-
ing.

Selection is the process by which an organism
which cannot hold its own in its surroundings is

8 WAR AND THE BREED

destroyed. Only those survive which can live
in the actual conditions and only those which do
survive are repeated in their progeny. This
process as occurring in nature, " Natural Selec-
tion " as Darwin called it, leads to the " Sur-
■' vival of the Fittest," not necessarily of the
largest nor the fairest nor the best, but of those
who can maintain themselves in the world as
they find It. Natural ' selection, blind choice in
nature, goes on constantly, generation after
generation, among all living creatures. En-
vironment constantly challenges the right to
live, and the organism that overcomes, be it
man or fly or sea-weed, constantly meets that
challenge.

The continuance of any stock demands per-
sistent victory. Each individual man or
woman, animal or plant, represents success in
escaping from the vicissitudes of all the ages,
of overcoming the million chances of millions
\ of varied changes of environment. Of all our
VA'countless ancestors, " numberless out of the end-
K^i \les8 ages," not a single one, brute or man, ever
^^y died in Infancy, an amazing record were It not
' 'shared by every living creature on the whole
Earth!

^ Far the interposition of the hand of man modifying con-
ditionfl of survival, the term Artificial Selection is uted.
This is discussed further on.

ORGANIC EVOLUTION

Segregation

The fourth great factor of evolution is the
negative one of Segregation, or Isolation. The
world on which we live has its mountains and its
valleys, its rocks and seas, Its land and water
barriers, its barriers of climate, rainfall, ene-
mies and food. Every species or kind of or-
ganism, man Included, must fit the surroundings
it has or can secure. Thus races are estab-
lished, not by the direct effect of climate or food,
so far as we know, but by varying degrees of
adaptation to actual conditions. A race once
established, the barriers which prevent crossing
with other races tend to keep It permanent,
Any race or species of man, as of other animals
or plants, is thus in a degree a product of Geog-
raphy.

Physical obstacles prevent intermingling of
different types. " Migration keeps a species
true; localization lets it slip," That is, locali-
zation permits the development of minor pe-
culiarities which would have been lost In the
free interbreeding of migration. And in such
separations and migrations most of the differ-
ences of species or race among organisms have
their origin and their permanence. The begin-
ning of races and of species In most cases is due
to some Initial variation, larger or smaller, em-
phasized or maintained In environment, and to
the protection of some barrier which shuts ofE

WAR AND THE BREED

a group from the one from which it has di-
verged. And thus in a negative way, through
limitations to movement and separations due
to natural causes, have arisen most of the differ-
ences among men as to race, nation, language
or religion.

Reversal of Selection

Reversal of selection is the process by which
those organisms best fitted to survive under nor-
mal conditions are destroyed, while inferior
types are thus left to reproduce the species.
Similar states may be brought about artificially
by a change in the conditions of survival. In
human affairs such reversal of selection is the
necessary result of the war system,^ as this book
will endeavor to show.

War is, of course, not the only reversal factor
in modern civilization. There are numerous
other elements of varying importance which
tend to reverse the natural processes of selec-
tion. Chief among these are the effects of
Emigration and Immigration, both briefly
treated in another chapter. The various rami-
fications of Charily, wise and unwise, constitute
another important factor. By unwise charity,
pauperism is helped to perpetuate itself, feeble-
mindedness becomes the heritage of future gen-
erations, and races of idiots and criminals have

been created. By wise charily the lives of many
of the physically weak have been saved or en-
riched to the advantage of human character, but
not to the physical gain of the race.

The development of a priesthood bound by
Celibacy has been a loss to religion, debarring
piety as it has from reproducing itself in prog-
eny. The conditions of personal success in pro-
fessional life now tend also to enforce Celibacy
on women of superior ability, and have delayed
marriage on the part of men. These factors
on the whole may work to the advantage of
present day society, but certainly at the expense
of future racial welfare.

Vice, alcoholism, the use of drugs, the losses
of industrialism, are elements to be investigated
by the student of social movements, but for the
present we have only to consider those factors
in reversal of selection which are connected with
the main agency, War.

III. HUMAN GENETICS
Nature and Nurture

Genetics is the science of birth, development
and heredity among living organisms. Eugen-
ics ^ is the science and art which treats of condi-
-tions under which a human being may be well
born. As defined by Francis Galton who first
devised the word, it had a broader scope than
this, including Eulhenics, or the science and art
of being well brought up. Galton's last defi-
nition {1904) was the following: "Eugenics
is the science which deals with all influences
which improve the inborn characters of a race,
also with those which develop them to the ut-
most advantage," Recent writers have sepa-
rated the second element under the name Eu-
thenics. The opposite of Eugenics, that is, the
promotion of ill-birth, Is termed Dysgenics. In
like fashion, bad rearing is called Dysthenics.
Eugenics and Eulhenics correspond to " Nature
and Nurture," as earlier defined by Mr, Galton.
Eugenics and Eulhenics must supplement each
other. Nature depends on Nurture for normal

1 Efrywtio, the eondiijon of being well-born; EMewio, the
condition of being well brought up.

HUMAN GENETICS t^

development. Nurture can modify but not
create.* With the function of conception, " the
gate of gifts is closed." The organism may
then make the most of the potentialities heredity
has granted it. It can secure nothing more,
though use and disuse may greatly modify the
relative relations of Its inborn powers. Nur-
ture can do wonders with man, but it cannot
alter the Nature he is to transmit to his descend-
ants. Bad surroundings may spoil a child of
good stock, but good surroundings can never
change a bad breed Into a good one. It is a
Danish proverb that " It does no harm to be
born in a duck-yard, if one is laid in a swan's
egg."

In this fact of the persistence of qualities In
the germ-plasm lies the hope of the children of
the very poor and the very rich. They Inherit
the possibilities, not the actualities of their par-
ents, spoiled or injured by bad nurture. Their
inheritance is a resultant of what their father
and mother might have been, not (disease or
race poison excepted) of what they actually arc.

In every race group, no matter how small,
some families or family strains will be gifted
above others. The best of every group con-
stitute the basis of its eugenic progress. There
are very many types of fitness, physical, mental,
ethical, as many as there are forms of success

'"Nature is □bstinate and will come running back even
though you eicpel her with a fork." (Carlyle.)

14 WAR AND THE BREED

or of usefulness in life. There are thus num-
berless elements involved in racial advance.
And the best In one of the races considered
lower may have greater potential value than the
less desirable of a race admittedly higher as a
whole.

Meaning of Human Progress

The word " progress " is commonly used with
a double meaning, including nurture as well as
nature, the advance of education as well as race
development. The first of these meanings is
entirely distinct from the other. Race improve-
ment is very slow and often thwarted by crimes
and blunders. The results of education may
be immediate and impressive. But the results
of nurture are permanent only if imposed on the
solid basis of nature. By training we may in-
crease the force of the individual man. Edu-
cation gives him access to the accumulated stores
of wisdom built up from the experience of the
ages. The trained man is placed in a class
relatively higher than the one to which he would
belong on the score of heredity alone. Hered-

\ ity carries with it possibilities for effectiveness.

\ Training makes these possibilities actual.
Civilization has been defined as " the sum total

" of those agencies and conditions by which a race
may advance independently of heredity." But
while education and civilization may greatly
modify the activities of Individuals, and through

HUMAN GENETICS

them those of the nation, these influences are
spent on the individual and the social system
of which he is a part. So far as science knows,
education and training have no part in heredity.
The elements in the germ-plasm are ancient and
persistent, not affected by the vicissitudes of the
individual life which bears them from genera-
tion to generation. The change in hereditary
traits, which is the essence of race-progress, as
distinguished from progress in civilization, finds
its main if not its sole cause in selection.

Blood Wm TeU

A common expression of the law of human
heredity is that " Blood will tell." This means
that ancestral traits persistently reappear.

The word " blood " in this sense is figurative
only, an expression of the facts of heredity.
Some traits, as the phrase goes, " run in the
blood." " Blood," says Mephistopheles, " is
quite a peculiar juice," And so it is, but not In
the degree formerly believed. It was long
imagined that blood was the actual physical ve-
hicle of heredity, that the traits of family and
race ran literally in the blood itself. This is
not the case. Actual blood plays no part in
heredity, the transfusion of blood means no
more than the transference of food, and the
physical basis of the phenomena of inheritance
is found in the structure of the germ-cell and its
contained germ-plasm.

WAR AND THE BREED

But the old word well serves our purpose.
Blood which is " thicker than water " is the
symbol of race unity. In this sense lies the ap-
parent paradox that blood determines history
and history determines blood. For example,
wherever Englishmen go they make, whether
well or ill, English history. Chinamen make
Chinese history. We may note in passing, how-
ever, that the climate in which a given tribe may
live may affect the activities of its members as
individuals or as an aggregate; education may
intensify their powers or mellow their preju-
dices; oppression may make them servile, or
dominion make them arbitrary; but these traits
and their resultants due to external influences
do not " run in the blood," they are not " bred
in the bone." Older, deeper set, more per-
manent than climate or training or experience
. are the traits of heredity and in the long run
it is always " blood that tells."

But even hereditary traits are not immutable.
War and conquest, with other selective influ-
ences, may modify even these. It is the man
who is left who determines the future trend of
history. His inborn qualities the next genera-
tion must inherit.

Artificial Seleotloii

In a herd of cattle, to banish or destroy the
most promising individuals is to allow the in-
ferior to become the parents of the next genera-

HUMAN GENETICS

tion. This is race deterioration, although as
heredity runs level, the individuals of the
new herd must be on the average the equiv-
alent of their parents. A scrawny herd is
the natural offspring of scrawny parents.
On the other hand, by preserving the most de-
sirable types and these only, one gets a basis of \-
continued betterment. It is said that when the
short-horned Durhams first attracted general
attention in England, the long-horn breeds
which preceded them, inferior for beef and milk,
vanished "as if smitten by a pestilence." If
conditions should be reversed and Durhams be
chosen for destruction, then the long-horns
might again appear and increase rapidly in num-
bers, unless of course all traces of the breed had
in the meantime been annihilated. Among ani- .
mals as well as among men, the type is deter- •{^
mined by the individuals which survive. This
fact is the basis of the process known as Arti-
ficial Selection. By this process men have
formed the various breeds of domestic animals
and plants. The value and stability of these
breeds depend on the preservation of the best
for parentage.

Betnra of the Fairies

An interesting phenomenon in London has
been discussed as " The Return of the Fairies."

It is a current theory that the fairy tales of
Europe are based on persistent memories of pre-

i8 WAR AND THE BREED

historic swarthy dwarf races which once lived
on the continent. It is now claimed that these
types, not yet extinct, are tending in the preva-
lence of military selection to reassert themselves
and to " congregate in their old haunts." The
" pygmies of London," under-sized, dark-
skinned people, " clothed in rags and begging
an existence " are now increasing in relative
numbers. " The prehistoric small, dark types
which were submerged by the Celtic and Teu-
tonic Invasions have been asserting themselves
numerically, and have also been percolating
back to the areas from which they were driven
by those bigger, fiercer, blonde immigrants."

The increase of these dwarfs may be ascribed
to their immunity from military selection. The
editor of American Medicine, however, thinks
rather that they represent small sizes of all the
types found in the melting pot of London and
that their existence is due to " disease and un-
derfeeding." " Boys cannot grow Into good
citizens without plenty of food, and if we can-
not increase the food, we must decrease the im-
migration and the birth-rate. No matter what
we do, our American population In the end will
settle into social layers as In England, where
stature Increases with social rank from good
feeding as well as good inheritance."

But If the facts are as stated, we must be
dealing with a matter of heredity, not merely

HUMAN GENETICS

with the effects of scant food and unfavorable
surroundings. Life in the slums causes deteri-
oration in all types of men. But it is the weak
and unstable who create the slums. Slum-life
with its associations of liquor and vice consti-
tutes at once a cause, an effect and a symptom
of persona] weakness.

The slums of the great cities of Europe have
formed the hopper into which, along the lines
of least resistance, slide those rejected from en-
listment. Were there no war, there need be no
Elums, for the slum as a social institution is a
product of the War System. The " Return of
the Fairies " will be one result of every great
conflict, but the phenomenon will not often pass
under so poetic a name.

Value of Individual Initiative

More vital than the elimination of the weak
strains in humanity Is the encouragement and
preservation of the strong ones. It is this that
counts most in human welfare.

In all history, the influence of individual in-
itiative has been a potent factor. In the long
run it has been the most important element in
the building of civilization. Great men have
been " molders of environment " while the
common man lies " at the foot of the strong
god, Circumstance." With men in the mass,
history repeats itself. The rare man of cour-

20 WAR AND THE BREED

age, wisdom and initiative Interposes to prevent
such repetition and a new epoch in human affairs
is begun, a new type of history written.

In a scholarly work on the Influence of Mon-
archs, Dr. Frederick Adams Woods calls es-
pecial attention to the absurdity of speaking
of the Romans, the Greeks, the French, as
though these nations constituted a continuous
series from century to century. In reality the
history of these and other races Is largely
measured by the number and quality of the men
of high ability produced among their number.
And such men of ability are not descended from
the mass but from superior strains, natural no-
bility within the rank and file of the race.
Whatever cuts off its superior strains contrib-
utes to the downfall of the group containing
them.

"The Egyptians," says Dr. Woods, " prob-
ably never had any highly developed building
instinct, though some of their rulers had.
' The Greeks ' as a whole may never have been
artistic and intellectual, though a percentage
certainly were. ' The Romans ' may never
have had a special faculty for law and govern-
ment. Such talents may have been confined to
the patrician families. ... No matter what
may be the form of government ... the laws
of heredity will work toward the formation of
governing classes inherently superior to the sons
of other men. Universal suffrage and uni-

HUMAN GENETICS

versal education, the most carefully equalized
scheme of social opportunity cannot prevent this
tendency of the homogeneous to pass into the
heterogeneous, — this splitting up of mankind
into sub-varieties, castes and breeds.

" Historical science can scarcely at present
predict the future, but It can interpret the past.
If the work of the world has been Initiated and
directed by a few very great men, and if these
men are the predetermined products not of out-
ward but of inward differences, the true inter-
pretation of history must hinge upon the
gametes,^ and the laws of history will be found
to be but a part of the laws which govern all
organic life."

" In life or death," says Ellen Burns Sher-
man, " the man with presence of mind rarely
counts as merely one. Indeed, Nature's basis
of valuation of such men may be Inferred from
their numerical ratio to the rest of the popula-
tion. For Nature, for her various ends has a
human currency of divers metals and denomina-
tions. The ratio of Ctesars, Cromwells, Lin-
colns, and Shakespeares to the rest of the popu-
lation has always been most economically pre-
determined.

" But the mad presumption of war destroys
Nature's ratio, and the result is similar to what
might be expected if one should rob the baker

s Gamelr, the bearer of hereditary trails within the germ-

22 WAR AND THE BREED

of two-thirds of his quota of yeast prepared for
a hundred loaves of bread and then expect him
to make the same amount of good bread with
the insufficient remainder of leaven.

" Counting truly, we should add to the total
annihilations of the battlefields all those partial
extinctions of humanity, manhood, and charac-
ter in the surviving — which follow the sur-
render of honesty, purity, justice, generosity,
faith, trust, honor, pity, gentleness, and love.
That all these virtues are maimed — if not ut-
terly destroyed — by war who can deny it?"

Law of Quetelet

By the law of probabilities as developed by
Quetelet, it is claimed that there will appear in
each generation the same number of potential
poets, artists, investigators, patriots, athletes
and superior men of each type of excellence,
But this law can hold only In case of absolute
continuity of parentage, A percentage prac-
tically equal of men of superior force or superior
mentality should survive to take the responsi-
bilities of parenthood. Otherwise Quetelet's
law, as Quetelet himself noted, becomes subject
to the operation of reversed selection or the bio-
logical " law of diminishing returns."

Again, all laws of probabilities and of aver-
ages are subject to the primal law of biology,
which no cross-current of life can overrule or
modify, — "Like the seed is the harvest."

HUMAN GENETICS

There is a Moorish proverb which reads :
" Father a weed, mother a weed, do you expect
the daughter to be a saffron root? " One from
the Spanish puts the obverse of this: " A lion
breeds lions; a brave man has brave sons."

WorkingB of Primogeniture

The feudal nobility of each nation in Europe
was primarily made up of the brave, the strong
and the fair. By their courage and strength
they became the rulers of the people, and by the
same token they chose the fairest for their
mates. In the organization of England par-
ticularly, the attempt was made to emphasize
and perpetuate this superiority by the law of
primogeniture. On " inequality before the
law " British polity has always rested. A cer-
tain few have been fed on " royal jetly " as the
young queen-bee is fed, and thus raised to a
higher class, distinct from the worliers. To
take this leisure class out of the struggle and
competition of life, so goes the theory. Is to
make the first born and his kind harmonious
and perfect men and women, fit to control the
social and political life of the state. In Great
Britain the eldest son is chosen for this pur-
pose, — a good arrangement, according to Sam-
uel Johnson, " because it insures that there shall
be only one fool in the family." For the
" theory of the leisure class " overlooks that
men are made virile by effort and resistance,

24 WAR AND THE BREED

and the lord developed on " royal jelly " has
rarely shown qualities of leadership.

Primogeniture has brought, however, a real
gain to the nation though not to the individual.
This lies in the fact that the younger sons and
the daughters' sons were forced constantly back
into the mass of the people, insuring among
them the presence of dominant strains. Eng-
lishmen of today are descendants of the old no-
bility, and in the stress of natural selection they
have crowded the children of the swineherd
and the slave. The evil of primogeniture has
furnished its own antidote; for primogeniture
begat democracy. The younger sons in Crom-
well's ranks asked on their battle-flags: " Why
should the eldest son receive all and we noth-
ing? " Richard Rumbold, slain in the Bloody
Assizes, " could never believe that God had sent
into the world a few men already booted and
spurred, with countless millions already sad-
dled and bridled for these few to ride."
Younger sons became the Roundheads, the Puri-
tans, the Pilgrims. They swelled Cromwell's
army, they knelt at Marston Moor, they
manned the Mayflower, and in each generation
they have striven for liberty in England and
the United States. Studies in genealogy show
this to be literally true. All the " old families "
in New England and Virginia trace their lines
back to nobility and thence to royalty. Indeed,
almost every Anglo-American has, if he knew it,

'HUMAN GENETICS

noble and royal blood In his veins. The Massa-
chusetts farmer, whose fathers came from De-
von or Somerset, has as much of the blood of
the Plantagenets, of William and of Alfred, as
flows in any royal veins in Europe. But his an-
cestral line passes through the working and
fighting younger son.

On the continent of Europe the law of primo-
geniture was little emphasized. There the no-
bility formed a distinct leisure class, all of noble
blood being included. All were borne on the
backs of the " third estate," the people at large.
Gentle blood rarely mingled with that of the
commoner. Noblemen were brought up in In-
dolence and dissipation, their maintenance lay-
ing an ever-increasing burden on the villager
and the farmer.

In France, the intolerable load of taxation
led to the Revolution with Its Reign of Terror,
and the sacrifice of the " best that the nation
could bring." For despite their Intrigues and
cruelties, the victims numbered many of the best
from the standpoint of race value. Their weak-
nesses were those of luxury and Irresponsibility,
individual defects not Inherited by their children
who, under other conditions, might have reached
at least a decent human average.

Effects of Race Poison

Dr. Saleeby and others have shown that cer-
tain organic Infections may serve as Race Pot-

26 WAR AND THE BREED

sons, by direct injury to the germ-cells or to the
growing embryo. Chief among these is the

, minute animal organism, Spirochete, a species

-■^of which Is the cause of Syphilis.

Another type of race-poison has an influence
purely chemical. The two best known agencies

-of this kind are alcohol and the salts of lead.
According to the experiments of Dr. Stockard
in New York, Dr. Mjoen In Norway, and
others, one effect of alcohol even In moderate
quantities is to kill or to maim the germ-cells
in either man or woman. If the vitality of such
cells be destroyed, they are of course sterile.
Minor injuries may lead to imperfect develop-
ment in the embryo which may show itself in
distortion, in epilepsy or in some form of feeble-
mindedness. Plumbism, or saturation with
salts of lead, may have similar effects.

The study of race poisons, if this term be
properly applied, is still in its infancy. In gen-
eral, also, although the deteriorating effects of
alcohol on the human system are well under-
stood, we still have much to learn of the racial
results arising from its use, the extent to which
it becomes a " race " poison as well as a poison
to the individual. The subject is in a special
sense related to the purpose of the present hook
through the fact that the barrack as part of the
War System, has been in the past a special cen-
ter for the spread of alcoholism and venereal
disease.

HUMAN GENETICS 27

Bacial Loss Through Emigration

Emigration has played a large part in the
depletion of peoples in different districts of
Europe and even in older sections of the United
States. This may mark a loss to a particular .^
region, but none to the world, the value of a
man and his posterity, broadly speaking, being
as great in one place as in another. Moreover
the pioneer gains by travel, picking up some-
thing on the road, though he may also lose
through separation, as in the new freedom he
tends to fall out of touch with the achievements
of the old social fabric. Much of human effec-
tiveness consists in entering into the work of
others. But on the other hand, he will escape
many hampering traditions, and the sturdiness
of racial stock is in no way dependent upon cul-
ture, the social values of native strength reas-
serting themselves when opportunity offers.
Meanwhile the gains in the new world may be
traced as losses in the old. For example, from
the counties of Devon and Somerset arose, pri-
marily, the colony of Masachusetts Bay. From
the loins of Old England, New England arose,
and from self-governing New England, the de-
mocracy of the United States. From Devon
'especially came forth the Puritan Conscience, a
most precious political heritage of the Republic.
Under its Influence every public act finds its final
test in moral standards. Such standards still
rank more highly in America than in any other

28 WAR AND THE BREED

land. The American people may consent to
unrighteous deeds under the impulse of false-
hood or greed, but only for a time. They
make many mistakes in the rush of events.
They may apply standards wrongly, but if so,

1 the case comes up again for settlement. Ghosts

\will walk till justice lays them.

In the days of Queen Elizabeth no county in
England had more abounding life than Devon-
shire. " The Dragon Persecution " there and
the "Bloody Assizes" in Somerset, sent the
Pilgrim Fathers forth as emigrants. Devon
now lives across the sea, whither three hundred
years ago her young men carried the venerated
names of her picturesque sea-ports.

Kacial Loss Through Immigration

By Immigration, lands scantily occupied by
barbarous races have been replaced by peoples
more efficient or more aggressive. Through
the same agency strong nations have sucked in
weaker groups to fill the vacuum caused by war
or to meet the demands of industry. The his-
tory of America, North and South, has fur-
nished examples of all of these. Through con-
quest by war as well as out of industrial needs
grew up the institution of slavery. In Rome,
" whole tribes were borrowed " for the work of
agriculture, while conquered groups were util-
ized as menials or slaves.

Everywhere, under these conditions, the

HUMAN GENETICS 39

blood of the slave or the conquered has diluted
that of the dominating race, usually to its detri-
ment. For example, in most Spanish and Por-
tuguese Colonies, Latin blood has been mixed
with aboriginal, producing crosses showing few
of the virtues of the European stock. Indeed,
in Portugal, the mixture from subject races in
Brazil, Africa and India has invaded the parent
itself to its social and political confusion.

Two main facts appear in this connection.
In many racial crossings occurs the mingling of
the least desirable types of each. Naturally
where the dregs of one race mix with the off-
scourings of another arise distressing possibil-'
ities of vice and incompetence. For instance,
the Eurasian in Asiatic sea-ports " is damned
from his birth and on both sides." But when
good European blood mingles with Asiatic
strains as good, there Is no evidence that the
progeny is inferior to either parent stock,

The words "hybrid" or "mongrel," terms
of reproach as usually applied to the human race,
relate commonly to the union of widely different
peoples. But the question of " Race or Mon-
grel " cannot be settled by a priori assertions as
to superiority of pure over mixed races. Thcre,-
is no general law that mongrels are sterile, in-
ert and non-resistant. It is a matter to be de-
termined in any individual case of crossing by a
study of the results derived. Experiments of
the sort have no pertinence unless best is mated

30 WAR AND THE BREED

with best, and even then they might prove con-
clusive only if many times repeated. And no
result shown in individuals need be valid as a
general law of crossing. It would apply only
to the particular types in question. No im-
portant information could be expected from the
study of the first generation. One would need
to know the nature of the recessive characters
involved as well as of the dominant ones. The
final Mendelian disposition of mixed race char-
acters must determine the final answer.

The intermarriage of European races can
hardly be called crossing at all, as the racial dif-
ferences concerned are of slight order, little
more than temperamental at the best, and most
of the traits we commonly recognize are mat-
ters of education. All those qualities which
disappear in a generation in America must be
chargeable to education, not to race. And, in
general, other things being equal, the advantage
seems to be on the side of the blended races
which belong to the same general stock. More-
over, in civilized lands, there are only blended
races. Blending is part of civilization. Pure
strains confined to isolated islands or valleys,
thus withdrawn from competition, by no means
represent the best of any race. There is no
widespread race which is pure. There is no
such thing as a pure-blooded German or French-
man. " Saxon and Norman and Dane are we "
of England. Likewise are we Briton and

HUMAN GENETICS

Welsh and Cornish; also Scotchmen, Highland
and Lowland, Manxmen, Ulstermen and Irish-

That the crossing of the closely allied Euro-
pean races In America has, of itself, brought no
disaster to our republic is a matter of visible
observation. That wide crosses necessarily
work always for evil is not proved. Appar-
ently the American mulatto as a whole is supe-
rior to the pure African negro. And the ulti-
mate fate of the negro race in America is ap-
parently to become mulatto, even though the in-
troduction of white blood is relatively much less
frequent now than in the days of slavery. But
in all these matters, we are much in need of
scientific, that is, exact and systematized, infor-
mation.

We may admit that the introduction of Afri-
can blood has not been a gain to the republic.
And we may also admit that much of later immi-
gration from Europe and Asia has lowered our
average. The original impulse to America was
that of escape from paternalism and oppres-
sion, two words for the same thing. America
was a haven of refuge from senseless tyranny.
Immigration thus brought to the new world a
wealth of Initiative and adaptability such as no
nation ever inherited before. But in later days
this current has changed. Wider opportunity
has opened before the common man in the more
progressive nations, and the incentive of free-

32 WAR AND THE BREED

dom has been less acute. Moreover, while still
" America means Opportunity," this !s not al-
ways to be had for the asking.

The demands of manufacturers, the oper-
ations of steamship companies, and the possi-
bilities of earning money without economic free-
dom, are drawing another type of immigrant
from other parts of the world. Among immi-
grants to America today are some with magnifi-
cent personal responsibilities, men of the stuff
that makes republics. But the most of them
are not such, and while their presence adds to
our material wealth they constitute, as a whole,
a burden on our democracy. Only a man who
can take care of himself and have something left
over for the common welfare is a good citizen.
It is hard to maintain the principle of equality
before the law among people who have never
felt and never demanded such equality.

Ba:Cial Inequality

The claim is sometimes made on an assumed
basis of science that all races of men are bio-
logically equal, and that the differences of
capacity which appear are due to opportunity
and to education. But opportunity has come to
no race as a gift. By effort it has created Its
own environment. Powerful strains make
their own opportunity. The progress of each
race has depended on its own inherent qualities.
There has been no other leverage. Physical

HUMAN GENETICS 33

surroundings have played only a minor part
To say that one race as a whole is inferior to
another is only to repeat what is said every day
of individual men. This does not imply that
the lower man or the lower race need be robbed,
enslaved or exterminated. Nor that a lower
race may not produce its own prophets or
scholars or heroes. The tribe of Australian
bushmen is counted one of the lowest on earth.
Not long ago, in Adelaide, I met a full-blooded
" Black- fellow," broad-minded and competent,
a mechanical engineer by profession, a man who
would hold his own in any community. That
race is lowest which shows, on the whole, least
capacity for self-elevation.

" All men are born free and equal," it is as-
serted, but such equality is political only. It
cannot be biological. In every race are certain
strains having capacities not attainable by the
mass. There should be equality of start,
equality before the law, but there will always be
differences of attainment. 'The gifts of poten-
tiality, unit characters of the germ-plasm, are
not equally shared by all people of the same
race. The average status of one may be below
that of another, and the highest possibilities of
one type may be greater than those of another.
In general, the highest range of possibilities
in every field has been reached by the " blonde
races " of Europe. Groups of less individual
or of less aggregate achievement may properly
be regarded as " lower."

IV. THE WAR SYSTEM AND
MILITARISM

The War STstem

" War," says Clausewitz, the greatest of mil-
itary philosophers, " is an act of violence, which
in its application knows no bounds." The Sys-
tem comprises all organizations, disciplines and
devices useful for carrying on warfare. In our
day, in every country its avowed purpose is de-
fensive, but defense Implies also aggression
and it is a recognized maxim of war that the best
defense is to be the first to strike.

The War System comprises the most potent
of all agencies for the reversal of selection
among men. In its three-fold function — Mili-
tary Conscription,* " Armed Peace " (" Dry
War") and War itself, it promotes the waste
of the fittest, and allows the increase of inertness
and ineiHciency in relative numerical impor-
tance. The whole civilized world is still or-
ganized more or less completely on the basis of
the War System. Democracy demands escape
from it, but nowhere has perfect democracy yet
existed, because nowhere yet has any nation fully
emerged from the shadow of r

'The effects of Military Conscription a
iollawins chapter.

THE WAR SYSTEM

The War System has its foundation in the
mediiEval conception of nations as rivals or ene-
mies, each using its abilities to impede the pros-
perity or commerce of other nations, each a unit
of power desirous of expansion in territory,
eager to enforce its will on others and prepared
to do limitless Injury, if necessary, to that end.
Each is therefore suspicious of all others, and
in proportion to its subservience to the War
System, cultivates hatred along its borders. As
suspicion, hatred and the use of force demand
secrecy to be efFective, the War System is main-
tained by secret diplomacy and arbitrary action.
To consult with the people concerned would de-
stroy the opportunity for sudden decision and
lightning attack, so vital to successful warfare.
The System in Europe is essentially aristocratic,
its higher councils open only to the chosen few.
It is, in fact, the right arm of privilege, while
the left arm is found in the State Church. Ac-
cessories of the War System are restrictive
tariffs and repressive legislation, with every
other line of policy which tends to aggravate dif-
ferences among men and nations. Its exigen-
cies, throughout Europe, have perverted and
poisoned most teaching of history, politics,
morals and patriotism. The same evil influ-
ences have been felt in the schools of America.

Bismarck, the ablest exponent of the War
System since Napoleon, recognized that military
officials as a whole and in every country not only

36 WAR AND THE BREED

think of current events in terms of war, but that,
with many sincere exceptions, their voice is for
war. This condition he approved, at the same
time providing that military authority should
never override civil. " Strategy must wait
on diplomacy." But military efficiency every-
where exerts a constant and at times overween-
ing pressure to the end that rivalries of whatso-
ever kind be adjusted by the sword.*

In passing we may note that modern diplo-
macy concerns itself mainly with the affairs of
the rich, and especially with those of the ad-
venturer in backward or barbarous lands, where
robbery may supplement enterprise. To be ef-
fective, such diplomacy must be supported

1 of the above is given in the Memoin of
Prince Hohentohe, as thus quoted and condensed by Henry
Noel Brailsford in The War of Steel and Gold. "Tbere
was (in 18S9} some serious question of provoking a nar
with France, and (he main reason for hurrying it fornard
was apparently the eagerness of the German generalissimo,
Count Waldersee, a most influential person at court, to
reap the glory which is only to be had by leading armies
in the field. There was unluckily no obvious pretext for
war, but on the other hand Count Waldersee, who was
growing old wag obsessed by the painful reflection, that if
the inevitable war was postponed much longer he would
be compelled, as a superannuated veieran, to wicnesa the
triumphs of a younger rival. In the end it was found in»-
possible to provide Count Waldersee with a European
war, but 10 the astonishment of mankind the Kaiser did,
before he reached (he age-limit, arrange a punitive er-
pedition in China for his benefit. If he reaped no glory
by it, the Chinese will not soon forget his prowess against
Don-combatanls and movable property."

THE WAR SYSTEM 37

by armed force, which points directly towards
war.

The War Systenj consists of three main ele-
ments of organization, — the Standing Army,
Conscription, and finally War itself, towards
which the other two converge. In each of the
three branches, it stands opposed, on the whole,
to the eugenic welfare of the nation, as Benja-
min Franklin was the first to observe, iTo be-
gin with, all armies are chosen by selectibn.
They are made up of young men between the
ages of seventeen and thirty-five, without blem-
ish so far as may be, men of physical strength
and soldierly bearing, having by preference the
qualities of courage, dash and initiative. The
feeble, the loose-jointed, the weak-minded, the^-
adenoid, the intemperate, the diseased arc leff^
at home. Furthermore, in camp-life, the sol-
dier is peculiarly exposed to the unwholesome
influences of liquor, lust and absence of social
restraint. In actual war, the hazards far ex-
ceed those of civil life, and in camp and field
the soldier is alike debarred from normal home
surroundings and from honorable parenthood.
The War System then, in all its ramifications,
tends to the continuance of the race from stock
in most or in all respects inferior to the average.
In any event, it leaves the nation crippled, " une
nation blessee," In the word of Professor
Bonet-Maury.

This crippling, from which all nations have

VAR AND THE BR

suffered more or less, may not appear in the ef-
facement of art, of science or of creative imag-
ination. Men who excel in these regards are
not drawn by preference to the life of the sol-
dier, though in war time they, with the others,
may be victims of conscription. But while to
cut the roots of a tree may not impair the quality
of its fruitage, it will most certainly reduce its
vitality and the amount of its produce.

Militarism

The animating spirit of the War System is
I known as Militarism. This we may define as
dependence on force instead of law in national
and international relations. Through its influ-
ence Law itself becomes the expression of supe-
rior power, not of the will and intelligence of
the people concerned. Militarism is a mental
attitude of a nation quite as much as an objec-
tive fact. For this reason, it cannot be meas-
ured by the number of soldiers or ships or by
the size of guns. It is placing dependence on
these agencies for the enforcement of a dominat-
ing will. Militarism considers all public ques-
tions in terms of force, its alternate, Civilism,
in terms of equity. The degree of a nation's
reliance for defense or aggression on the War
System serves as a measure of Militarism. If
it be regarded as menacing in tendency, the rem-
edy lies in education, in the spread of ideas of
international equity, and in the recognition of

THE WAR SYSTEM

tbe fact that War is not a normal condition in
human affairs, but a most disastrous form of
world-sickness, to be met like any other pesti-
lence by sanitation.

The primal causes of modern war are found
in Militarism, Exploitation and Fatalism. The
last named elemefit Is that mental bias which
moves people otherwise intelligent and peaceful
to think of every little hitch between civilized
nations in terms of war. The newspapers
which are the echoes of the ideas of the people
at large blare out these thoughts. Men in-
terested in war preparation take them up, and
in time " the man on the street " reaches the
second stage of martial degeneration. " Our
honor is attacked; our vital interests are in peri!.
This has been two or three times repeated I
War is inevitable. We shall never be more
ready for it than we are now." At once the
call is raised to Increase all our means of de-
fense. The result Is that the more we have
invested in these things, the more we think in
terms of war, the more easy it is to get our
honor Impugned, the more " inevitable " Is the
too long delayed conflict.

Along this line, the " Dry War " of Europe
progressed for years. For years every entan-
glement of spheres of Influence had been con-
sidered in terms of war. Tenuous " national
honor" was variously insulted; the "vital in-
terests " of bands of adventurers were im-

40 WAR AND THE BREED

perilled. Thus war became inevitable in the
popular mind.

Culture * is a product of friendly relations.
One of its chief attributes is the capacity to put
oneself in another's place. In this sense, it is
the antithesis of militarism. The culture of a
nation has sources far beyond its boundary lines.
The culture of all Western and Central Europe
is essentially one, each nation large and small
contributing its part and the whole having deep
roots in the philosophy of Greece and that of
Judea. The whole body of the " blonde race "
constitutes a brotherhood from which no ele-
ment could be spared. A European war is nec-
essarily of the nature of civil war, fratricidal
as well as suicidal. " Laws," said Plato, " are
their own avengers on those who slight them,"

In the words of Sir Robert Morier: "A
nation cannot afford the luxury of cynicism, can-
not risk to place itself outside the pale of the
opinions of mankind, because a nation never dies
and the conscience of mankind never dies, and
when the orgies of successful force have spent
their strength, the day comes when it has to live,
not with its own recollections, but with that
which mankind has preserved for it." (Mem-
oirs and Letters, quoted by Havelock Ellis.)

