UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 8 3955 AND THE BREED DAVID STARR JORDAN wm ^ ^0.-^ UNtVl b-TY OF CAL!FORNIA SAN DIE0O oH«,fflaswfflf(ff"|'«° .„, r. ';g5't)1718 3955 Tl Central University Library Un,versi,y Of California. San Diego Please Note: This «em is 3ub;ec„oreca.,. Date Due CI 39 (7/93) UCSD Lib. WAR AND THE BREED The Relation of War to the Downfall of Nations BY DAVID STARR JORDAN chancellor ofLeland Stanford Junior University BOSTON THE BEACON PRESS 25 BEACON STREET G^OG ■Xi:. LIBRARY SCR.IPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LA JOLLA. CALIFORNIA G^OG Copyright, 1915 The Beacon Press, Inc. To ANDREW DICKSON WHITE who taught me to see in HISTORY not a succession of events, but a segment of human life. evaipetv. (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 title 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 University, California. March 20, 1915. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE I. INTRODUCTION i II. FACTORS IN ORGANIC EVOLUTION . . 3 Organic Evolution 3 Variation . • 4 Heredity 5 Selection 7 Segregation 9 Reversal of Selection 10 III. HUMAN GENETICS 12 Nature and Nurture 12 Meaning of Human Progress 14 Blood Will Tell 15 Artificial Selection 16 Return of the Fairies 17 Value of Individual Initiative 19 Law of Quetelet 22 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 38 Militarism and Industrialism 41 Militarism and Private Right 42 Militarism and Nationality 45 CONTENTS PAGE V. THE WAR SYSTEM AND RACE SELECTION 47 Franklin's Views 47 Other Early Observations 49 Novicow and Richet 52 War as Race Suicide 57 War and Stature 61 Ammon's Argument 67 Observations of La Pouge 69 Traumatic Neurosis 73 Hrdlicka's Observations 73 Battlefield Infections 77 Losses in War 79 Are there Compensations? 82 Ruskin's Testimony 88 Social Darwinism 90 Do We Exaggerate? 98 VI. MILITARY CONSCRIPTION . . . . . . loi The Nation in Arms . , loi Compulsory Service loi Military Drill as Physical Training . . .104 The Boy Scouts 108 The Australian Plan 109 Eugenics of Conscription no VII. THE WAR SYSTEM AND WOMEN . . . n8 Selection among Women 118 The Barbaric Drop 119 Womanhood and War 120 War Brides 123 Excess of Women after War 126 VIII. WAR SELECTION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 128 The Fall of Rome 128 Seeck's Interpretation 134 Effects of Race Crossing 138 CONTENTS PACE Greece 141 Macedonia 146 Samarkand 148 IX. MILITARISM AND WAR SELECTION IN WESTERN EUROPE 150 France 150 Spain 161 Paraguay 163 Germany 164 X. MILITARISM AND WAR SELECTION IN GREAT BRITAIN 172 Cost of Empire 172 The Picked Half Million 178 Tommy Atkins 183 The Non-resistants 184 Scotland 185 XL THE UNITED STATES AND WAR . . .190 War Selection and the Republic .... 190 War's Aftermath in Virginia 194 XIL DOES HUMAN NATURE CHANGE? . . .199 How Human Nature Changes 199 The Visionary in History 201 XIIL AFTER WAR, WHAT? 215 APPENDIX A The Long Cost of War : Saleeby . . B Military Training in the Schools: Impey C Military Service in Germany: Villard . D Military Service in France: Guerard . E A Digression on Uniforms: Gardiner . 223 223 225 230 234 24s CONTENTS PAGE F The Queen's Daughters in India: Andrew and BusHNELL 246 G SiMPLICIUS SiMPLICISSIMUS: Grimmelshausen . 250 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, 19 15, 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 are 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 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. 11. 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 forms, 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 race of organisms, man, animal, or plant, comes 3 WAR AND THE BREED 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- ORGANIC EVOLUTION 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 WAR AND THE BREED 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 but 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-matlngs 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 E\ OLUTION 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 countless ancestors, " numberless out of the end- less ages," not a single one, brute or man, ever died In infancy, an amazing record were It not shared by every living creature on the whole Earth ! 1 For the interposition of the hand of man modifying con- ditions of survival, the term Artificial Selection is used. 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 off 10 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 Charity, 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 2 " La guerre a produit en tout temps une selection a rebours." (Novicow.) ORGANIC EVOLUTION ii been created. By wise charity 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 Eiithenics, 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 Euthenics correspond to " Nature and Nurture," as earlier defined by Mr. Galton. Eugenics and Euthenics must supplement each other. Nature depends on Nurture for normal 1 'Eiiyevela^ the condition of being well-born ; Eu5eve/a, the condition of being well brought up. 12 HUMAN GENETICS 13 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 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 are. 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 obstinate and will come running back even though you expel 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 15 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 Will Tell 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. i6 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 Selection 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 17 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. Return 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 19 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 personal 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 slums, 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 21 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 Caesars, 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 ' Gamete, the bearer of hereditary traits within the germ- cell. 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 23 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." Working's 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 jelly" as the young queen-bee is fed, and thus raised to a higher class, distinct from the workers. 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 25 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 Poi- 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, Splrochaete, 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 book 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 Racial 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, 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. Racial 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 29 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. There 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 Mendellan 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 31 Welsh and Cornish; also Scotchmen, Highland and Lowland, Manxmen, Ulstermen and Irish- men. 