Militarism to those reared under its disci-

■The ward "culture" is here used in its ordinary EDgliih
lignificance. The German " Kullur " refers rather to a
panicuUr group of social adjui

THE WAR SYSTEM

pline Is like the pressure of the atmosphere,
everywhere present but not recognized. The
one people of modern times most thoroughly
subject to it vehemently denies its existence. A
poet of the day affirms of this nation: "We
hate as one; we love as one." The idea is im-
possible to an individualistic people not subject
to such discipline. In Great Britain, as in
America, the people can never be conceived to
" hate as one." Each loves as he pleases, hates
as he pleases and fights if he thinks the cause
worth while, or if drawn by a gregarious or
combative nature. But a people must be thor-
oughly militarized before it will " love as one "
or " hate as one " at the dictate of any ruler or
government,

Militarigm and IndustrlEilisiii

One of the staple arguments for the War
System is its industrial value. By it the work- [
ing man is taught obedience to authority. His
docility is a valuable industrial asset. He will
not block industry by strikes, sabotage or
syndicalism once he has learned to obey. And
in a community thoroughly disciplined, failure to
obey can be made unpleasant or perilous.
Meanwhile a kindly paternal government
through employment insurance, old age pensions
and the like can protect the workman from want
with one hand while with the other it holds him
in his place. Freedom gives the opportunity to

42 WAR AND THE BREED

rise but also the liability to fall. A land of in-
dividual liberty is a land of industrial contrasts.
Where varied humanity gives place to standard-
ized industrial units, personal initiative must suf-
fer. The difference between the two ideals in-
dicated is sharply emphasized in Europe today.
This divergence is marked by the theory and
practice of military conscription. The absence
of enforced service constitutes the main bond of .
union throughout " Greater Britain." And the
actual tie between the United States and Great
Britain is not primarily that of blood nor even
of language. It lies in the fact that both
nations are essentially democratic and indi-
vidualistic, recognizing the man as the unit In
society, not as a mere industrial factor in " the
State " which " exists over and apart from the
individuals who compose it."

MilitajiBm and Private Big^ht

The War System involves constant encroach-
ment on the rights of the individual. Actual
war introduces Martial Law, which is not law
at all, simply the suspension of ordinary equity.
Under Martial Law every government whatso-
ever arrogates to itself imperial power. The
property, the food, even the bodies of Its citi-
zens may be seized for the good of the nation
and that without redress. Even crime may be-
come " military necessity." The precedents
formed by the Invasions of personal rights per-

sist long after war has ceased. The more def-
initely victorious a nation, the more prone it
is to rivet chains on Its own people. The ex-
pansion of national power means, for the most'
part, the narrowing of individual liberty. The
Prussian Imperialist, Professor Von Treitschke,
asserts (in words here slightly condensed) :

" The essence of the state is power, and it is
to be found in a well-equipped and well-drilled
army. ... It is only in war that a people be-
comes a people, . . . The state exists over and
apart from the individuals who compose it and
it is entitled to their utmost sacrifices, in short,
they exist for it, rather than the state for them.
A nation's military efficiency is the exact coeffi-
cient of a nation's idealism."

Says the London Morning Post, harking back
to the days of Lord Beaconsfield : *

" The first function of the State is the organ-
ization of the Army. . . . The second is war-
fare. That men have so long refused to recog-
nize this fact proves how emasculated political
science has become in the hands of civilians.
... If It had not been for war there would
be no states. It Is to war that all the states we
know of owe their existence. . . . Wars must
continue to the end of history so long as there
is a plurality of states. Neither logic nor hu-
man nature reveal any probability that it could
ever be otherwise.
* fFar and Piaet, March, 1915, quoted by C, E. Fajle.

WAR AND THE BREED

" The absurd talk about this being a war
against militarism has now subsided. , . .
After all, the British Empire is built up of good
fighting by its Army and Navy. The spirit of
fighting is native to the British race. Only by
militarism can we guard against the abuses of
militarism. War is in itself a thing indifferent,
being either bad or good according to its use
and service. . , . Adequate military prepara-
tion is the only means yet devised by man to
avoid the horrors of war. ... In times of
corrupting peace, the State's energies and re-
sources are absorbed in schemes of social
change, and it accordingly neglects those na-
tional considerations which were at one time
thought to be the sole business of a national
government . . . social reform, land reform,
and all the other reforms without which it was
supposed the nation could not live, are gone
clean out of the picture. Democracy may still
exist, but it is no longer in evidence. . . . Then
war comes, and the people perceive that the in-
dividual matters nothing, the class matters lit-
tle, what really counts is the nation."

This is, in brief, the political and social creed
of the War System. It suppresses the individ-
ual, it throttles democracy, it drains the re-
sources of the people. It strengthens the con-
ception of the nation as an entity with an exist-
ence apart from the people who create It. It
furnishes the privileged groups 3 means of de-

THE WAR SYSTEM 45

fense against the rising tide of democracy. For
when all are beset by a common danger, the
minor equities are forgotten and a definite halt
is called on every kind of social reform.

Militarism and Nationality

The spirit of tiatioitalily as understood in an
aggressive sense, lies behind the international
conflict of our day. It begets a type of patriot-
ism vicious in its influence, because directed
not toward the welfare of mankind or even that
of the fatherland itself, but toward rivalry with
other nations. By such means, nationality has
built its boundaries in hate.

Nationality has succeeded to the feudal sys-
tem. With all its splendid advantages for hu-
man culture and well-being, it is still on trial
because capable of terrible perversion.

The dual nature of nationality has been ad-
mirably put by Professor G. Lowes Dickinson
of Cambridge : " Nationality is a Janus, facing
both ways. So far as it stands for the right
of a people to govern itself, it stands for free-
dom. So far as it stands for the ambition to
govern other people, or to destroy them or to
shape them into an unknown world, it stands
for domination. Throughout history it has
stood for both. . . . Nationality is respectable
only when it is on its defense. When it is
waging wars of liberation it is sacred. When
it is waging wars of domination, it is accursed.

46 WAR AND THE BREED

It is therefore an ideal only when it is associated
with Law and Peace."

Says Havelock Ellis:* "An Englishman
no more dreams of worshiping the state than
of worshiping his own trousers. Both the one
and the other he regards as useful ... in fact,
he clings to them both with a remarkable
tenacity. But he regards them as alike made
for him and to his own measure. The idea
that he was made for them and that he must
abase himself in the dust before their divine
superiority is an idea at which he would smile."
'Atlantic Monthly, April, 1915.

V. THE WAR SYSTEM AND RACE
SELECTION

Franklin's Views

Benjamin Franklin who, above all his con-
temporaries, " saw through the forms of things
and laid bare the substance " was, so far as
records go, the first man in all history to no-
tice the necessary relation of war to the breed.
Of an interview he had with Franklin in 1783,
John Baynes records the following: ^

" Insensibly we began to converse on stand-
ing armies, and he, seeming to express an opin-
ion that this system might some time or other
be abolished, I took the liberty to ask him in
what manner he thought it could be abolished;
that at present a compact among the Powers
of Europe seemed the only way, for one or two
Powers singly and without the rest would never
do it; and that even a compact did not seem
likely to take place, because a standing-army
seemed necessary to support an absolute gov-
ernment, of which there were many in Europe.
'That is very true,' said he; ' I admit that if

^Mirnoirs of the Life of Samuel Romllly, by his iod*.
2 vols. 1S42. vol. I, p. 69, quoted by James Parton and by
Jatnei Biowd Scott

48 WAR AND THE BREED

one Power singly were to reduce the standing-
army, it would be instantly overrun by other
nations; but yet I think there is one effect of a
standing-army which must in time be felt in
such a manner as to bring about the total abo-
lition of the system.' On my asking what the
effect was to which he alluded, he said he
thought they diminished not only the popula-
tion, but even the breed and the size of the
human species. ' For,' said he, ' the army in
this and every other country is in fact the flower
of the nation — all the most vigorous, stout
and well-made men in a kingdom are to be
found in the army. These men in general never
marry.' "

" History," observes Dr. James Brown
Scott, " is but a commentary on the statement
of Dr. Franklin, for standing armies and their
destruction in battle have sacrificed the fit to
the unfit and ruined the nation on the battle-
field. We may close our eyes to history and
refuse to listen to its teachings, but the fact is
and always has been that war deprives a nation
of the most fitted to maintain its existence, and
a succession of wars ruins the stamina of a
nation, no matter by what sophistry we may
disguise the fact or: explain the consequence.

" It is not maintained or asserted that war
may not draw out the higher instincts of a na-
tion; that courage and self-sacrifice, of which
we arc proud and whose traditions we cherish,

RACE SFXECTION

are not produced and made prominent in war In
ways impossible in peace; but the misfortune
and the scourge of war lie m the fact that these
very qualities are sacrificed and lost; for, to
repeat the language of Dr. Franklin: ' the army
is the flower of the nation. All the most vig-
orous, stout, and well-made men in a kingdom
are to be found in the army. These men in
general never marry.' The realization of this
state of affairs will one day reach the people,
and it cannot be doubted that they will save
themselves and their countries by insisting upon
the settlement of international disputes in a
way which does not deprave humanity and
jeopardize civilization."

Other Early Observations

Almost contemporary with Franklin was Dr.
Tenon of Paris, who reached a similar conclu-
sion through actual studies of the effect of war
on the stature of men. It appears that Dr.
L. R. Villerme called attention, in 1833, to cer-
tain notes written by Dr. Tenon in 1785.'
*' ' Tenon was led by his studies,' says Villerme,
' to conclude that human stature is more largely

"Villerme, L. R., " EstraU de Notes MS relaiive k ti
Stature et au Poids de rhomme, lesquellea notes ont iti
iTDUvfes dans les papiers de feu Tenon, membre do I'lnsti-
tut de France," in Aiinales d'Hygicne Publique, i" Sirie,
vol. X, pp. !t7-3S. 1833. Quoted by V. L. Kellogg in
Military Seleclian and Ract Delerioration, Carnegie En-
dcnvmcDt for Peace, Setiei, 1915.

so WAR AND THE BREED

determined by heredity than environment.'
And on one of the note sheets, Villerme found
a statement of Tenon's to the effect that all
the facts from all the documents and statistics
which he had been able to assemble touching
this matter of human stature, made it necessary
for him to conclude that ' wars, and especially
long wars, reduced the average height (in a
population) by using up the tallest men.' But
Villerme was unable to find in the notes any
particular assembling of facts on which this
conclusion had been based."

" Dr. Villerme himself, in 1829," continues
Professor Kellogg, " published a valuable
pioneer study ^ of the height of French con-
scripts, with a direct, if somewhat timid and
suppressed suggestion to the effect that a cer-
tain reduction of the average height of French
young men noted by him in the years after the
Restoration, was due to the deteriorating effects
of the earlier Napoleonic campaigns. Villerme
notes that after the Restoration, when the mini-
mum height of the conscripts for service had
been raised to 1670 mm. — it had been reduced
by Napoleon from 1624 mm. to 1598 mm.,
and then to 1544 mm. — certain Cantons were
not able to complete the number of young men
which they should furnish as soldiers of sufS-

= Villerme, L. R. Mfmoire tur la TailU de I'Homme *n
France, in Annalea d'Hygiine Publique, i" Sirie, vol. i,
pp. sS'-339. 'B»9-

RACE SELECTION

cient height and vigor according to the propor-
tion of their population.

"In 1833, Benoiston de Chateauneuf in an
admirable, full paper * documented by statistics
and touching such matters as numbers in the
French army in different years, the changing
height-figures for conscripts, the proportions
and causes of deaths in garrison and camp in the
army in times of peace, etc., quotes approvingly
from a writing by one M, de Petigny, a ' con-
seiller de prefecture ' entitled ' Observations sur
le Recrutement.'

" ' Conscription has destroyed not only the
generations exposed to it; it has struck at itS'
very source, the life of the generations to come-i
In constantly taking from the nation the elite'
of its youth, it has left France only the infirm
and adolescent. Consequently marriages are
made only with soldiers used up by the fatigues
of war, or with youths hardly escaped from in-
fancy, who hasten to find a protection, in these
immature marriages, from the rigor of the con-
scription laws. Such ill-made unions have been
able to produce only a degenerate race, and the
proof of this is found in the increase, in recent
years, of the number of exempts {conscripts
excused from joining the colors for undersizc
or infirmity). According to the report of the

' Benoislon de Chaieauncuf . Essai lur la Martaliti dam
Vlttfanterie Franqaise, in Annales d'Hygiine Publique, i"
S£rie, vol. 10, pp. 239-316, 1833.

52 WAR AND THE BREED

I' War Office, the proportion of exempts aver-

aged in 1827 for all France, 43 per hundred,

> or one of every three and forty-seven hun-

■ dredths.'

" Dr. Chateauneuf himself adds: ' A weak-

' ened constitution, an enfeebled health, arrest

the flow of the sap of life and the development
of the body. The man remains feeble, small,
[ stunted. Louis XIV bequeathed to his suc-

cessors a people ensraalled by long wars, and
Louis XV, after him, was obliged to reduce the
required height of the soldiers to five feet.
Since Louis XV, the same causes have contin-
ually compelled the lessening of the height re- J
quirement. It is at present four feet and ten j
inches ( 1 meter, 57 centimeters) , but in spite of
this continual lowering, in spite of the more
advanced age at which the young soldier now
enters the service, an age at which the develop-
ment of the body is indeed near its full limit
— 'although while the militia takes possession of
him at his very Issuance, so to speak, at 16 and
1 8 years of age — this low stature of the young
men is today, together with the accompanying
condition of infirmity, one of the commonest
causes of exemption from service.' " J

Novicow and Richet H

The late Professor Jakov Novicow of the ij

University of Odessa, one of the most learned

RACE SELECTION

and vigorous opponents of war, has said:'
" War produces indeed a selection, a choice
of the worst. The young men strongest and
most healthy go to the war. Among its com-
batants, the most valiant take the lead. In con-
sequence, the more perfect the individual, the
greater his chance to be killed. In most battles
it is the best that fall. On the other hand, the
feeble and sickly elements, those not enrolled
under the banners of war, reproduce them-
selves, while the flower of the nation U con-
demned to celibacy or to relations with prosti-
tutes, this leading so often, alas, to the most
fatal results."

The arguments as to race selection in war,
that war conserves the white races as against
the others, Novicow shows to be likewise falla-
cious: "Let us admit that the white race is
superior. We cannot say that it was created
by natural selection, by the elimination bf in-
ferior races or by their extermination, since
most of the globe is peopled by these races
called inferior, the white race forming a small
minority. . . . Progress depends upon thou-
sands of factors, of which race conflict is one
of the least important. The struggle as a
whole with the conditions of life plays always-
the dominant role. . . . Natural selection

• The following paragraphs are condenicd from Not!-
ecnt't La Criligue da Darwiniim Social.

54 WAR AND THE BREED

among men operates not by homicide but by
economic phenomena. The individuals best en-
dowed have their well-being assured; the others
fail. Positive selection operates through nat-
ural death. This factor is infinitely more im-
portant than war, because it acts constantly,
while homicide appears at rare intervals. Nat-
ural death strikes all the world, while violent
death on the battlefield strikes soldiers only, a
small minority of the population. Still another
claim is set up by Renan and Schallmeyer.
These authors claim in substance that war de-
stroys the states which are badly organized,
preserving those governments favorable to the
human species, thus promoting progress. ' If,'
say Renan, ' a state is not constantly under the
menace of conquest, it is difficult to measure the
degree of debasement to which its people may
descend.' " To this, Professor Novlcow ef-
fectively answers :

"Since 1783 the United States of America
have had no fear of being conquered by their
neighbors. In these 128 years they have real-
ized some progress. The population has risen
from 4,000,000 to 88,000,000, In agricul-
ture, industry, commerce, technical inventions,
and even In science, the Americans stand among
the first nations on earth. Far from ' falling
to sleep,' the Americans are the most wide-
awake and active people on earth.

*' As a matter of fact, it is very easy to prove

RACE SELECTION

that the fear of being conquered produced pre-
cisely the ' abasement ' indicated by Renan.
To attribute human progress to one factor, war,
and to neglect the thousands on thousands of
others, ts the most illogical reasoning that one
could imagine. Nowhere else in social studies
have learned men fallen into an error so colos-
sal."

Plainly, the history of peace in the various
nations is the history of the slow recuperation
of races from the effects of war. Most phases
of natural selection, in society as in nature, make
for advance, very slow no doubt, but real.
Every war means a step backward, long or
short in proportion to the accompanying de-
struction of virile elements.

Professor Charles Rlchet,* of the Chair of
Physiology in the University of Paris, thus
discusses military selection:

" In nature, when two animals fight with one
another, it is the more valiant that survives.
Disease attacks the weak ones; those of greater
vigor and courage live on to perpetuate the
race of the courageous and strong. But In war
among men . . . the selection is reversed, and
conduces to the Impoverishing of the race.

" First, let it be remembered that the sick

and the infirm are exempt from service. Those

who have any weakness — such as the deaf

mutes, the one-eyed, the one-armed, the crip-

' Le Paiii de la Guirre el fAiienir de la Faix.

56 WAR AND THE BREED

pies, the hare-lipped, the rickety, the scrofulous,
the deranged, the lunatics, and the imbeciles —
all these diseased and impotent people are well
protected by the military laws, and not one of
these unfortunates runs any risk of perishing
on the field of battle. Those who are chosen
to disappear are the halest and heartiest. Ro-
bust youths, the hope of future generations,
these are the ones who are declared fit for serv-
ice.

" On the field of battle It Is always the same
kind of men," according to a well-known say-
ing/ "who get themselves killed." . . .
^ " From a biological point of view, long wars
are exhausting to a nation and conducive to
actual degeneracy. For at last, as during the
period of the Napoleonic massacres between
1798 and 1815, all the able-bodied population
ends by being annihilated on the field of battle,
and the weak and infirm and cowardly are alone
left to carry on the race. This is one of the
most serious evils among the innumerable ones
which follow in the wake of war.

" And, finally, need I remind any one that in
time of peace — that sinister peace which means
only a preparation for war — syphilis, alcohol-
ism and tuberculosis, inevitable results of all
agglomerations of human beings and of all mil-
itary institutions, are hardly to be reckoned as
''"A la guerte, n tone toujours lei memei qui ae font

RACE SELECTION

especially advantageous tor die comiag
'tions, if they are to be taken into accouot.'

Vfax at Bace BmeidB

" The Great War," lays Romain RoUand.

ms " a sacrilegious conflict, which shows a mad-
<]ened Europe ascending its funeral pyre, and
Jike Hercules destroying itself with its own
Jiands."

" Each nation justifies its own share In the
3>resent struggle on the ground that it is vir-
tually waging a war of self-preservation. If
all this is the outcome of a war of self-preserva-
tioQ, one would like to know what form a war
of self-destruction would take. ' Your K.ing
and country need you ' is the patriotic appeal,
and those who respond are immediately thrust
hy King and country as fuel into a smoking
furnace. ..." *

Says Professor Kellogg, " War to the bid-
o^st seems, above all else, stupid. It is ra-
cially dangerous. It so flies in the face of all
that makes for human evolutionary advance,
and is so utterly without shadow of serious
scientific reason for its maintenance. It is not
natural selection in Man, nor in any way the
counterpart of it. Its like does not exist in
Nature outside the forays of the few degenerate
fighting ant species, some of whom have lost
the power of caring for their young, and hence

' Topeka Journal.

58 WAR AND THE BREED

live as social parasites on less barbarous Icinds,
or have given up all other means of feed get-
ting than robbery by force of numbers. It is
not only not natural selection, but its results
are an artificial, unnatural reversed selection,
one that turns on Itself, giving no advantage to
the conqueror, but only many and terrible dis-
advantages to victor as well as to loser." *

In a recent address In Worcester, Mass., Dr.
G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University,
thus speaks of the anti-eugenic aspects of war:

" Seven to ten millions of the soldiers now in
the war, or training for it, are married men and
are the most able-bodied and intelligent poten-
tial fathers. Statistics can tell us approximately
how many children would, on the average, have
been born of these men, had they stayed at
home. . . . Thus the crop of best babiesf-which
Is the most precious of all assets for both na-
tional and cultural prosperity, and on which
national greatness depends more than upon any-
thing else, is greatly reduced, for, to say noth-
ing of the killed who will never be parents, we
must also consider the vastly greater number
who, as medical studies of the effects of war
show, suSer impairment In the quality of their
future parenthood, because war always brings
such a tragic aftermath of nervous and other
physical deterioration in those who survive it,
as pension systems show."
'Beyiind War.

RACE SELECTION 59

Elbert Hubbard observes: "The warrior
unfitted by wounds and disease to fight longer,
returns home to assist the man who escaped
conscription through weakness and these two
march their disabilities down the winding ways
of time."

" Europe must breed," says Bernard Shaw,
" from the men of the last reserve."

" The strongest and best men," says Robert
L. Duffus, " those fittest to be the fathers of
coming generations, are picked out by the mil-
itarist system to be mowed down by shell, to be
weakened by hardship and overstrain, to con-
tract and perhaps to pass on to other genera-
tions the hideous diseases of camps. Every]
great war leaves the general average of health,!
strength, intelligence and morality a littlel
lower.

" The most fatuous of militarists in the most
undemocratic of nations has to defend war on
the ground that it is good for the people, that
it Is a factor in the working out of national
destinies; but all the time, during any war,
forces which he utterly ignores are at work in-
flicting the very gravest injury that can possibly
befall a nation, the lowering of the quality of
its people. However the mean little schemes
of the war-makers may turn out, they leave
everybody worse off. No nation has an ex-
ternal enemy half so dangerous as its own war
party."

6o WAR AND THE BREED

Dr. Caleb Williams Saleeby of London, dis-
cussing The Long Coil of fVar, says: '"

" We all find reasons for the fall of the Ro-
man Empire according to our creeds, Instincts
and prejudices. But some of the reasons ad-
vanced actually have reason in them. The in-
cessant drain of the right kind of military stuff
from the population of Rome, led in the long
run, to the production of that degenerate peo-
ple who wish only for panem et circenses (bread
and circuses). The recruiting officer rejected
the halt and blind, feeble-kneed, the easily fa-
tigued, saying, though he did not know it:
' You are not good enough to be a Roman sol-
dier; stay at home and be a Roman father.'
The future was ruthlessly sacrificed by mili-
tarism to the present, even as now in Northern
Europe.

" This very morning as I write, comes the
news that several famous athletes of our own
race have been killed In France, They may
have been winning or losing, retreating or. ad-
vancing, but they are dead, and Britain will have
no more sons of theirs. Similarly the cor-
respondents tell us how, in Paris and elsewhere,
none of the able-bodied remain, between, it may
be, the ages of nineteen and fifty. How, then,
is the race being recruited, while the regiments
are being recruited? With some personal
knowledge of and almost boundless admiration

'" ffeitminsltr Gazttlf.

RACE SELECTION

for France, I can scarcely doubt that the heav-
iest burden under which France now bows is
the lack of those sons of hers whose grand-
fathers that should have been, fell a century
ago. . . ■ Racial ruin in the long sequence of
history is the real nemesis of militarism." *^

War and Stature '"

The lowering of the stature of the French
soldiers due to the wars of Napoleon has be- "
come a matter of common knowledge. It is
the saying in France that " Frenchmen are small
because all our tall ancestors died in our vlctori-

■^'"Just off ihe southern shore of Newfoundland lie the
islands of Si. Pierre and Miquelon — rather pathetic ves-
tiges of the broad domain France hoped to possess on
this western continent. The sLmpie folk in ihis retired
colony have been asked to send 800 men to the mar. When
the physical examinations were over, the officers found that
just 300 men were fit for service. These chosen men, the
very pick of the colony, its best hope for growth and
bettermeat for generations to come, are nom at sea on
theii way to the front. Before them is desperate service
for their mother country; behind they leave the chaff and
riff-raff from which they were vtinnowcd. Should they
Tctuin to their homes, nine in ten will bring the physical
and moral injuries which war inflicts. This instance of
destructive selection takes our attention because it comes
close to our own shores. We should remember that through
the villaf;es and towns and cities of almost all Europe (he
same process is at work. The war is gnawing at the vitals
of our race like the vulture that tortured Proroelheus."
(Edwin D. Mead, in the Boston Herald.)

11 Dr. William S. Sadler has made the following esti-
mates of results of reversed selection in the present war,
considering the present physique of Americans and Euro-

ous wars." Legoyt thus states the case: " It
will take long periods of peace and plenty before
France can recover the tall statures mowed
down in the wars of the Republic and the First
Empire."

It should be clearly noted that a mere decline
in stature is in itself of little racial significance,
save as an index of decline in other and more
vital regards. Tall stature has been sought for
in recruiting armies and so have qualities of
boldness and dash. The decline In stature can
be measured; other qualities cannot, but we may
fairly assume that all soldierly traits have suf-
fered together and the measure of one serves
in some degree as the measure of all.

This matter has been made the basis of a

■'jcritical study by Professor Vernon L. Kellogg,

in the interests of the Carnegie Endowment for

Peace. A synopsis of the results of this study

is given In Social Hygiene, December, 19 14.

□f the areragE of the Eurc^eans

Av«rate htight GB.; fn. 67 in

Slnngth of'stim 1A9' lbs. i,Jo8 Ih

Smngth of Irgs i.i» tbt. i^G lb

StreogUi o{ Irunk i.jji lbs. i.ngo lb

TduI bod]' itrvnglll . ■ . . s.o 1 8 tb*. 4i<44 It

Lung capscity ijo cub. in. 11; c<

Lang nnngth Si mill. 7'°'

This table is quoted b>- Prof. Herbert Eugene Walter of
Brown UniTeiii^, ia the PhilaJrIfhia IngMirer-

RACE SELECTION

" France has kept for over a century an inter-
esting set of official records which offers most
valuable data for the scrutiny of the biological
student of war. They are the records of the
physical examination of all the male youths of
France as these youths reach their twentieth
year of age, and offer themselves, compulsorily,
for conscription. . , .

" The minimum physical condition for actual
enlistment has varied much with the varying
needs of the nation for men of war. In cer-
tain warring periods of her history France has
had to drain to the very limit her resources in
men able to bear arms. Most notably this con-
dition obtained during the nearly continu-
ous twenty-year period of the Napoleonic
Wars.

"Louis XVI in 1701 fixed the minimum
height of soldiers at 1624 mm. But Napoleon
reduced it in 1799 to 1598 mm, (an inch lower)
and in 1804 he lowered it two inches further,
namely, to 1544 mm. It remained at this fig-
ure until the Restoration, when {1818) it was
raised by an inch and a quarter, that is, to 1570
mm. In 1830, at the time of the war with
Spain, it was lowered again to 1540 mm., and.
finally, in 1832 again raised to 1560 mm. Na-
poleon had also to reduce the figure of minimum
age.

" The death list, both in actual numbers and
in percentage of all men called to the colors,

64 WAR AND THE BREED

during the long and terrible wars of the Revo-
lution and Empire, was enormous. And the
actual results in racial modification due to the
removal from the breeding population of
France of its able-bodied male youth, leaving
its feeble-bodied youth and senescent maturity
at home to be the fathers of the new generation,
is plainly visible in the condition of the con-
scripts of later years.

" From the recruiting statistics, as officially
recorded, it may be stated with confidence that
the average height of the men of France began
notably to decrease with the coming of age in
1813 and on, of the young men born in the
years of the Revolutionary Wars { 1 792-1 802),
and that it continued to decrease in the follow-
ing years with the coming of age of youths born
during the Wars of the Empire. Soon after
the cessation of these terrible man-draining
wars, for the maintenance of which a great part
of the able-bodied male population of France
had been withdrawn from their families and
the duties of reproduction, and much of this
part actually sacrificed, a new type of boys be-
gan to be born, boys that had in them an in-
heritance of stature that carried them by the
time of their coming of age in the late 1830's
and 40's to a height an inch greater than that
of the earlier generations born In war time.
The average height of the annual conscription
contingent born during the Napoleonic Wars

RACE SELECTION 65

was about 1625 mm.; of those born after the
war it was about 1655 mm.

" The fluctuation of the height of the young
men of France had as obvious result a steady
increase and later decrease in the number of ex-
emptions in successive wars from military serv-
ice because of undersize. Immediately after
the Restoration, when the minimum height
standard was raised from 1544 mm. to 1570
mm,, certain French departments were quite
unable to complete the number of men which
they ought to furnish as young soldiers of suffi-
cient height and vigor according to proportion
of their population.

"Running nearly parallel with the fluctuation
in number of exemptions for undersize is the
fluctuation in number of exemptions for infirm-
ities. These exemptions increased by one-third
in twenty years. Exemptions for undersize
and infirmities together nearly doubled in num-
ber. But the lessening again of the figure of
exemptions for infirmities was not so easily ac-
complished as was that of the figure for under-
size. The influence of the Napoleonic Wars
was felt by the nation, and revealed by its re-
cruiting statistics, for a far longer time in its
aspect of producing a racial deterioration as to
vigor than in its aspect of producing a lessening
stature. . . .

" And disease . . . has stricken and still
strikes soldiers not only in war time but in the

66 WAR AND THE BREED

pipingest time of peace. And, what is almost
worse for the individual and decidedly so for
the race, its stroke is less often death than per-
manent infirmity. The constant invaliding
home of the broken-down men to join the civil
population is one of the most serious dysgcnic
features of militarism. In the French army in
France, Algeria, and Tunis in the 13-year
period, 1872-1884, with a mean annual strength
of 413,493 men, the mean annual cases of
typhoid were 11,640, or one typhoid case to
every 36 soldiers I In the middle of the last
century the mortality among the armies on peace
footing in France, Prussia, and England was
almost exactly 50 per cent, greater than among
the civil population. When parts of the armies
were serving abroad, especially if in the tropics,
the mortality was greatly increased. In 1877
the deaths from phthisis in the British army
were two to one in the civil population. And
how suggestive this is, when we recall that the
examining boards reject all obviously phthisis-
tainted men from the recruits. The proportion
was still three to two as late as 1884. In the
last war of our scientifically enlightened country,
the deaths from disease in camp were eight to
one from the incidents of battle. But we could
do better now. And so may France and Eng-
land."

RACE SELECTION 67

Ammon's Arguments

The most important attempt in the name of
science to minimize the evil effects of military
selection is that of Dr. Otto Ammon of Jena.^^
His special thesis is that the best men should
rule, and that such a condition is brought about
by selection ruthless and without regard to any
principle of equality or democracy. He con-
tends that war has this result, exerting on the
whole a helpful and advantageous selection.
He admits that partisan warfare, banishments
and executions in ancient time left Rome weak
in men of force and ability to lead. But a dif-
ferent result comes from the massacres in war
and conquest. In them, it is the weak rather
than the strong who are extirpated. " A hun-
dred years after the unspeakable desolation of
the Thirty Years' War, in which Germany was
robbed of three-fourths of her people, arose
Goethe and Kant," Thus while recognizing,
in part at least, the fact of reversal of selection
by war he denies it in the case of massacre.

" War," continues Dr. Ammon, " Is sur-
rounded by many evils, but one should not push
his criticism too far. In its total result, war is
a blessing to mankind because it is the only
means to measure the power of nation with
nation, granting victory to the bravest. War
is the highest and most majestic form of the

i'Die GeiiHickajUordiUHg utU ihtt NalSrlichen GruiU-
lagta," Jen*. it9&

WAR AND THE BREED

struggle for existence and being indispensable,
it should not be abolished. War is not alone
to be considered in the sense of a factor in Nat-
ural Selection by which in strength and spirit
a stronger nation gains the overlordship it de-
serves, but it can also produce selection among
individuals in an important sense.

" It is wrong to generalize the effects of war,
as though all wars produced like results. Our
losses in 1870-71 were great and painful, yet
the general loss amounts to only a small figure.
At the end of the war those children born in
1871 and 1872 showed its improving influence.
Paradoxical this seems at first sight; it is self-
evident on closer inspection."

This condition, Ammon explains, " is due to
the fact that while bullets kill indiscriminately,
the losses of disease, numbering more than half
of the slain, are confined mainly to the weaker
of the soldiery. Besides this, the children fol-
lowing the war sprang from stronger stock, men
steeled {gestahlt) by war, Germany has never
had better conscripts than in 1893, when the
sons of the early seventies entered the ranks."

Dr. Ammon insists that the same was true
in France, in which nation the contingent of
1893 was, to the surprise of the army, un-
usually good and serviceable. " Short wars
act as clearing storms to the population. After-
wards they give a new vigor which shows Itself
in the greater health of infants, the hardening

RACE SELECTION

of the grown people and a notably increased
movement of the spirit,"

This paper of Dr. Ammon, with many sim-
ilar discussions by authorities in Germany, is
vitiated through the omission of a single fact.
A selection much to the detriment of the popu-
lation had been made already before war, the
strong being chosen for military service and for
decimation while the weak were released. The
army had no use for the cripples, the deformed,
the organically diseased and the dwarfs. These
were all handed back to the population by the
recruiting commission. Naturally they were
largely the fathers of the contingents of 1891
and 1892. In the class of 1893 the sons of
returning soldiers found their places as well.
There is not the slightest evidence that these
boys were in any way superior to their fellows
born before the war. Assertions to this effect
rest on comparisons with the necessarily weaker
average of those brought forth during the war
period.

Observations of La Potige

In his Selections Sociales, Vacher de La
Pouge discusses the alleged compensating influ-
ence of increase of births after war and the
superior character of the subsequent genera-
tion.

As a matter of fact, the contingents of 1891
in Germany and of 1892 in France were notably

poor. The rise in quality and in numbers after
the war of 1870-71 was a natural result of a
sudden partial return to normal conditions.
Most of the soldiers had then got back home
and had resumed their usual vocations. There
is nothing pertinent, he asserts, In the fact that
those who returned had been " steeled "
(" gestiihh ") and " hardened " (" abgehdr'
let") by war. They had simply come back
alive into the ranks of civil society. It should
also be noted that doubtless there were among
them many more of the weakened and maimed
than of those strengthened by the ordeals
through which they had passed.

La Pouge further asserts that In 1870 in
France there was a shortage of 25,000 from the
normal number of marriages, the shortage oc-
curring in the second half of the year, and
caused by the call of conscripts to the war.
Also 50,000 young men had been torn away
within a few days or a few weeks after mar-
riage. The end of the war was naturally
marked by an " epidemic of marriage," the num-
ber of unions in 1872 (353,000) being the
highest reached in France since 1813. In 1813,
due to a desire to escape through marriage from
the call to arms, there were 387,000 weddings
in France, 120,000 above the normal. " It is
needless," says La Pouge, " to look further for
the increase in the number of births in 1872."
As for the improvements in quality, the return

RACE SELECTION

^f the men from the colors restores in large
part the normal average. The longer the war
and the greater the loss of life, the less fully
would this be accomplished.

These facts, says La Pouge, "are not with-i
out interest in the point of view of military
selection. But to regard them as evidences that
war is a cause favorable to selection through the
elimination of the feeble would be a positive
error. The defective individuals are still pro-J
tected from the direct attack of the enemy." t

The claim sometimes made that a higher per-
centage of male children follow war belongs to
folk-mythology, having so far as known no sus-
taining facts.

La Pouge quotes from a study made in the
community of Herault '■' in Languedoc, these
facts as to the " children of the war."

" If one compares the stature of the classes
1887 and 1891, the last formed of 'children ;
of the war,' born in 1871, one finds that the
average of the disinherited class is much smaller.
In 8 cantons alone the stature of 1891 is equal,
in nearly all the others it is lower than that of I
1887. The cantons where the amelioration is
noticed are urban cantons where the increased
prosperity of these later years has produced a
more precocious growth. In fact, my re^

'* jl/«l/fiaux pour la Ciographlt Anthropologique de
I'HirauU; Bull dc la Sac. Languedoc de Geographie ig!i4.
f»ic. 3. 4.

1^^^ huma

72 WAR AND THE BREED

searches in Herault show that the check of de-
velopment due to town life has almost disap-
peared for some years past. The reduction of
stature is most marked in those regions where
the original average was highest. Thus the
canton of Servain, which furnished fine men
land which was a choice contingent under the
colors during the war falls from meters 1,68 to
'1.64."

La Pouge thus generalizes : " All social evo-
lution is dominated by selection. In virtue of
the organization, psychic, cerebral and cranial,
the ethnic elements multiply or are eliminated.
Events thus produce selective movements, and
selection produces historic events. The more
advanced the civilization, the more effective is
social selection. Its effects are greatest the
more rapid the social progi-ess. The period of
arrest and reversal occurs soonest for the races
best endowed and for all humanity. Systematic
selection seems to be the only possible means of
escape from approaching mediocrity and from
final relapse. However difficult (eugenic) se-
lection may be in practice, we should not regard
it as impossible. We should not lay undue
stress on the obstacles due to the ideals of the
times. In the future and with races who think
and feel differently, these obstacles will disap-
pear, in whole or in part. Horizons of which
we have not the least Idea may thus open before
humanity."

RACE SELECTION

Traumatic Neurosis

" The anthropologist," says Henry Scolield,
" sees but one enemy in the field. That enemy
is the lasting injury to progeny of the nations
at war through seeds of disease and debility to
be planted in the constitutions of the men fight-
ing today in the battlefields of Europe."

Among the secondary evils of war is that of
TrauJTiaiic Neurosis, nervous disorganization
due to injuries to brain-cells following the shock
of big guns and of terrible trials in war. Such
disturbances, it is believed, affect, through nerve
connections, the germ-cells also, rendering a man
less fit for parentage, as his children are' likely
to suffer from some type of nervous disorder.
For this reason, Traumatic Neurosis may per-
haps be ranked with the " Race Poisons." "

Hrdlicka's Observations

The effects of great shocks on soldiers are
thus summed up by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, an-
thropologist of the Smithsonian Institution, in

^'"During (he siege of Port Arthur, especially toward
the close, the Russian aoldiets were so subject lo tnemal
sber ration that they frequently attacked one another under
the impression that (he Japanese were making an assault.
Fanic-fear, so well known as an element of war, which
anacks even seasoned troops, is only a special case of this
disturbance of mental balance due to the violent and un-
accustomed emotions of conflict." (Dr. Consigllo,)

See The Bed Laugh, by Leonid Andreev, a gruesome
■tody of (he mental condition of the Russian troops about
Mukden.

a personal letter dated January 23, 1915, and
here printed with author's consent:

" In accordance with your wishes, I give you
in a totally unpretentious way a few opinions
of my own as to some of the pathological re-
sults of the present war, particularly on the
nervous system of the combatants and on their
progeny. They will be to some extent more
than the opinions of an outsider for, in the early
years of my anthropological worlc, I was for a
number of years associated with the insane,
epileptic, feeble minded, criminal and other ab-
normal classes.