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 is 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. Racial 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 docs 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 System " 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 inefficiency 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 menace. 1 The effects of Military Conscription are treated in the following chapter. 34 THE WAR SYSTEM 35 The War System has its foundation In the medlzEval conception of nations as rivals or ene- mies, each using Its abihties 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 mihtary 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 2 An illustration of the above is given in the Memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe, as thus quoted and condensed by Henry Noel Brailsford in The War of Steel and Gold. " There was (in 1889) some serious question of provoking a war with France, and the main reason for hurrying it forward 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 was obsessed by the painful reflection, that if the inevitable war was postponed much longer he would be compelled, as a superannuated veteran, to witness the triumphs of a younger rival. In the end it was found im- possible to provide Count Waldersee with a European war, but to the astonishment of mankind the Kaiser did, before he reached the age-limit, arrange a punitive ex- pedition in China for his benefit. If he reaped no glory by it, the Chinese will not soon forget his prowess against non-combatants and movable property." THE WAR SYSTEM 37 by armed force, which points directly towards war. The War System 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. To be- gin with, all armies are chosen by selection. 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 are left 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 38 WAR AND THE BREED 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 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, Civllism, 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 39 the 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 element is that mental bias which moves people otherwise Intelligent and peaceful to think of ev^ery 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 peril. This has been two or three times repeated! 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- 3 The word "culture" is here used in its ordinary English significance. The German " Kultur " refers rather to a particular group of social adjustments. THE WAR SYSTEM 41 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. Militarism and Industrialism 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." Militarism and Private Right 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- THE WAR SYSTEM 43 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. * War and Peace, March, 1915, quoted by C. E. Fayle. 44 WAR AND THE BREED " The absurd talk about this being a war against mihtarlsm 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 a 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 nationality 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 ^Memoirs of the Life of Samuel Romilly, by his sons. 2 vols. 1842. vol. I, p. 69, quoted by James Parton and by James Brown Scott. 47 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 are proud and whose traditions we cherish, RACE SELECTION 49 are not produced and made prominent in war in ways impossible in peace; but the misfortune and the scourge of war lie in 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 2 Villerme, L. R., " Extrait de Notes MS relative h la Stature et au Poids de rhomme, lesquelles notes ont ete trouvees dans les papiers de feu Tenon, membre de I'lnsti- tut de France," in Annales d'Hygiene Publique, i'"^ Serie, vol. X, pp. 27-35. 1833. Quoted by V. L. Kellogg in Military Selection and Race Deterioration, Carnegie En- dowment for Peace, Series, 1915. 50 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 sufii- 2 Villerme, L. R. Memoire stir la Taille de I'Homme en France, in Annales d'Hygiene Publique, i""" Serie, vol. i, PP- 551-339. 1829. RACE SELECTION 51 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. 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 undersize or infirmity) . According to the report of the * Benoiston de Chateauneuf. Essai sur la Mortalite dans I'lnfanterie Fran^aise, in Annales d'Hygiene Publique, i™ Serie, vol. lo, pp. 239-316, 1833. 52 WAR AND THE BREED 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 ensmalled 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- quirement. It is at present four feet and ten inches ( i 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 18 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.' " Novicow and Richet The late Professor Jakov Novicow of the University of Odessa, one of the most learned RACE SELECTION 53 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 is 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 of 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 condensed from Novi- cow's La Critique du Darivinism 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 Novicow 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 SS 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, is 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 Richet,^ 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 Passe de la Guerre et I'Avenir de la Paix. 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 1 8 15, 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 guerre, ce sont toujours les memes qui se font tuer." RACE SELECTION 57 especially advantageous for the coming genera- tions, if they are to be taken into account." War as Race Suicide " The Great War," says Romain Holland, is " a sacrilegious conflict, which shows a mad- dened Europe ascending its funeral pyre, and like Hercules destroying itself with its own hands." " Each nation justifies its own share in the present 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- tion, one would like to know what form a war of self-destruction would take. ' Your King and country need you ' is the patriotic appeal, and those who respond are immediately thrust by King and country as fuel into a smoking furnace. . . ." ^ Says Professor Kellogg, " War to the biol- ogist 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 kinds, 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 vi^ell 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 babies, 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, suffer 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." * Beyond 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 little 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 Cost 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 iov 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 10 lyestminster Gazette. RACE SELECTION 61 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 victori- 11 " Just off the southern shore of Newfoundland lie the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon — rather pathetic ves- tiges of the broad domain France hoped to possess on this western continent. The simple folk in this retired colony have been asked to send 800 men to the war. 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 betterment for generations to come, are now at sea on their 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 winnowed. Should they return 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 villages and towns and cities of almost all Europe the same process is at work. The war is gnawing at the vitals of our race like the vulture that tortured Prometheus." (Edwin D. Mead, in the Boston Herald.) 12 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- 62 WAR AND THE BREED 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 critical 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. peans with an estimate of the average of the Europeans after the war is over: Present European American. European. After War. Average height 68.5 in. 67 in. 65 in. Weight 150 lbs. 141 lbs. 136 lbs. Strength of arms ii49i lbs. 1,208 lbs. 836 lbs. Strengrth of legs 2,195 'hs. 1,846 lbs. 1,428 lbs. Strength of trunk >,332 lbs. 1,090 lbs. 818 lbs. Total body strength. ... 5,018 lbs. 4,144 lbs. 3,082 lbs. Chest measurement .... 34.2 in. 33.5 in. 32.5 in. Chest expansion 3.5 in. 3.2 in. 2.8 in. Lung capacity 240 cub. in. 225 cub. in. 205 Cub. in. Lung strength 81 mill. 72 mill. 60 mill. Circumference of head.. 22 in. 20.5 in. 20.8 in. » This table is quoted by Prof. Herbert Eugene Walter of Brown University, in the Philadelphia Inquirer. RACE SELECTION 63 " 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 (18 18) 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 1 8 13 and on, of the young men born in the years of the Revolutionary Wars ( 1792-1802), 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 piplngest 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 dysgenic features of militarism. In the French army in France, Algeria, and Tunis in the 13-year period, 1 872-1 884, 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! 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 SELFXTION 67 Amnion'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 13 Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre NatUrlichen Grund- lagen." Jena, 1896. 68 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 1 87 1 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 {gestdhlt) 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 ^^^1 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 69 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 ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ 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 Pouge 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 WAR AND THE BREED 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 " {"ffestdhlt") and "hardened" {" ahgehdr- tet") 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 18 13. In 18 13, 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 71 of 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- 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- tected from the direct attack of the enemy." 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 ^"d 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 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- ^^ Materiaux pour la Geographie Anthropologique de I'Herault; Bull de la Soc. Languedoc de Geographie 1894. fasc. 3. 4. 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 and 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 progress. 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 v/ith 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 73 Traumatic Neurosis " The anthropologist," says Henry Scofield, " 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 Traumatic 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 the siege of Port Arthur, especially toward the close, the Russian soldiers were so subject to mental aberration that they frequently attacked one another under the impression that the Japanese were making an assault. Panic-fear, so well known as an element of war, which attacks 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. Consiglio.) See The Red Laugh, by Leonid Andreev, a gruesome study of the mental condition of the Russian troops about Mukden. 74 WAR AND THE BREED a personal letter dated January 23, 19 15, 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 work, 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 shocks 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 RACE SELECTION 75 by concussion alone, and which besides scatter fragments of iron and balls that frequently pro- duce 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 brain and nervous system will bear pathological results of these shocks and injuries. " Such men will marry in many cases and create progeny. But a father with epilepsy, even though of traumatic origin, or with neu- rasthenia, nervous instability, or other marked disorders or weakening of his nervous system, cannot 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 little 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- 76 WAR AND THE BREED sideratlon 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 111 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 and RACE SELECTION 77 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) v/ith 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 warfare Is ended. In the 78 WAR AND THE BREED English service, consumption is the chief cause of mortaHty and invahdlng; 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 Servia. 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 79 courses become infected with the Amoeba 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 anaesthe- 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. 