" Even under ordinary conditions of life there
will come under the observation of the special-
ist numerous cases of so-called traumatic neu-
rosis, insanity, epilepsy, and other mental and
nervous disturbances, due to shocks of explo-
sions or collisions, and to falls, blows, and other
forms of injury to the head or the whole body.
In many cases these effects are of a serious
nature, deep-seated and quite intractable. Be-
sides such major effects of shoclts there are
numerous cases of chronic irritability, hysterism,
and other lasting mental and nervous disturb-
ances which have been caused, awakened, or
aggravated by sustained violence.

" If we now consider the nature of the mod-
ern warfare, with the preponderance of heavy
artillery and consequent frequent violent explo-
sions, which disable men within a large radius

"by concussion alone, and which besides scatter
fragments of Iron and balls that frequently pro-
<luce direct and serious injuries to the skull or
spinal column, we cannot but expect that there
"will be many men left after the war whose
Tjrain and nervous system will bear pathological
Jesuits of these shocks and injuries.

" Such men will marry in many cases and
<rcate progeny. But a father with epilepsy,
<ven though of traumatic origin, or with neu-
Tasthenia, nervous Instability, or other marked
■disorders or weakening of his nervous system,
<annot be expected to give rise to normal
progeny. Judging from many analogous ex-
periences with similar cases, it seems safe to
assume that all deep-seated, long continued men-
tal and general nervous disturbances will affect
■unfavorably the trophic centers that control the
development of the germ cells, with the result
of a more or less defective mental or nervous
state in the progeny of such individuals.

" Former wars, barring some sieges, can
scarcely be compared in these respects with the
present one, for armies in the past have had
litde heavy artillery, with none of the powerful,
modern high explosives, and other conditions
of warfare were such that deep mental and
nervous shocks must have been far less fre-
quent.

" But it is not only the direct injuries to the
brain or nervous system which come into con-

WAR AND THE BREED

sideration in connection with the subject of the
deleterious influences on the race of the present
war. Perhaps even greater harm, both in the
way of resulting defective personalities and fol-
lowing defective progeny, will result from the
extreme and prolonged tension that must be
sustained in many cases by the soldier in the
trenches, for days and even weeks at a time, with
maxima of excitation, fatigue and depression;
from the infectious diseases, such as typhoid,
and from the diseases of the various Important
organs such as the heart, liver, kidneys, and
the digestive apparatus, contracted through
overstrain, exposure or direct injuries. All
such conditions will leave lasting marks on the
organism. They will produce a large class of ;
invalids, and these invalids, at best, will not be
able to give the proper care to their progeny;
but in many cases they will, doubtless, not be
able any more to transmit to their progeny a
' healthy mind and a healthy body.'

" Those who are killed outright may really
be regarded as individually more fortunate in
comparison with those of their comrades who
become chronically ill or debilitated for life;
and their lot is also the more fortunate one for
the race, for they will propagate no defectives
as will many of their surviving comrades.

" Viewed in this light, modern warfare be-
comes a great enemy of the human race. It
not only kills many of the most healthy gni

competent but It will create and perpetuate on
a large scale many serious organic defects,
which, like the proverbial sins, will plague hu-
manity for generations. The victor and the
vanquished will suffer alike. It is indirect ra-
cial suicide on a large scale, and should the war
last for years, recovery from it in western Eu-
rope, regardless of the economical side, will be
long and difficult."

Battlefield Infections

Dr. John B. Huber writes thus of the in-
fections of camp and battle:

" What if one should, prophesy that this war
is going to be decided by no bullet of metal, but
by that infinitely microscopic bullet known to
doctors as the pathogenic bacterium or the dis-
ease-breeding germ — a bullet of sentient, liv-
ing fiber that evolves poisons from which many
more die than the weapons of the enemy can
destroy." . . .

" In the world's large standing armies tuber-
culosis has long played a leading part. For it
is a disease that begins to take its heaviest toll
(one in three or four under the ordinary, non-
military circumstances of life) with the adoles-
cent. And many enlisted men have this most
surreptitious of diseases in latent 'form, either
to manifest itself under the stresses of cam-
paigning or to appear soon after the exhausting
and predisposing w'arfare is pndc^- In the

78 WAR AND THE BREED

English service, consumption is the chief cause
of mortality and invaliding; in the French serv-
ice consumption is second only to typhoid.
Typhoid has in times past been a ghastly deci-
mator of armies — rather, let us say, a quadri-
mator, even a tertiomator of troops. The Ger-
man military surgeons began anti-typhoid vac-
cinations; practically all European armies have
followed suit; and our own regular army has
by this means been practically fortified against
its ravages."

In civilized nations the soldier is protected
before the battle begins from smallpox by vac-
cination, from typhoid fever by serum inocula-
tion, and from other diseases by all the various
agencies known to the most progressive of mod-
ern sciences, preventive medicine. But in the
rough work of the field, he is subject to con-
stant attacks from the parasitic bacteria and
protozoa which cause Infectious disease. Ty-
phus fever is carried by lice; other fevers by
fleas, mosquitoes and other insects which have
him at their mercy.

Cholera, so long the fighting mate of war,
comes from the East. Modern sanitation had
of late kept it out of Europe, until the recent
conflicts in the Balkans called it back to Rou-,
mania and Servla. It will spread again with the
hot weather of summer, bidding a defiance to the
interrupted efforts at battle sanitation. Dysen-
tery may spread widely when once the water

RACE SELECTION

courses become infected with the Amosba which
produces it.

One of the greatest scourges of the battle-
field is Tetanus, or Lockjaw. The germs of
this disease occur in all cultivated soil, especially
when manured. Any closing wound into which
infected dirt has been introduced is likely to be
followed by lockjaw, unless the remedial serum
can be at once applied. Scarcely less disastrous
is a field infection producing gaseous inflation of
the tissues, a condition, I understand, thus far
without remedy.

Attempts at surgery in the absence of anesthe-
tics and antiseptics have formed one of the spe-
cial horrors of all war. Even with the best of
scientific knowledge and skill, warfare conditions
make successful operations precarious. There
can be nothing more ghastly than a field hospi-
tal in which a few surgeons work in awful stress
and under the most baffling limitations. The
Medical records kept in certain conflicts of the
past, notably Leipzig and the Wilderness of
Spottsylvania, are among the most gruesome
documents in existence.

Losses in War •-

Colonel G. F. R. Henderson of London thus
estimates the losses in killed and wounded in
twenty battles showing greatest fatalities, be-
tween 1704 and 1882.

80 WAR AND THE BREED ^^

Killed

and Percenl-

Battle

Dale

Na. engaged Waunded age

Leipzig

.. 18.3

440,000 93,000 30

Borodino

.. 1S12

262,000 75>ooo i8

Aspem

.. 1809

170,000 45,000 16

Wagrara

.. 1B09

370,000 44,000 II
133.S00 4=.ooo 33

Eylau

.. 1807

Waterloo

i70,cjoo 42.000 Z4

Gettysburg

.. 1863

163,000 37iOoo *4-

Chicltaraauga

.. 1S63

128,000 3 5, 000 37

Friedland

.. 1807

142,000 34,000 23

Malplaquet

.. 1709

200,000 S4,ooo 17

Vionville

.. 1870

i6S,ooo 32,Soo 19

Zorndorf

-. "758

84,760 32,000 jg

Solferino

■■ "859

295,000 31,50a 10

Bteohelm . ' . ^ . . ■ -

Kunnersdarf ....

■■ -759

113,000 31,000 27

Gravelottc

.. 1S70

jio.ooo 30,000 9

Kiiniggratz

.. 1866

317,000 26,894 6

Wilderness

.. 1864

179,000 26,000 14

Austerlitz

.. TS05

148,000 2S|000 16

Spottsylvania . . .

...186+

150,000 25,000 ifi 1

Ypres ••

1,000,000 500,000
ndon Evening News, the

According tc

the Lo

latest list {173

) in the

Prussian Armies make a

total of killed,

wounded and missing (to March

I, 1915) of

,050,02

9 men. Besides these,

160 lists from

Javaria

136 from Wiirtemberg,

119 from Saxony and 20 from the Navy, 435 in

all, have been

ssued in

Germany.

The California On

tlook thus enlarges on

these estimates

: "Th

e last eight Prussian lists

contain 33,142

names.

or an average of 4,143

to each list. The average for the entire 173

'•Estimate of Will Irwin

Prxissian lists Is 6.o6g to each list. Taking the
smaller of these two averages, and cutting even
It cJown to 4,000, by striking out the odd num-
bers, and we would have, even on this underes-
tirnate, 1,740,000 casualities for the non-Prus-
sian part of Germany, or 2,790,029 for the en-
tire German army. This is more than all the
soldiers who served for any period, short or
long, on the Union side in the American Civil
War. Taking the average of the Prussian lists
as probably the average for the others, we have
2,640,015 German casualities outside of Prus-
sia, or 3,690,044 for all the German armies.
This is more than all the soldiers on both sides
in the American Civil War.

*' In other words, if every soldier who enlisted
in our war, in the whole four years, had been
lost, the number would not yet Have equaled
the losses of the German army alone, in a little
over half a year of war. It would certainly be
an underestimate to compute the Russian, Aus-
trian, Belgian, French and British losses com-
bined at twice those of the Germans. Probably
they are nearly proportionate to their total num-
bers engaged. But even at three times, the
losses to date of all the European armies must
be over ten million men. There are about
twenty million adult, able-bodied men in the
United States. The European losses already
equal half of these — a sum of grief and tears
and blood equal to depriving every second fam-

82 WAR AND THE BREED

ily in America of its adult father or adult son.
It is a thing colossal, staggering, incomprehen-
sible. Nothing remotely approaching it ever
happened in the world before, and civilized man-
kind could not survive its happening twice." ^' >

Are There Compensations?

In every war, it has been argued that there
have been certain compensations in exaltation
of character among soldiers in the field and,
quite as often, among those who suffer at home.

In an eloquent paragraph, in which he lays
great emphasis on the biological evils of re-
versed selection due to modern war. Professor
J. Arthur Thomson of Aberdeen adds this note
of appreciation of the soldier : " Who does not

"'From 3 German Social Democrat maniffsto (April 8,
1915), gigned by Karl Licbknechc, George Lcdebour, Rosa
Luxembourg, and others, we take the following:

"The human mind cannot grasp the misery these figures
repiescnt. It cannot conceive of the sulleringa of the mil-
lion* of human beings whose homes have been devastated
by the War God. . , , Besides exhausting ua, the present
war Is ruining future generations. While the cty of na-
tional defease could be used with sincerity at the beginning,
the imperialists of both sides now make it clear that they
arc fighting to destroy the rival nation. To avert a nen
period of armed peace they wish to crush the enemy so
that he cannot rise again. The same proclamation is made
in Germany, England, France and Austria. What would be
the result if this bloody fury were allowed 10 run its course
unopposed ? Either tj-rannical domination by the conqueror
or blood spilt till both sides were absolutely exhausted. In
any case, Europe's economic, democratic and socialistic de-
velopment would be retarded a century."

RACE SELECTION 83

admire what Mr. Sandeman says in his Uncle
Gregory? That quite unmistakable note that
you get in a very few people who in one way
or another have actually accepted death and are
only, so to speak, alive in the meantime. It be-
longs to the flawless perfection of the military
spirit, with its entire detachment from life it-
self, from self-will, from fear, from ease and
from all pretense."

The son of a valued friend in Germany wrote
this to his sister, just before his death in Po-
land: " One who stands in the field, so often
face to face with death, knows how to value
hfe, But he loses also the fear of death, for
he knows that the highest fortune is the forget-
ting of personality, the offering up of self.
And this takes all terror from death."

But this " flawless perfection " is by no means
a development from the military spirit. It be-
longs to the make-up of the man himself. It is
shown as often by physicians and nurses or even
by firemen as by warriors. It is as likely to ap-
pear in a shipwreck, an earthquake, or a pesti-
lence as in the welter of battle. As Profes-
sor Thomson observes ; " The story of the ex-
ploration and conquest of earth and sea is full
of heroes whose work is constructive, not de-
structive. The man who has grit enough to
bring about the afforestation or the irrigation
of a country is not less worthy of honor than its
conqueror." Through the ages men, civilians

84 WAR AND THE BREED

and soldiers as well, have given their lives to
save others.

" In Europe, in war time, moral conditions,"
says Julia Grace Wales,** " arc very far from
normal — not abnormally low, but almost super-
humanly high. The very unity and cohesion of
a race has carried the Individual beyond his
normal range. Each people is as a single fam-
ily; there is neither high nor low, rich nor poor,
but a brotherhood of men. No man counts his
life dear unto himself. All are lighting, with
unquestioning devotion for homes and father-
land, for language, Institutions, traditions, for
all that they hold most sacred and most dear.
Whatever we may believe about the folly or the
deliberate wrongdoing of governments, the fact
remains that each people is In a state of spiritual
exaltation. Individuals are everywhere think-
ing, feeling, suffering, facing the ultimate issues
of life and death. Their senses are sharpened,
their spirits sensitized to the significance of what
had become commonplace, to familiar ' land-
scapes, to the associations of home, to the ideals
of the race, to its heroism and its poetry, to the
symbols of its religion. This thing is like a
tidal wave of the sea; it has drawn deep."

But these conditions of exaltation are features
of personal sacrifice, of fear and dread and hope.
They are temporary, resulting often In no per-
manent elevation of character. At the best,
Thf Wisconsin Plan " of Peace.

RACE SELECTION

they are the efforts of gentle spirits, bred in
security, to adapt themselves to the insecurity,
horror and waste of war. The same traits ap-
pear in like degree in face of any mighty calam- \_,'
ity. But the effect of war as a whole is not
uplifting, whatever the feeling of the devoted
ones left at home who cast their wedding rings
into the melting pot to furnish gold for the cam-
paigns.

The fact that In all the nations of Europe
today men throw away their lives with unsur-
passed courage shows how little is the value of
the martial ardor men have cultivated in time
of peace as a preparation for defensive war.
Courage needs no artificial stimulus. More-
over, there is no inheritance of the martial
spirit engendered by war or by patriotic hate.
This, at the most, is only an " acquired char-
acter," a matter of training and education, which
may affect the individual life, but cannot color
the stream of heredity. The entire discipline
of the war-system is devised to make men not
heroes but automatic cogs in a machine of de-
struction. That a soldier may nevertheless be
a hero, is a tribute to human nature, to the edu-
cation of peace and not to that of war.

To those writers who claim that courage,
magnanimity, incentive, all have their founda-
tions in war, we must return a simple denial,
"War creates nothing. Whatever is left when ,
war is ended becomes the heritage of the race.

86^

And courage, boldness, initiative, war consumes
in more than its due measure. The magnanim-
ity of war is inherent in human nature, persist-
ing in spite of war. " Flashes of nobility like
lightning against a dark sky are not part of
War itself. They are the surviving agencies of
peace struggling against pitiful odds to undo an
infinitesimal fraction of the havoc of war."

In his charming studies of Feudal and Mod-
ern Japan, Mr. Arthur Knapp, then of Yoko-
hama, returns again and again to the great
marvel of Japan's military prowess after more
than two hundred years of peace. This was
demonstrated in the Chinese war, and more con-
clusively shown on the fields of Manchuria since
Mr. Knapp's book was written. It is astonish-
ing to him that, after more than six generations
in which physical courage had not been de-
manded, this virile virtue should be found un-
impaired.

Biit this is just what should have heen ex-
pected. In times of peace there is no slaughter
of the strong, no sacrifice of the courageous.
In the peaceful struggle for existence a premium
is placed on vigor and intelligence. The virile
and the self-reliant survive. The idle, weak
and dissipated go to the wall. " What won the
batdes on the Yalu, in Korea or Manchuria,"
says Professor Inazo Nitobe, " was the ghosts
of our fathers guiding our hands and beating in

RACE SELECTION

our hearts. They are not dead, these ghosts,
these spirits of our warlike ancestors. Scratch
a Japanese, even one with the most advanced
ideas, and you will find a Samurai," Trans-
lated from the language of Shintoism to that of
science we find it a testimony to the strength of
race-heredity.

If after two hundred years of incessant bat-
tle Japan still remained virile and warlike, that
would indeed be a marvel. But such marvel
no nation has even seen. It is doubtless true
that warlike traditions are most persistent with
nations most frequently engaged in war. Tra-
ditions of war, however, and the physical
strength to gain victories are very different.
Other things being equal, the nation which has
known least of war is the one most likely, when
necessary, to develop the " strong battalions "
which bring victory.

The little mountain kingdom of Montenegro
is sometimes used as a demonstration that much
war breeds strong men, for the Montenegrins,
physically superior to their brother Serbians, are
tall, straight and strong and they have fought
much, within and without, as their belts
crammed with daggers and pistols seem to tes-
tify. Time and again have they made forays
on the Turks in Albania, taking their fortresses
by storm, while at home the custom of private
revenge for personal wrong has been a duty
almost religious. Herbert Spencer quotes from

88 WAR AND THE BREED

Boue : " In Montenegro, one will say of a man
whose clan has killed a member of another,
' This clan owes us a head and this debt must
be paid, for who does not revenge himself can-
not be sanctified.' "

Originally the Montenegrins were Serbians
who defied the Turk and fled to their inaccess-
ible limestone crags. They were a picked
group physically, men of indomitable will.
They have not mixed with other races, and all
their members have practically the same inherit-
ance of superior blood. They constitute a little
group selected for courage and not yet ruined
by war.

Buskiii'a Testimony

John Ruskin once gave an address on the
higher ideals of war before the cadets of the
Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.^^ He
spoke of the nobler features of the profession,
its freedom from selfish ends, its " cleanli-
ness " as compared with the soot of industrial-
ism.

" All pure and noble arts of peace," he said,
" are founded on war; no great art ever rose on
earth but among a nation of soldiers. There
is no art among a shepherd people if it remains
at peace. There is no art among an agricul-
tural people if it remains at peace. Commerce

^»Tht Crevm of Wild OVivt.

RACE SELECTION

is barely consistent with fine art, but cannot pro-
duce it. Manufacture not only is unable to pro-
duce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds
of it exist. There is no great art possible to a
nation but that which is based on battle."

The above words have been many times
quoted, not for their inherent value, but because
Ruskin wrote them. They constitute a sort of
paradox, for everywhere else, even in the same
address, their author accentuates the value of
human life. For the time being, his mind is
not fixed on the actualities of war. Every form
of human activity (unconnected with coal and
steam), war included, might contribute, he be-
lieved, to spiritual elevation. But he was
plamly not thinking of the warfare in which
these cadets might have to engage; rather of the
ancient contests between man and man. Of
modern slaughter by machinery elsewhere he
says:

" If you have to take away masses of men
from all industrial employment — to feed them
by the labor of others — to move them and pro-
vide them with destructive machines, growing
daily in national rivalship of inventive cost; if
you have to ravage the country which you at-
tack — to destroy for a score of future years
its roads, its woods, its cities, and its harbors;
— and if, finally, having brought masses of
men, counted by hundreds and thousands, face
to face, you tear those masses to pieces with

WAR AND THE BREED

jagged shot, and leave the fragments of living
creatures, countlessly beyond all help of surgery,
to starve and parch, through days of torture,
down into clots of clay — what book of accounts
shall record the cost of your work? That, 1
say, is modern war, — scientific war, — chemical
and mechanic war, worse even than the savage's
poisoned arrow."

Ralph Bronson thus comments on this :
" When one considers the hellish perfection to
which ' chemical and mechanic ' war has been
brought since Ruskin's time, one cannot but feel
that even that supreme master of language
would have been at a loss for words forcible
and fiery enough to express his abhorrence of
the ' insensate devilry ' of modern war. I, for
one, cannot but believe that he would have pre-
ferred to see all the great cultural treasures of
the past perish like the manuscripts of Louvain
or the painted glass of Rheims rather than that
Europe should be devastated and brutalized as
is being done today."

Social Darwinism

Through the custom of framing a system
to justify a line of conduct, the philosophy of
" Social Darwinism " has been developed.
This is in brief the attempt to justify war as a
necessary phase of " The Struggle for Exist-
ence," naturally leading to the " Survival of the
Fittest " in human society and in the society of

RACE SELECTION

nations. As a part of this process, war is
lauded as necessary to enable God to wipe out
the meanest of his creatures, gathered in small, ■.
weak, backward or peace-loving nations, leaving
thus the field to the " deep-lunged children of
the fatherland," with their " religion of valor."
This doctrine has no legitimate connection with
Darwinism. Darwin, as already stated (prefa- i
tory note) saw clearly that the war system was a
reversal of the process of natural selection. i

Against the misuse of the phrase " Social
Darwinism," Major Leonard Darwin, the son
of Charles Darwin and president of the Eu-
genics Education Society of London, enters the
following just protest; (London Times, Sept.,
1914.)

" In so far as Darwinism has any connection
with Darwin this (Social Darwinism) is wholly
erroneous. Several passages might be quoted
from my father's writing very different from
' the will of the stronger.' In ' The Descent of
Man ' he told us that there are other agencies
more important than the struggle for existence;
' for the moral qualities are advanced, either di-
rectly or indirectly, much more through the ef-
fect of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction,
religion, etc., than through natural selection.'
No doubt he believed that selection was the most
potent factor making for racial advancement.
But are the fittest now surviving? What sec-
tion of our nation is more ' fit ' than the noble-

minded, courageous, and healthy men who are
now volunteering by thousands to go to the war,
where so many must die? Eugenics is the prac-
tical application of scientific doctrines to human
affairs, and I say unhesitatingly that war is ut-
terly dysgenic. Fight we must, and fight to
win. But it is the worship of brute force and
not the doctrine of evolution which must stand
condemned."

The philosophy of Social Darwinism ex-
pounded in detail by many writers in different
nations is nowhere more compactly expressed
than by General Friedrich von Bernhardi*" in
his Deutschland und der Nachste Krieg. He
observes;

" Since 1795, when Immanuel Kant published
in his old age his treatise on ' Perpetual Peace,'
many have considered it an established fact that
war is the destruction of all good and the origin
of all evil. In spite of all that history teaches,
no conviction is felt that the struggle between
nations is inevitable, and the growth of civiliza-
tion is credited with a power to which war must
yield. But, undisturbed by such human theories
and the change of times, war has again and
again marched from country to country with
the clash of arms, and has proved its destructive
as well as creative and purifying power. It has

10 Friedrich von Bernhardi, General of Cavalry in Ger-
miDv, and for lome years a member of the General Staff of
the German army. (Wn lift.)

RACE SELECTION

not succeeded in teaching mankind what Its real
nature is. Long periods of war, far from con-
vincing men of the necessity of war, have, on the
contrary, always revived the wish to exclude
war, where possible, from the political inter-
course of nations. . . .

" This desire for peace has rendered most
civilized nations ammic, and marlis a decay of
spirit and political courage such as has often
been shown by a race of Epigoni. ' It has al-
ways been,' H. von Treitschlte tells us, ' the
weary, spiritless, and exhausted ages which have
played with the dream of perpetual peace.'

" Everyone will, within certain limits, admit
that the endeavors to diminish the dangers of
war and to mitigate the sufferings which war en-
tails are justifiable. It is an incontestable fact
that war temporarily disturbs industrial life, in-
terrupts quiet economic development, brings
widespread misery with it, and emphasizes the
primitive brutality of man. It is therefore a
most desirable consummation if wars for trivial
reasons should be rendered impossible, and if
efforts are made to restrict the evils which fol-
low necessarily in the train of war, so far as is
compatible with the essential nature of war.
Ali that the Hague Peace Congress has accom-
plished in this limited sphere deserves, like
every permissible humanization of war, uni-
versal acknowledgment. But it is quite another
matter if the object is to abolish war entirely,

WAR AND THE BREED

and to deny its necessary place in historical de-
velopment.

" This aspiration is directly antagonistic to
the great universal laws which rule all life.
War is a biological necessity of the first im-
portance, a regulative element in the life of man-
kind which carjnot be dispensed with, since with-
out it an unhealthy development will follow,
which excludes every advancement of the race,
and therefore all real civilization. ' War is
the father of all things.' . . .

" That social system in which the most effi-
cient personalities possess the greatest influence
will show the greatest vitality in the intrasocial
struggle. In the extrasocial struggle, in war,
that nation will conquer which can throw into
the scale the greatest physical, mental, moral,
material, and political power, and is therefore
the best able to defend itself. War will furnish
such a nation with favorable vital conditions,
enlarged possibilities of expansion and widened
influence, and thus promote the progress of man-
kind; for it is clear that those intellectual and
moral factors which insure superiority in war are
also those which render possible a general pro-
gressive development. They confer victory be-
cause the elements of progress are latent in
them. Without war, inferior or decaying races
would easily choke the growth of healthy bud-
ding elements, and a universal decadence would
follow. ' War,' says A. W. von Schlegel, ' i»

I necessary as the struggle of the elements in
Nature.' . . .

" Strong, healthy and flourishing nations in*
crease in numbers. From a given moment they
require a continual expansion of their frontiers,
they require new territory for the accommoda-
tion of their surplus population., Since almost
every part of the globe is inhabited, new terri-
tory must, as a rule, be obtained at the cost of its
possessors — that is to say, by conquest, which
thus becomes a law of necessity.

" The right of conquest is universally ac-
knowledged. At first the procedure is pacific.
Over-populated countries pour a stream of emi-
grants into other States and territories. These
submit to the legislature of the new country, but
try to obtain favorable conditions of existence
for themselves at the cost of the original in-
habitants, with whom they compete. This
amounts to conquest. ...

" Lastly, at all times the right of conquest by
war has been admitted. It may be that a grow-
ing people cannot win colonies from uncivilized
races, and yet the State wishes to retain the sur-
plus population which the mother country can
no longer feed. Then the only course left is to
acquire the necessary territory by war. Thus
the instinct of self-preservation leads inevitably
to war, and the conquest of foreign soil. It '
not the possessor, but the victor, who then has
the right. . . .

96 WAR AND THE BREED

" Might gives the right to occupy or to con-
quer. Might is at once the supreme right, and
the dispute as to what is right is decided by the
arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically
just decision, since its decision rests on the very
nature of things. . , .

" War depends on biological laws and this
leads to the conclusion that every attempt to
exclude it from international relations must be
demonstrably untenable. But it is not only a
biological law, but a moral obligation, and, as
such, an indispensable factor in civilization. . . .

" War, from this standpoint, will be regarded
as a moral necessity, if it is waged to protect I
the highest and most valuable interests of a na- I
tion. As human life Is now constituted, it is '
political idealism which calls for war, while ma-
terialism — in theory, at least — repudiates
it. . . .

" But when the State renounces all extension
of power, and recoils from every war which is
necessary for its expansion; when it is content
to exist, and no longer wishes to grow; when
' at peace on sluggard's couch it lies,' then tts
citizens become stunted. The efforts of each
individual are cramped, and the broad aspect
of things is lost. This is sufficiently exempli-
fied by the pitiable existence of all small States,
and every great Power that mistrusts it
victim to the same curse.

" All petty and personal interests f(

RACE SELECTION

t-~y to the front during a long period of peace.
SeXiishness and intrigue run riot, and luxury ob-
literates idealism. Money acquires an exces-
e and unjustifiable power, and character does
no t obtain due respect. . . . Wars are terrible,
but necessary, for they save the State from so-
ci^ 1 petrifaction and stagnation. It is well that
tli^ transitoriness of the goods of this world
is anot only preached, but is learnt by experience.
W"ar alone teaches this lesson." *^

"With the part of Bernhardi's argument
w"l"»ich tries to show that war, despite its horrors
and its sacrifice of individuals, is the highest
dtity of the state and therefore above all moral
question, the present volume is not directly con-
cerned. I need only say that I repudiate the
idea in all its ramifications. But just here we
deal especially with the perversion of the cen-
tral principle of Darwinism. War does not
promote a " Survival of the Fittest," Tlie na-
tion is made up of individuals. It continues
through the generations of men. It has no
strength, no welfare, no permanence, except
that given by the individuals of which it is suc-
cessively composed. The "human harvest"
■" each generation is determined by the quality
of the men and women chosen or left for the

" ^^B elaboralE antwer to ricni like tb<*e ba* been ^vea
^y «f»e late Profrasor Jakov NorJcow, of tht Uoiver»«y of
P"'^*"^, under the dtle of t« Critique du Darviiniim Sarial.
^ra^rti from tfait woik liare been eliewhcrc ijvcii (p>f*

98 WAR AND THE BREED

duties of parenthood. War destroys, perverts
. and vitiates the best elements among these.
The philosophy of the war-like nation involves
its own destruction. That cannot be a national
duty which passes through robbery and murder
to end in race suicide. And race suicide, in
greater or less degree, has been the fate of all
nations that have adopted the practice this phil-
osophy promotes.

" All war is bad," said Franklin, " some only
worse than others." " I believe," said Frank-
lin again, that " there was never a good war or
a bad peace." " War is not paid for in war
time; the bill comes later! "

After the death of Franz von Sickingen in
the disastrous siege of Landstuhl (May 7,
1523), Martin Luther thus wrote to Spalatin:

" Yesterday I heard and read Franz von
Sickingen's true and sorrowful story. God is a
righteous but marvelous Judge." ..." Siclc-
ingen's death is a verdict of God that
strengthens the belief that force of arms must
be held far from matters of the Gospel," ^'

Do We Exaggerate?

Turning for a moment to the war now rag-
ing in Europe, certain final effects may be dis-

^* " Gestern horte und las ich Franzens von Bidcingen'i
wihre und kliglicbe Ge»chichtc, Gott ist ein gerechier aber
wundcrbarer Richter." " Sickingen's Unfall war ihm ein
GottcBuitheil dai ihu in der uebezeuguog bestirkte, dan

RACE SELECTION 99

cerned. As the greatest of all wars, it must
prove the most disastrous, and such from every
point of view. The number of losses already
(March, 1915) rises high into the millions.
All these individuals had been selected for
vigor and strength. The various armies en-
gaged include the great body of the university
men, athletes and skilled laborers*^ in each. of
the belligerent nations. The conditions of this
war leave little hope that any large percentage
of those on the firing line will return unscathed.
The future will show, doubtless as never before,
and. in all nations alike, that war-selection points '
the way downward. To what degree this will
be felt and what will be its visible effects on so-
ciety, we have no precedent by which we may
adequately estimate. That the damage will be
greater in fact than wilt show on the surface
one may be very sure. It is the men of initia-
tive who mould civilization. Through them
social and political betterments arise. " An
institution is but the lengthened shadow of a
man." The nation which lacks epoch-making
men will fail in epoch-making history.

It will no doubt be said by some who read
this book that its thesis is an exaggeration, that

VPaffengewalt von de

Sache d» Evangeliuma feme zu

halten sei," (UirifA va

B Hutltn, by David Fricdrich Strauss,

Boon, l%^%.)

=»It is Mid (hat in

Germany jsoo of the best picked

mechanics have been

assigned to the Aviator corps.

lOo WAR AND THE BREED

war is but one influence among others which
sift the human breed for better or for worse and
that for all forms of destructive selection na-
ture provides an antidote.

Very true. There are always elements
worlting for reconstruction and the conditions
most favorable for these influences are security,
thrift and justice among men. Equality before
the law is the central purpose of democracy,
and democracy in the long run will mean se-
curity and peace.

Perhaps these pages as a whole may consti-
tute an exaggeration. To see anything clearly
and separately is to exaggerate it. The micro-
scope exaggerates the size of the object it re-
veals, as the telescope exaggerates its nearness.
A treatise on any single topic, the history of
Rome or the life history of a lion or a microbe,
constitutes an exaggeration, so much which
might divert our attention having to be left out.
Thus exaggeration becomes an instrument of
precision, and such an instrument, I have tried,
as far as possible, to apply to " the Icing cost of

VI. MILITARY CONSCRIPTION --;.;;
The Nation in Arms^

As a necessary part of the War System, if
maintaliied on any scale of completeness, there
must be either a large standing or professional
army made up by voluntary enlistment, or else
a system of military conscription by which part
or all of the able-bodied men of the nation are
compelled for a time to bear arms. The pro-
fessional army is seen on a small scale in the
United States, on a large one in the British
Empire, where, however, up to the present crisis
it has mostly been retained in India. A stand-
ing army is, in its organization and mainte-
nance, adverse to national eugenics. A redeem-
ing feature Is that it may be left small, a sort
of celibate priesthood of militarism, the mar-
riage of privates in the regular army being gen-
erally discouraged.

Compuhory Service

To all propositions looking toward compul-
sory military service in the United States as in
Great Britain, those who believe in democratic

'^ For di^ussion of special features of military conKtip-
tion, »ce Appendix C, D.

102 \yAR AND THE BREED

freedom and the development of the individual
can give but one answer. Military service is a
matter for each man to decide for himself.
Colnpulsion means the failure of liberty. It
.■ -.is not wholesome. Moreover, it is largely in-
■/. gtrumental in creating the dangers against which
.. it guards. It has been the bane of continental
Europe and a leading factor in the most awful
catastPfSphe of all time.
JThat no man shall be a soldier against his
I >^ill is the sign of freedom in Great Britain and
*^ the United States. " Every Englishman's
house is his castle." Every Englishman's body
(except on conviction of crime or of incompe-
tence) is secure from official^ manhandling.
The primal evil of compulsory military service
19 its onslaught on personal freedom. The po-
litical evil is that its purpose being war, It keeps
the air filled with war talk. War is in Itself
so irrational, so costly, so brutalizing, that it
would be universally abhorrent if we could
separate it from Ideas of " patriotism " and of
glory. The European Conscript thinks of war
as the ultimate end for which he is " doing
time." Above him subalterns, swarming in
thousands, have no other thought than war.
His higher officers (though not all of them)
look forward to actual war for exercise, for
promotion, for the test of their unverified
theories, their newly devised submarines and
Zeppelins, and their 42-centimeter siege-guns. ■

All these men, idle or malemployed, pile up the f
taxes on the back of the working man.

The " Nation in Arms " was primarily the
conception of Scharnhorst, the great disciplin-
arian of Prussia who first systematized and put
into form the practice of militarism. To its
discipline has been ascribed the greatness of
modem Germany, due in fact mainly to German
unity, industry, education and advancing science.
All elements of national progress have their
roots in the arts of peace.

One need not deny a certain value — physical,
mental or even moral — to military drill; nor
that a standing army may be made in some de-
gree a school for the betterment of the indi-
vidual. We should not in the least depreciate
the work of those men engaged in the upbuild-
ing of boys in "military" institutes. To act
together, to move promptly, to obey orders —
all these may be of high value in the training of
growing boys, but they are matters wholly out-
side of war.

Enforced military service of grown men
bears the same relation to military discipline of
willing students that stoking a furnace bears to
building one's own camp-fire in a forest. The
successful military school has sympathetic
teachers, men to whom the end of the work Is
character-building. It deals with boys at the
age in which order and obedience furnish the
best lessons. It is as far away as possible

104

WAR AND THE BREED

from the evil atmosphere of barracks and
brothels, common features of the idle standing
army.

Military service considers only the purpose
of war. The discipline of the private is too
often in the hands of narrow-minded, brutal or
profane teachers. As a school, it is at the best
most costly, inefficient and belated, its work be-
ing begun too late in life to have much educa-
tional value. And in it everything else is con-
sistently subordinated to military ends. Again,
to spend two, three or more years in camp in-
terferes just so far with the possibility of bet-
ter training for civil life, and to a greater or
less degree reduces the likelihood of industrial
or professional success. Naturally, better
teachers and higher personal ideals are found
in schools than in barracks.

Military Drill as Fhysict^ Training

There Is In certain quarters, especially in
England, a curious perversion of ideas of cause
and effect. It is freely admitted that war does
indeed destroy many of the best, leaving to a
large extent the second-best to sire the coming
generations. But we are further told that this
defect is to be remedied by compulsory military
drill. The weak will then be made virile and
capable of begetting vigorous progeny. There
is not much truth in the first assertion and none
in the second. Military drill is a costly and in-

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

efficient substitute for rational physical training,
while no results of a process of this kind on the
part of the male parent have permanence in he-
redity. Men inefficient by nature have progeny
of like type, and the case for the children is
not materially modified by a superficial allevia-
tion of the physical limitations of the father.

The young men in the British cadet corps
seem stronger than those outside, because they
are selected from the beginning. No officer
wants a recruit who cannot be made to look well
in uniform. General Ian Hamilton Is reported
to have said that if the War Office had control,
" never for one moment would a soldier In-
spector-General endure the tens of thousands of
weak eyes, incipient deafness, rotten teeth, re-
laxed throats, adenoids, hammer toes, flat feet,
knock-knees, now disfiguring our elementary
schools." (Impey.)

But these defects are hereditary qualities, the
legacy from previous generations of just such
people, rejected from the armies by drill-ser-
geants of the past. There may be alleviation
for them, by surgical or other methods, but they
cannot be eliminated by military drill applied
to those who have never suffered from such de-
fects.