8o WAR AND THE BREED Killed and Percent- Battle Date No. engaged Wounded age Leipzig 1813 440,000 92,000 20 Borodino 1812 262,000 75,000 28 Aspern 1809 170,000 45,000 26 Wagram 1809 370,000 44,000 11 Eylau 1807 133,500 42,000 33 Waterloo 1815 170,000 42,000 24 Gettysburg 1863 163,000 37,000 24 Chickamauga 1863 128,000 35,000 27 Friedland 1807 142,000 34,000 23 Malplaquet 1709 200,000 34,000 17 Vionville 1870 168,000 32,800 19 Zorndorf 1758 84,760 32,000 38 Solferino 1859 295,000 31,500 10 Blenheim 1704 116,000 31,000 26 Kunnersdorf 1759 113,000 31,000 27 Gravelotte 1870 320,000 30,000 9 Koniggratz 1866 317,000 26,894 6 Wilderness 1864 179,000 26,000 14 Austerlitz 1805 148,000 25,000 i6 Spottsylvania 1864 150,000 25,000 16 Ypres 1^ 1915 1,000,000 500,000 According to the London Evening News, the latest list (173) in the Prussian Armies make a total of killed, wounded and missing (to March I, 1915) of 1,050,029 men. Besides these, 160 lists from Bavaria, 136 from Wurtemberg, 1 19 from Saxony and 20 from the Navy, 435 in all, have been issued in Germany. The California Outlook thus enlarges on these estimates : " The last eight Prussian lists contain 33,142 names, or an average of 4,143 to each list. The average for the entire 173 i« Estimate of Will Irwin. RACE SELECTION 81 Prussian lists is 6,069 to each list. Taking the smaller of these two averages, and cutting even it down to 4,000, by striiving out the odd num- bers, and we would have, even on this underes- timate, 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 1^ From a German Social Democrat manifesto (April 8, 1915), signed by Karl Liebknecht, George Ledebour, Rosa Luxembourg, and others, we take the following: " The human mind cannot grasp the misery these figures represent. It cannot conceive of the sufferings of the mil- lions of human beings whose homes have been devastated by the War God. . . . Besides exhausting us, the present war is ruining future generations. While the cry of na- tional defense could be used with sincerity at the beginning, the imperialists of both sides now make it clear that they are fighting to destroy the rival nation. To avert a new 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 to run its course unopposed? Either tyrannical 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 life. 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, ^^ " are 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 fighting, 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, 1* " The Wisconsin Plan " of Peace. RACE SELECTION 85 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 Hke 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 WAR AND THE BREED 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. But this is just what should have been 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 battles 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 87 our hearts. They are not dead, these ghosts, these spirits of our warHke 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. Ruskin's 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 19 The Crown of Wild Olive. RACE SELECTION 89 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 plainly 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 90 WAR AND THE BREED jagged shot, and leave the fragments of Hving 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, I 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 beein 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 91 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- tory note) saw clearly that the war system was a reversal of the process of natural selection. 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- 92 WAR AND THE BREED 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 iind 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 20 Friedrich von Bernhafdi, General of Cavalry in Ger- many, and for some years a member of the General Staff of the German army. {Wer I si's.) RACE SELECTION 93 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 anaemic, and marks 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 Treitschke 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. All 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, 94 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 cannot 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, ' is RACE SELECTION 95 as 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 is 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 the highest and most valuable interests of a na- 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 Its 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 Itself falls victim to the same curse. " All petty and personal interests force their RACE SELECTION 97 way to the front during a long period of peace. Selfishness and intrigue run riot, and luxury ob- literates idealism. Money acquires an exces- sive and unjustifiable power, and character does not obtain due respect. . . . Wars are terrible, but necessary, for they save the State from so- cial petrifaction and stagnation. It Is well that the transltorlness of the goods of this world Is not only preached, but Is learnt by experience. War alone teaches this lesson." ^^ With the part of Bernhardl's argument which tries to show that war, despite its horrors and its sacrifice of Individuals, Is the highest duty 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." The 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 " in each generation Is determined by the quality of the men and women chosen or left for the 21 An elaborate answer to views like these has been given by the late Professor Jakov Novicow, of the University of Odessa, under the title of La Critique du Darivinism Social. Extracts from this work have been elsewhere given (page 53). 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." ..." Sick- 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- 22 " Gestern horte und las ich Franzens von Sickingen's wahre und klagliche Geschichte. Gott ist ein gerechter aber wunderbarer Richter." " Sickingen's Unfall war ihm ein Gottesurtheil das ihn in der uebezeugung bestarkte, dass 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 will 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 Waffengewalt von der Sache des Evangeliums feme zu halten sei." {Ulrich von Hutten, by David Friedrich Strauss, Bonn, 1878.) 23 It is said that in Germany 3500 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 working 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 long cost of war." VI. MILITARY CONSCRIPTION The Nation in Arms ^ As a necessary part of the War System, if maintained 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. Compulsory Service To all propositions looking toward compul- sory military service in the United States as in Great Britain, those who believe In democratic 1 For discussion of special features of military conscrip- tion, see Appendix C, D. lOI 102 WAR 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. Compulsion means the failure of liberty. It is not wholesome. Moreover, it is largely in- strumental in creating the dangers against which it guards. It has been the bane of continental Europe and a leading factor in the most awful catastrophe of all time. That no man shall be a soldier against his will 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 is 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. MILITARY CONSCRIPTION 103 All these men, idle or malemployed, pile up the 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 modern 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 Physical 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 105 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- 2 See Appendix B, for Mr. Impey's detailed analysis of Military Drill. MILITARY 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 unchlvalrous 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, 191 5) in England and Bel- gium, their Scout training makes them peculiarly adequate. MILITARY CONSCRIPTION 109 The Australian Plan 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- ciales) 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 infec- MILITARY CONSCRIPTION in tions. In tropical service the proportion of men ruined or half ruined is far greater than in temperate regions. Venereal diseases are the product of infection by either of two slowly de- veloping parasites, the one a Spirochete (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 from one person to another, the more delicate membranes of the body being subject to per- meation. As Syphilis in particular may be transferred from father to mother and from mother to foetus 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, Emile Gir- ardln, wrote : " If war is to be suppressed in 3 See Appendix 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, 19 14. 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 *This figure does not include a certain number of deaths MILITARY CONSCRIPTION 113 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 ^^ 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- from such para-syphilitic affections as tabes, which should properly be counted against syphilis. ^ A German authority has questioned the accuracy of the statistics quoted below, by which a special degree of im- munity is claimed for Germany. Those figures were pre- pared, my informant asserts, to give support to the dubious 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 igio show the rates of prevalence of venereal diseases in dif- ferent armies: Year Per looo Germany * 1905-06 19.8 France 1906 28.6 Austria ■ 1 907 54.2 Russia 1906 62.7 United Kingdom 1907 68.4 United States 1907 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 developing manhood in its compulsory exercise, enforced habits of discipline, unescapable stimulus to patriotism, and general moral control." In the words of a German general at the London Eugenics Congress, " Military service is not injurious to the body, but healthful, not depressing to mind and spirit, but inspiring." But even were we to 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 his country," he gives more than himself. He gives the long line, the ever widening wedge of those who should be his descendants. MILITARY CONSCRIPTION 115 army in 19 10, 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 suffering from the earlier stages of syphilis. (V. L. 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- logg? " 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. Pethick-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 1 87 1, 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 Pacifiste, Berne, March 30, 1912. 120 WAR AND THE BREED 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 fire 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 nation 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 Millicent 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 {JVomen 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 l3y 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 2 The Independent. 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 Warring Against IVar)^ "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 all 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 WAR SYSTEM AND WOMEN 123 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, 19 14, 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 maid! " The avowed purpose of the movement, how- ever, is not the convenience nor the happiness 2 See War Brides, a drama by Marion Craig Wentworth. 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 they will be children! Say what you will WAR SYSTEM AND WOMEN 125 of national honor, patriotism, all the rest ! The supreme necessity of a nation is children. " Breed before you die ! 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 did 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 in 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, 19 15) 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. VIII. WAR SELECTION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 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, but 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 128 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 knowl- edge of Darwinism to history are even now just beginning to penetrate the current literature of war and peace. In public affairs most na- tions 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 1 Firilis, austerus, severus, dominans, good old words ap- plied by Romans to themselves. 130 WAR AND THE BREED meant aggression, suppression, plunder, strug- gle, glory and all that goes with the pomp and circumstance of war. So the individuahty 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, Vir, 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. " Vir 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 swelHng 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 Cassar, 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 him 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 Caesar notes the dire scarcity of men ( Seiv^v 6\iyav6poTriav) ^ 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 Constantlne seemed greater than Augustus. No wonder that " if Tiberius chastised his subjects with whips, Valentinian 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 2 The point of this is that the cruel Tiberius was less severe on the Romans of his day than was the relatively benevolent Valentinian on his decadent people. 