The objections to military training as part of
a system of general education are mainly three.
The one Is that such training Is on the whole
highly specialized for a particular profession.

io6 WAR AND THE BREED

and that, war. The second is that the martial
spirit or specific bias which this training gives
to some degree unfits its possessor to consider
justly the affairs In which his nation Is con-
cerned. It tends to exaggerate that perverted
form of patriotism expressed in the words " my
country right or wrong " to the expense of
" planetary patriotism " which would have the
fatherland contribute to the welfare of the
world. A third objection is that military drill
is in the hands of non-commissioned officers, in
general with no fitness for teaching, while its
value as exercise is far Inferior to that of a well-
appointed gymnasium, or even of an ordinary
athletic field.

According to the British Infantry Drill book,
the object aimed at in the training of the soldier
is to " fit him mentally and physically to do his
duty in time of war," to be the Instrument of
that " ultimate resource of policy by which a
nation Imposes its will on its enemies in defense
of its honor, Its interests, and Its existence."

But to quote the words of Mr. E. Adair
Impey^ of Dunfermline, an experienced special-
ist In physical training: "The object of gen-
eral education should be to fit the nation so to
exist that its honor and Interests are maintained
by all those intermediate resources of policy,
which will never have a chance of full develop-

^ See Appendix B, for Mr. Impey'a detailed analyiii of
Military Drill.

ARY CONSCRIPTION 107

ment or of effective action, if all educational
powers are concentrated on the ' ultimate re-
source.' "

Scientific physical training is wholly personal,
directed toward the upbuilding of the individual.
Military drill is collective, necessarily in the
mass. Experiment shows, according to Dr. W.
Evans Darby of London that " the average re-
sults yielded by school gymnastics have three
times as much value as those yielded by drill
alone. Military drill is defective as it does not
meet the physical demands of the body. It
does not make the youth erect, nor give him a
manly bearing. On the contrary, it tends to
make him stiff and angular in his movements,
as well as to droop and round his shoulders."

Further testimony concerning the inadequacy
of military drill as physical training is given by
Dr. John H, Finley, Superintendent of Public
Instruction of New York; by Professor Dudley
A. Sargent, Director of the Hemenway Gym-
nasium at Harvard University; by W. Evans
Darby of London; and, In general, by most
competent experts In physical training.

As to the moral effects, Dr. Nathan C.
Schaeffer, Superintendent of the schools of
Pennsylvania, quotes from " a British Com-
mander-in-Chief " that " Legitimate warfare
includes and justifies the mean, false, cowardly,
and unchivalrous actions which youth have been
taught to despise in their own behalf, such as

io8 WAR AND THE BREED

stratagems, ambushes, spying, eavesdropping,
hitting from behind, — and when a fellow is
down, — lying, forging letters, telegrams, sig-
nals to mislead the enemy, following up a beaten
enemy and hammering at him with cavalry and
artillery to annihilate him, Insisting on the se-
verest possible terms of surrender or refusing
all offers of surrender with the order to ' take
no prisoners.' " But in the training of youth
for democratic citizenship such ideals should
have no place. In the words of Dr. Schaeffer:
" The state should not be conceived as organ-
ized force, but force only as a backing for or-
ganized justice, and in support of organized
good-will."

The Boy Scouts

To give all advantages of drill and discipline,
together with wood-craft, out-of-door life and
resourcefulness in the presence of obstacles, with
none of the evil suggestions of military train-
ing, is the object of the Boy Scout Movement,
There can be no question as to the value of such
discipline in helpfulness and self-control, and
equally no doubt that many of Its essential vir-
tues would be lost if the Boy Scouts were turned
into " little soldiers." Even in times of great
stress, when military necessity lays hold on them
as now (March, 1915) in England and Bel-
gium, their Scout training makes them peculiarly
adequate.

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

109

The Australian Flan

Australia and New Zealand have lately
adopted a system whereby boys of about six-
teen spend between two and three weeks each
year in camp and drill. Opinion is divided as
to its merits. The time occupied is too short to
have much military significance, except as an
" entering wedge "; the teaching is too bad to
give it much educational value. That it may
be an " entering wedge " to conscription is a
chief reason for opposition to the measure.
But it is claimed that the wide-ranging and
often idle Australian boy is thereby made amen-
able to discipline and accordingly improved In
the process. Moreover the camp Is democratic
and all classes meet on the same level. Fur-
ther, bad boys get here a taste of good company,
but it is also admitted that good boys often find
themselves for the first time in bad company.
Association of the foul-mouthed with the clean-
minded Is not, as a rule, wholesome. The old
trooper, " no plaster saint," is not on the whole
a proper instructor for growing youth.

Australia has found the experiment extremely
costly. The accepted reason for It, " war
scares " as to a possible seizure by Japan of the
unoccupied lands of North Australia, has risen
to a height of absurdity. But without the men-
ace of a tangible " enemy," a democratic peo-
ple could hardly have been drawn into such
legislation. The effect of the Great War in

no WAR AND THE BREED

Europe may be to strengthen the movement,
giving militarism a firm root where it had be-
fore only a scanty foothold. If so, it will tend
to keep alive a puerile dread of an imaginary-
danger.

Eugenics of Conscription

Vacher de La Pouge {Les Selections So-
cialei) finds that the disadvantages of mili-
tary service in time of peace outweigh all ad-
vantages. " Militarism not only augments the
chances of destruction, but diminishes the
chances of reproduction of the chosen, at the
same time assuring to the rejected an ample
progeny. Military life causes deterioration of
the individual. For the few that it strengthens,
there are many it tears down." Even in peace
the barrack is a center of deterioration and
weakness. The two affections especially char-
acteristic " are of an extreme importance from
the point of view of marriage and reproduc-
tion."

The eugenic bearings of military discipline
are mainly two: postponement of marriage and
infection with disease making marriage dan-
gerous or impossible. As to the last, the stand-
ing army has been for centuries the reservoir
of the " red plague " parasites. Under the
most favorable conditions physicians have been
able only to reduce the number of victims of
venereal disease, never to put an end to infcc-

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

rtions. In tropical service the proportion of
men ruined or half ruined is far greater than m
temperate regions. Venereal diseases are the
product of infection by either of two slowly de-
veloping parasites, the one a Sptrochate (pro-
ducing Syphilis) an exceedingly minute animal
organism, the other Gonococcus (producing
Gonorrhea) of the nature of a plant. These
minute creatures are transferred by contact
I from one person to another, the more delicate

I membranes of the body being subject to per-
meation. As Syphilis in particular may be
transferred from father to mother and from
mother to ftetus it has been especially classed
among the *' racial poisons." The plant or-
ganism, Gonococcus, is peculiarly Injurious in
producing disorders of the ovaries with conse-
quent sterility in the woman. Congenital
blindness arises mainly from gonorrheal infec-
tion.

The " white slave traffic " of today is largely
an outgrowth of the standing army. Requisi-
tions signed by commanding officers have been
frankly drawn for the replenishment of the
regimental brothel or " lock hospital." * The
term " white slave " itself was first used in a
very different but related sense by Napoleon
III, who applied it to his conscript soldiers.
And in 1867 the great journalist, fimile Gir-
ardin, wrote: " If war is to be suppressed in
»See Appendii F.

112 WAR AND THE BREED

Europe, this must be done gradually. The
first step is the abolition of the ' white slave
■■ traffic ' — that is, of military serfdom, the sup-
pression of the drawing of lots for men. It is
here that a beginning should be made."

The most important study on the Eugenics
of barrack life is that of Professor Vernon
L. Kellogg, summarized in Social Hygiene, De-
cember, 1914. Professor Kellogg says:

" Of the congenital transmission and racial
importance of one terrible disease, of the vene-
real disease group, and one that more than any
other is characteristic of military service, there
is no shadow of a doubt. It is a disease com-
municable by husband to wife, by mother to
children, and by these children to their chil-
dren. It is a disease that causes more suffer-
ing and disaster than phthisis or cancer. It is
a disease accompanied by a dread cloud of other
ills that it causes, such as paralysis, malforma-
tions, congenital blindness, idiocy, and insanity,
all of them particularly dysgenic in character.
It is a disease that renders marriage an abom-
ination and child-bearing a social danger. And
as a crowning misfortune this disease does not
kill but only ruins its victims. While phthisis
and cancer carry off their subjects at the rate, in
England today, of 1000 per year to each 1,000,-
000 of population, Syphilis kills but 50 * per-
sons a million. It is not a purifying but wholly

'Thia figure docB not iaclude a ceitain number of deaths

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

"13

contaminating disease. It does not select by
death. It is, then, a disease of great possibil-
ities and importance in relation to racial dete-
rioration.

" Venereal disease is a scourge fostered •
especially by militarism. The statistics reveal
this at once. It is the cause of more hospital
admissions among soldiers than any other dis-
ease or group of related diseases. It caused
31.8 per cent, of the total Inefficiency in the
British army in 19 10. It was the cause of one-
fifth of all the British hospital admissions for
that year, yet it caused but one-hundredth of the
total military deaths. It causes one-third of
all the illness of the British navy, both at home
and abroad. The admissions to the hospital
for venereal disease in the British army in India
reached in 1895 as terrible a figure as 537 per
1000 men. Conditions are bettered, but are
still bad.

" Nor is the British army by any means the
greatest sufferer from the scourge. The army
of the United States has twice as many hospital
admissions from the same cause. Russia has
about the same as Great Britain, Austria and
France less, and Germany" least of all. Ger-

affectio.

i tabes, which ahould

from such para-syphili

properly be counted against syphilj

^A German authority has questioned the accuracy of the
•talinici quoted below, by which a special degree of im-
munily is claimed for Germany. Tliose figures were pre-
pared, roy informant asBcrtB, to give lupporC to the dubioui

114 WAR AND THE BREED

many, Indeed, has done much more to control
the disease than any other great nation,, unless
it be Japan, for which I have not been able to
get data. The following figures from the Brit-
ish Army Medical Report for igto show the
rates of prevalence of venereal diseases in dif-
ferent armies:

Year Per looo

Germany ' 1905-hd6 19.8

France 1906 28.6

Austria 1907 54.2

Russia 1906 62.7

United Kingdom 1907 68.+

United States J907 167.8

" A measure of the prevalence of syphilis
and other venereal diseases in the civil popula-
tion is difficult to get at. But certain facts are
most suggestive. Of the young men who of-
fered themselves for enlistment in the British

claim that military service "provides a special advantage
of devclopmg manhood in its compulsory exercise, enforced
habits of discipline, (inescapable stimulus to patriotism, and
general moral control." In tlie words of a German general
at the London Eugenics Congress, "Military service U not
injurious to the body, but healthful, not depressing to mind
and spirit, but inspiring." But even were we 10 admit this,
the fact remains that armies exist for war; their members
" especially selected and zealously cared for " are chosen for
sacrifice, and the more worthy the sacrifice the greater the
permanent loss to the nation. When a man of character and
ability " gives his life to bis country," he gives more than
himself. He gives the long line, the ever widening wedge
of those who should be hia descendants.

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

army in 1910, 1.5 per 10,000 were rejected be-
cause of syphilis, while for the same year in
the army, 230 per 10,000 were admitted to hos-
pitals with syphilis. And for all venereal dis-
ease the proportion was 31.5 per 10,000 of
those applying for enlistment rejected, and 1000
per 10,000 of those in the army admitted to
hospital. In other words, while the army re-
cruiting boards * discover in the civil population
and reject back into it but two or three syphilitic
men per 1000, the army finds within Itself a
constant proportion of infected men of many
times that number.

" It is obvious from these figures that vene-
real disease finds in armies a veritable breeding
ground. That such disease is highly dysgenic,
I, e,, race deteriorating In Influence, Is Indisput-
able. The frightful effects of syphilis in its
direct communication from parents to children
are fairly well known popularly. But with re-
gard to the serious effects of gonorrhea the
popular mind Is not equally well Impressed. In-
deed it is too commonly regarded as a mild and
not very shameful disease. But medical opin-
ion Is really doubtful whether it is not, in some
of its effects, as bad as or even worse than
syphilis. About 50 per cent, of young women
Infected by young men are made sterile by it.
Many are made chronic invalids. It is the

•These boards probably pass a number of men lufferlog
from tbe earlier atagei of syphilis. (V. h. K-)

ii6 WAR AND THE BREED

commonest cause of infant blindness (ophthal-
mia neonatorum) . In Prussia 30,000 such
blind persons are to be found.

" The congenital transmission of venereal
disease is what gives it its particularly dysgenic
importance. Such transmission has all the force
of actual inheritance. Indeed, if tainting the
germ cells so that the fertilized egg is prede-
termined to develop into a syphilitic individual
is heredity, then syphilis is literally an heredi-
tary disease. But as between a taint at concep-
tion and one at birth, either of which can be
handed on to successive generations, there is
little choice from the point of view of the stu-
dent of race deterioration. The effect is typ-
ically that of hereditary transmission. Indeed,
as an authority has strongly put it, ' Syphilis is
the hereditary disease par excellence. Its he-
reditary effects are more inevitable, more mul-
tiple, more diverse, and more disastrous in their
results on the progeny and the race than in the
case of any other disease. Syphilis in fact, has
a more harmful influence on the species than on
the individual.'

" The facts speak for themselves. Serious
war and the preparedness for serious war mean
the temporary or permanent withdrawal from
the population of a part of it selected for phys-
ical vigor and often for courage, patriotism, and
idealism, and the exposure of this part to spe-
cial danger from death and disease. This

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

117

death and disease, under the circumstances, are
not race-purifying or race-enhancing, but race-
deteriorating, through the encouragement of
poor breeding and the fostering of heritable,
race-poisoning disease. Every race needs Its
best possible inheritance. Any Institution that
tends to give it less than that is a race-injuring
institution. Militarism Is such an institution." ^
" The most economical and most positive fac-
tor in human progress," says Professor Kel-
'oSgi " is good breeding. Race deterioration
comes chiefly from its opposite, bad breeding.
Militarism encourages bad breeding. Despite
all delusive phrases to the contrary, the main-
tenance of any army is a preparation for war
and a step toward war and not toward peace.
Do governments, or will they, maintain this
blessing of military service for the health and
eugenic advantage of their people? Is it not
done solely from the stimulus of expected war?
Is it not done solely with the full expectancy and
deliberate intention of offering this particularly
selected and cared for part of the population to
the exposure of wholesale mutilation and death?
And this death Is to come, If at all, before this
extra-vigorous part of the population has taken
its part In race propagation, the precise func-
tion the performance of which the race most
needs from it."

' See Appendix F.

VII. THE WAR SYSTEM AND
WOMEN

Selection Among Women

We may here note that the process of selec-
tion in the War System is confined mainly to
men. If the fittest among the women were
also destroyed, the proportion of decline would
be twice as rapid. Women — personally the
greatest sufferers from war — in a measure save
the day because they are not subject to the re-
versal of selection. "Yet one consoling fact,"
observes Dr. Saleeby, " alone prevents this
longest price of war from ruining even victo-
rious nations more quickly and surely than it
does. It is that war does not demand the
healthiest and bravest of a nation's womanhood
to be destroyed for the glory of the men who
make wars. At least the generation to come
may have mothers and grandmothers as fine as
if there had been no war at all; and, of course,
so impartial are the laws of heredity, both boys
and girls to come profit accordingly."

Nevertheless to a very large extent the War
System destroys also its quota of women. For
as Mrs. Pethlck-Lawrence truthfully says:
" Every war is a war against women. In the
ii8

WAR SYSTEM AND WOMEN 119

Boer War, counting both armies, more women
perished than men. In Belgium today the
deaths of women and children far outnumber
those of men. In the starvation campaign now
(March, 1915) threatened by Great Britain
and Germany, it will be the women that suffer,
the babies first, then in turn the other non-com-
batants. Only soldiers are cared for in war;
women have no shelter."

Dr. S. Dumas ^ of Paris has shown that dur-
ing the wars preceding 1872, in France, Ger-
many, Denmark and Austria, the death rate
among the people at home, was 12 to 25 per
cent, greater than in time of peace. The per-
centage in Austria, for example, rose from 2.92
to 3.22 in the war of 1866; In France, In that of
1871, from 3.28 to 4.06. In regions actually
desolated, where starvation and exposure join
with suffering, " democratic famine working
day and night," as in Belgium, Servia, Poland
and Macedonia at the present time, the death
rate of non-combatants is terribly increased.

The " Barbaric Drop "

Perhaps the most shocking feature of all mili-
tary service is the " barbaric drop " from all
traditions of sexual purity. The ideals of
womanhood which form the highest incentive
to right living on the part of healthy men are
lost in war. This condition is just as frequent
^ Le Mouvement Padfiiti, Berne, March 30, 1912.

in modern times as in the ages more remote and
barbarous, and the personal results are now
the more horrible. Rape and robbery have al-
ways gone with lire and sword. And the moral
degradation which all of this Involves for the
average soldier (not the man of exceptional
character) is one of the most terrible of war
afflictions, every campaign of every natron leav-
ing behind to a greater or a less extent a dis-
honored and desecrated womanhood. At the
worst a soldier only dies, and death on the bat-
tlefield has its halo of glory. To a virtuous
woman death is incomparably less terrible than
dishonor. Moreover, " Let any man Imagine,
if he can," says Milllcent Garrett Fawcett,
" what must be the mental and moral anguish
of women condemned to bear children begotten
in rape and hatred by a victorious enemy.
Such women, in no small numbers, are facing
their shattered lives today."

Womanhood and War

" It is especially in the domain of war," says
Olive Schreiner {fVomen and Labor), "that
we, the bearers of men's bodies, who supply its
most valuable munition, who, not amid the
clamor and ardor of battle, but singly and alone,
with a three-in-the-morning courage shed our
blood and face death that the battlefield might
have its food, more precious to us than our
hearts' blood; it is we, especially, who, in the

WAR SYSTEM AND WOMEN 121

domain of war have our word to say, a word no
man can say for us. It is our intention to enter
into the domain of war and to labor there till
in the course of generations we have extin-
guished it. . . . Only a woman knows what a
man costs."

Dr. Anna Garlin Spencer* discusses effec-
tively the reasons why women should hate war
as the supreme outrage on the moral nature of
humanity, and the chief enemy of womankind.
She says:

" Women bear the chief burden of personal
care of the young, the undeveloped, the frail
and sick, the aged, the feeble-minded, the so-
cially incompetent. They have had to bear that
burden ever since social sympathy forbade the
strong to kill the weak by fiat of the state.
This process of social protection of the incom-
petent has unquestionably lowered the average
standard in human quality where it has worked
unmodified by some science and art of race cul-
ture. War — and all that makes for war —
is the worst hindrance to the attempt to relieve
women of this overmastering burden of admin-
istering philanthropy, and to give her time and
opportunity for her organic function of teach-
ing and developing the normal and super-ex-
cellent specimens of the race. Not only does
it destroy uselessly all the common wealth of
humanity so terribly needed for projecting and

' The Indtpendtnt.

122 WAR AND THE BREED

realizing the social control that can truly ad-
vance individual life, but it deliberately and
monstrously aids that ' breeding downward '
which is the bane of civilization. . . .

" It is because of women's peculiar functional
relation to the social demand for race integrity
and race culture that enlightened women must
hate war and all that makes for war. It sinks
under waves of bestiality and passion those
ideals on which respect for womanhood and
tender regard for the child have fibered the later
progress of the race,"

" The cause of woman is the cause of peace,"
says Novicow. " While this is the fundamen-
tal fact," says Havelock Ellis {The Forces
fVarring Against War), "we must remember
that we cannot generalize about the ideas or
the feelings of a whole sex, and that the bio-
logical traditions of women have been associated
with a primitive period when they were the de-
lighted spectators of combats." Steinmetz
{Philosophie des Krieges) , remarking that
women are opposed to war in the abstract, adds :
" In practice, however, it happens that women
regard a particular war, and all wars are par-
ticular wars, with special favor."

This fact, observable to some extent in aU
the belligerent countries at the present time,
shows merely that most women, like most men,
are swayed by the feelings of the group in which
they are placed. It is a rare man or woman

who can think for himself in times of great
emotional stress. Those who have done so in
the past, if remembered, are revered as heroes

and martyrs.

" War Brides "*

At the beginning of the present war efforts
were made in various nations (Germany, Great
Britain, Austria, Turkey) to " guard against a
falling birthrate " by offering special induce-
ments to marriage before leaving for the front.
This course has as a result the dubious advan-
tage of making maids into widows and leaving
them to bear children under great nervous stress
with a probable heritage of weakness and mis-
ery. I am told that in Berlin, in early August,
1914, more than 50,000 of such marriages were
celebrated. A similar kind of war-mating took
place in many other military centers.

In favor of this arrangement it has been
maintained In England that for many men al-
ready engaged, it made marriage possible and
compatible with enlistment. In a certain num-
ber of cases, this was no doubt true. It is fur-
ther urged that for two or three million of
women in Europe, matrimony must otherwise
be wholly impossible. " Better a day of
wedded life than to die an old maidl "

The avowed purpose of the movement, how-
ever, is not the convenience nor the happiness

■ See Ifar Brides, a drama by Marion Craig Wentworth.

*JKP>*^!r^an«<rc *• J- . ■

124 WAR AND THE BREED

of the " war brides," but a plan to restore the
population, certain to be enormously depleted
by war. " Give us children or we perish; this
is the tragedy of national existence," at least
under the modern War System. Wholesale
marriage, however, on the eve of mobilization,
amid popular acclaim, is quite out of the nor-
mal. It has in it an element of the repulsive,
an echo of the days when womanhood was
chiefly valued as furnishing for the next gen-
eration the raw material for war.

" We suppose," says the Lincoln Journal,
" that one should be no more pained at the en-
listment of women for the speedy reproduction
of their country's population than at the enlist-
ment of men for the unnatural destruction of a
generation. There Is doubtless all the differ-
ence between murder and war that there is
between prostitution and the War Mar-
riage. ... Is it more cruel to furnish cannon
to be fed than to furnish men to feed them ?
Are not men a munition of war? "

" They may not be happy children," says the
Chicago Herald. " Many will never see their
fathers, or seeing them, loathe them for crippled
incubuses upon self and nation. The mothers
of many will die to give them birth, weak with
suspense and fear and want. Many will go
through life in physical and mental weakness.
Many will live and die In sordid Ignorance.
But diey will he children I Say what you wIU

WAR SYSTEM AND WOMEN 125

of national honor, patriotism, all the rest ! The
supreme necessity of a nation is children.

" Breed before you die 1 It is our future that
makes up those battalions and regiments of
eager men so soon to know the freezing trench,
the death rattle, and all the horrors of war.
Leave us our future ere ye go. We might have
thought of this before we drew the sword. We
clid not. We might have stopped to consider
the thousands and thousands of unborn babes
we were about to slay before we entered upon
this enterprise. We could not take the time."

" There are times," continues the same
writer, " when plain speaking is best. Noth-
ing in the whole record of blood and slaughter
shows the terrific effect of war more than this
reduction of the marriage tie, at the instance of
the state, to a mere hasty plan to maintain the
population — than this official approval of the
debasement of the high and holy ideal that has
grown up through the centuries."

" ' The War Brides of Europe ' (again the
Lincoln Journal) reflects merely one phase of
the degenerative effect of war. What the na-
tions gain physically by such process, they must
lose morally. Men cannot be bred for battle
as birds for the cockpit and not descend to the
level of the cockpit. Women cannot let them-
selves be used, however patriotically, as men-
breeding stock, without becoming less than
women."

126 WAR AND THE BREED

Excess of Women After War

After any war, and under the War System m
general, the number of women must necessarily
exceed the number of men, the ratio of birth in
the two sexes being always approximately
equal, while the waste of men (except in deso-
lated districts) is always greater. This dis-
parity leads to drudgery as the lot of a greatly
increased body of women. It produces a social
confusion which may be summed up as enforced
but not legalized polygamy, measurable by the
number of illegitimate children in the com-
munity. Statistics show that illegitimate births
are always most numerous in states most militar-
ized.

Mr. Arnold Bennett {Pictorial Review,
March i, 1915) finds ground for hope In these
conditions. " The mean value of young women
will rise on account of the shortage of young
men. Those who are left will naturally pick
the finest of the young women, having many to
choose from. Competition implies the survival
of the fittest and that implies the general im-
provement of the strain." Hence, he argues,
young women will devote special energy to mak-
ing themselves attractive, with ultimate advan-
tage to social conditions and growing elimination
of sex hostility from political life.

Some such selection may arise within narrow
circles, but it is not evident that to condemn
great numbers of women to celibate drudgery

WAR SYSTEM AND WOMEN 127

can be to give them social or political indepen-
dence. The plain fact is that a large prepon-
derance of more or less helpless women
unprotected by marriage is incompatible with
social advancement and personal freedom.

The Fall of Rome

" The human harvest was bad!" Thus the
historian sums up the conditions in Rome in the
days of the good emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
By this he meant that while population and
wealth were increasing, manhood had failed.
There were men enough In the streets, men
enough in the camps, menial laborers enough
and idlers enough, hut of good soldiers there
were too few. For the business of the state,
which in those days was mainly war, its men
were inadequate.

In recognition of this condition we touch
again the overshadowing fact in the history of
Europe, the effect of " military selection " on
the human breed.

In rapid survey of the evidence brought from
history one must paint the picture, such as it is,
with a broad brush, not attempting to treat ex-
ceptions and qualifications, for which this book
has no space and concerning which records yield
no data. Such exceptions, if fully understood,
would only prove the rule. The evil effects of
military selection and its associated Influences

WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 129

have long been recognized in theory by certain
students of Social Evolution. But the ideas
derived from the sane application of our ltnowl-1.
edge of Darwinism to history are even now
just beginning to penetrate the current literature
of war and peace. In public affairs most na-
tlons have followed the principle of opportu-
nism, "striking while the iron is hot," without
regard to future results, whether of financial
exhaustion or of race impoverishment.

The recorded history of Rome begins with
small and vigorous tribes inhabiting the flanks
of the Apennines and the valleys down to the
sea, and blending together to form the Roman
republic. They were men of courage and men
of action, virile, austere, severe and dominant.^
They were men who " looked on none as their
superior and none as their inferior." For this
reason, Rome was long a republic. Free-born
men control their own destinies. " The fault,"
says Cassius, " is not in our stars, but in our-
selves that we are underlings." Thus in free-
dom, when Rome was small, without glory,
without riches, without colonies and without
slaves, she laid the foundations of greatness.

But little by little the spirit of freedom gave
way to that of domination. Conscious of
power, men sought to exercise it, not on them-
selves but on one another. Little by little this

^ Firilh, auUerut
plied by Romini ii

"WAR AND THE BREED

meant aggression, suppression, plunder, strug-
gle, glory and all that goes with the pomp and
circumstance of war. So the Individuality in
the mass was lost in the aggrandizement of the
few. Independence was swallowed up in am-
bition and patriotism came to have a new mean-
ing, being transferred from hearth and home to
the camp and the army.

In the subsequent history of Rome, we have
now to consider only a single factor, the " re-
versal of selection." In Rome's conquests, F'ir,
the real man, went forth to battle and foreign
invasion; Homo, the human being, remained on
the farm and in the workshop and begat the
new generations. " Fir gave place to Homo,"
says the Latin author. Men of good stock
were replaced by the sons of slaves and camp-
followers, the riff-raff of those the army sucked
in but could not use.

The Fall of Rome was due not to luxury,
effeminacy or corruption, not to Nero's or
Caligula's wickedness, nor to the futility of Con-
stantine's descendants. It began at Philippi,
where the spirit of domination overcame the
spirit of freedom. It was forecast still earlier
in the rise of consuls and triumvirs incident to
the thinning out of the sturdy and self-sufficient
strains who brooked no arbitrary rule. While
the best men were falling in war, civil or foreign,
or remained behind in far-away colonies, the
stock at home went on repeating its weakling

WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 131

parentage. A condition significant in Roman
history is marked by the gradual swelling of the
mob, with the rise In authority of the Emperor
who was the mob's exponent. Increase of arbi-
trary power went with the growing weakness of
the Romans themselves. Always the " Em-
peror " serves as a sort of historical barometer
by which to measure the abasement of the peo-
ple. The concentrated power of Julius Cssar,
resting on his own tremendous personality,
showed that the days of Cincinnatus and of
Junius Brutus were past. The strength of
Augustus rested likewise in personality. The
rising authority of later emperors had its roots
in the ineffectiveness of the mob, until it came to
pass that " the little finger of Constantine was
thicker than the loins of Augustus." This was
due not to Constantine's force, but to the con-
tinued reversal of selection among the people
over whom he ruled. The Emperor, no longer
the strong man holding in check all lesser men
and organizations, became the creature of the
mob; and "the mob, intoxicated with its own
work, worshiped htm as divine." Doubtless
the last emperor, Augustulus Romulus, before
the Goths threw him into the scrap-heap of his-
tory, was regarded by the mob and himself as
the most god-like of the whole succession.

The Romans of the Republic might perhaps
have made a history very different. Had they
held aloof from world-conquering schemes

132 WAR AND THE BREED

Rome might have remained a republic, enduring
even down to our day. The seeds of Rome's
fall lay not in race nor in form of government,
nor in wealth nor In senility, but in the influences
by which the best men were cut off from parent-
hood, leaving its own weaker strains and strains
of lower races to be fathers of coming genera-
tions.

" The Roman Empire," says Professor See-
ley, " perished for want of men." Even Julius
C^sar notes the dire scarcity of men ( Sov^t-
6Xiyav6pomav) , while at the same time there were
people enough. The population steadily grew;
Rome was filling up like an overflowing marsh.
Men of a certain type were plenty, but self-
reliant farmers, " the hardy dwellers on the
flanks of the Apennines," men of the early Ro-
man days, these were fast going, and with the
change in type of population came the turn in
Roman history.

" The mainspring of the Roman army for
centuries had been the patient strength and
courage, capacity for enduring hardships, in-
stinctive submission to military discipline of the
population that lined the Apennines."

" The effect of the wars was that the ranks
of the small farmers were decimated, while the
number of slaves who did not serve In the army
multiplied," says Professor Bury. Thus " Fir
gave place to Homo," thus the mob filled Rome
and the .mob-hero rose to the imperial throne.

WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 133

No wonder that Constantine seemed greater
than Augustus. No wonder that " if Tiberius
chastised his subjects with whips, Valentinlan
chastised them with scorpions." ^

With Marcus Aurelius and the Antonines
came a "period of sterility and barrenness in
human beings." Bounties were offered for
marriage. Penalties were devised against race-
suicide. "Marriage," says Metellus, "is a
duty which, however painful, every citizen
ought manfully to discharge," Wars were con-
ducted in the face of a declining birth-rate, and
the decline in quality and quantity in the human
breed engaged very early the attention of Ro-
man statesmen. Deficiencies of numbers were
made up by immigration, willing or enforced.
Failure in quality was beyond remedy.

Says Professor Zumpt: "Government hav-
ing assumed godhead, took at the same time the
appurtenances of it. Officials multiplied. Sub-
jects lost their rights. Abject fear paralyzed
the people and those that ruled were intoxicated
with Insolence and cruelty." " The worst gov-
ernment is that which is most worshipped as di-
vine." " The Emperor possessed In the army
an overwhelming force over which citizens had
no influence, which was totally deaf to reason or
eloquence, which had no patriotism because it

>The point of ihU ii that ihe cruel Tibei
•evere oti the Romans of hii day than was i
beoevolenl Valentinian on hia decadent people.

^^^^1^ *wXr^nd the bree:^^^^^

had no country, which had no humanity because
it had no domestic tics." " There runs through
Roman literature a brigand's and barbarian's
contempt for honest industry." " Roman civ-
ilization was not a creative kind, it was military, :
that is, destructive." 1

What was the end of it all? The nation I
bred Romans no more. To cultivate the Ro-
man fields "whole tribes were borrowed."
The man with quick eye and strong arm gave
place to the slave, the scullion, the pariah, whose
lot is fixed because In him there lies no power to
alter it. So at last the Roman world, devoid of
power to resist, was overwhelmed by the swarm- ■
ing Ostrogoths. " The barbarian settled and
peopled the empire rather than conquered it.
It was the weakness of war-worn Rome that
gave the Germanic races their first opportu-
nity." " A nation is like a bee," wisely observM
Bernard Shaw, " as it stings it dies."

Seeck's Interpretation

In his monumental history of the " Downfall
of the Ancient World " {Der Untergang der
Antiken IFelt), Dr. Otto Seeck of the Univer-
sity of Miinster In Westphalia treats in detail
the causes of such decline. He first calls atten-
tion to the Intellectual stagnation which came
over the Roman Empire about the beginning of
the Christian Era. This manifested itself in
all fields of intellectual activity. No new idea

WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD

»35

of any importance was advanced in science nor
in technical and political studies. In the realm
of Literature and Art also one finds a complete
lack of originality and a tendency to imitate
older models. All this, Seeck asserts was
brought about by the continuous " rooting out
(^" Ausrotiung") of the best " ^ through war.
Such extermination which took place in
Greece as well as in Rome, was due to persist-
ent internal conflicts, the constant murderous
struggle going on between political parties, in
"which, in rapid succession, first one and then the
other was victorious. The custom of the vic-
tors being to kill and banish the leaders and all
prominent men in the defeated party, often de-
stroying their children as well, it is evident that
in time every strain distinguished for moral
courage, initiative or intellectual strength was
exterminated. By such a systematic killing oflf
of men of initiative and brains, the intellectual
level of a nation must necessarily be lowered
more and more.* In Rome as In Greece, ob-

» " D[e Ausrottung der Besten, die jeaen schnScheren
"Volken die Veraichiung brachte, hat die starken Gcrmanen
«tsi befahigt, auf den Trummern der anliken Welt neue
dauerende Gemeinschafien zu errichten." (Seeck.)

*The hislory of Korea reveals much the aame condition.
Three hundred years ago this country had reached a con-
siderable degree of civilization. Its coaquest by Hideyoshi,
Shogun of Japan, was followed by a vigorous reaction, in
-which the Japanese armies were Hung out of Korea and the
Japanese fleet destroyed. At that time in an matters at
least, the Koreans were more advaocd than the Japanese.

130

AR AND THE BREED

serves Seeck: "A wealth of force of spirit
went down in the suicidal wars." " In Rome,
Marius and Cinna slew the aristocrats by hun-
dreds and thousands, Sulla destroyed the dem-
ocrats, and not less thoroughly. Whatever of
strong blood survived fell as an offering to the
proscription of the Triumvirate." "The Ro-
mans had less of spontaneous force to lose than
the Greeks. Thus desolation came sooner to
thera. Whoever was bold enough to rise polit-
ically in Rome was almost without exception
thrown to the ground. Only cowards re-
mained, and from their blood came forward the
new generations.'' Cowardice showed itself in
lack of originality and in slavish following of
masters and traditions."

Certain authors, following Varro, have main-
tained that Rome died a " natural death," the

The Buddhist temples and ihe palaces of Kyoto and Nagoja
are modeled after similar buildings in Seoul, being, in
fact, mosily built by Korean artisans.

In modern times, until the country was taken over by
Japan, the government of Korea was singularly inert and
correspondingly cruel, while the people though individually
fairly intelligent had come to lose all initiative. This seems
to have been largely due to a reversal of selection aming
out of the persistent practice on Ihe part of the rulers
of beheading all persons opposed to their policies. Similar

customs widely spre

1 Asia,

irge f=

The old English I

Tower" ihose lards or minislers

some was another form of the sa

from which in ruder times no na

^Author's ilalkt.

:iar in the extirpation
t of sending " to the

crown found trouble-
costly waste of ability

was free.

m ANaENT WORLD 137

normal resuk of old age. It is mere fancy to
suppose that nations have their birth, their ma-
turity and their decline under an inexorable law
like that which determines the life history of
the individual. A nation is a body of living
men. It may be broken up if wrongly led or
attacked by a superior force. When its propor-
tion of men of initiative or character is reduced,
its future will necessarily be a resultant of the
forces that are left.

Dr. Seeck speaks with especial scorn of the
idea that Rome died of "old age." He also
repudiates the theory that her fall was due to the
corruption of luxury, neglect of military tactics
or over-diffusion of culture.

" It is inconceivable that the mass of Romans
suffered from over-culture.' In condemning
the sinful luxury of wealthy Romans we forget
that the trade-lords of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries were scarcely inferior in this regard to
Lucullus and Apicius, their waste and luxury not
constituting the slightest check to the advance of
the nations to which these men belonged. The
people who lived in luxury in Rome were scat-
tered more thinly than in any modern state of
Europe. The masses lived at all times more
poorly and frugally because they could do noth-
ing else. Can we conceive that a war-force of

• " DamiiBprechend hat r
fiberhaupc frfundfn, aU tv<
Kultur ubcrhaupt deakbar i

das Wort ' Ueberkultur '
ein xu groise* Maasi von

138 WAR AND THE BREED

untold millions of people is rendered effeminate
by the luxury of a few hundreds? . . . Too
long have historians looked on the rich and
noble as marking the fate of the world. Half
the Roman Empire was made up of rough bar-
barians untouched by Greek or Roman culture."
" Whatever the remote and ultimate cause
may have been, the immediate cause to which the
1/ fajl of the empire can be traced Is a physical,
not a moral decay. In valor, discipline and sci-
ence the Roman armies remained what they had
always been, and the peasant emperors of Illyri-
cum were worthy successors of Cincinnatus and
Caius Marius. But the problem was, how to
replenish those armies. Men were wanting.
The Empire perished for want of men."