134 WAR AND THE BREED had no country, which had no humanity because it had no domestic ties." " There runs through Roman literature a brigand's and barbarian's contempt for honest industry." " Roman civ- ihzation was not a creative kind, it was miHtary, that is, destructive." What was the end of it all? The nation 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 observes 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 135 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 {*' Ausrottung") 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 off 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- 2 " Die Ausrottung der Besten, die jenen schwacheren Volken die Vernichtung brachte, hat die starken Germanen erst befiihigt, auf den Trummern der antiken Welt neue dauerende Gemeinschaften zu errichten." (Seeck.) * The history of Korea reveals much the same condition. Three hundred years ago this country had reached a con- siderable degree of civilization. Its conquest by Hideyoshi, Shogun of Japan, was followed by a vigorous reaction, in which the Japanese armies were flung out of Korea and the Japanese fleet destroyed. At that time in art matters at least, the Koreans were more advancd than the Japanese. 136 WAR 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 them. 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 the palaces of Kyoto and Nagoya are modeled after similar buildings in Seoul, being, in fact, mostly built by Korean artisans. In modern times, until the country was taken over by Japan, the government of Korea v^'as 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 arising out of the persistent practice on the part of the rulers of beheading all persons opposed to their policies. Similar customs widely spread in earlier times in Europe as well as in Asia, must have been a large factor in the extirpation of initiative. The old English habit of sending " to the Tower " those lords or ministers the crown found trouble- some was another form of the same costly waste of ability from which in ruder times no nation was free. ^ Author's italics. WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 137 normal result 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 Apiclus, 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 ^ " Damitsprechend hat man das Wort ' Ueberkultur ' iiberhaupt erfunden, als wenn ein 2U grosses Maass von Kultur iiberhaupt denkbar ware." 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 fall 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 Crossing 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 Darzo'm'ism, 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. 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, Umbrlans, Sicilians, Etrus- cans, Greeks being blended In republican Rome. Whatever the origins, the v/orst 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." 140 WAR AND THE BREED 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. " The Niobe of Nations, there she stands, Crownless and childless in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose sacred dust was scattered long ago ! " Byron. WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 141 Greece Once Greece led the world in intellectual pur- suits, in art, in poetry, in philosophy. 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 Constantlne 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 Melians by the Athenians during the Pelopon- neslan 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 Mummies are among the more familiar Instances of the catastrophes WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 143 which overtook the civic element in the Greek cities. The void can only 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. Bourchier.) " 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 millions of barbarians. In two centuries there were born 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 ''' Certain recent writers who find in environment the causes of the rise and fall of nations, ascribe the failure of Greece to the introduction in Athens and Sparta of the malaria-bearing mosquito. As to the facts in question, we have little evidence. But while the prevalence of malaria may have affected the general activity of the people, it could in no way have obliterated the mental leadership which made the strength of classic Hellas, nor could it have injected its poison into the stream of Greek heredity. 144 WAR AND THE BREED into Hellas from every side. These resident aliens, or metics, 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." ^ * In contrasting a new race with the old — as the modern Greeks with the incomparable Hellenes — we must not be unjust to the men of today whose limitations are evident, contrasted 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 Mycenae 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 Louvain and Mallnes, 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 mountain Greek, at least, knows the value of freedom, and has more than once put up a brave fight for it. The valleys breed subservi- ency, and the Greeks of Thessaly are said to be less inde- pendent than the mountain-born. 146 WAR AND THE BREED were, " in the glory which was Greece," not as they are now, largely fishing hamlets by the blue w^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 Clytemnestra in the A gamemnon of ^schylus. (Translation by E. D. A. Morshead.) WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 147 donia, a region which in 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 19 13 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 buffalo, some- times a small horse, while behind her another woman guides the plow. Rarely a man to be seen! In one village, Sigelovo, visited by the writer, not a man is left. How great the human waste in Macedonia in 148 WAR AND THE BREED the years from PhilippI to Kilkis, from Aristotle to Venizelos, from Alexander to King Constan- tine ! 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 In 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 only a handful of students with a peasant's In- WAR IN ANCIENT WORLD 149 come for each of its little group of professors. In Armenia, the brutal and often repeated massacres, with the scattering of the population almost as the Jews were scattered after the Conquest, must have had large racial effects. But as to these we can present no adequate data. IX. 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 strengthened 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 her own 150 IN WESTERN EUROPE 151 sons. She has been making a healthy recovery.