Effects of Race Grossing

In a volume entitled Race or Mongrel, pub-
lished as I write these pages. Dr. Alfred P.
Schultz of New York, author of The End of
Darwinism, takes essentially the same series
of facts as to the fall of Rome and draws from
them a somewhat different conclusion. In his
judgment the cause was due to " bastardy," to
the mixing of Roman blood with that of neigh-
boring and subjective races. To my mind,
bastardy was the result and not the cause of
Rome's decline, inferior and subject races hav-
ing been sucked into Rome to fill the vacuum left
as the Romans themselves perished in

WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 139

The continuous killing of the best left room for
the " post-Roman herd," who once sold the im-
perial throne at auction to the highest bidder.
As the Romans vanished through warfare at
home and abroad, came an inrush of foreign
blood from all regions roundabout. " The de-
generation and depravity of the mongrels," as
Schultz graphically states, " was so great that
they deified the emperors. And many of the
emperors were of a character so vile that their
deification proves that the post-Roman soul must
have been more depraved than that of the Egyp-
tian mongrel, who deified nothing lower than
dogs, cats, crocodiles, bugs and vegetables."
It must not be overlooked, however, that the
Roman race was never a pure race. It was a
union of strong elements of frontier democratic
peoples, Sabines, Umbrians, Sicilians, Etrus-
cans, Greeks being blended in republican Rome.
Whatever the origins, the worst outlived the
best, mingling at last with the odds and ends of
Imperial slavery, the " Sewage of Races "
(" cloaca gentium ") left at the Fall.

Gibbon says: "This diminutive stature of
mankind was daily sinking below the old stand-
ard and the Roman world was indeed peopled
by a race of pygmies when the fierce giants of
the North broke in and mended the puny breed.
They restored the manly spirit of freedom and
after the revolutions of ten centuries, freedom
became the parent of taste and science."

But again, the redeemed Italian was of no
purer blood than the post- Roman-Ostrogoth an-
cestry from which he sprang. The " puny
Roman " of the days of Theodoric owed his in-
heritance to the cross of Roman weaklings with
Roman slaves. He was not weak because he
was " mongrel " but because he sprang from
bad stock on both sides. The Ostrogoth and
the Lombard who tyrannized over him brought
in a great strain of sterner stuff, followed by
crosses with captive and slave such as always ac-
company conquest. To understand the fall of
Rome one must consider the disastrous effects
of crossings of this sort. Neither can one over-
look the waste of war which made them inevit-
able through the wholesale influx of inferior
tribes. Neither can one speak of the Roman,
the Italian, the Spaniard, the French, the Rou-
manian, nor of any of the so-called " Latin "
peoples as representing a simple pure stock, or
as being, except in language, direct descendants
of those ancient Latins who constituted the Ro-
man Republic. The failure of Rome arose not
from hybridization, but from the wretched
quality on both sides of its mongrel stock, de-
scendants of Romans unfit for war and of base
immigrants that had filled the vacancies.
1 ." The Niobc of Nations, there she stands,
Crownless and childless in her voiceless woeJI
An empty um within her withered hands,
Whose sacred dust was scattered long ago! "J
Byt

WAR rN ANCIENT WORLD

Greece

Once Greece led the world in intellectual pur-
suits, in art, in poetry, in philosopiiy. A large
and vital part of European culture is rooted di-
rectly in the language and thought of Athens.
The most beautiful edifice in the world was the
Peace Palace of the Parthenon, erected by Peri-
cles, to celebrate the end of Greece's suicidal
wars. This endured 2187 years, to be wrecked
at last (1687) in Turkish hands by the Chris-
tian bombs of the Venetian Republic.

But the glory of Greece had passed away long
before the fall of the Parthenon, Its cause was
the one cause of all such downfalls — the extinc-
tion of strong men by war. At the best, the
civilization of Greece was built on slavery, one
freeman to ten slaves. And when the freemen
were destroyed, the slaves, an original Mediter-
ranean stock, overspread the territory of Hellas
along with the Bulgarians, Albanians and
Vlachs, barbarians crowding down from the
north.

The Grecian language still lives, the tongue
of a spirited and rising modern people. But
the Greeks of the classic period — the Hellenes ,
of literature, art and philosophy — will never
be known again. " Most of the old Greek
race," says Mr. W. H. Ireland, " has been
swept away, and the country is now inhabited by
persons of Slavonic descent. Indeed, there is a
strong ground for the statement that there was

142

WAR AND THE BREED

more of the old heroic blood of Hellas in the
Turkish army of Edhem Pasha than in the
soldiers of King George." The modern Greek
has been called a " Byzantinized Slav," King
George himself and Constantine his son are only
aliens placed on the Grecian throne to suit the
convenience of outer powers, being in fact de-
scendants of tribes which to the ancient Greeks
were merely barbarians.

It is maintained that " the modern Greeks
are in the main descendants of the population
that inhabited Greece in the earlier centuries of
Byzantine rule. Owing to the operation of
various causes, historical, social and economic,
that population was composed of many heter-
ogeneous elements and represented in very lim-
ited degree the race which repulsed the Persians
and built the Parthenon. The internecine con-
flicts of the Greek communities, wars with for-
eign powers, and the deadly struggles of factions
in the various cities had to a large extent oblit-
erated the old race of free citizens by the begin-
ning of the Roman period. The extermina-
tion of the Plata;ans by the Spartans and of the
Mellans by the Athenians during the Pelopon-
nesian War, the proscription of the Athenian
citizens after the war, the massacre of the Cor-
cyrean oligarchs by the democratic party, the
slaughter of the Thebans by Alexander and of
the Corinthians by Mummlus are among the
more familiar instances of the catastrophes

WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 143

'which overtook the civ*ic element in the Greek
cities. The void can ordy have been filled from
the ranks of the metics or resident aliens and
of the descendants of the far more numerous
slave population. In the classic period four-
fifths of the population of Attica were slaves; of
the remainder, half were metics. In 100 A. D.
only three thousand free arm-bearing men were
in Greece." (James D. Bourchicr.)

" The constant little struggles of the Greeks
among themselves made no great showing as to
numbers compared to other wars, but they wiped
out the most valuable people, the best blood,
the most promising heredity on Earth. This
cost the world more than the killing of millimii .
of barbarians. In two centuries there were
bom under the shadow of the Parthenon more
men of genius than the Roman Empire had in
its whole existence. Yet this empire included
all the civilized world, even Greece herself."
(La Pouge.)

The downfall of Greece,^ like that of Rome.
has been ascribed by Schultz to the crossing of
the Greeks with the barbaric races which flocked

' Ccrtaiu rtcmt writer* wbo find in enviroDineiK (he cai»«s
ef lb« lise aod fill of nadoni, asci^e the failnre of
Gmce to th« tntroduciioD in Aiheni and Spina of the
malaria-bcarmg mosquito. As to the facts in qaestioo. w«
have little evidence. Bm while the prevalence of laiUria
mar have aStaed the general aciirity of the people, it
could io DO war h»re obliieriicd the mental Uadenhip
wbicb made the (trcogth of clauie Hellai, ooi conld h
have iDJeoed its poiwo into the itream of Greek heredity.

144 WAR AND THE BREED

into Hellas from every side. These resident
aliens, or metlcs, steadily increased in number
as the free Greeks disappeared. Selected
slaves or helots were then made free In order to
furnish fighting men, and again as these fell
their places were taken by immigrants.

It is doubtless true at this day that " no race
inhabits Greece," and the main difference be-
tween Greeks and other Balkan peoples is that,
inhabiting the mountains and valleys of Hellas,
they speak in dialects of the ancient tongue.
Environment, except through selection and
segregation, cannot alter race inheritance and
the modern " Greeks " have not been changed
by it, Schultz observes: "We are told that
the Hellenes owed their greatness largely to the
country It was their fortune to dwell in. To
that same country, with the same wonderful
coastline and harbors, mountains and brooks,
and the same sun of Homer, the modern Greeks
owe their nothingness."

In other words, it is quite true that the Greece
of Pericles owed its strength to Greek blood, not
to Hellenic scenery. When all the good Greek
blood was spent in suicidal wars, only slaves and
foreign-born were left. " 'Tis Greece, but liv-
ing Greece no more." ^

^ Id contrasting a new race with the old — a> the nioderD
Greeks with the incompafible HeilenM — we must not be
uojust to the men of today whose liraitationi are evident,
contrattcd with a race we know mainly by its finest ex-

WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 145

Furthermore we do not know that even the
first Hellenes of Myceni were an unmixed race,
or that any unmixed races ever rose to such
prominence as to command the world's atten-
tion. We do know that when war depletes a
nation slaves and foreigners come in to fill the
■vacuum, and that the decline of a great race in
history has always been accompanied by a de-
basing of its blood.

Yet out of this decadence natural selection
may in time bring forward better strains, and
■with normal conditions of security and peace,
nature may begin again her work of recupera-
tion.

In the fall of Greece we have another count
against war, scarcely realized until the facts of
X,ouvain and Malines, of Rheims and Ypres
have brought it again so vividly before us.
"War respects nothing, while the human soul in-
creasingly demands veneration for its own noble
and beautiful achievements. As I write this,
there rise before me the paintings in the " Neue
Pinakothek " at Munich, representing the
twenty-one cities of Ancient Greece, from Sparta
to Salamis, from Eleusis to Corinth, not as they

amples. In spite of poverty, touchiness and vanity char-
acteristic of the modern Greek, there is good stuff in him.
He is frank, hopeful, enthusiastic. The mounlBin Greek, at
least, knons (he vulue of freedom, and has more than once
put up a brave fight for it. The valleys breed subservi-
cticy, and the Greeks of Thessaly are laid to be less iode-
ScodcDt than t'

were, " in the glory which was Greece," not as
they are now, largely fishing hamlets by the blue
^gean Sea, but as ruined arches and broken
columns half hid in the ashes of war, wars
which blotted out Greece from world history.

" Such are the sights, the sorrows fell,
About our hearth — and worse, whereof I may not tell.

But all the wide town o'er.
Each home that sent its master far away

From Hellas' shore,
Feels the keen thrill of heart, the pang of loss, to-day.

For, truth to say.
The touch of bitter death is manifold.
Familiar was each face, and dear as life.

That went into the war,
But thither, whence a warrior went of old.

Doth naught return —
Only a spear and sword, and ashes in an urn.

For Ares, lord of strife.
Who doth the swaying scales of battle hold,
War's money-changer, giving dust for gold,

Sends back, to hearts that held them dear,
Scant ashes of warriors, wept with many a tear,
Light to the hand but heavy to the soul;
Yea, fills the light urn full

With what survived the flame —
Death's dusty measure of a hero's frame."'
Macedonia

Few districts have suffered more or longer
from war-ravages and war selection than Mace-

^ From the chorus to Clylimnistra in the Agamemnon of
^ichylus. (Translation by E. D. A. Morshcad.)

donia, a region which m recorded history has
never known security or peace. In Macedonia,
Aristotle saw the light and unfortunately Alex-
ander also. Originally Greek and at times a
center of Greek culture, it has been overrun in
turn by Persians, Romans, Normans, Turks,
lonians, Venetians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Ital-
ians, and by Greeks, Romans and Turks at in-
termediate intervals. It is now arbitrarily
divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria,
while of its population {2,200,000 before the
wars) fully half are refugees fleeing across the
various artificial borders, created in 1913 by the
ill-starred Treaty of Bucharest, with whatever
property they can carry on their backs. Many
of them become outlaws, for in the Balkans a
" brigand " is simply a farmer who has lost his
hold. He who is rich and prosperous today
may have to take to the road tomorrow on a
few hours' notice, by the light of his burning
house. In the fields of Macedonia one marks
a striking sign of war's latest ravages. Here
and there three poles stand tied together at the
top, with a baby swinging from them just out of
reach of goats and dogs. Farther on appears
a woman leading a bullock or a buflalo, some-
times a small horse, while behind her another
woman guides the plow. Rarely a man to be
seen I In one village, Sigelovo, visited by the
writer, not a man is left.
How great the human waste in Macedonia in

the years from Philippi to Kilkis, from Aristotle
to Venizelos, from Alexander to King Constan-
tinel Let us in imagination compare the men
of today, those who survive furtively huddled
in dirty villages fired by each passing troop, with
those who might have been but were lost to the
world before they were born through War's in-
satiate selection of the noble Greeks who once
peopled Macedonia.

Samarkand

Samarkand, according to Charles R. Crane,
is a region permanently ruined by the racial rav-
ages of war. Twelve hundred years ago, at
about the time Oxford was founded and the
University of Paris in the relatively barbarous
West, it was the center of Arabian learning.
Later it was overrun by the Mogul Emperor
Jenghiz Khan, to the destruction of its Arabian
culture. Later still in the fifteenth century it
rose again to become the center of civilization
for the Moguls. The Mogul Empire falling jn
turn, and in a manner precisely comparable to
the decline of Rome, the district was occupied
by Arabs, Turks and Mongols engaged in mu-
tual extinction. Then came the Chinese and
after them the Russians, Samarkand's present
rulers. Now its once great University boasts j
only a handful of students with a peasant's in-

WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 149

ocme for each of its little group of professors.

In Armenia, the brutal and often repeated
amassacres, with the scattering of the population
Imost as the Jews were scattered after the
onquest, must have had large racial effects.
!But as to these we can present no adequate data.

MILITARISM AND WAR SELEC-
TION IN WESTERN EUROPE

France

Europe had no finer human stock than that
of France, and no modern people has suffered
more from the ravages of war and glory. The
Gauls as they appear in early history were a
Celtic race. Conquest made them Gallo-
Roman. Later, especially in the North and
East, their blood was s trengthened by Teutonic
strains, — the Normans' from Scandinavia and
the Franks from Central Germany. In later
days a large influx from Germanic Alsace has
made German names common in French society.

Certain effects of war on the French people
have been already considered in a previous
chapter. Through reversal of selection by war,
the men of France lost in stature and the na-
tion in initiative. But a good stock possesses
power of recuperation, and regenerative proc-
esses have been evident in France for the last
twenty years. Peace and security, industry and
economy enable the natural forces of selection
to operate. This means race regeneration.
The nation had been sorely wounded by he r own ,
ISO

IN WESTERN EUROPE

»5i

sons. She has been making a healthy recovery.^
In the WIcrtz gallery in Brussels is a striking
painting dating from the time of Napoleon,
called "A Scene in Hell" {Une Scene dans .
i'Enfer). It represents the great marshal with -
folded arms and face unmoved descending
slowly to the land of the shades. Before him
iiUing all the background of the picture, their
faces expressing every form of reproach, are
-the men sent to death before their time by his
unbridled ambition- Four millions there were
in all, more than half of them French. And
"behind the legions shown or hinted at, one seems
to discern the millions on millions who might

1 " Land, Taanty, tradition and prestige," says Professor
Albert 'Lion Gueratd [Frtnch Civilittalion 'tit Iht Niaelemth
Century, 1912), "would be naught if the people had lost
its soul. Their vreaUh would pass into atronger hands, and
their prestige to coniempt. Once, about twenty yean ago,
the French themselves wondered if it had not came to that.
The cry of a decadence was raised by malevolent livali,
by sensationalists, by " esthetes " in iguest of a new pose, by
earnest patriots who had lost ibeir star. When a belated
ecbo of this reaches ns now, bow faint and strange and silly
it sounds! For the one great asset of the French is their
indomitable vitality. Even in wasteful conflict one cannot
fail to admire the evidence of power. In the twenties
century as ever before the French are among the pioneers.

" I do not see Fiance as a goddess, austere and remote.
I see her intensely human, stained with indecencies and
blasphemies, scarred with innumerable battles, often blinded
and stumbling on the way, but lighting on undismayed, for
ideals which she cannot always deline. An old nation? A
wounded nation? Perhaps, but her mighty heart is throb-
bing with unconquerable life."

WAR AND THE BREED

have been and are not — the huge widening
wedge of the possible descendants of those who
fell in battle, youth without blemish {"L' elite de
I'Europe"), made "flesh for the cannon" in
the rush of Napoleon's great campaigns,

They came from the farm, the workshop, tfie
school, men from eighteen to thirty-five years of
age at first, but afterwards the older and the
younger. " A boy will stop a bullet as well as a
man," said Napoleon. " The more vigorous
and well-born a young man is," said Professor
Haeckel, " the more normally constituted, the
greater his chance to be slain by musket or
magazine, the rifled cannon and other similar
engines of civilization." " Napoleon," says
Seeck, " in a series of years seized all the youth
of high stature and left them scattered over
many battlefields, so that the French people who
followed them are mostly of smaller stature.
More than once since Napoleon's time has the
military limit been lowered."

In the career of Napoleon campaign fol-
lowed campaign, against enemies, against neu-
trals, against friends. Conscription followed
victory, both victory and conscription debasing
the human species. Again conscription after
conscription. " Let them die with arras in
their hands. Their death is glorious, and it
will be avenged. You can always fill the places
of soldiers." " A great soldier like me doesn't
care a tinker's damn for the lives of a million

million ;

IN WESTERN EUROPE 153

men." Still more conscription 1 After Wag-
.ram, France began to feel her weakness, the
" Grand Army " being no longer the army
"which had fought at Ulm and Jena. " Raw
conscripts raised before their time and hurriedly
<lrafted into the line had impaired its steadi-
ness." '

After Moscow, homeward " amidst ever-
<leepening misery they struggled on, until of the
six hundred thousand men who had proudly
crossed the Niemen for the conquest of Rus-
sia, only twenty thousand famished, frost-bitten,
unarmed specters staggered across the bridge
of Korno in the middle of December." " De-
spite the loss of the most splendid army mar-
shalled by man, Napoleon abated no whit of his
resolve to dominate Germany and discipline
Russia. . . . He strained every effort to call
the youth of the empire to arms . . . and 350,-
000 conscripts were promised by the Senate.
The mighty swirl of the Moscow campaign
sucked 150,000 lads of under twenty years of
age into the devouring vortex." " The peas-
antry gave up their sons as food for cannon."
But " many were appalled at the frightful drain
on the nation's strength." " In less than half
a year after the loss of half a million men a new
army nearly as numerous was marshalled under
the imperial eagles. But the majority were

>Thii quotation and ihoie that immediately follow are
ficm the Hhlory of Napolien I, by J. H. Rose.

y ca

young, untrained troops, and it was remarked
that the conscripts born in the year of Terror
had not the stamina of the earlier levies. Brave
they were, superbly brave, and the emperor
sought by every means to breathe into them his
indomitable spirit." " Truly the emperor
could make boys heroes, but he could never re-
pair the losses of 1 8 1 2." " Soldiers were want-
ing, youths were dragged forth." " To fill hell
with heroes," — in these words some one has
summed up the life-work of Napoleon. " J'ai
cent mille hommes de rente," " my income Is a
hundred thousand men," said Napoleon. But
to a terrible degree he lived beyond his income.
French writers have been frank in the discus-
sion of national deficiencies and mistakes. They
have wished to conceal nothing from France and
therefore nothing from the world. Their ad-
missions have been exaggerated by unfriendly
critics. It has been claimed that modern
ranee, with the other Latin nations, is a " de-
cadent state," * that she has passed her prime
and is now in the weakness and sterility of old
age, her place as the dominating force on the
continent of Europe having been yielded to a
younger and more aggressive power. De-
crepitude in a nation is due not to age, but

' The French people " have sunk to so low a level in
the virtues of a strong and proud nation thai, from the
military siandpoini, it must he regarded aa a doubtful pleas-
ure to have to fight such a people." {Berliner Post, April
sit, 1913, quoted by W. H. Dawson.)

IN WESTERN EUROPE

155

to the operations of war, as we have several
times insisted, followed by the loss of its best
strains of blood and their replacement by re-
cruiting from immigrants of the weaker races.
If its strong strains are not wholly extirpated,
peace and security will renew its youth.
Though France has suffered grievously from
Tpar, as a nation she has lost little from immigra-
tion and not much from emigration.

Certain features of French life have been in-
dicated as evidences of injury from reversal of
selection. The birth rate in France already low
has been steadily falling. This is apparently
a result of the survival of the cautious, for Na-
poleon's dashing grenadiers could hardly be im-
agined to limit their families for prudential rea-
sons. Indeed the French in Canada, not af-
fected by war, are notoriously fecund. Another
evidence of the survival of the cautious is found
in the relative lack of business enterprise in
France. The gold hoarded in her stockings has
been used mainly for international loans, rarely
for business development, foreign loans yield-
ing a higher interest with less personal responsi-
bility. And the absence of factory towns em-
phasizes the fall in the birth-rate, as in civilized
nations a high rate of increase occurs mainly in
industrial centers.

Edmond Demolins in a clever book asks:
" In what constitutes the superiority of the i,
Anglo-Saxon?" He finds his answer m the

WAR AND THE BREED

false standards of French life, in defects of
training and of civic and personal ideals. The
desire for seats in a government bureau and for
similar safe places of routine and without ini-
tiative has been termed in Italy " Impiego-
man'ta," — the " craze for sitting down." The
eagerness to secure such positions is said to be a
besetting sin of the youth of both Italy and
France. But the fault may be due to over-cen-
tralization of government, too many officials
and too little opportunity in the provincial cen-
ters, rather than to any fault in the nature of
the individual man. Nationalization of effort,
whether through socialism or through " efficient
organization," must contribute to the spread of
" impiegomania."

If the strictures of Demolins be true in any
degree, this may be the interpretation. In-
ferior standards are the work of inferior men.
Great men there are in France, and these have
persistently turned the nation's face toward the
light since Demolins' book was written. War's
effect has been to rob her of her due proportion
of leaders, but not to dilute or to weaken the
message of those who survive. The evolution
of a race is always selective, never collective.
Collective evolution among men or beasts, the
movement upward or downward of the whole
as a whole, irrespective of training or selection,
is never a fact. As La Pouge has said: " It
exists in rhetoric, not in truth nor in history."

H ablest

IN WESTERN EUROPE 157

nna:
I cone

r Another line of criticism of France finds its
ablest exponent in Dr. Max Nordau, whose
book on Dcgeneratinn aroused the attention
of the world some twenty years ago. Nordau
finds abundant evidences of degeneration in the
art and literature of every land, all forms of
eccentricity, pessimism and perversity being re-
garded as such. In France, such evidences he
finds peculiarly conspicuous. The cause of this
_condition he ascribes to the inherited strain of
I overwrought civilization. " Fin de Steele,"
Itnd of the century," is the catch-phrase ex-
jessing the weariness, mental, physical and
spiritual of a race " tired before It was born."
To Nordau, this theory adequately explains all
eccentricities of I'rench literature, art, politics
or jurisprudence.

But in fact wc have no knowledge of the ex-
istence of nerve-stress Inheritance. In any
event, the peasantry of France have not been
subjected to It. Their life is hard, but not
stressful; and they suffer more from monotony
(ncrvc-slugglshncss) than from any form of en-
forced nerve-activity. The kind of degcncra-
I tion Nordau pictures is not a matter of hcred-

l ity. When not simply personal eccentricity, it
I IB a phase of personal decay. It finds Its causes
I in bad habits, bad training, bad morals, or in
the desire to catch public attention for personal
advantage. It has no permanence in the blood
'^' «f the race. The presence on the Paris boulc-

158 WAR AND THE BREED

vards of eccentric painters, maudlin musicians,
absinthine poets and sensation-mongers, proves
nothing as to race degeneracy. When the fash-
ion changes, they will change also. The " end
of the century " is past and already the fad of
" strenuous life " is blowing them away. Any
man of any race withers In an atmosphere of
vice, absinthe and opium. The presence of
such an atmosphere may be a disheartening
symptom, but it is not a proof of deep-seated
national decline. The ghastliest and the most
depraved of Parisian sensations are invented to
catch the jaded fancy of gilded youth from
across the sea.

A French cartoon more than a century old
pictures a peasant plowing in the field, hopeless
and dejected, a frilled and cynical marquis on
his back, tapping his silver snuff-box, A recent
one reveals the laborer still at the plow and
equally hopeless. The marquis is gone, but in
his place sits a soldier armed to the teeth, while
on the soldier's back rides the money-lender,
colder and more crushing than the dainty mar-
quis, for the money-lender is the visible ex-
ponent of the War-trader, most sinister and
most burdensome of all, purveyor of imple-
ments of destruction.

For more than forty years past France has
lived under the shadow of war. The loss of
Alsace-Lorraine cut a deep wound in French
emotions as well as in French pride. Thfej

IN WESTERN EUROPE

159

ble attitude of the lost provinces * stimulated the
natural determination for the " War of
Honor," the " War of Revenge." But as time
went on, it became more and more evident that
such a war could never be successful. And
after the collapse of the inflated militarism of
Boulanger, and in view of the sordid failure
of military honor as shown in the " Dreyfus
Case," the people of France began generally to
doubt the righteousness as well as the wisdom
of war against Germany. In 1913, the influ-
ential men of France were willing to meet half
way the " Fricdcnsfrcuiidc " of Germany. The
writer was present at Niirnberg in 1913, at a
great mass meeting in which the Baron D'Es-
tournellcs de Constant spoke warmly and elo-
quently for international friendship. France

•Tlie protMt of ihe cwenly-eighi deputica of Alsace and

Lorraine, delivered by M. Groijean, before the French
AiMtiibly at Bordeaux on March 1S71, ie in part a* fol-
low.;

"Delivered, in leorn of all jutllce and by an odioua
•bu>e of force, to foreign dominaiioii, we have one laat
duty lo perform. We declare nnca
an agreement which disposes of ns wilhniit 1
The vindication of our rights rests forever opei
to each one in Ihe form and in the degree hi
shall assume. At (he moment we quit this hall, the su-
preme thought we find in the bottnm of our hearts is a
tbouKbi of unutterable attachment lo tlie country from which
ill violence we are torn. Our brothers of Alsace and
Lorraine, separated from Ibis moment from the commoti
family will preserve lowardi Frajice, absent from Cbeir
hearthstones, an affcciion faithful to [he day when we shall
D tike out place."

lull and void
all and

l6o WAR AND THE BREED

was becoming ready to forgive If not to forget.
But this the Prussian military system in Alsace-
Lorraine would not permit. They had left the
united province of Elsass-Lothringen without
citizens' rights as " Reichsland " or Imperial
territory, it being an " Eroberung " or conquest,
They had subjected it to the process of " Ent-
wehchung " or deforeignization, by means of
trivial and burdensome " Abwehrgeset'ze," or
special statutes directed mainly against the use
of the French language. The people of Al-
sace-Lorraine, those of Germanic and French
stock alike, could not forget. And for this
reason France could not. Had the united
provinces been given full autonomy within the
German Empire and their people been made
full citizens instead of "Deutsche Zweiler
Classe," " the nightmare of Europe," * the
" question of Alsace-Lorraine " would have dis-
appeared long ago from European politics.
The persistent menace of war involved in these
relations is the main reason why military con-
scription has been extended and rigidly enforced
in France in direct violation of the principles of
personal freedom on which the republic rests."

* Ut cauchemar de I'Europe.
^ This contradiction has b«n ahly set forth
t Rat S'man faitti la Pedx,

c rests." L

Id Mane] J
publl^l

IN WESTERN EUROPE

The Spain of today is not the Spain of 1493
to whom the Pope assigned half the seas of the
■world. Old Spain drooped long ago, exhausted
■with intolerance, sea power and empire. Now
that modern Spain has been deprived of the last
■vestige of Imperial control, she is slowly re-
cuperating on a foundation of industry and
economy.

In 1630, the Augustinian friar, La Puente,
thus wrote of the fate of Spain : " Against the
credit for redeemed souls I set the cost of
armadas and the sacrifice of soldiers and friars
sent to the Philippines, And this I count the
chief loss; for mines give silver, and forests
give timber, but only Spain gives Spaniards, and
she may give so many that she will be left deso-
late, and constrained to bring up strangers'
children instead of her own." " This is Cas-
tile," said a Spanish knight; "she makes men
and wastes them." " This sublime and terrible
phrase sums up Spanish history." '

" Everything has happened that could hap-
pen," says Havelock Ellis, " to kill out the
virile, militant, Independent elements of Span-
ish manhood.* War alone, if sufEciently pro-

'Captai

C. G. Calk

in..

■In Ihi

Mr.

Ell

a extols

the beauty,

grace

Md spirit

of the Spar

ish

now

n and

uggests the

theory

th«t 10 far

31 feminine

there h

s been no r

of seleclio

n. "The w

men

Spain," he thinks, "

are on

the average superior to the

men

i62 WAR AND THE BREED

longed and severe, suffices to deplete the nation
of its most vigorous stocks. ' The warlike na-
tion of today ... is the decadent nation of to-
morrow.' The martial ardor and success of
the Spaniards lasted for more than a thousand
years. It was only at very great cost that the
Romans subdued the Iberians and down to the
sixteenth century, the Spaniards were great sol-
diers. The struggle in the Netherlands wasted
their energies and then finally at Rocroy, in the
middle of the seventeenth century, the Spanish
infantry that had been counted the finest in Eu-
rope went down before the French, and the mili-
tary splendor of Spain vanished " ( The Soul of
Spain).

It is a question whether Spain suffered most
from the scattering of her strong men over seas,
from her perpetual struggles in Europe or from
the Inquisition. This sinister institution was
more wasteful and more cruel in Spain than any-
where else, leading to the extinction of Inde-
pendent minds and of virile intellectuality,

In Spain as in France, the continuance of
peace with the cessation of the loss and waste
over seas is bringing a financial and industrial
recuperation, which must be slowly followed by
a physical and moral advance. It is noted that
before the war with the United States, Spanish
4 per cent, government bonds were held at 45
per cent. They have now touched no. It is
claimed that Spain now enjoys " an intellectual

IN WESTERN EUROPE

163

and artistic renaissance that will make her
memorable when her heroes are forgotten."

" The greatest gain ever yet won for the
cause of peace," writes Mr. H. W. Nevlnson,'
" was the refusal of the Catalonian reservists
to serve in the war against the Riff mountaineers
of Morocco in July, 1909. ... So Barcelona
flared to heaven, and for nearly a week the peo-
ple held the vast city. I have seen many noble
as well as many terrible events, but none more
noble or of finer promise than the sudden upris-
ing of the Catalan people against a dastardly
and inglorious war, waged for the benefit of a
few speculators In Paris and Madrid."

Parapiay

It is said that in no other country of the
world has the devastation of war in modern
times been so complete as in Paraguay. As to
this, Elisee Reclus observes: "After the war
in Paraguay, the virile population disappeared '
almost entirely, and there remained of the men
only the invalid and infirm."

In 1864, the usurper Lopez, dictator of
Paraguay, invaded Brazil. The governments
of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina united to
suppress him. After five years, he was totally
defeated in the battle of Aquidaban. In re-
treat, he burnt every town, destroying as well
the domestic animals and most of the people.

' Peact and War in tkt Balanct, p. 47.

" There is nothing more dangerous than a re-
treating army," Among Lopez' forces, ac-
cording to the EncycIopEcdia Britannica, boys
of twelve years were included, whole regiments
being made up of lads under i6. At the begin-
ning of the war, the population of Paraguay
amounted to ii337,437. It fell to 221,079
(28,746 men, 106,254 women, 86,079 c^'^"
dren). It is now estimated at 630,000. Here
in a small area has occurred a drastic case of
racial ravage without parallel since the time of
the Thirty Years' War.

Germany

Germany suffered perhaps scarcely less than
France from the wars of Louis XIV and of the

two Napoleons. German writers, however,
have been much less frank than the French and
also less lucid in discussing their national disa-
bilities. They have given but scanty records
of the racial waste their wars have involved.
Moreover, the organization of modern Ger-
many, a socialist state under military domina-
tion, has tended to minimize the visible distinc-
tions among racial strains. Every man has his
place. It Is not easy to fall below one's class,
correspondingly difRcult to rise. Universal
compulsory education, technical as well as aca-
demic, saves even the feeble from absolute in-
competence. The three duties of the citizen,
" Soldat sein; Steuer zahlett; Mund halten"

(Be a soldier: pay taxes; bold your tongue),
are simple and do not encourage initiative.
Universal conscription binds tbe individual into
subjection to tbe central pover. He has tbe
choice bctweea docile acceptance ot a fate not
wholly intolerable, and revolt with probable
misery or death. Forms of insurance against
poverty, unemployment or old age guard him
against total failure- The difficulties which be-
set the common man in trying to enter the
'* learned proletariat " of the L'niversities or
the sublimated caste of the army deter all but
the most gifted from ambition for advancement.
Only real genius for scholarship or for money-
getting can break the bonds of caste. This sys-
tem minimizes the miseries of poverty, while at
the same time it checks initiative in the mass of
the people. It attempts to insure prosperity
through surrender of liberty. It subordinates
individual freedom to a prearranged discipline
of efficiency. This has culminated in the devel-
opment of the army and navy. To those who
regard the dominance of militarism as a survival
of savagery, the recrudescence of military ideals
in Germany seems one of the saddest results of
modern scientific advance."*
The victory over France in 1871 has had

10 " To glorify the state is to glorify war, for ihere ii no
I TOliective operation which can be so effectively achieved
I it war, and none ivhicb more conspicuoualy illuMraies the
I Mcrifice of the iodividual to the nation." (Havelock Ellis.)

WAK AND THE BRE^

the effect of intensifying the military spirit of
Germany, and of making its extension appear
an integral part of the nation's commercial and
industrial growth. This fact operates toward
final disaster, for whether successful or not in
the struggle with the allied powers, the aggre-
gate result will be of the nature of terrible de-
feat. When the record is summed up it may
appear that Germany rather than France is the
final sufferer from the Franco-Prussian war and
the "blood and iron" policy of Bismarck and
his successors.

That the present war will cut deep Into the
best stock of Germany no one can doubt. As to
the effects of their great wars of the past, the
most important studies known to us are those
of Dr. Seeck and Dr. Karl G. Rendtorff. Pro-
fessor Rendtorfl ^' furnishes for our purpose
the results of his researches in the decline of
German literature following the wars of the
thirteenth century. In brief, he shows that the
period from 1170 to 1230 marks a climax in
early German culture. The thirteenth, " the
greatest of centuries," saw the culmination of
early poetry, of the epic of chivalry, of military
prowess, of imperial greatness.

The period" came to a sudden end with the
downfall of Knighthood and the consequent
cessation of intellectual life. The Knights were
the pick of the nation. Knighthood was, in

■' See Appendix H.

IN WESTERN ElUOPE

167

some degree, a democratic institution open to
any one, even a serf wfao distinguished himself
by physical courage or by mental power. Thou-
sands of Knights tell in the bloody wars waged
by the Hobenstauiens in Italy, slain in battle,
yielding to disease and poison. Thousands
more died in the Crusades, through epidemics
in the ports and battles in Palestine. Border
warfare existed everywhere, taking Its toll,
while many of the hnest minds escaped to the
shelter of the Church. In all these episodes,
a " surrival of the fittest " was impossible. The
inevitable result of the destruction of the intel-
lectual and physical leadership of the nation
was the mental decay of which the most glar-
ing evidence is found in the contemporaneous
decline of German poetry. Later, in the rise
of the Burghers, appeared new life, a literature
without imagination or originality, but to be
later followed by the great creative work of
architects, sculptors and painters.

It is apparent that organized warfare, prop-
erly a conflict of soldier with soldier, has the
final effect of minimizing the very qualities it
demands. A massacre differs from war in that
its operations are not confined to soldiers. It
involves old and young, sparing neither age nor
sex. Only those escape who are vigorous
enough to run away and to endure starvation
and exposure. In, the Thirty Years' War of

i68 WAR AND THE BREED

the seventeenth century, a continuous massacre,
the population of Germany was reduced from
about sixteen millions to six millions.

It is claimed by some writers, notably by
Seeck and Ammon, that the slaughter, however
terrible from the standpoint of humanity, caused
no injury to the quality of the German race.
Seeck insists that this is indeed the fact. Ac-
cording to him, in massacres, more weak than
strong are killed and consequently, while the
numbers are greatly reduced, the average phys-
ical and intellectual strength of the nation is
thereby rather enhanced: '^

To quote from Seeck: "A systematic ex-
termination of exceptional people, such as wc
find was carried out in Greece and Rome, must
produce a race of cowardly and mediocre men;
on the other hand, when a terrible war sweeps
over a nation, indiscriminately killing thousands
upon thousands, we may expect the opposite
result. . . . For if out of every one hundred
thousand strong men eighty thousand were
killed, surely out of every one hundred thou-
sand weaklings, at least ninety thousand or per-
haps ninety-five thousand were killed." He

'^Ooce after a greai drought in Australia, a large pro-
portion of the iihcep died. Sheep ownera naturally pre-
served the most valuable individuals and the average yield
of wool in the next generation is said to have increased by
one-third. This vras an example of drastic selection, and
something like thii may have taken place in the Thirty
Yean' War.

IX WESTERN EmOPE 169

cites a number of examples to prove his theory
aod claims that usually a ccnrurj- or so after a
calamity such as this, the nation bears its finest
intellectual fniit. He points to ^atn which,
during a period of peace lasting for more than
Hftcen hundred years, furnished nothing valua-
ble in art or science, but which, at the time of
Cervantes and \'elasquez, produced a genera-
tion of heroes, exactly a hundred years after
a succession of terrible civil wars and massacres
had swept over the country. Germany lost
three-fourths of her population during the
Thirty Years' War, the Netherlands suffered a
similar fate during the Wars of Liberation.
England during the Wars of the Roses, and
France during the War of the Huguenots. But
a century after the worst slaughters, Goethe
and Kant were born in Germany, Shakespeare
and Bacon in England, Moliere and Bayle in
France, while Grotius and Rembrandt appeared
in Holland even before a century had passed.
As further proof that a great civil catastrophe
acts beneficially, he cites Northern Italy, which
towards the close of the Middle Ages was again
and again the scene of massacres which left
Southern Italy untouched ; and yet it was North-
ern Italy which gave the Renaissance to the
world while the southern districts have hardly
done anything at all for the glory of the na-
tion," Finally he asserts that among the an-

» Seeck here tttma to orerlodc the fact that the people

X. MILITARISM AND WAR SELEC-
TION IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Cost of Empire

Not long ago, in England, a parliameni
commission was set to inquire into the fact of
" national deterioration." Of this there were
various sorts of evidence. The yeomanry were
disappearing. The slums of London, Man-
chester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Sheffield,
were centers of sweat-shops and child labor, of
wasting over-work, of infant mortality, of mal-
nutrition, of sodden drunkenness with helpless
old age. And in the higher classes, one heard
of " flannelled oafs " and heedless sportsmen
to whom a cricket match was of more worth
than the conservation of empire. Much of
this was complacent self-criticism, a favorite
amusement with the literary classes of England.
Some of it had the political purpose of discred-
iting the government, but behind it all rests a
certain neglected residuum of truth. For
Great Britain has paid in full the costs of Em-
pire.

In the Norse mythology. It was the Mitgard
serpent which reached around the world, swal-
lowed its own tail and held the earth together.
England has been the Mitgard-serpent of his-

173

IN GKZ\T BRITAIN

173

tory. She has made this in a sense a British
World. Her youth have gone into all regions
where free men can live. Everywhere they
have built up free institutions held together by
the British cement of cooperation and compro-
mise. England carried her " Pax Britan-
nica," with its semblance of order and decency,
to barbarous lands, mixing with it enough of
freedom to give permanence to her rule.' She
has made it possible for Englishmen to trade
and to pray with savages. " What does he
itnow of England, who only England knows? "
For the activities of the Greater Britain of
whom we of America form an integral part, out-
Weigh those confined to the little island from
■which the British people set forth to inherit the
Earth.

1 The other and sordid lide of Military Imperialiim i*
ttius touched by Lord Morley, referring to the occupation of
d^hilral, in Northern India in 1895:

" First, you push on into territories irhere you have no
business to be, and where you had promised not 10 go;
secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment, and. In these
'xrild countries, resentment means resistance; thirdly, you
instantly cry out that the people are rebellious and that
th^r act is rebellion (this in spite of your own assurance
vhat you have no intention of setting up a permanent
sovereignty over them) ; fourthly, you send a force to Mamp
out the rebellion ; and fifthly, having spread bloodshed, con-
fusion and anarchy, you declare, with hands uplifted 10 the
heavens that moral teaaona force you (o slay, for if you
-were to leave, ihia territory would be left in a condition
'vrhich no eivlliied power could contemplate with equanimity
er ■with composure. These are the five stages in ibe For-
'watd Rake's progress."

WAR AND THE BREED

What has it all cost? For every great race
sacrifice takes toll In race exhaustion. The losa
will not appear in the decline in ability of the
statesmen and scholars who remain. It will
show itself in the relative fewness of strong men
with a proportionate increase of weaklings and
wastrels.

Much of the force of England has gone out
to America and to her self-governing commcm-
wealths, the forceful young democracies still
proud of British traditions, even while escap-
ing from the worst of these, the legalization of
privilege. But a man is a man wherever he
may live, and the occupation of Canada, Aus-
tralia, New Zealand and South Africa has been
a source of continued strength to the mother
country.

With India the case Is less certain. Men
have asked, " What has Britain done for In-
dia " ? We may admit that she has done much,
and her work, improving with experience, grows
more successful with the lapse of time. But
one may rather ask: "What has India done
for Britain?" The answer to this Is not so
clear and much loss as well as gain must enter
into the calculation. India has enriched Eng-
land — that small part of England which is
engaged in over-seas trade. The men who
have gained, like the Sassoons of the opium
trade for example, are not as a rule those who
share their fortunes with the people who have

IN GREAT BRITAIN 175

been taxed to make such fortunes possible. In-
dia has furnished employment for thousands of
young Englishmen (" outdoor relief for sons of
good families") and it has opened graves for
thousands of British yeomen and British gen-
tlemen, men of spirit whom Britain could ill af-
ford to spare. A returning officer once said to
me, " I have seen men who might have been
makers of Empire, die like flies in India."

Says Franklin: "The profits of no trade
can ever be equal to the expense of compelling
it by force of armies." But the profits of the
trade obtained through compulsion go to the
wndeserving few. The cost of compulsion in
blood and in gold falls on the body of the na-
tion. " Regarded as a national investment Im-
perialism does not pay. Regarded as a means
of assuring unearned incomes to the governing
class, It emphatically does pay. It is not true
that trade follows the flag. It Is true that the
flag follows investments." (Henry Noel
Brailsford.)

Can we measure the cost of British Imperial-
i ism?

" There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who mourns for her only son ;
There's a grave by the Pabeng River, —
A grave which the Burmans shun."

To know why Chester is sleepy, let us ask
■er red sandstone cathedral, " What of your

176 WAR AND THE BREED

dead? " The long array of bronze tablets tells
the story. They bear the names of the fine*
spirited yeomanry whose lives Cheshire has
spent for empire. In almost every English
cathedral and In almost every parish church in
England and Scotland we read the same story.
^Britain has exchanged her young men in India
for bronze tablets at home. Says Alfred
Noyes, speaking of England;

" It is only ray dead that I count,
She said and she says to-day."

Here are names of sturdy farmers, of gentle-
men's sons from Eton and Rugby, from Har-
row and Winchester, of scholars from Oxford
and Cambridge, all lost in some far-off war.
Their bodies rest in India, in Burmah, in Af-
ghanistan, in the Transvaal. " At home," they
are remembered.^ What would have been the

' The follonlns ia a record of tablets !d urtain Engliih
cathedrals recently visited:

Winchester in Hampshire. 1400 names, 500 not named,
recorded by regiments.

Salisbury in Wiltshire. 115 names of men killed in South
Africa, 204^ of the Imperial yeomanry, only the officer*

Exeter in Devon. Names of 15 officers, 44S privates died
at Lucknow and Cawnporc; names of 47 women and S3 chil-
dren massacred at Cawnpore; names of 672 killed in Boer
War, t40 in Afghan campaign, 5 in Bengal, 48 in "India";
7j " died of climate." Others killed in the Crimea not
named or numbered.

Taunton Church in Somerset. 144 in Burmese War; Afri-
can War loo; 44 in Ava; 425 in South Africa;
"The Wat is the Lord's."

I in Nigeria. J

IN GREAT BRITAIN

177

effect on England if all of these and their po-
tential descendants could be numbered among
her sons today?

Says Havelock Ellis: "The reckless Eng-
lishmen, who boldly sailed out from their little
island to fight the Spanish Armada, were long
since exterminated; and an admirably prudent
and cautious race has been left alive."

" We have fed our sea for a thousand ycnti.
And she calls us, still unfed;
Though there's never a wave of all her waves,
But marks our English dead.

We've strawed our best to the waves' unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of Admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid it in full! "

" We admit," says Prof. J. Arthur Thomson,

" that wars have been necessary and righteous

I — especially necessary, and that they may be

Clouctster in Gloucestcrahire. 500 in Smlej; 75 in Soudan.

LichReld in Stafford ah irt. NumerouB officera; 86 men
in South Africa, €6 in Dangola, 500 others.

Lincoln in Lincotnihire. 44 in Nile; 76 in Sutlej and
Punjab, 45 at Moolian, So in India.

Ely in Cambridgeshire, one labJK only.

Peterborough, 9G in Boer War.

All this represetits a total of 6101 killed, mainly in the
wan in India and South Af.rica. The total number of luch
cathedral memorials must be about ie,ooo. There are ts,ooo
parish churches in Great Britain. These alio contain many
lableti, perhap* £0,000 naniM in all.

178 WAR AND THE BREED

so still, but this opinion does not affect the fact
that prolonged war in which a nation takes part
is bound to impoverish the breed, since the char-
acter of the breed always depends on the men
who are left. The only thing a nation dies
of is lack of men and is there not disquieting
evidence of the increase of incapables? "

The Picked Half-Million

"The picked half-million I " This phrase
Mr. William T. Stead applied to the University
men of Great Britain. " It is theirs to com-
mand and the world obeys." In the Great
War now raging their blood is being wasted
as never before in history. In Oxford (March,
1915) not a "Blue" is left, not an athlete,
only about eight hundred men out of more than
four times that number for whom the authori-
ties made ready last July. In an article, " Ox-
ford at Wary Professor L. P. Jacks, editor of
Hibbert Journal, makes the following state-
ments: "

". . . It is probable that out of a normal
total of 3,500, not more than 750 will be re-
turning, certainly not more than 1,000. And of
those who do return the number will be rapidly
reduced as the pending commissions are allot-
ted. , - . The best — morally, intellectually,
physically — have gone. With rare exceptions
only the weaklings remain. . . .

*Satian, Jan. i%, 1915.

IX GRKAT BRITAIN

>79

" The ■ RoU of Honor ' of Oxford men wfco
have fallen in the war is already very long and
it lo^thcns day by day. Oxford hardly dares
to count its dead. ... I return to my work
and presently another regiment passes, march-
ing with a different step. . . . These, I think,
must be raw recruits. But, nol This is the
corps humorously known in the University as
the ' Last Ditchers ' — a body composed for the
most part of professors and dons, some of them
well advanced in life. There in the second
rank is the Poet Laureate; there is Sir Walter
Raleigh; there is Professor Gilbert Murray;
there is Mr. Godley, the University orator,
seemingly In command, and many others known
to fame."

At Cambridge,* the same. Even the pro-
fessors are engaged in drill or practicing with
rifle or pistol. The Universities of Scotland,
the municipal Universities of England, all tell
the same story. The German Universities are
marking time, and those of France scarcely

«"The Cambridge Revit-w, has published (he naniM «f
the past and present membera of the universitjf who at*
Jtrving ia some capacity in the British ■rmy. The nuMktr
unmints lo 7,237, and they are diaiributcd aaMnKM Ac
colleges as follows: Trinity College, 1,84°; P«mbrokft. l*»i
Gonrille and Giius, 6t6; Clare, jjs; Kmgt, 4)6; Jttu^ i>s;
Enunael. 371: Chrisi'i, 359; St. John's, jjj; Trintty M«H
jal; Magdaleoe, 314; Queen's. 179; Sidney Sutw*. tMi
Petertiouse, 140; Downing, 116; Selwyn. itt; S. V»th»iW\
117; Corpus Christi, 109; Ficzwilliim Hill.
Kiadnatcs, 16." {School and S»6rty, M*ti-b, 19*).)

i8o WAR AND THE BREED

even that.^ Young French instructors in Amer-
ican Universities have gone quietly back to the
colors, and even confirmed pacifists are on the
firing line on the Aisne and the Marne.

Lloyd-George proudly asserts: "Our new
army will be the most democratic and the most
self-sacrificing that has ever rallied to a na-
tion's colors. . . . And fine soldiers, verily 1
All the pick of the nation, the best and the brav-
est of all classes of society, intellectuals as well
as workmen, rich as well as poor, the elite of
our trade unionists, as well as our most bril- \
liant scholars of Oxford and Cambridge, the

* In Science, April i, 1915, ia the following slaleraent;
" A coimpondent informs us that the follotviog German
zoologists have been killed in the war: Professor Stanislaus
von ProwaEck, head of the zoological department of the
Inslilute for Tropic Diseases, Hamburg; Dr. W. Meyer,
assistant in the same institute; Dr. W. Mulsow, assistant ia
the p^oto^oo logical department of the Institute for Infec-
tious Diseases, Berlin; Dr. G. Gantsch, docent for zoology,
Kiel; Df, v. Steudell, Edinger Institut, Frankfurt; Dr. v.
Milller, assistant in the Zoological Institute, Kiel; Dr. t.
Grienz, assistant in the Zoological Institute, Konigaberg.

"The following have been wounded, but have in some
cases recovered ; Professor O. zur Slrassen, professor of
zoiilogy, Frankfurt; Professor L. Rhumbler, professor of
zoology, Forest School, Minden ; Dr. W. Reichensperger,
docent for zoology, Bonn; Dr. C. Thiencmann, docent in

"Of 1400 students in the ficolc des Beaus Arts, 1300 went
out at the first call, and three-fourlbs of those who survive
are in tlie trenches. They left behind only a few cripples
and foreigners, such as Russians, natives of the Balkani,
atid occasional Americans and Englishmen." (Will H. Ir-

IN GREAT BRITAIN

bench and bar as well as the shop, the factory
as well as the club, have furnished these hun-
dreds of thousands of vigorous men of from
twenty-one to thirty-six years, with whom my
colleague, Lord Kitchener, has formed his new
army," *

One can hardly blame the Chancellor of the
Exchequer for his point of view. His sole
thought is of speedy victory, not of the nation's
ultimate stability. Considering the long future
of the nation only, not one scholar, not one
skilled laborer ought to be sacrificed. In Lon-
«lon, during the first months of the war, the
■writer saw troops going to the front and re-
cruits to training camps, — strong, serious, well
set-up Englishmen, reinforced by stronger and
often more vigorous Scots. Left on the streets
Tvere many thousands of men war could not use,
men of smaller stature, though that hurts noth-
ing. A small man may be just as good as a
large one if as well put together. He may
even be a better soldier, standing less chance
«f being hit. But many Londoners reserved to
be fathers of a large part of the next genera-
tion are not well put together. Loose-jointed,
shambling, weak-kneed, ansemic, adenoid, with
crowded and imperfect teeth, tainted by liquor
and disease, they form a strain from which
England might well wish to be free. Into the

•From interview with H. B. Needham; Collier's, Febru-
ary 17, 1915.

slum by the line of least resistance these feeble
people fall. War is the parent of the slum.
Nor is it so in London alone. The same con-
ditions occur in a degree in every great city
and in every war-swept land, I never dreamed
that there were such Scotchmen alive as I saw
in the slums of Dundee. " Father a weed,
mother a weed, do you expect the daughter to
be saffron root? " Father of the slums, mother
of the slums, can the son be a British yeoman?

Slum life, alcoholism, vice, each of these is
at once the cause, the symptom and the effect of
weakness. The evils of the slum, like the virus
of disease, tend to spread and engulf those who,
under better conditions, might have been re-
sistant. War selection is not the whole story
but It forms a large part of it. As without
f iwar, there need be no national debt, so without
' 'war, there need be no slums. And the remedy
for slums and all kindred evils is available only
in security and peace.

We still have but scanty details of recent bat-
tles, for the censors have drawn behind the line
an impenetrable veil, and the events of current
history are as obscure as those of the Middle
Ages. Yet this is certain that the flower of our
civilization is falling as never before, and the
" gaps in our picked and chosen " will not be
filled for a century. Will H, Irwin, of New
York, a competent observer in the field, assures
us that the long-drawn battle of Ypres cost

IN GREAT BRITAIN

■83

England 50,000 out of 120,000 men engaged.
The French and Belgian loss he estimates at
70,000 killed and wounded, that of the Ger-
mans at 375,000, " In that one long battle,
Europe lost as many men as the North lost in
the whole Civil War."

Tomtny Atkms

Certain English writers have urged that the
private soldier is not the best, but an inferior
product of the British nation. " Tommy At-
kins " comes from the streets, the wharves, the
factories and mines and if the empire be " blue
with his bones," it is after all, they say, to the
gain of the nation, as her better blood is thus
saved for higher purposes. It has been as-
serted that the wars of the last century made
no real drain on British energies. The plain
answer to this statement is that every one knows
it to be untrue. The regular army in time of
peace may not be drawn from the best, although
to be strong physically is the first requisite for
enlistment. But " the best " Is not to be meas-
ured wholly from the standpoint of society or
of inherited wealth. Tommy may have good
stuff in him, as good it may be as the average
lord, and when a great trial comes as in Eng-
land today, the lord, the athlete, the club man,
the university man, all find their place in the j
trenches by his side.

If war is actually a means of race Improve- I

WAR AND THE BREED

ment in England the lesson of this book does
not apply to that nation. But if in the past,
much of England's best has not fallen on the
field of battle, then has fame been singularly
deceptive. It is a matter of statistics. Doubt-
less, in enlistment, physical excellence Is more
considered than moral or mental strength, and
certainly, again, the more noble the cause, the
more worthy the class of men who will risk
their lives for it.

The Non-Besiatants

It is sometimes claimed that the finest type
of man is he who stands on principle and re-
fuses to go to war at all. There is no stronger
or more sturdy body of people in the world than
the Friends or Quakers, who have stood out in
England and America in unyielding opposition
to war. In so far as they have escaped from
war, some of the " fittest " have survived. In
Germany, Austria and Russia, the Mennonltes,
Moravians and other groups have made a like
stand against military service. But taking the
nations as a whole, the Friends and their kind
form a very small minority, a few fine strains
among many, and not numerous enough to make
a tangible exception.

The Society of Friends maintains that no
nation would be the worse in the long run. If it
offered to aggression only its moral, mental and
financial forces, never defending Itself by blood-

IN GREAT BRITAIN

shed. They argue that the appeal to the hu-
man conscience would win in the long ntn, es-
pecially in our days of rapid communication
^nd intemationat friendships. This view may
be sound. It has certainly much to com*
xnend it. But ve have no data by which the
xnatter can be tested. No nation has ever tried
the plan.

It has been stated (March, 1915) that in the
Society of Friends in Great Britain, the per-
centage of enlistments among men of the age
«)f service is about seven in a hundred. Among
others It is from 66 to 70. This makes for a
survival of the blood of conscientious people,
and a relative extension of their principle of
mon-resistance to violence.

Scotland

In Scotland, the martial spirit has generally
been stronger than in England. It is a trait
of the emotional Celt of the Highlands as well
as of the calculating Scotsman of the valley
towns. The facts as to war-selection in Scot-
land have been vigorously set forth by Dr.
James A. Macdonald.

" Scotland," says Macdonald, " speaks from
long and sad experience. Every heathery hill
looks down on a glen that, generation after
generation, sent in answer to the fiery cross and
pipes of war the best its home had bred. On
those moors and through those intervales life

i86 WAR AND THE BREED

at best was hard. The weaklings died in in-
fancy. By the law of the survival of the fittest
there was bred a race of giants whose kilted
regiments, every man six feet or more, were the
pride of their race and the glory of British
arms.

" In the awful days of the Forty-five, out of
this very Glenurquhart eight hundred men of
the clansmen's mold marched to Culloden for
their ' Bonnie Prince Charlie.' But a fortnight
ago among those who marched out to ' Leaving
Glenurquhart,' not a corporal's guard, though
they looked their best from Loch Ness to Cor-
rimony, could pass the heroic standard of the
olden days. Grants '' from that glen and from
Strathspey stained with their blood the marble
palaces of India, and saved the honor of hu-
manity in the awful days of the mutiny; but to-
day few of their clan are left ' in their ain dear
glen.' The sturdy Chisholms are gone from
Strathglass. Wild and high, as through Bel-
gium to Waterloo a hundred years ago, the
' Cameron's Gathering ' ^ rose this very month
when Lochiel called for his men, but how many
had the ' biological ' excellence of the clan
' what time the plaided chiefs came down to do

'"When the good Lord was making Adam, even ihen the
Clan Grant was as numerous ai the heather on the hills."
(Bailie Grant.)

•"Proudly they march, hut each Cameron knows,
He may tread the heather no more."

[

IN GREAT BRITAIN

battle with Montrose?' The Mackeazies to-
day are few at I.ochbroom. In the gloaming
glens of the West Highlands there is a silence
deep as death where once a thousand Camp-
bells would start up in the night at the call of
Argyll. No Lord of the Isles who sleeps In
lona could ever again gather a clan worthy his
tartan, though he blew all night on the pibroch
of Donald.

"Tell me, have the fittest survived? Go
through their cities and over their moors and
down their glens. More than 800 kilted sol-
diers of the giant mold went out of my ances-
tral glen at CuUoden Moor; up and down that
glen I have gone without seeing a corporal's
guard of the olden type. In vain I looked for
them even in Inverness itself.

" They went out, these Highland clans,
wherever the Royal Standard flew. Again
those Highland clans go out, the best and brav-
est of their breed, and they never come back.
Biology does the rest. War's commercial dis-
locations and war's financial ruin are bad
enough, but war's biological reaction is damage
beyond repair.

" Is war a ' biological necessity ' ? Let Scot-
land answer. Never since the days of the
Stuarts has Scotland, and especially the Scot-
tish Highlanders, been free from the toll taken
by the recruiting sergeants for Britain's army.
The history of the Celts is in one sentence:

i88 WAR AND THE BREED

' Forever they went out to battle, and forever
they fell.' "

• ••••••

The story of Ireland must run largely paral-
lel with that of Scotland, the effects of emigra-
tion and of war-selection being even more
highly accentuated among the Irish people. But
adequate details are lacking, so far as the pres-
ent writer is concerned.

• >v

Set in this stormy northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England ! tvhat shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?

And thou whose wounds are never healed,

Whose weary race is never won,
O Cromwell's England! must thou yield

For every inch of ground a son?

What profit that our galleys ride,
Pine-forest-like, on every main?
Ruin and wreck are at our side.
Grim warders of the House of Pain.

Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet?

Where is our English ckivalryf
Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,

And sobbing waves their threnody.

Peace, peace ! we wrong the noble dead

To vex their solemn slumber so:
Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head.

Up the steep road must England go.

Ave Imperatrix; Oscar Wilde.

THE UNITED STATES AND WAR

War Selectaon and the Republic

The Republic of America was founded in the
spirit of democracy, as a nation free from caste
and privilege, pledging to all its citizens equality
before the Law. Nevertheless with the ad-
vantages of a generous land and political free-
dom, it bore at its birth two heavy burdens,
War and Slavery. Martial glory colored its
early history, and national problems internal .
and external were left to the arbitrament of

The armies of the Republic have been made
up of volunteers, men who went forth of their
own free will, believing themselves to be in the
right, and willing to fight for it. It was at
Lexington that " the embattled farmers fired
the shot heard round the world," reechoing the
principle written by Cromwell across the statute-
book of Parliament: "All just powers under
God are derived from the consent of the peo-
ple." The Revolutionary War destroyed no
great number of men, though among the slain
were many of the finest stock of the Republic.
Our great racial loss came in the conflict be-
tween the States, for the getting rid of slavery

UNITED STATES AND WAR 191

cost a million lives. I saw not long ago m
Maryland one hundred and fifty acres filled with
the bodies of the fallen. The cemeteries of
the South cover 12,000 acres. In them lie
24I1S38 American boys, half of their graves
with the sign " Unknown." North and South,
all were in dead earnest, each believing that his
view of state's rights or of national authority
rested on solid ground. North and South, the
nation was impoverished by the loss. The gaps
they left are filled, to all appearance. A new
generation has grown up since then. Its men
and women have taken the nation's problems
into their hands, and we shall never know how
much we have lost. If the boys in blue or in
gray were picked men, those who should have
been their descendants would have raised to-
day's average, but It is Impossible to measure
our actual loss or determine how far the men
that are fall short of those that might have
been.

An English professor who lately visited the
United States remarked that the most vivid
impression he got in all his travels across the
continent came from the chance statement of a
friend in Boston that he had belonged to the
Sixty-ninth Massachusetts Regiment. It was,
Indeed, a wonder that from this little State,
with little more than half a million people, 69,-
000 volunteers should have gone Into the
Civil War. This gave him a most vivid im-

192 WAR AND THE BREED

pressioti of the moral earnestness involved in
that struggle. As a matter of fact Massachu-
setts sent 159,000, her regiments having suf-
fered enormous depletion. It took at times
2,500 men to fill the brolicn ranks of a regi-
ment to its full quota of a thousand.

From Edward H. Clement is quoted the fol-
lowing: " Ever since the last quarter of the
last century the lamentation has been heard:
'Where are the poets of yesterday? Where
are the historians, the philosophers, the political
leaders, the moral reformers whom the whole
country and the world gladly followed in the
liberalizing of thought and of religion?' In
the light of the emphasis on the degeneration
of nations through their glorious wars, answer
might well be sought In the Roll of Honor of
Harvard Memorial Hall. The price was worth
paying, no doubt. The ones who gave their
lives in the Civil War most certainly thought
so. But the price was exacted all the same.
There stand the names of those who, but for
this sacrifice, might have continued the glory
of Boston in all the higher reaches of intellec-
tual life, in national politics, and in social ad-
vance."

" There is no class in this republic," says
Col, Thomas Wentworth Hig^inson, " from
whom the response of patriotism comes more
promptly and surely than from its most highly
educated class. All those delusions which pass

current m Europe, dating back to De Tocquc-
viUe, in regard to some supposed torpor or
alienation should be swept away forever. In
the list of Harvard Universitj- men who fell in
the Civil War it is surprising to note how large
is the proportion of Puritan and Revolutionary
descent."

The Civil War was followed by the extinc-
tion of slavery, by the maintenance of the de-
mocracy, and by the spread of the free-school
system of the Union throughout the rural dis-
tricts of the South. That all these results were
most desirable, even vital to the extension of
civilization, no one may now deny. But we may
hesitate to ascribe any of them mainly to the
Civil War. Sooner or later they were inevita-
ble in the life of our people. The exhaustion
of the South opened the way, but their final
establishment on a permanent basis is due to
their innate wisdom and justice, and not to the
results of any campaign. If the war had ended
differently the same problems would have come
up again for final judgment.

"How long will the Republic endure?"
Guizot once asked of James Russell Lowell.
" So long as the ideas of its founders remain
dominant," was the answer. But again one
might ask, "How long will that be?" Just
so long, it may be said, as the seed of the
fathers remains dominant In the land. Not
necessarily of Puritans and Virginians -alone,

194 WAR AND THE BREED

original creators of the free nation. We must
not read our history so narrowly as that. It is
by a freeborn stock that a free nation is cre-
ated and upheld. Our republic shall endure so
long as " the human harvest " is good, so long
as the movement of history, the progress of
science and industry, preserve for the future
not the worst but the best of each generation.
The Republic of Rome lasted so long as there
were Romans; the Republic of America will last
so long as Its people, in blood and In spirit, re-
main American.

War's Aftermatli in Virginia

In a little volume called IVar's Aftermath
Dr. Harvey Ernest Jordan ^ and myself made
a study of the selective effects of the Civil War
on the people of the State of Virginia. In this
investigation, it was at once evident that no
numerical statement was possible. Inasmuch
as people can not count what has never been,
all estimates of loss must be vague and varying
with each different community. Again, the
changes due to immigration, emigration and the
shifting of industrial stress make the original
problem very difficult to investigate in detail.
The intensive study of two Virginia counties
(Rockbridge and Spottsylvania) with a hasty
survey of several others, the whole checked up
by the opinions of fifty-five Confederate vct-
^ Profeiaor of Anatomy in the Univenity of Vxrgrnia.

trans, men of exceptional character and intelU-
gence, has given a degree of certainty to tfairty
propositions, those most relevant to the present
study being the following : *

1. The leading men of the South were pait
of select companies of militia and these were
lirst to enlist.

2. The flower of the people went into the
war at the beginning and of these a large part
(20 to 40 per cent.) died before the end.

3. War took chiefly the physically fit; the
unfit remained behind.

4. Conscripts, though in many cases the equal
of volunteers, were on the average inferior to
the latter in moral and in physical qualities,
making poorer soldiers.

5. A certain rather small number ("bush-
men") fled to the hills and other places to
avoid conscription. Others deserted from the
ranks and joined them. These deserters suf-
:fered much inconvenience, but little loss of life.

6. The volunteer militia companies, having
«nlistcd at the beginning, lost more heavily than
the conscript companies who entered later:
"' Those who ' fit ' the most survived the least."

7. The result was that the men of highest
character and quality bore largely the brunt of
■the war and lost more heavily than their in-

:fcriors. Thus was produced a change in the

*ThMe propoaitions are given maioly in the acti
Xuage of some one of the veteiani.

balance of society by reducing the percentage
of the best types without a corresponding re-
duction of the less desirable ones, a condition
which was projected into the next generation
because the inferior lived to have progeny and
the others did not.

8. Eighty per cent, of the " best blood " of
the county of Spottsylvania was lost tn the war.^
Of course in any estimation of quality, we can
only judge of those who died by the subsequent
success of their fellows who survived. We
should have accomplished a great deal more in
these fifty years if we could have had the help
of those who fell in the war,

9. Widows of soldiers suffered great hard-
ships; most of them never remarried; the death
rate among them was high for the first ten or
fifteen years after the war.

10. The sweethearts of many victims never
married. With the lack of men of their own
class some girls of the aristocracy married be-
low their previous social station.

1 1. The public men of the South as a whole
do not measure up to those of old times.

12. "The men who got themselves killed"
were on the whole the better men.

In this

conneciion

Ye may

note thai '

besi blood

racial point of view

may no

be the 9a

ae as when

ured by s

wial standar

Js. Als

[he perce

ntage abov

ed may

have been t

ue of

e counly n

ost special

ed, but

certainly not

of the southern st

tes a« a w

UNITED STATES AND WAR

13. Emigration has weakened the South, in
some places as much as war,

14. The energetic fell first in battle; the
Weaker died in camp. The very weakest were
left behind from the beginning.*

15. The war could have been avoided if only
patience and good sense had been shown,

16. The South is the better by far for the
spread of education, for the willingness to work,
for the loss of slavery, for the maintenance of
the union and for the development of business.
But for war, as war, there is no redeeming fea-
ture, no benefit to any one, not one word to be
said.

17. The curse of the war was heavier than its
Ijlessing.

" It is not right that war be classed with
pestilence and famine in our prayers. It should
liave an hour, a daily hour to itself alone." "

Of the states of the Union, Virginia and
TNorth Carolina probably suffered most in the

Civil War, Virginia furnished 165,000 sol-
<liers out of a population (excluding West Vir-
ginia) of 1,154,304. North Carolina gave

133,905, of which number 42,000 were killed
or wounded. The number of voters tn North

Carolina in 1861 was only 115,000, the popu-

* Compare with this
Scrald, "War is nor the surviva
survival of those who never ' fit.' '

' Mra. Roger A. Pryor, a Virgin

lation 992,622. In each case about 14 per
cent, of the population, first and last, went to
the war. The University of Virginia enlisted
almost as a body and suffered accordingly. Of
the students in the University of North Caro-
lina, from 1850 to 1862, 842 or 57 per cent,
enlisted in the Confederate Army; 312 of them
{34 per cent.) fell in service.

In the Union Army were 296,579 white and
137,676 colored soldiers from the South, be-
sides about 200,000 who had enlisted in North-
ern regiments.

XII. DOES HUMAN NATURE
CHANGE ?

How Human Nature Changes

One commonly hears war defended on the
ground that it is ingrained in human nature, and
*' human nature does not change," " So long
as nature produces red-blooded men, the sport
of war will endure." The thesis is maintained
in spite of the fact that (to continue the figure
of speech) most recent wars are made by " blue-
blooded " men, supported by professional War-
traders, men of " no blood " at all. In other
words, members of the privileged military caste v
bring on war, backed up by those whose only in-
terest is money.

An instinct for struggle is doubtless innate
in man but it can be turned to noble purposes
as well as to destructive ends. There are a
thousand lines of effort which demand finer
courage and inlenser devotion than those which
center In war. The qualities inherent in hu-
man nature are for the most part very simple
elementary Impulses, The form they will take
depends very largely on custom, tradition and
education. With changing conditions of so-
ciety the same impulse will manifest itself van-

WAR AND THE BREED

ously. The weakest mind is the one most gov-
erned by impulse or tradition. To think for
oneself, to suppress impulses, to overcome tra-
dition and convention is the highest ideal of
education. Human instincts change very
slowly, and by the long process of selection and
adaptation. Human customs, the vestment of
instinct, are formed rapidly and mainly by the
influence of association. And a great crisis in
the life of a man or a race may make a profound
alteration in the mental state on which manners
and customs depend. In the mind of every man
there exist impulses towards strife and destruc-
tion, which may be exaggerated or perverted
into murder, robbery or war, through persist-
ently wrong education.^ On the other hand,
every man has social instincts, which by proper
training contribute to friendliness and mutual
respect between men and tribes and nations.

1 A British officer writes thus to [Far and Peace (March,

191S):

" If you want to kill forever the itching for war, you
must try to make peace a little less respectable, a little more
spirited. For all your line metaphor, a self-acting machioe
is net such fun to handle as a rifle, nor a Guardian's meet-
ing so exciting as a bayonet charge. In so many thousands,
active service with all its discomforts and horrors, comes in
the guise of a welcome relief from the uncongenial slavery
of the counting house and the factory. You must inquire
whether desire for adventure as compared with the desire
for domination does not play a much larger part than you
had realized in that very complex attitude of mind which
you describe rather perfunctorily as militarism and whether
you cannot devise for us all some kind of return to nature
sufficiently alluring to satiate the savage in our breast*."

DOES NATURE CHANGE? 201

Civilized society has placed personal combat
under its ban, and with it the vendetta, the blood
feud, the feudal war, the bandit raid, every
form of lawless force save that of international
war. That the instinct for strife can be con-
trolled is shown by the maintenance of peace
within the nation. Peace between sister nations
would follow naturally, were it not that war is
legalized and officially abetted.

Tbe Visionaiy in History

That human nature does not change is at
most a half truth only. Human nature does
change very slowly, but human perspective some- \/
times very quickly. In the short course of re-
corded history human nature runs in much the
same grooves. In the long story of a strug-
gling race, changes in human temper are many
and varied. It is a matter of survival .and
selection. In our own time the angle of vision
is being rapidly, often suddenly modified. In
all times what was once in its degree right, be-
cause nothing better was attainable, becomes
hideously wrong when there is a choice of bet-
ter things. The rise of civilization is a move-
ment towards the best. It means suppression
of the second-best, the substitution of fore-
thought and justice for vacillation and violence.
There have been " visionaries," " peace work-
ers " through all the ages and they have labored
consciously or unconsciously for justice, for

clamored for it, demanding now, not the slain
in battle, but the living " nearest and best."
And the Visionary rose again, this time to plead
that the gods should be appeased, not with the
fair bodies of youth, but with dumb sheep and
oxen instead. At first, perhaps, out of fear
they gave no heed, but in the end he and his
like prevailed, and with the lapse of time, little
by little, men came to look with horror on any
altar stained with blood.

Two thousand years ago, the whole world
knows the story, the incomparable Visionary of
Nazareth raised his voice, proclaiming that all
men were brothers, Gentile and Jew, weak and
strong, rich and poor, all children of the same
Father. " The Prince of Peace " they called
him, for peace means brotherhood. But men
were in power who loved not peace nor brother-
hood. These rose in anger and destroyed him.
And yet his word was Truth, sinking deep and
long enduring, some fragments In the heart of
every one of us.

Among those who heard his sayings and re-
membered them was much variance of interpre-
tation. Every group came to have its schism,
and each divergent faction found the others

theless, give up the praclice. The chieftain inaisti, however,
that "It is absurd to pretend to preserve war while pro-
Ktibing cannibalism, for this is at once the principal cauie,
l^e ntccmry condition and the real justification i'

on of. it." , j

DOES NATURE CHANGE? 205

tainted by heresy, to be expiated only with
blood. To betray the faith meant death, for
death only would save others from contamina-
tion. Thus the racls and the pyre became in-
struments of faith.

Now once more the Visionary raised a voice,
protesting against all shaclding of the human
mind, and proclaiming man's right to call on
God each in his own way. " Dangerous doc-
trine this," the people said, and to a stake on
Oxford Common they chained him and his fel-
low Visionary, Ridley. " Be of good cheer.
Master Ridley," said Latimer, " We shall to-
day light such a candle, by God's grace, in Eng-
land as shall not be put out," And by the light
of this " Oxford candle " men saw the wrong
they had done, and the torch of intolerance
never again flared up so high in England,

On the field of victory the In-Group long
slew without mercy the conquered foe. One
day the Visionary came to plead for the lives
of the captured survivors. Better to keep
them as workers than to destroy them wantonly.
And helots being profitable, saving men's labor
in a world hard at the best, arose gradually the
great system of slavery, hurtful alike to master
and man. Whatever its phases in later days,
its primal motive was mercy.

But it came to pass, as time went on and peo-
ple more and more craved excitement, that they

chose strong men from among their captured
slaves and trained them to fight with swords in
the arena. Thus were brave men butchered
" to make a Roman holiday." But here again,
a Visionary stood up to condemn. It was the
monk Telemachus, who with his life stopped the
last gladiatorial combat. They disposed of
him easily, but that day of blood was passing.
Others saw with his eyes and sickened at the
sight. The system of slavery, however, still en-
dured, though as centuries passed the mind and
soul of man revolted more and more against it.

Fourteen hundred years after Telemachus,
arose John Brown who made his last stand
against the time-honored institution. When
they took him from the gallows at Charlestown
in Virginia and laid his body in the grave at
North Elba, where it " lies mouldering," his
soul, you remember, went marching on. " It
seems," said Thoreau at Concord, fifty years
ago in the old town hall, " It seems as if no one
ever died in America before. If that man's
acts and words do not create a revival, it will
be the severest possible satire on words and acts
that do." " Some eighteen hundred years
ago," Thoreau continued, " Christ was cruci-
fied. This morning, perchance. Captain Brown
was hung. ... He is not ' Old Brown ' any
longer. He is an angel of light."