^ In the Wiertz 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 filling 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, money, tradition and prestige," says Professor Albert Leon Guerard {French Civilization in the Nineteenth Century, 1912), "would be naught if the people had lost its soul. Their wealth would pass into stronger hands, and their prestige to contempt. Once, about twenty years ago, the French themselves wondered if it had not come to that. The cry of a decadence was raised by malevolent rivals, by sensationalists, by " jesthetes " in quest of a new pose, by earnest patriots who had lost their star. When a belated echo of this reaches us now, how 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 twentieth century as ever before the French are among the pioneers. " I do not see France 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 fighting on undismayed, for ideals which she cannot always define. An old nation? A wounded nation? Perhaps, but her mighty heart is throb- bing with unconquerable life." 152 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, the 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 arms 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 IN WESTERN EUROPE 153 men." Still more conscription! 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 drafted into the line had impaired its steadi- ness." ^ After Moscow, homeward " amidst ever- deepening 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 2 This quotation and those that immediately follow are from the History of Napoleon I, by J. H. Rose. 154 WAR AND THE BREED young, untrained troops, and it was remarked that the conscripts born in the year of Terror had not the stamina of the earher 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' at 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 France, 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 2 The French people " have sunk to so low a level in all the virtues of a strong and proud nation that, from the military standpoint, it must be regarded as a doubtful pleas- ure to have to fight such a people." {Berliner Post, April 21, 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 war, 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 Anglo-Saxon? " He finds his answer in the 156 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- mania," — 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 Demohns' 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." IN WESTERN EUROPE 157 Another line of criticism of France finds its ablest exponent in Dr. Max Nordau, whose book on Degeneration 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 an overwrought civilization. " Fin de siecle," " end of the century," is the catch-phrase ex- pressing the weariness, mental, physical and spiritual of a race " tired before it was born." To Nordau, this theory adequately explains all eccentricities of French literature, art, politics or jurisprudence. But in fact we 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 (nerve-sluggishness) than from any form of en- forced nerve-activity. The kind of degenera- tion Nordau pictures is not a matter of hered- ity. When not simply personal eccentricity, it is a phase of personal decay. It finds its causes 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 of the race. The presence on the Paris boule- 158 WAR AND THE BREED vards of eccentric painters, maudlin musicians, abslnthlne 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. The no- 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 19 13, the influ- ential men of France were willing to meet half way the " Friedensfreunde " of Germany. The writer was present at Niirnberg in 19 13, at a great mass meeting in which the Baron D'Es- tournelles de Constant spoke warmly and elo- quently for international friendship. France * The protest of the twenty-eight deputies of Alsace and Lorraine, delivered by M. Grosjean, before the French Assembly at Bordeaux on March 1871, is in part as fol- lows: " Delivered, in scorn of all justice and by an odious abuse of force, to foreign domination, we have one last duty to perform. We declare once for all, null and void an agreement which disposes of us without our consent. The vindication of our rights rests forever open to all and to each one in the form and in the degree his conscience shall assume. At the moment we quit this hall, the su- preme thought we find in the bottom of our hearts is a thought of unutterable attachment to the country from which in violence we are torn. Our brothers of Alsace and Lorraine, separated from this moment from the common family will preserve towards France, absent from their hearthstones, an affection faithful to the day when we shall again return to take our place." i6o 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 " Erobermig " or conquest. They had subjected it to the process of " Ent- welschiing " or deforeignization, by means of trivial and burdensome " Abwehrgesetze" 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 Ziveiter 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.® ^ La cauchemar de I'Europe. ^ This contradiction has been ably set forth in Marcel Sembat's book Faites un Rot Sinon faites la Pa'tx, published not long ago. IN WESTERN EUROPE i6i Spain 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 sufficiently pro- ' Captain C. G. Calkins. 8 In this connection, Mr. Ellis extols the beauty, grace and spirit of the Spanish women and suggests the theory that so far as fenninine traits go, there has been no reversal of selection. " The women of 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 ijntellectual 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. Nevinson,® " 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." Paraguay- 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. ° Peace and War in the Balance, p. 47. 164 WAR AND THE BREED " There is nothing more dangerous than a re- treating army." Among Lopez' forces, ac- cording to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, boys of twelve years were included, whole regiments being made up of lads under 16. At the begin- ning of the war, the population of Paraguay amounted to 1,337,437. It fell to 221,079 (28,746 men, 106,254 women, 86,079 chil- 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 difficult 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 zahlen; Mund halten " IN WESTERN EUROPE 165 (Be a soldier; pay taxes; hold your tongue), are simple and do not encourage initiative. Universal conscription binds the individual into subjection to the central power. He has the choice between docile acceptance of 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 Universities 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 io«Xo glorify the state is to glorify war, for there is no collective operation which can be so effectively achieved as war, and none which more conspicuously illustrates the sacrifice of the individual to the nation." (Havelock Ellis.) i66 WAR AND THE BREED 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 Rendtorff ^^ 