Captured, wounded, on the floor of the old

DOES NATURECfEWJGE? 207

Armory at Harper's Ferry lay the Vision-
ary, John Brown. " No man sent me here,"
he said, " It was my own prompting and that of
my Maker. I acknowledge no master in hu-
man form. It is perfectly right for any one to
interfere with you so far as to free those you
willfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I have
yet to hear that God is a respecter of persons.
. . . You may dispose of me very easily. I am
nearly disposed of now, but this question is still
to be settled and the end is not yet."

And again they said, clergymen, professors
and journalists, " There have always been
slaves and there always will be. It is the end
and purpose of inferiors to take inferior places.
Human nature never changes." Nevertheless,
slavery was to pass away forever, even though
" for every drop of blood drawn by the lash,
another was drawn by the sword." And a mil-
lion men laid down their lives to prove that
though human nature might not change, yet it
could develop a wholly different point of view in
matters of right and justice.

More than once before our day Europe has
been reddened with brothers' blood. Feudal
lords fought against feudal lords, the men of
one faith took arms against those of another.
Soldiers of fortune peddled out for gold the
service of their marauding bands to one prince
or to one religion, and then to another. No

one was armed with the awful weapons of to-
day, but hate raged everywhere and was cher-
ished as a patriotic duty to an extent which we
of gentler rearing can scarcely conceive. The
worst manifestations of today come down in
direct line from the hatreds and cruelties of the
17th century and from which no part of the
Continent of Europe was then free.^

" Of all tyrannies of unreason in the modern
world," says Andrew D. White,* " one holds a
supremely evil prominence. It covered the pe-
riod from the middle of the sixteenth century
to the middle of the seventeenth, and through-
out those hundred years was waged a war of
hatreds, racial, religious, national and personal,
of ambitions, ecclesiastical and civil, of aspira-
tions patriotic and selfish, of efforts noble and
vile. During all those weary generations, Eu-
rope became one broad battlefield drenched in
human blood and lighted from innumerable
scaffolds."

In this confused struggle appeared heroes and

» Like conditions prevailed in Asia at (hat time. For
instance, at Nauwon, in Korea, three hundred years ago,
three thousand heads of the slain were pickled and for-
warded to the Japanese Shogun Hideyoshi, as evidence of
victory. Later at Suchon (he trophies, 39,000 pickled heads,
were found so burdensome that only ears and noses were
sent. In Kyoto still stands the stone monument of the
Mimi Dzuka or " Ear Mound," where they were trium-
phantly buried. And here again, in Japan as in Europe,
voices were raised for better things.

* Material quoted on (his and tv^o following pages !■
from While's StV£n Great Statesmen.

1109

martyrs, ruffians and scoundrels. The domi-
nant international gospel was that of Macbia-
vcUi, a gospel of malicious opportunism.

" Into the very midst of this welter of evil,
at a point in time to all appearances hopeless,
in a nation in which every man, woman and
child was under sentence of death from its sov-
ereign, was bom a man who wrought as no other
has done for a redemption of civilization from
the cause of that misery; who thought out for
Europe the principles of right reason in inter-
national law, who made them heard, who gave
a noble change to the course of human affairs,
whose thoughts, reasonings, suggestions and ap-
peals produced an environment in which came
an evolution of humanity which still continues."
Hugo Grotius spoke for the inalienable
rfghts of man, the right to be, to think, to live,
to travel, to trade, to use the land and the sea,
— rights which no authority should take away.
In his day he fought against the same old preju-
dice, the human nature that can never change,
the crimes that have always been and so must
ever be, the same " unreason, bigotry, party
passion, individual ambition, all masquerading
as saving faith."

In prison, in poverty, in banishment, the Vi-
sionary of Holland to whom more than to any
one else we owe such international justice as
is granted us today, may be granted when to-
day's conflict is over, wrote against war, against

210 WAR AND THE BREED

intolerance, against the double standards of
morality for men and nations, the idea that
what is wrong in the In-Group is right toward
the Outs.

" Few more inspiring things have been seen
in human history. Grotius had apparently
every reason for yielding to pessimism, for hat-
ing his country and for despising the race. He
might have given his life to satirizing his ene-
mies and to scolding at human folly. He did
nothing of the sort, but worked on, day and
night, to bestow on mankind one of the most
precious blessings it has ever received," the
blessing of international law in place of inter-
national violence, hatred and anarchy. " More
wonderful than the book was the faith of the
author. . . . He saw In all this darkness one
court sitting supreme to which he might make
appeal, and that court the heart and mind of
universal humanity. ' I saw,' said Grotius,
' many and grave reasons why I should write a
work on that subject. I saw in the whole
Christian world a license of fighting at which
even barbarian nations might blush. Wars
were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all
and carried on without any reference for law
Divine or human, A declaration of war
seemed to let loose every crime,' War to
extermination became the only means of obtain-
ing peace." The annulling of oaths and trea-
ties " inconvenient to keep " leaves, said WIl-

DOES NATITRE CHANGE?

liam of Orange, " nothing certain Jn the world."
And to build up a foundation of certainty whldi
should in time mean universal peace, was the
purpose of International Law.

A scholar, a patriot, a lover of his race, with
no army and no claque behind him, Grotius was
soon disposed of. " It had not been given him
to see any apparent result of his great gift to
mankind." From childhood till his death in
shipwreck on the Pomeranian Coast, he " had
known nothing but war, bigoted, cruel, revenge-
ful war, extending on all sides about him."
And when they took his body through Rotter-
dam for burial in his old home at Delft, stones
were thrown at his cofEn by the city mob. Yet
in all these two thousand years, no one else has
come nearer to the mission of Jesus of Naza-
reth, " The earth is upheld by the influ-
ence of good men. They keep the world whole-
some." The mantle of Grotius has not fallen
to the ground, it rests on the shoulders of many,
not one so great as he, but all imbued with the
same spirit of toleration and humanity.

After the seizure of Alsace and Lorraine,
Prussian revenge for old French outrages, the
first meeting of the Interparliamentary Union
was called at Berlin. This Union was to in-
clude representatives from all the congresses,
parliaments and self-governing bodies of the
world, and Its purpose was to bring about ra-

tional relations among the great nations. The
representatives of France refused to attend.
They would not go to Prussia to find themselves
and their nation insulted. One only, Frederic
Passy of Paris, took a broader view. " I will
go to Berlin," he said, " and I will not be in-
sulted." And he went, and took his part in the
work for belter understanding which should at
last make war unthinkable. The present writer
remembers, as one of the fine moments of life,
a visit to the aged Passy at his home at Neuilly-
sur-Seine, in which, forty years after, the vet-
eran peace-worker showed him the photograph
of the first meeting of the Interparliamentary
Union. In this picture, there in the central seat,
the place of honor, appears the brave deputy of
France.

Little by little, by one means or another,
arises the great appeal of the heart and mind of
universal humanity, the appeal to keep unrea-
soning anger out of the councils of the world,
to make the use of violence the last resort and
not the first in international disputes. In this
movement devoted women are coming to take
their part. Through the ages, woman has
borne the real brunt of war. It was a brave
woman of Austria, the Baroness Bertha von
Siittner, who first gave to the world the story
of war, its patriotism and its intrigues, as seen
from the woman's side. This vision

1 of J

DOES NATURE CHANGE? 213

women's suffering, set forth in fVaffen Nleder,
turned the current of thought for thousands of
other women. " H'ajfen Nieder," Madame von
Siittner once said to me, " is not the story of my
life, it made my life." She had glimpsed the
vision of a better world, one ruled by ideas and
not by bayonets. Today, when the old half-
imothcred brutahties have broken out again, the
I^^gue of women rises to plead for the sacred-
n^ss of human life, calling to men to stop this
wicked war.

Tifty years ago and more a great battle was
fc>vight on the hills above Desenzano, near the
bl«_ie Lake of Garda. There on the field of
Sc>lferino, more than forty thousand men killed
ar»<d wounded lay for three days untended under
tVic: hot June sun of Lombardy, the prey of flies
^'^d mosquitoes. In those merciless times a
'*''«>unded soldier, like 3 broken musket, was not
""•^rth saving. It happened, however, that
|ienri Dunant of Geneva, a tourist in Verona,
'c<i by curiosity went out at last to see the bat-
^cfield. There and then he touched one of the
"'"St modem notes in regard to war, human sym-
pathy. This, he said, is no field of glory. " It
".3 European calamity." And he set to work
"■'tb the help of the people of Desenzano to
""eiieve the suffering of that hideous day. Then
^^^ there began the Red Cross movement which
"^W spreads the world over.

WAR AND THE BREED

Dunant died at Heiden.in Switzerland, Octo-
ber 31st, 1910, having received the Nobel Peace
Prize in recognition of what he had done, not
for peace directly, but to make war a shade less
horrible.

There have been many Visionaries in history,
true to the hght they saw — men and women
who have given their lives for their fellows.
Thoreau spoke of Jesus and John Brown as
" the ends of a chain that is not without its
links." The Visionaries of the ages are links
of a chain which will not end. The causes they
serve shall outlast all opposition. The indi-
vidual is weak enough and easily disposed of,
but his soul goes marching on. In a high sense,
" human nature does not change," — it responds
eternally to the call of righteousness I

So many human Illusions and obsessions,
Crusades, Feudalism, Inquisition, Witchcraft,
each has gone Its way, and perished each In the
day of Its apparent triumph I When men come
to see nakedly what their wicked institutions
mean, they will no longer live and die to main-
tain them. By the same token. War is doomed.
If today's horror be not its death-throe, if we
must look forward to another, then all thrones
and empires will go down together. " God is
not mocked forever." Neither is manl

XIII. AFTER WAR, WHAT?

The Great War will eventually come to al JJ**""^ \

close through exhaustion, through tack of I
money, through star\-ation or through sorro^Yj
and mourning. There is at present (March,
1915) little prospect that it will end in any
sweeping victory. It may be that Jean de
Bloch was right and that the armies of todays
with their hundreds of miles of battle front are
too large to be maneuvered. Giant guns and
swift instruments of murder balance one an-
other. As armies become invulnerable, war-ac-
tivities have been more and more directed
against non-combatants. Little headway has
been made by either side in those features com-
monly regarded as legitimate warfare. Except
for the invasion of Belgium, the Germans have
accomplished little. Except for parrying the
stab at France, the Allies have so far made as
little headway. And everywhere non-combat-
ants have suffered with the armies.

The warfare at sea on both sides has been di-
rected mainly against the property of private
citizens. All this, raids on seaside resorts, the
capture of merchant ships, the sinking of fish-
ing-boats, the whole matter of War Zones,

X*;

215

2l6

WAR AND THE BREED

blockade and food contraband, is directed
against those who cannot strike back. The
only difference between this and old-time piracy
is that the modern free-hooters have framed
their own rules, while the outlaw of the past
knew no restrictions. Frederic the Great, with
the frankness of a King said: " As to war, it
is a trade in which the least scruple would spoil
everything. Indeed, what man of honor would
make war if he had not the right to make rules
that should authorize plunder, fire and car-
nage? "

Let us assume that there will be no victory

for either side, but that all nations concerned

will find themselves defeated. The treaty of

peace must be written at last. There are many

things we should like to put into this treaty,

1 /things essential to the future security and well-

k /being of Europe. But we shall not get many of

[them. We may not get any. It may he that

the drawn game will end in a truce, not of peace

but of exhaustion.

After the war is over then will begin the work
of reconstruction. Then will come the test of
our mettle. Can Europe build up a solid
foundation of peace amid the havoc of greed
and hate ? Constructive work belongs to peace ;
it may take fifty years to put the Continent in
order. When the killing is stopped, perma-
nently or for a breathing spell, the forces of law
and order must begin mobilization.

AFTER WAR, WH.\T?

There are many things wc need to make civil
ization stable and wholesome. Every gain
counts. We want foreign exploitation limited
hy law and justice. We want to have dipl
macy and armies no longer at the call of ad-
venturers. We want no more " red rubber,"
red copra or red diamonds. We want open
diplomacy and we want democracy. Whatever
is secret is corrupt, and the control of armies
by an unchecked few is a constant menace to
human welfare. The people who pay and who
die should know what they pay for and why
they are called upon to die.

"We want all private profit taken away from
war. We want to see armies and navies brought
down from the maximum of expense to the min-
imum of safety. We want to have conscription
abolished and military service put on the same
voluntary basis as other more constructive
trades. A direct cause of modern warfare is
the eagerness to find something for over-grown
armies and navies to do. We want to abolish
piracy at sea and murder from the air. Wc
want to conserve the interests of neutrals and of
non-combatants. We want to take from war at
once its loot and its glory. We hope especially
for an abatement of tariffs and the removal of
all obstacles that check the flow of commerce.
With a free current of trade the Eastern half
of Europe would lose its commercial unrest.
We cannot mend all the defects of Geography,

ited . , ^H
plo- ■

lE^^^^

218 WAR AND THE BRE]

but we might refrain from aggravating them.
Landlocked nations will not be so tempted to
" hack a way to the sea," if it is not made ar-
tifically distant by barriers to trade. We would
like to have nations pay their debts, not struggle
pjo rivalry of borrowing. We would welcome

^ I the day of fewer kings, all with limited au-

^■vthority.

Furthermore we would like to see manhood

M suffrage everywhere and womanhood suffrage
too, Councils of the People instead of " Con-
certs of Powers," effective Parliaments, not
mere debating societies without power to act.
We would like to see land-reforms, tax-reforms,
reforms in schools and universities. In judicial
procedure, in religion, sanitation and temper-
ance, with the elimination of caste and privilege
wherever entrenched. We would like to sec
every man a potential citizen of the country he
lives in. We would like to see the map of Eu-
,rope redrawn a bit (but not too much) in the
linterests of freedom and fair play. We would
like to see the small nations left as stable as
great ones, for smalt nations,^ have done more
than their share in the work of civilization.
We believe that a nation can have no welfare
independent of the individual welfare of its
people. That nation is greatest which has most

1 great nation in Europe, you mait

AFTER WAR, WHAT«

219

indmdual initiative along with most abundant
life.

We would like to sec Belgium restored to
the " permanent neutrality " which is her right,
and Luxemburg as well. We believe that the
" Balkans should belong to the Balkans." We ,
would like to see, if it may be, Constantinople "^
neutralized and autonomy restored to Alsace- ly
Lorraine, to Finland, to Armenia. We would
hear from the Danes in Northern Schleswig and
from the Poles in Warsaw, Posen and Galicia.
The people especially concerned should be con-
sulted over every change in boundary lines. We
would insist that the Hague Conference be made
up wholly of serious men, not baffled by diplo-
matists sparring for advantage. We would
like to see the Hague Tribunal dignified as the
International Court of the world, to extend and
create International Law by Its precedents. /■
We would like to have Judicial Procedure and
Arbitral Decisions everywhere take the place
of war talk and war preparations, to see the
channels of commerce opened wide, neutralized, v^
unfortified and free to all the world, — the Bos-
porus, the Dardanelles, the straits of Den-
mark, Gibraltar and Aden, the canals of Suez,
Panama, and Kiel as well. Above all we
should hope to have human life held as sacred
as the flag, and patriotism become " planetary,"
not merely tribal or provincial. Whatever is

220 WAR AND THE BREED

good for the world is good for every nation in
it. All this leaves task enough for the lovers
of peace. " Never again should the sword be
sheathed; it should be broken."

Not much of all this may go into the coming
treaty of peace. But the struggle will go on,
the most Intense since the days of the Reforma-

Ition. A few resolute men, reckless of conse-
quences, brought on the Great War. A few
men, equally resolute, could make war impos-
sible, if they had the backing their cause de-
mands. To get peace Is to do away with stand-
ing incentives to war. Only peace activities can
achieve this. And among these activities, he
who looks for It may find. In full abundance, the
long-sought " Moral Equivalent for War."

APPENDIX

In this appendix arc added a number of pertinent ex-
tracts which illustrate matters considered in the fore-
going pages.

A. THE LONG COST OF WAR'

Cald> Williams Saleeby.

The people who will live in the years to come get
none of the glory for which rulers wage war ; the)', at
least, are innocent; they arc at the mercy of the past,
which did not consult them ; but they must pay.

Here is the terrible argument. Take the case of
Paris when I write. No able-bodied man between
twenty and forty-five is to be found there. When the
boys under twenty reach that age, they too, if they are
healthy, will be sent away. All the able-bodied, all
who have good eyes and good teeth, who arc not lame
or deaf, who have sound hearts and lungs, must go
off, never to return in hosts of cases. But if the doctor
finds their lungs full of consumption, as scores of thou-
sands of lungs are, or thai their hearts do not beat u
hearts must beat on the march ; or, tf they cannot see,
or hear, or stand on their feet at all, then the men
stay at home and arc spared. So that war not only
demands a price in life, even of the victor, but the life
which war demands is always the strongest and fittest,
and healthiest and best.

1 W eitminiier Gaxetlt, Feb. ii, ijij.

224

APPENDIX

Every afternoon, nowadays, I take my daily walk
in Hyde Park, where thousands of young men are
drilling for what we call " Kitchener's Army." The
standard for admission is high, and has lately been
raised. The doctors reject a large proportion of all
whom they examine. In the park the two kinds of men
may now be daily seen and contrasted. The healthy
and vigorous and clean and keen are drilling; the dis-
eased and dirty and broken-down and idle are lying
about on the grass, looking on, smoking, and, doubt-
less, jeering in their hearts. These last we shall keep,
while those are soon going across the sea. Exactly
the same process has been going on among the armies
beside which, or against which, they are to fight. No
matter whether the system be voluntary or compul-
sory, the result is the same. Nor is it only the fine
qualities of body that must be sacrificed to war; fine
qualities of mind are demanded too. The coward may
stay at home, either by not volunteering or by pre-
tending to be ill when he is not. On the Continent
of Europe many a man purposely injures himself, or
shams illness, in order to escape military service. The
patriot, the man who loves his country — whichever
country it be — and would die for what he believes to
be her freedom and good name, goes and dies indeed;
but he who cares only for his own skin will stay be-
hind if be can. So he whom we, or any country, could
most spare is left to us, along with the deaf and blind, ,
the consumptive and crippled. Clearly it is a bad
business.

But it is vastly worse than at first appears, and
history proves it to be so. There is a fact of life called
heredity, which most dreadfully asserts itself in this
case. In consequence of heredity, which means that

APPENDIX

225

we are all largel}' dependent upon what our ancestors
were for what we can be, the future 0/ any race de-
pends upon the quality of those who become its fathers

None of the champions of war, who declare that
peace corrodes and ruins nations, have thought about
the matter deeply enough to learn that the argument
they quote is the most fatal of all to their own horrible
creed. For the truth is that war involves what real
students of this subject call " reversed selection " —
in which the best are chosen to be killed, and the worst
are preserved to become the fathers of the future,

B. MILITARY TRAINING IN THE
SCHOOLS

E. Adair Impey, of Dunfermline, Scotland-
Mr. Impcy {Military Training Considered as a
Part of General Education) divides the details of such
training into nine heads, the qualities of each being
briefly stated as follows: (See pages 105 and 106.)

I. First and foremost in importance is put the cul-
tivation of a "soldierly spirit." In so far as this
means capacity to bear fatigue, privation, and danger
cheerfully, little can be said against it, except that in
elementary schooU, at least, there is usually enough
privation without arranging for it in the curriculum;
and that the bearing of fatigue and danger, as well as
the capacity to act in combination, seem more naturally
fostered and cheaply brought about, al school age, by
organized games than by practicing imitation war-
fare. In so far as the " soldierly spirit " implies im-
plicit obedience to superiors, under all circumstances,

226 APPENDIX

without the guiding of individual conscience and under
fear of punishment, it is wholly an ti- educational, re-
pressing the personality instead of " leading it out,"
and stultifying initiative.

2. Imiruction in Camp Duties, acquisition of clean-
liness, smartness, etc. All that can be learnt in camp-
life is admirably suited to enter into an educational
scheme; for it allows of the simultaneous cultivation
of self-reliance and mutual helpfulness. It is educa-
tion by living — not by talking — but in its essence
this is not military, nor does it need any help from
military authority to be carried out effectively, as boys'
camps of all sorts have already shown.

3. Gymnastics. The War Office now recommend
Swedish Educational gymnastics, about which some-
thing must be said in order that the argument may be
complete. Their manual of physical training is simply
an addition to the growing literature on the subject.
It has no military bias, the exercises are selected and
designed for their effects on the body, so that all the
organs may be kept in a state of vigor and health,
capable of performing the wort required of them.
Training for the two sides of the body is equal, it is
adaptable to individual capacity, and in every inherent
aspect, progressive. Almost every movement occasions
an exertion of will-power, and in this and other ways
the system is well calculated to give the boy and girl a
physical consciousness of his or her own body and a
well- developed power of controlling it. It cannot but
infuse a sense of the dignity and honor of the human
body, a glory in it and reverence for it, which should
make the notion of planning its destruction intolera-
ble.

4. Infantry training consists of saluting, i

g, parading j

327

squad drill, shouldering, sloping arms, etc. The move-
ments involved, in so far as they are separable from
pure gymnastics, fall short of all the purposes of scien-
tific physical education. They are not selected for any
good effect they have on the body locally or as a whole ;
they cannot be shown to improve cither the structure or
function of the respiratory, circulatory, or nervous
systems, etc. They exercise one side of the body more
than the other; they comprise an unalterable and com-
plete set of movements, incapable of adaptation to age
or individual limits; and cannot be graded step by
step, in diiBculty of performance or in quality of effect,
as is essential to any true educational exercise. Though
well defined as to time and space, they soon become
completely mechanical, and fail even to occasion an
exertion of will-power. From the point of view of
physical education their value is nil ; for effective firing
on an enemy they are no doubt essential.

5. Marching in companies and running practice may
be innocent enough. Considered as muscular move-
ments, they are both elaborate reflex actions, and as
such lack the mentally educative effect of many other
kinds of movement, and do not justify much time be-
ing spent on them. Continuous marching certainly
trains the powers of endurance, and running especially
must be looked upon as physically educating to the
heart and lungs, so long as it is not overdone. But the
growing heart and organism of the youth are much
more fitting to make sudden frequent and even vio-
lent efforts than prolonged steady effort. What is ac-
tually intended under this section is, however, to pro-
duce the prolonged steady effort necessary for rapid
and distance marching. These may not be injurious
to the well-fed and fully-grown recruit, but to the

APPENDIX

growing and promiscuously- fed or under-fed boy, the
result can but be exhausting and devitalizing, if it fali
short of actual heart-strain.

6. Musketry insiruclion. Aiming and firing arc ex-
cellent hand-and-eye training, and as such might have
real educative value, were it not for the fact that the
nerve mechanisms associated with hand-and-eye work are
ripening to their full development at a much earlier
age than that at which a child can he expected to hold
a musket. Aiming and hitting, catching and throw-
ing, have unquestionably been foremost among the ac-
tivities which have developed and maintained the hu-
man race, and on this account might well receive more
attention than they do in the planned school-life of
the boy and girl. If only our military enthusiasts could
be persuaded to increase and improve the opportunities
for hand-and-eye training in the lower departments
of the schools, how much less time and money would
have to be spent on training the recruits to shoot
straight! According to the War Office, the rifle is by
far the most deadly of all weapons, accounting for 85
per cent, of all deaths in battle, in recent wars. Rifle-
practice therefore must be acknowledged paramount
in an education for man-killing, but as hand-and-eye
training it is too elaborate, too costly, and of necessity
comes too late, to have any school value.

7. Visual training and judging distance arc useful
factors in everyday life, and are perfectly well acquired
in field games, by such things as " lining out," keeping
one's place in the field, watching the flight of the ball,
etc., as well as in swimming, diving, and all forms of
jumping sports.

8. Night-operations. As it is probable that even the

APPENDIX 229

War Office would exempt school-children from drills at
night, this section need not be discussed.

g. Bayonet fighting. This as training to kill may
be excellent, but as general physical bodily exercise it is
very poor. It consists of two forms of thrust, a parry to
cither side, a stroke with the butt of the rifle, and va-
rious forms of tripping an opponent. The movements
are restricted, without variety, and ugly; they produce
neither the grace nor skill of single-stick and fencing.
Fencing we advocate as good all-round exercise, calling
for work from every muscle and most finely coordi-
nated nervous work too. Since the combat is single,
extreme mental alertness and physical agility arc
needed and produced in maneuvering for openings to
thrust, and in parrying a great variety of possible at-
tacking strokes. Bayonet fighting, on the other hand,
is always carried out in close lines, and at the charge,
so that it is not possible, nor permitted, to maneuver
for openings to thrust. Alertness and agility are at a
discount, for the success of the strokes depends on the
momentum with which they are delivered rather than
on skill, and it is hard to see any higher physical value
in their practice than the cultivation of well-directed
brute- force. . . .

Roughing it, cooking and eating rather unappetizing
food, sleeping out of doors, are all character- forming.
Tree climbing and obstacle scaling, swimming and
rescuing, scouring and scouting, train the mental and
physical faculties in a way which cannot be done in
the school and make the school child resourceful, fear-
less and fit in himself, a thousand times more helpful
and unselfish at home.

C. MILITARY SERVICE IN GERMANY
Oswald GarrUoQ Villard.

In a chapter on Militarism and Democracy in Ger-
many,^ Mr, Oswald Garrison Villard describes the
effect of military service on the people who have car-
ried this service to the highest degree of perfection.
From this work, the following paragraphs are con-
densed. (See pages 40, 41, etc, and 101.)

It is claimed that German militarism is one and
indivisible with German culture. " Without it," say
the German professors, "our culture would long since
have been wiped off the earth." It is also lauded as
a democratic institution, as well as having been at this
very hour the salvation of Germany, beset by the troops
of half the world, yet carrying on the war on the soil
of other peoples.

Like the nation, the German army is curiously two-
sided, for it is both a democracy and an autocracy,
with the autocracy on top. It is a democracy because
within its regiments are men of every rank and caste,
of every degree of learning and every degree of poverty
and wealth. It is democratic because it is compulsory
and because it spares none. No amount of pull or
power can free a German from his year or more of
service. Thus when the call to arms came on the
4th of August, it was literally an uprising of the peo-
ple. Men of every class went forth singing to die.
Barriers of all kinds were leveled. In the enthusiasm
of that tremendous hour caste and rank were, for the

' Germeny Embatlleil, a Neiv Inlerfirefalion, by Oswald
GartiBiin Villard. Charles Scribner'i Sona, New York, 1915.

moment, forgotten. The entire citizenship was drawn
together by the leveling infiuence of devotion to a single
cause. For the moment all Germany was a democ-
racy. Democratic were the forces that stormed Liege
and swept like irresistible gray-green waves of the sea
through Brussels, until they were nearly in sight of the
defenses of Paris.

There is no discrimination among regiments when
the war is on. Whatever the prestige of the regiment
in time of peace, it meets with no other consideration
than that of the most plebeian infantry when the fight
is under way. The German army enforces, so its ad-
herents claim, a fine standard of personal conduct, of
physical vigor and of loyalty to King and country
throughout the nation. It takes the humblest conscript
however ignorant and lacking in self-respect and turns
him out a decent healthy citizen with fine physique,
excellent carriage, inured to heavy burdens, long
marches and absolute obedience.

The great lesson of subordination to authority is
thus learned and its methods are applied just as rigor-
ously to the son of a millionaire or an aristocrat. A
genuine comradeship with men in all walks of life
springs up, and with it the ability to feel as a German,
to think in terms of the nation whose patriotic songs
one and all sing as they march, for singing is a wise
requirement of the German military training. The
wonderful machine leaves its impress on all those who
for a time are its cogs. ■ To this is attributed some of
the unequaled efficiency to which the nation owes its
octraordinary rise and prosperity. The army is re-
garded as a vital part of the German system of educa-

But to all this there is another side. It is hard to
conceive of a closer corporation or a more autocratic
body than the German General Staff. It is the army
to which it gives the dominating note. It is a group
of aggressive, hard-working, exceptionally able officers,
envied by soldiers the world over because the nation
does exactly as they tell it. To question the Gen-
eral Staff would be like questioning the Deity. The
General Staff having declared that it was necessary to
invade Belgium, nobody doubts that fact. One may
start controversies over sacred theology in the Kaiser's
domains, but not one as to the all-embracing wisdom
of the General Staff, for on that there have never
been two opinions since 1866 up to the time of this
writing. Every officer must subscribe fervently to the
overbearing pretensions of the military clique, to the
autocratic attitude of the army toward the civilian
and the nation. They must carry themselves as mem-
bers of an exalted caste where adoration of their uni-
form borders on pagan worship.

In brief, the army is a narrow caste with professional
ideals of a mediaeval character scrupulously maintained
in the face of modern progress. Anything that smacks
of democracy is anathema. The army is the chief
pillar of the great landlords, the Junker and the aristo-
crats as it is of the throne. The aristocratic nature
of the army is not affected by the bourgeois antecedents
of some of the officers. Many a man of plainest lineage
may, if he is a good soldier, rise to high rank. To do
this he must have married or inherited money, for no
officer lives on his pay.

Democracy does not flourish in continental barracks.
German discipline is as unyielding as iron. Brutal
olficers can make existence a hell for any man they do

APPENDIX 233

not lite. The number of suicides runs high," The
presumption is always in favor of authority. The
forms of abuses practiced in the German army exhibit
great variety. . . ■

When Rosa Luxemburg, the fiery Socialist orator,
declared at Freiburg last year (1914), in speaking of
the case of a horribly abused soldier at Metz: " It is
certainly one of those dramas which are enacted day
in and day out in German barracks, although the
groans of the actors seldom reach our ears," General
von Falkenhayn, as war minister, prosecuted the " Red
Rosa " for libeling the army. The case was promptly
dropped when her counsel announced that they pro-
posed to call one thousand and thirty eye-witnesses to
such wrong-doing, mostly in the form of "slaps in
the face, punches and kicks, beating with sheathed
sabers and bayonets, with riding- whips and harness
straps; forcible jamming of ill-set helmets on the
wearer's head ; compulsory baths in icy water, followed
by scrubbing down with scrub-brushes until the blood
ran; compulsory squatting in muscle-straining attitudes
until the victim collapsed or wept for pain ; unreason-
able fatigue drill, and so on. There were also abun-
dant cases of absurd and humiliating punishments in-
flicted by non-commissioned officers, such as turning
the men out of bed and making them climb to the
top of cupboards, or sweep out the dormitory with
tooth-brushes." Now, single men in barracks are
never plaster saints, as Kipling, the exalter of British
militarism and hater of German militarism, has made
it quite clear to us. Sporadic cases of abuse happen in
our own American barracks ; but no one will, it is to be

' Said to average one a day, (or tome lime before the war.
D. S. J.

APPENDIX

hoped, assert that in this phase of its existence the Ger-
man army even faintly suggests a democracy.

. . . Not that the other type of officer is lacking.
As the writer knows by personal experience, there are
plenty of kindly, gifted, and charming officers who
are neither fire-eaters nor war- worshipers, who write
no Jingo books and do not subscribe to Bernhardi.
They despise the intrigues, the narrowness, and fre-
quent immorality of the small garrison, and the dissi-
pation of life in the big cities. They recognize the
medieval character of the code of honor, but they arc
helpless to change it, and as they grow older the more
ready they are to think an intense militarism the nor-
mal condition of society. If there are many officers
of this type, particularly in the south German armies,
the trend is, however, toward the overbearing arro-
gance of the Von Reuters, which is again merely saying
that militarism unchecked and unsubordinated to civ-
ilian control will run to excesses everywhere.

D. MILITARY SERVICE IN FRANCE

AlberE Lion Gaii

(Our best account of military discipline from the stand-
point of an inieltigeni conscript is that furnished me in a
private letter' by my friend and colleague, Professor Al-
bert Lten Gujrard. See pages loi and i;iO

I served 309 days — we counted them from the
very first, and shouted every morning " Encore lant et
la ftiile!" — as second-class private in the 129th regi-

APPENDIX 235

ment of the line, stationed at Le Havre. I was paid
one cent a day, and in addition was entitled, every
ten days, to a packet of tobacco at half its market
value. That was in 19OJ-04, under the old (1889)
law. University students, teachers, artists, artisans
and craftsmen (ouvriers d'art), ministers and men
having a family to support {souliens dt famille) had
to serve, nominally one year, practically ten months.
The rest — two thirds of the contingent — served
three years. Any one mentally or bodily deficient was
totally exempted. At present, the universal term of
service is two years, without exception. Many of the
lialt and maimed, formerly totally excused, are em-
ployed in office work or in the repair shops, which
offer a sorry sight. Candidates for the priesthood
were for a while placed in the regular troops. Now
they serve in the ambulance corps, as do a few deter-
mined Tolstoians who stubbornly refused to touch a
weapon.

My impressions of the army were unfavorably col-
ored, for several reasons, and my testimony is open
to discount. First of all, I was a widow's only son,
and was brought up very strictly by my mother. Then,
the Dreyfus case was hardly over at that time (it was
before the second " revision," and the final triumph
of justice), and for the last four or five years I had
been an enthusiastic Dreyfusist and attended number-
less antimilitarist meetings. I found myself among
workmen from the mills of Elbeuf and Rouen. Nor-
mandy is a fine country, and the race that lives there
still offers splendid specimens. But it is rapidly be-
ing ruined by an evil greater than militarism — alco-
holism; alcoholism to a degree which I as a Parisian

did not dream of. Children seemed to be brought up
on " Cahados" (cider brandy). The result can be
imagined.

Finally I was stationed at Le Havre, the second
seaport in France. The barracks rose right on the
quays, and I could see in all its hideousness the gross im-
morality which prevails in all shipping centers. On
the very first day, our sergeant carefully explained to
us when to go to the brothels (on the day of sanitary
inspection), and how to tell a diseased woman. I re-
ceived a shock which I remember clearly to this day.
Yet the fault lay not with militarism, but with social
conditions. These being granted, our sergeant's elo-
quence was to the point ; and there was some advantage
in my being compelled to realize " how the other half
lives."

All educated conscripts, serving one year, were seg-
regated, and had to study for becoming reserve offi-
cers. I wanted most particularly at that time not to
become an officer, even in the reserve. So I did not
go in with the special company of dispensei, but re-
mained with the " skimmed milk," The social and
intellectual level among the dispenses must have been
much higher. I am not so positive about the moral
level. They were kept more busy, had more intelli-
gent work to do, and their instructors — officers and
non-coms — were picked men. But I had the advan-
tage of seeing more of the real thing. I did not suffer
in the least from my position. The fact that I was
the only educated conscript left in the company {I was
then twenty-three, had spent two years in England,
and held a few degrees) was a great advantage, I
was made instructor of the illiterate — three half-
witted peasants, two of whom did not even know that

France was a republic, I gathered a library of 6oo
volumes for the use of the soldiers. I coached my
sergeant major for an examination, Thus I had con-
genial work instead of the usual fatigue duties (clean-
ing the room, etc.). and after a few weeks of gradual
adaptation I had a fairly pleasant time of it.

From the material standpoint, life in the army is
on a higher level than the lowest among the poor
(leaving out the destitute), although not quite up to
the average. My terms of comparison are the Lon-
don slums, on the one hand {I spent a year at Toynbee
Hall in Whitechapel), and on the other hand, the
conditions which prevail among ordinary working peo-
ple — my neighbors and acquaintances — in Paris,
Food is coarse and monotonous (boiled beef every
morning), prepared in bulk by unskilled cooks, but it
is abundant, and cleaner than the fare afforded by
cheap restaurants. I tried the canteens, the non-coms'
mess (by special privilege) and the popular eating-
houses near the barracks, and went back in disgust to
the plain, wholesome regimental beef. Cleanliness is
enforced in an unpleasant, rough, but efficient way;
hair cropt short, frequent hot shower baths (thirty in
a room at times!), sea-bathing in the spring, on a
beach of brick bats and tin cans; walls kept white-
washed and coal-tarred ; lavatories disgustingly primi-
tive, but disinfected every day. Our captain " took
pride " in the feet of his company, and inspected them
repeatedly. The amount of work was not excessive
for any but weaklings — soon weeded out and put to
sedentary work; it was generally hard and prolonged
enough to prevent habits of laziness from being formed.
On the whole, a very unpleasant experience for any
person of fastidious tastes and habits; tolerable for

healthy individuals of an adaptable type ; satisfactory
for the great majority.

From the mora! point of view, the question is more
complex. I no longer hold, as I did in the fever of
my Dreyfusism, that the army is the school of all the
vices. Such exaggerated statements would harm the
best cause. The indictment may have been true of
the old professional army, recruited exclusively from
the lowest strata, and entirely separated from the rest
of the nation. Yet 1 have known veterans of the sec-
ond empire who were simple-minded, honest, kindly,
delightful old fellows. A regiment is not much worse
than a big factory. Factory life in Europe is bad
enough ; military service extends its evils to agricul-
tural laborers, and also to men who would otherwise
have escaped these lowering influences. As for traces
of moral uplift in the army, 1 have totally failed to
notice any. War may be a stern school of virtue:
barrack life is not. Honor, duty, patriotism are feel-
ings instilled at school; they do not develop, but often
deteriorate, during the term of compillsory service.
Daily drudgery deadens enthusiasm. That is prob-
ably why so many French Nationalistes tried to dodge
the law and shirk their military duty, in order to re-
tain their patriotic feelings intact.

The iirst evil of military life is that young men are
transplanted away from home, and no provision made
for sane, wholesome entertainment. Military clubs
have greatly developed of late. They are still too
few, and so " philanthropic " in character as to frighten
most men away. A soldier is free every evening
after five. This would be dangerous for most young
workmen, who do not know what to do with their
leisure hours. The absence of any home circle makes

APPENDIX 239

it much worse. For a long time the principle was to
send young recruits as far as possible from their place of
residence. The idea was to break down local difier-
eoces, to prevent the army from siding with the popula-
tion in case of political or social conflict (the brief
mutiny of a southern regiment at the time of the wine-
growers' riots in 1907 shows that this is a real danger),
and to foster the old spirit of exclusive loyalty to the
flag. Now, the contrary principle of local (regional)
recruiting has been adopted, with a view to more rapid
" mobilization," and also under the pressure of public
opinion. Even then, it was impossible for most soldiers
to go home oftener than once a month. Uneducated
young men, friendless and idle, turned loose in the eve-
ning in a big city, could do little good. There were cer-
tainly temptations to drunkenness and debauchery
greater than those which would assail the regular work-
ing man. And unfortunately the repressive measures
were a farce. The non-commissioned officers, so strict
about trifles, sympathized with the drunkards and
shielded them, and the penalties were so severe that the
officers themselves often preferred to close their eyes.
The old ideal of the eighteenth century soldier, " le win,
tamour et le tabac," remains unchanged to this day.
Home-sickness, chiefly among peasants, the squalor and
monotony of barrack life among clerks and even stu-
dents, often lead to a sort of dull despair, which seeks
relief in drink (sometimes in suicide, too — there are oc-
casional epidemics). On the evening of July 14, there
were hardly half a dozen men sober in the whole com-
pany of a hundred.

The officers had no moralizing influence. The su-
perior officers were seldom seen and greatly feared.
The subalterns (captains and lieutenants) belonged to

J40 APPENDIX

three groups : ( i ) A few clever, ambitious young men.
These, all too rare anyway, scorned the routine of bar-
rack life. They spent b'ttle time with the men; they
studied, or managed to be sent abroad or in the colonies
on a mission, or served at headquarters and on the gen-
eral staff. (2) A large group of young men of means
and leisure, not a few belonging to the old nobility.
They serve because it is a family tradition, because a
man must do something, because of the social prestige
of the uniform — not seldom with a view to the larger
price which officers command in the matrimonial market
in the form of a dowry. They are, on the whole, ami-
able, inefficient and totally without prestige with their
men. The old military caste, still the backbone of the
German army, is merely an uninteresting survival in
France. Distrusted by the government on account of
their royalist opinions, without hope or desire of reach-
ing the highest positions, they give a contagious ex-
ample of indifference and idleness. (3) Men risen
from the ranks — efficient drill-masters as a rule ; not
seldom kind with their men in a rough way ; but often
coarse, uncultured, intellectually paralyzed by twenty
years of garrison life. The pay is small, the standard
of living set by the officers of the second group is high ;
plebeian or free-thinking intruders are mercilessly
snubbed. Silent or open rivalry of aristocrats and com-
moners, of school- trained and unschooled officers ; a gen-
eral spirit of uneasiness, listlessness and ennui ; the most
blindly patriotic men not in sympathy with modern
France ; with all these causes of division, officers as a
body can have no real influence on their troops.

As for the non-commissioned officers, I think that j
Lucien Descaves's sordid and disgusting book, Sous- 1
Offs, does not slander them. The pay is exceedingly

APPENDIX

small (from twelve to thirty cents a day), the pros-
pects of promotion not very bright, the work not at-
tractive to a normal, self-respecting man. Only actual
failures, or men who shrink from responsibilities in civil
life, will take up military service (in subordinate ranks)
as a profession. Working men despise them exactly as
they despise flunkeys — and they have all the vices of
flunkeys — laziness, arrogance and servility. They arc
undoubtedly inferior to the average foreman or head
clerk. In the army, authority is much more absolute,
obedience more strictly enforced than in civil life. An
act of disobedience, " talking back," means not " the
sack," but imprisonment, the court martial, the disci-
plinary companies of Africa or even death. Yet in civil
life authority generally implies some degree of real su-
periority; in the army it is often vested in mer
grantly inferior to the average. Hence a spirit of suL
len opposition among the soldiers. The only enduring
bitterness which my passage in the army left me was
due to the pettiness and tyranny of these underlings.
Yet I found among them one unusually able and well-
meaning young man, a sergeant-major who died three
years later as a lieutenant.

The most demoralizing features in French military
life are due to an incontestable progress in the French
mind — its gradual loss of faith and interest in military
glory. Henceforth the army is considered as useless,
dangerous, a burden without a compensation. Authors
of school books may be censured for daring to print such
opinions, but the great majority of the French hold
them in their hearts. Nay, there is a prevailing sus-
picion among workingmen that the military establish-
ment is kept up for the sole benefit of the capitalists,
and the reckless use of troops in case of labor conflicts

gives color to the contention. In missions, explora-
tions, aviation, rescue work and on colonial battlefields,
the French have shown the same enthusiastic spirit as of
yore. But dreary barrack life, without a clear purpose,
without an ideal, is more than they can bear. Hence,
a universal spirit of indifference and laziness; the main
point is to reach the end of the year without trouble, and
with the least possible effort {vulga " iirer au ftane").
Those who succeed in shirking duty are admired and
envied as " debrouillards." A disease or an accident, if
not too painful, is considered as a stroke of luck; it gives
a soldier a few days of far-niente. The military doctors
have to exercise the closest scrutiny on malingerers and
shammers. To waste time and to escape punishment
are the only ideals. There is no incentive to good work.
In this respect military life is vastly inferior to indus-
trial life. Men who serve only two years do not aspire
to promotion ; by working hard for fifteen months, they
could barely manage to become sergeants for the remain-
ing four or five. They can't be turned out for inefficient
work. I believe the barracks were the school in which
the French working-men, naturally industrious and con-
scientious, learned the terrible habit of " Sabotage."
No legitimate superiority is recognized in any way.
Education, refinement, cleanliness — verbal, physical
and moral — are causes of suspicion. Brute strength,
profanity, capacity for strong drink, are titles to respect.
Many a workman's son, trained in technical schools, as-
piring to better manners and a higher ideal than those
of his first associates, is during his stay in the army
dragged down back to his old level.

So my general impression is that the army has on the
whole no uplifting influence whatever; and without be-
ing so black as it was sometimes painted, it has a lower-

APPENDIX 243

ing effect on all except the very lowest. I must, how-
ever, mention a few hopeful signs of transformation,
which seem to point to a compromise between the army
and modern democracy.

The first is the absolute equalization of the term of
service. Before 1 905 the wealthy classes had either
escaped service altogether (paying a substitute, or buy-
ing themselves off directly ) , or served one year in special
corps while the rest served five or three. They con-
sistently opposed the general adoption of the one-year
term of service, which they themselves enjoyed. Now,
ft will be easier to further reduce the term of service,
first to one year, then to six months. With such reduc-
tion the dangers of military life decrease {less idleness,
more interest), while its good features (as a school of
citizenship and physical culture) are retained.

2. For the last ten years an immense effort has been
made for transforming the army into a great educational
agency. Le Temps, always opposed to any form of
progress, recently published a skit in which civil pro-
fessors in the army (professors of civics, hygiene, geog-
laphy, rural economy, " prevoyance," etc.), complained
that drills, marches, and manceuvers were interfering
■with their teaching. Nay, pacifist lectures were at one
time regularly given in French barracks (under General
Andre). Of course it would be more sensible to spend
the money directly on education. But the gradual
" humanization " of the army is an excellent thing.

3. At the time of the postal strites, of the railroad
strikes, of the Seine flood, the army was called upon to
fulfrll various duties, and did it admirably. There is
a great danger in turning the army into a universal
strike-breaking corps, or a body of " compulsory scabs."
On the other hand, this industrial use of the army points

244 APPENDIX

to a mighty transformation; the war forces could be-
come, as William James intimated, reserve forces of
peace, for great public works, sudden emergencies, na-
tional disasters.

We must look forward to a gradual transformation,
for militarism will not be rooted out in one day. Costly
as it is, the nations grow rich in spite of the burden.
There is no doubt but France is amassing wealth at a
rapid rate, and fast becoming the banker of the world,
while Germany's progress is stupendous. France's toll
on the foreigner (investments abroad, and expenses of
tourists) alone more than pays for the interest of the,
debt, and the cost of the military establishment. Con-
servative papers, like Le Figaro and Le Temps sound
notes of warning when new educational or social laws
are proposed ; but when a reduction of military expendi-
ture is mooted, they prove conclusively that the country
is marvelously prosperous, and could afford a few more
army corps and a dozen super- Dread noughts.

Besides the spirit of mutual distrust which centuries
of hostility have fostered, and which the recent attitude
of Germany has revived, the strong point of militarism
remains its sentimental appeal. Dreary barrack life is
still linked in popular imagination with the somber but
grandiose epic of ancient wars. Men serve their time
when they are young and buoyant, when no hardship is
unendurable, when even the memories of unnecessary
fatigue, squalor, petty tyranny, are transfigured by the
general glow of youth and hope, I for instance look
back upon these days of servitude with a sort of pleas-
ure I remember the fun, the marching at the sound of
bugles and band, or singing away on the highroad ; the
mock guerilla warfare around Norman farms in the
early morning ; the incontestable grandeur of a divison in

APPENDIX 245

baidtiiniy. Soldkring is 3 pmt)- game, although mur-

iti'm^ it an ug!>' buttocM. It it ponible that wars may

be iboliilM»] gmcratioiK before armies are suppressed.

(Profeiut Gu*r*(d add* die folloiring ootc. May, tjij-)

It mutt be remembered that this article refers to the

conditions that prevailed in the French Army twelve

yean ^o. The revival of the military spirit, due in

^ minor degree to the dismal failure of Dreyfusist

^*adicalisni, and chiefly to the threatening attitude of

^^rmany, has radically modified these conditions.

^or the last few years, the army and the nation have

^*en one as never before. So much the worse for the

/^*tion, but so much the belter for the army. The

,^ J*oilus" of 1915 have little in common with the

taxeurs au flanc " here described.

E. A DIGRESSION ON UNIFORMS '

Alfred G. Gardintr.

^ So long aa the world allows the Kaisers and the
"^*is!ars and the Napoleons to play with its destinies there
''"■ll be war, I would have no king who wore a uniform
**" piranced at the head of soldiers. The head of a State
^■»«3uld be its chief citizen, and he should come on to the
^^»-ade ground as the symbol of the civic power. Make
**>*"ri a soldier and he will soon subordinate the council
'■"amber to the parade ground. Give him a uniform,
%^ld epaulettes and a brass helmet and he will soon be-
6'n to think of government in the terms of Krupp and
ft-rmstrong. His diplomacy will be the diplomacy not
" iiilernal peace but of external conquest. It will look
a^toad- rather than at home. He will think of his peo-
ple not as citizens whom he can serve, but as soldiers
' Daily Nevji and Ltader, London.

whom he can command, and every art of peace, every
victory of science will be diverted to the purposes of

In the black coat of the President we have the asser-
tion that peace and not war is the goal of human society
and that the highest interest of the State is the well-
being of its people. The day that the French President
or the United States President should put on a uniform
to review the Army would be a day of sackcloth and
ashes for all who wish well to those countries. Nothing
, but the necessity of wearing civilian clothes (and a lira-
i ited term of office) would keep so perfect an example of
the Napoleon breed as Theodore Roosevelt from dc-
1 veloping dreams of world-empire, Let France, after
' this war, look after its plain-clothes President. He
will be in imminent peril.

F. THE QUEEN'S DAUGHTERS IN
INDIA '

The following is a copy of a Circular Memorandum
by the Quarter-Master General in India, dated 17th
June, 1886, and said to have the approval of the Com-
mander in chief (Lord Roberts). (See pp. 111-117.)
Circular Memorandum. — Addressed to General
Officers Commanding Divisions and Districts.
Office of Quartermaster General
In India,
Army Headquarters, Simla,

17th June, 1886.

In former years His Excellency, the Commander in

Chief, has frequently impressed on General and Com-

1 From The Queen's Dauglileri in India, by Elizabeth M.

APPENDIX

247

manding Officers the necessity for adopting stringent
measures to reduce the chances of venereal disease
spreading more widely amongst the soldiers of the
Army.

At the present time His Excellency desires me to give
prominence to the following points which appear to be
specially deserving of consideration by the Military and
Medical authorities in every command.

The treatment of venereal disease generally is a mat-
ter calling for special devotion on the part of the medical
profession.

To mitigate the evil now experienced, it is not only
necessary to deal with the cases of troops in hospitals,
but to arrange for a wider-spread effort, which may
reach the large centers of population, and, in this view,
His Excellency has suggested to the Government of
India the desirability of establishing a Medical School
from which native practitioners trained in the treatment
of venereal diseases may be sent to the various towns
throughout the country.

It can no longer be regarded as derogatory to the
medical profession to promote the careful treatment of
men and women who are suffering from a disease so in-
jurious, and in mentioning the step which His Excel-
lency has taken, he desires me to indicate the extreme
importance in the first instance of medical ofHcers be-
ing prepared to study and practice this particular branch
of their professional work, under the assurance that
their doing so must certainly result in the recognition of
their efforts.

Whether or not the Lock Hospital system he ex-
Andrew sod Katherine C. Buahnell, London, 1899. See alio
an article, "Bella, Brlla, Horrida Billa," by F, J. Corbel,

tended, it is possible to encourage in every Cantonment,
and in Sudder and Regimental Bazars, the treatment of
those amongst the population who are suffering from
venereal disease. The bulk of the women who prac-
tice the trade of prostitution are willing to subject them-
selves to examination by Dhais or by Medical Officers,
if by their so doing they can be allowed to reside in regi-
mental bazars.

Where Lock Hospitals are not kept up, it becomes
necessary, under a regimental system, to arrange for the
effective inspection of prostitutes attached to regimental
bazars, whether in cantonments or on the line of march.

The isolation of women found diseased, and their
maintenance while under treatment, becomes also a
question to be dealt with regimen tally.

In. the regimental bazars it is necessary to have a
sufficient number of women, to take care that they are
sufficiently attractive, to provide them with proper
houses, and above all to insist upon means of ablution
being always available.

If young soldiers are carefully advised in regard to
the advantage of ablution and recognize that convenient
arrangements exist in the regimental bazar, they may
be expected to avoid the risks involved in association
with women who are not recognized by the regimental
authorities.

The employment of Dhais, and insistence upon the
performance of the acknowledged duties, is of great
importance.

The removal of women who are pronounced to be in-
curably diseased from cantonment limits should be
dealt with as a police question in communication with
the civil authorities.

In regard to the soldiers themselves, there are means

APPENDIX

249

t the disposal of Commanding Officers to enforce a
e careful avoidance of contact with women who are
diseased. Where venereal disease is largely prevalent,
the increase of the regimental police in controlling the
movements of the men is imperative.

Frequent medical inspection should be ordered, and
every endeavor should be made to make the men realize
their own responsibility in assisting their officers, by in-
dicating the women from whom disease has been ac-
quired.

Much may be done to encourage a feeling amongst
the men that it should be a point of honor to save each
other where possible from risk in this matter.

The medical inspection of all detachments before
leaving or entering a cantonment should be enforced by
General Officers.

In conclusion, His Excellency desires me to impress
upon all concerned the necessity for meeting the present
difficulty by increased individual effort.

However much legislation may be desired to check
the spread of disease, it is necessary to abandon a sense
of false modesty, in dealing with the matter in question,
and to recognize that, as in the case of all other diseases,
its open treatment, and the widespread knowledge of its
disastrous effects, are the surest means of effacing it in
each locality.

(By Order) E. F. Chapman,

Major General, Quartermaster General in India.

2SO APPENDIX

G. THE ADVENTURES OF SIMPLICIUS
SIMPLICISSIMUS

(From the ■ncicnl chronicle of th« Thirlf Years' Wir
of the SeTCDleenlh Century, by C hri atop her ui Griromela-
hauien of Rechen in the Black Forest (1624-1676], WE take
the folloning illuitrative paragraphs. The traaaUtion it
by Dr. Karl G. Rendtorff. See page 170.)

The first thing the soldiers did when they had come
to the house of my master was that they stabled their
horses right in the rooms. Then every one of them got
busy in his own way, but whatever ihey undertook
meant devastation and ruin. For although some of
them began to cook and to fry so that it looked as
though a gay and jolly feast was to take place, there
were others who searched every room of the house from
the cellar to the garret. Others, again, tied up bundles
of clothing, linen, and all sorts of household goods as
though they intended to start a junkshop ; but what
they could not take along was smashed and ruined.
Some ran their swords through the hay in search of
hidden treasures. Some shook the feathers out of the
featherbeds and filled the bags with bacon, dried mest,
and other things. Others, again, tore down the stove
and broke the windows. All utensils made out of cop-
per and pewter they knocked together and packed up
the bent and broken pieces. The bedsteads, tables, and
benches were burned, although many cords of dry wood
were lying in the yard ; and all pots and pans were
broken. Our girl was treated in the barn in such a
way that she could not move. The farmhand was put
down on the ground and a pail of horrible liquid dung
was forced into his mouth ; this they called " giving him
a Swedish drink." In this way they made him lead

APPENDIX

251

them to a hiding place where ihcy caught many people
and many cattle and brought them back to our farm.
Among the people so caught was my master, his wife,
and their daughter.

Now they started to take the flintstones from their
pistols and to set the screws to the thumbs of the fann-
ers, and to torture the poor fellows as though they had
been witches. One of them they put into the oven and
started the lire. They placed a rope around the head of
another one and twisted it so tightly by means of a stick
that the blood came out of his mouth, ears, and nose.
In short, every one had his own way of torturing the
peasants. According to my childish way of thinking,
my master was treated the best, for he confessed with
laughter what the others confessed under pain and with
the most pitiful lamentations ; and such honor was be-
stowed upon him beyond doubt because he was master
of the house. He was placed close to a tite, then he
was bound so tight that he could not move hand or foot,
whereupon they rubbed the soles of his feet with wet
salt which our old goat was made to lick off; and this
tickled him so that he almost burst with laughter.
This appeared to me so funny that I laughed with all
my heart for company's sake, or because I did not then
know any better. In such a fit of laughter, he con-
fessed where the hidden treasure could be found, which
proved to be much richer in pearls, gold and jewels than
one should have expected, considering that he was a
farmer. What happened to the married women, their
daughters, and the girls, I cannot tell because the sol-
diers would not allow me to look on. But I remember
very well that one heard pitiful cries, and I guess that
I my master's wife and her daughter did not fare any bet-
l ter than the test. During all this misery, I turned the

2J2 APPENDIX

inderstand what |

spit and had no cares because I did not u
all this meant. During the afternoon, I helped to
water the horses, and thus I happened to come near the
girl in the barn, who looked much dishevelled, I did
not recognize her at first, but she said with a weak
voice : " Oh, boy, run away, for otherwise the soldiers
will take you. See that you get away ; you can see how
terribly . . ." She was unable to say more,

Simplicissimus, who has been brought up in the wil-
derness, without any knowledge of the ways of the
world and of men, sees for the first time in his life sol-
diers and peasants engaged in a savage fight in which no
mercy is shown. He meditates about this, and comes
to the conclusion that, "There must be two different
kinds of men who have nothing in common, just as there
are two kinds of animals, the wild and the tame."

H. THE DECLINE OF GERMAN LITERA-
TURE IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY '

professor Karl G. Rendtorff.

The period from 1170 to 1230 marks a climax in the
development of German culture. It was the era of
the great emperors of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the
age of chivalry; it was the time when Germanic epic
poetry found its culmination in the Nibelungenlied ;
when the court epic reached its height in the works of
Hartmann von der Auc, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and
Gottfried von Strassburg; when the Minnesong flour-
ished and found its loftiest expression in the exquisite
songs of Walther von der Vogelweide. In fact, the

* Here printed for the tirsi time. (See piKci i£6 md 167.)

APPENDIX 2i3

freshness and strength, the imagination and idealism, the
productiveness and perfect technique which characterize
the works of this period have caused It to be known as
" the first classical period of German literature."

This period came to an abrupt end about the year
1230 and with it the development of German literature
received a sudden check. After all this wealth of imag-
ination and vigorous literary activity there followed a
period lasting almost three centuries the characteristic
features of which are shallow conventionality and ster-
ility. This stagnation cannot possibly be mistaken for a
natural reaction which we sometimes observe after a
rime of great literary productiveness, a period of hiber-
nations, so to speak; It was too complete for that and of
too long duration. It was a total standstill. If we
were to represent the development of German literature
graphically, the period after 1230 should be indicated
not by a downward curve but by an abrupt drop.

This complete break in the continuity of German
literary thought and life has, of course, not failed to at-
tract the attention of the scholars. Yet in most cases
they have been satisfied with noting the fact; and, con-
sidering the importance of the phenomenon, compara-
tively little has been offered by way of explanation.
And what little there is does not seem convincing.

We have in the main two theories diametrically op-
posed to each other. Scherer (Gesckickte der deut-
schen Lilteratur, p. 231} holds that the natural growth
of Middle High-German poetry was thwarted by an ex-
ternal force, the church, at a time when it had not yet
exhausted its resources and was capable of develop-
ment along many lines. " Middle High-German
poetry," he argues, " did not decay from within, but
was deprived of light and air from without; the old

254 APPENDIX

enemy of secular poetry, the German clergy, commenced
with redoubled power a new attack which was this time
successful and decisive for a long period," This theory
meets with an emphatic denial in Battels' Geschkhte
der deulschen Lilteralur, vol. I, p. 56. Bartek believes
that chivalrous poetry died from natural causes at a
time when it had completely outlived itself and he at-
tributes this decay to the fact, " that the time ivas not
yet ripe for a revival of literature by realism or by an
intelligent imitation of the classical models of an-
tiquity."

It should be stated here that both Schercr and Bartels
have contented themselves with merely presenting a
theor>% making no attempt to prove it. And it should
also be stated that both of them, at least in this con-
nection, take into consideration the literary develop-
ment of Germany only, paying no attention to the po-
litical and economic conditions of the time.

Modern science has taught us the futility of trying to
solve problems while confining ourselves to the narrow
limitations of one particular field of work. A solution
of this problem can only come from a study of its con-
nection with the dei'elopment of German civilization as
a whole. We cannot separate the literary life of a peo-
ple from its religious, political, and economic Ufc;
we are unable to interpret the literature of a people on-
less wc know the ph>-sical, intellectual, and spiritnal
conditions which produced it.

^^^lat then was the social and intellectual background
for the poetry of this period?

German literature of the so-called " first classical
period " cannot be called the genuine escpression of the
soul-life of the German people for it was confined al-
most exclusively to one class of the people ; it was writ-

APPENDIX 255

ten by and for the small body of knights, der Ritter-
itend. It was a Siandespoesie, the literary expression
of the sentiments of one exclusive class, knighthood, the
product of a culture in which only a comparatively
small group of the nation participated.

The predominating position held by the knights in
the literary life of the 13th century is a startling phe-
nomenon. There is something incongruous about the
fact that the exponents of the warlike life of the nation
should be the only ones to voice the poetic and literary
sentiments of the people. This fact can be accounted
for only when we realize that the Rilterstand of that
time really represented the pick and (lower of the Ger-
man nation, not only physically but intellectually as
well. For the Rilterstand had not yet become the ex-
clusive nobility into which it developed tn later times.
It still was open to any freeman or even serf who had
conspicuously distinguished himself by deeds of physical
courage or by his mental powers.

This is not the place for 3 comprehensive or critical
study of the rather obscure origin of knighthood. Yet
I wish to point to a few facts regarding the history of
knighthood that may help to prove my assertion that it
was the pick of the nation. Feudal aristocracy of the
middle ages was the natural result of two leading
classes of the people growing into one, one of them con-
spicuous because of its intelligence and administrative
ability, the other one distinguished by its energy and
physical prowess. The first class consisted of the so-
called " Ministeriales," a body of retainers about the
person of the king attending to the royal service in high
and low positioos. Because of their official position and
their ability they soon gained a leading part in the life
of the nation. They are the forerunners of what still

256 APPENDIX

exist in Germany as BtamUnarutokratie. chev still play
a predominant part in the social and poiidcal liic or
Germany. The second are the " Ritter," maaateil
troopers who devoted their life to professional waz&nc,
who came into existence as a class about the Cosdi ctn-
tury, at a time when the old Gennan anny. f^H M g oa
foot, and consisting of every freebom Gciiuu wb
could bear arms, came to be supplanted by an anBf of
trained soldiers fighting on horseback. These t-i^fc—
were the old freeholders, but after about 1150 tfaor
ever decreasing number was supplemented by sct^ vAd
bad won distinction by their courage. Both of ilieae
groups were alike in that they received fiefs in [ wyiMtMt
of (heir services and so, in the course of time, tbey wek
welded into one. They formed the RiltmUatd with
ite peculiar Slandnkullur and, as has already heat
stated, with a StandetpneiU of their own. They de-
veloped their own code of honor, their StanJestkre.
and they were supported by a highstning <elfcanscious-
ness and a firm belief in their own value, their Stamdes-
beumsiliein. And yet they were not altogether cut off
from the nation as a whole. Many of them had still
recently risen from the masses and the simple emotions
that swayed the man of the common people still ^1-
pcaled to them. Of course, it is not to be assumed that
all talent and genius of the nation was confined to this
one class, but owing to the social conditions of the time,
it was here only that the medieval German man had op-
portunity for culture and freedom, that he could find ex-
pression for his individualit}'.

A very important fact to be remembered in connec-
tion with this is that the knights at that time were the
only class of the German people who, separate from
and independent of the church, had produced a culture

APPENDIX 257

of their own and had, in contrast to the pale asceticism
of the church, developed a healthy and natural concep-
tion of life based upon the national German character.
The literary expression of this new vigorous attitude to-
wards life is the poetry of the first classical period.
This poetry must, to some extent, be called artificial ; it
undoubtedly voices the sentiments of a limited class of
the people only, yet it is a much truer expression of the
German Volksseele than we find in the literature of the
preceding centuries.

For ever since Germany had been christianized, its
literature had been in the hands of the clergy and had
only served the needs of the church. The duty assigned
to art in all its phases was simply to present, within nar-
row limitations, by means of stereotyped forms, the
teachings of the church. This appears not only in the
literature of that time but also in all art. The imagina-
tion was fettered to subjects that had been represented
so often that it was impossible for the individual artist
to exercise originality. Feeling was stifled under the
weight of mere repetition and the Volksseele of the
German people found no expression in art. But at this
moment the Ritterstand suddenly came forvi'ard and
wrested the art of poetry from the hands of the clergy.
The imagination which had been suppressed and dis-
torted so long seized upon and assimilated all the ma-
terial which knighthood had gathered in foreign lands,
in Italy and even jn the Orient, and where else the fate
of war or the crusades had taken them. It quickly
mastered and even improved upon the technique of its
French models. And the result is that burst of glorious
art called " the first classical period of German litera-
ture,"

And now to return to our original question: why

158 APPENDIX

did all this glory vanish so suddenly and so completely?
Shall wc believe that the pressure of the church an-
nihilated it or is it true that it had outlived itself and
died of old age?

While having this problem in mind I read Dr.
Seeck's Geschkhte des Vntergangs der ant'tken Welt
(vol. I, p. 270), and I was struck with the parallelism
between the intellectual conditions existing in Greece
and Rome at the time of their decay and those found in
Germany towards the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty,
a period marked in Germany by the rapid decline of its
political supremacy and, in literature, by the abrupt end
of the first classical period.

Dr. Seeck views the matter not only from the stand-
point of the historian but also from that of the biologist
and in this way reaches conclusions differing very
widely from those generally accepted. He recognizes
that intellectual and moral qualities are transmitted by
men to their descendants. He attributes the downfall
of the ancient world not to any physical degeneration of
the people but to the intellectual stagnation which was
due to what he calls "die Ausrottung der Besten."
This systematic extermination of the best was caused in
Greece as well as in Rome by the endless internal con-
flicts within the nation in which the nation's best blood
was drained and people of less strength of body and
mind lived to propagate the race. So the Greeks, whose
creative genius has furnished inspiration for all times to
come, rapidly deteriorated. Their originality of
thought disappeared and with it their political prestige.
In Rome the intellectual decadence is less striking, for
the Romans have never reached the exalted position of
their more conspicuously gifted neighbors. Here the
decadence became more plainly discernible in the polit-

APPENDIX 259

ical downfall of the nation. The Romans became a
nation of cowards and the decadence set in just at the
time when the wholesale slaughter of men for political
reasons had begun. The lack of courage, so evident in
the national life, is also manifest in the decay of the in-
tellectual life of that period. For does it not take cour-
age to produce a new thought? Is not every great deed
in the field of art and science as much a proof of charac-
ter as of talent? But of courage there is no evidence.
There is stagnation everywhere. We find the poet and
the artist content with copying the old models or bent on
outdoing the old masters by means of technical skill,
striking motives, or rich adornments. No one dared to
enter upon new fields.

From Seeclc's study of the downfall of the ancient
world the foUowinE deductions may be drawn ; when-
ever in the course of internal wars or revolutions the
strong men of a people are systematically exterminated,
even for a relatively short period, and the propagation of
that race is thus left to the mediocre and the weak, the
inevitable result will be the degeneration of that people.
For the propagation of a race is governed by the same
inexorable laws of heredity as are those which govern
the propagation of the individual. And this degenera-
tion is bound to result not only in the political downfall
of that people but will show itself in its decadence in
the realm of culture. A people hitherto strong and
creative will quickly become a race of epigones, weak
and decadent, without productiveness and intellectual
strength, at best able to imitate the thoughts of their
stronger forefathers.

The parallelism between the ancient world and Ger-
many during the 13th century is easily drawn. In
Greece and Rome as in Germany we find culture con-

36o APPENDIX

fined to a limited class of society. What we would call
" the people " did not yet contribute to this culture nor
were they directly benefited by it. In Germany this
limited class of the nation was represented by knight-
hood, or, to be more exact, by the knights of a relatively
small section of the country, for the literary and, to a
large extent, the political activity of Germany was then
concentrated upon Swabia, Bavaria, and Austria, while
the North and the Northeast remained much less active.

During the latter part of the I2th and during the
first half of the 13th century, knighthood in these south-
ern parts of Germany became decimated owing to the
continuous bloody wars in which Germany was en-
gaged. I need not give here a complete review of the
political history of that time inasmuch as the historical
documents fail to give an answer to the question that
would interest us most, namely, the question as to the
loss of life in the ranks of the knights. No one has so
far computed this loss, at least I know of no such at-
tempt, and the histories that I have consulted seem to
take no interest in this question. And yet this loss of
human life must have been appalling. And the knights
who bore the brunt of the battles suffered the greatest
loss.

Let me instance only those bloody wars which, owing
to their fatal ultramontane policy, the Hohenstaufen
dynasty waged in Italy. Again and again powerful
German armies crossed the Alps in order to crush the
flourishing cities of northern Italy, especially Milan.
Sieges of long duration, bloody battles, constant guerilla
warfare, a climate hostile to the northern warriors,
famine and epidemics, as well as poison and the dagger
of the Italians, did their work, and of those glorious
armies only small remnants returned to Germany.

Again religious enthusiasm and the spirit of ad- ^
venture induced the best and most energetic among the I i
German knights to follow the summons of the cross. I •
Thousands of them perished or were slain on the peril-
ous marches through the deserts of Asia Minor, many
were carried ofiE by epidemics in the overcrowded Italian
ports before they even could embark, while whole armies
were killed on the fields of Palestine.

Very great was the loss of life in Germany during
the constant wars between the Guelfs and the Ghibel-
lines, wars so bitter that brother would rise up against
brother and no mercy was shown. Many knights also
fell in the incessant border wars carried on against the
Slavs in the attempt to regain the country east of the
Elbe and to colonize it.

Another factor largely contributing towards ex-
tinguishing the best blood of knighthood was that the
service of the church appealed to the best and keenest
minds of that time. For the higher positions in the
church implied not only the possibility of doing much
good, they meant honor and opportunity, as the whole
diplomatic service and most of the influential govern-
ment positions lay in the hands of the higher clergy.
And, of course, the men holding such church positions
were forced to live in celibacy. A large number of
knights joined one or the other of the semi-religious
orders of knighthood beginning to flourish at the time
of the crusades and they, too, were forced to live in
celibacy. Asceticism and the spirit of renunciation
drove many knights into the monasteries.

These factors combined, all of them working with a
tremendous destructive force, decimated in the 1 2th and
13th centuries the ranks of the German knights. But
knighthood did not only lose in numbers, it lost in '

262 APPENDIX

ijaality and to tiaixxer. Its besr blood disappeared
aid "oo^ the weaUo^ ramioeil to propagate the
ace." Tlu mi n moA tlie more serious because the
more static an iasmmiaa dunlir had become the more
csdasm it grew. Its ranks were not replenished and
no new Mood was infused.

My omclusiaa then b simply this: Just as in the
ancient i^-oiid so in Germany lonards ihc end of the
middle ages the best died out and, owbg to the social
and econontk conditions existing in Germany during the
I2tli and 13th centuries, " the best " were the kni^ts.
And with them died their peculiar culture, chivalry,
as well as their poetiy, a flower that could grow on no
other soiL I do not deny that other causes, mostly of
economic nature, contributed towards the decline of
knighthood, but the main factor, I hold, was the phys-
ical degeneration brought about by the incessant wars
of that period. The natural and inevitable consequence
of this physical decay was the mental decay of knight-
hood, and a glaring symptom of this mental decay is the
decline of German poetry in the i3ih century.

There is a point of contrast, however, between the
ancient peoples and the Germans of the 13th century.
The gap between the intellectually strong class and the
mass of the people was much wider in Greece and Rome
at the time of their decline than in mediceval Germany.
As a consequence, with the extinction of the best intel-
lects in Greece and Rome the nation as such suffered a
much greater loss than Germany did through the loss of
its knighthood. In Greece and Rome it caused a lower-
ing of the intellectual level of the nation as a whole
which resulted in its political downfall; in Germany it
meant only the extinction of one class and with it a com-
plete stagnation of the literary life of the nation, while

APPENDIX 26s

intellectual pursuits in other lines not cultivated by the
knights were not affected.

Slowly a new class, the Biir^ersland (bourgeoisie),
arose to take the place of the Ritterstand, and with the
growth of this new class the trades and callings which
they had been following gradually developed into the
dignity of arts. Thus architecture which so far had
been but a trade, assumed a predominant role, Gothic
architecture began to flourish, and with architecture
there came the art of the sculptor and the painter.
Gradually the burgher appropriated the field once pre-
empted by the knight, and a new literature, which was
in fact the obscure beginning of modern German litera-
ture, arose. As I have stated before, this new literature
was at first marked by the tendency to imitate the older
models in form and in contents. The new poets seemed
to have but the one desire to acquire a mastery of the
form and technic bequeathed to them, and so bent were
they upon this labor that it left them no energy to find
a new and original note. When the burghers at-
tempted a literary expression of their own life they did
not rise above the commonplace, and it is pitiful to sec
how when they feel the lack of imagination and origi-
nality, they borrow expressions and figures from their
models, expressions which once had a concrete meaning
and value for chivalry but which could mean nothing to
the poets of a period that had outgrown chivalry.
They had not yet been able to find new poetic values
adapted to their own way of thinking. Poetic imagina-
tion had doubtless been concentrated in knighthood and
when knighthood died German literature came to an
abrupt and total standstill.

APPENDIX

I. PEACE AND DEGENERACY'
Will H. Irwin.

No war in history was ever so severe as this. What
wc call civilization has produced most powerful and
Subtle devices for taking life. Conversely, no other
war has brought forth such remarkable, such excep-
tional human courage. Those who advocate war for
war's sake are illogical and wrongheaded in nothing
so much as in their illusion that men " grow soft in
peace," that without war, the " manly qualities die
out."

The Canadians who scaled " Hill 60 " at Yprcs
were raw troops judged by the old standards and they
came from a dominion that has been at peace for a
century. It is futile to say they were " backwoods-
men " and therefore accustomed to something re-
sembling war. Some of them, it is true, were wheat
farmers of the Saskatchewan, miners of the Klondike,
or voyageurs of the great rivers. Further, not a few
were native born citizens of the untamed Western
United States. But as many or more left desks in
Montreal, Ottawa or Vancouver to go to war.

When war is forced upon a nation, as it has been
upon the more civilized nations of Western Europe, it
is, of course, necessary to fight hack. It is especially
necessary in this case, if you believe in maintaining a
blood-bought democracy. But let us be honest, even
in the midst of the struggle. Peace has brought to
Europe, not decadence, but such manly fiber as the
world never knew before. Perhaps this has happened
because the men of manly fiber have had a chance un-

' From ihe San Franciico CliranUle.

APPENDIX 265

der peace to live and breed their kind. One suspects
that just to live well in this complex, modern world
— to be deaf to siren songs, to be calm in adversity,
to keep working, to endure bereavement and disap-
pointment, to break untrodden ways through the
wilderness of industry, commerce and science — that
all this breeds enough of manly fiber. After this war
let no worshiper of bleeding gods put in his sermons
of valor the statement that peace breeds degeneracy.
It is not peace which does this; it is too much war.

'i 4

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