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 11 See Appendix H. IN WESTERN EUROPE 167 some degree, a democratic institution open to any one, even a serf who distinguished himself by physical courage or by mental power. Thou- sands of Knights fell in the bloody wars waged by the Hohenstaufens 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 finest minds escaped to the shelter of the Church. In all these episodes, a " survival 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 we 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 12 Once after a great drought in Australia, a large pro- portion of the sheep died. Sheep owners naturally pre- served the most valuable individuals and the average yield of vyool in the next generation is said to have increased by one-third. This was an example of drastic selection, and something like this may have taken place in the Thirty Years' War. IN WESTERN EUROPE 169 cites a number of examples to prove his theory and claims that usually a century or so after a calamity such as this, the nation bears its finest intellectual fruit. He points to Spain which, during a period of peace lasting for more than fifteen hundred years, furnished nothing valua- ble in art or science, but which, at the time of Cervantes and Velasquez, 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- 13 Seeck here seems to overlook the fact that the people 170 WAR AND THE BREED cient Germans when individual tendencies were too strong to permit the founding of a state, the extermination of the best, that is of the strong- est personalities, really was necessary for the es- tablishment of any government able to hold its own against its own citizens. Even if correct, the facts would not extenu- ate massacre, the most revolting and debasing of all forms of war, and it is incredible that the birth of great men like Shakespeare and Goethe is dependent on the killing of a multitude of weaker ones. Moreover, the details of such history are very imperfectly known. We have little that can be spoken of as statistics. Chris- topherus Grimmelshausen's story of ^' Sim- plicius Simplicissimus," ^^ the most elaborate of these records, is one long tale of debauchery and horror. The ancient " Chronicles of Thann " relate something of how upper Alsace was ravaged. There towns were destroyed never to be rebuilt. In one commune, there was not for twelve years a wedding, nor for fifteen a baptism. " So often as the Swedes gave battle to the Imperialists, so often did the Imperialists make war on the Swedes. It was an endless massacre." The records of 19 15 would seem to indicate that scenes not unlike those of the Thirty Years' of Naples and Sicily were of a different and much less virile stock than the Florentines and Lombards. ^* See Appendix G for a paragraph as an example. IN WESTERN EUROPE 171 War are again transpiring in Miihlhausen, Alt- kirch and even in Thann itself. It appears that the inhabitants in that region have been largely removed from the scene of war. This has meant the hideous winter misery of the " recon- centrado " camp similar to those established not long ago in Cuba, and later in South Africa, an institution which stirred the disgust of the civil- ized world. Dr. Rendtorff does not accept the views of Dr. Seeck that massacre leaves no racial injury, provided that the survivors are numerous enough to continue the race. In his judgment, general mediocrity follows even those slaugh- ters which make no distinction of age, strength or sex. " In the period of savagery," observes Novi- cow, " war between tribes was without pity. The victors destroyed the conquered to the last man, then married the women. To a certain degree, the result was favorable to the race, but on this condition that no one among the con- querors was killed. This evidently was never the case; hence, after any battle, the number of fine men who might have wives was always re- duced. Here again war produces a reversal of selection. . . . The pretended benefit of war, even in savagery, disappears wholly with the ad- vent of civilization." X. MILITARISM AND WAR SELEC- TION IN GREAT BRITAIN. Cost of Empire Not long ago, in England, a parliamentary 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- 172 IN GREAT 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 know 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. iThc other and sordid side of Military Imperialism is thus touched by Lord Morley, referring to the occupation of Chitral, in Northern India in 1895: " First, you push on into territories where you have no business to be, and where you had promised not to go; secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment, and, in these wild countries, resentment means resistance; thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are rebellious and that their act is rebellion (this in spite of your own assurance that you have no intention of setting up a permanent sovereignty over them) ; fourthly, you send a force to stamp out the rebellion; and fifthly, having spread bloodshed, con- fusion and anarchy, you declare, with hands uplifted to the heavens that moral reasons force you to stay, for if you were to leave, this territory would be left in a condition which no civilized power could contemplate with equanimity or with composure. These are the five stages in the For- ward Rake's progress." 174 WAR AND THE BREED What has it all cost? For every great race sacrifice takes toll in race exhaustion. The loss 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 common- 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 undeserving 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- 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 her 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 my 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 m India, in Burmah, in Af- ghanistan, in the Transvaal. *' At home," they are remembered.^ What would have been the 2 The following is a record of tablets in certain English 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 officers named. Exeter in Devon. Names of 15 officers, 448 privates died at Lucknow and Cawnpore ; names of 47 women and 53 chil- dren massacred at Cawnpore; names of 672 killed in Boer War, 140 in Afghan campaign, 5 in Bengal, 48 in "India"; 73 " died of climate." Others killed in the Crimea not named or numbered. Taunton Church in Somerset. 144 in Burmese War; Afri- can War 200; 44 in Ava; 425 in South Africa; i in Nigeria. " The War is the Lord's." 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 years, 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 — especially necessary, and that they may be Gloucester in Gloucestershire. 500 in Sutlej ; 75 in Soudan. Lichfield in Staffordshire. Numerous officers; 86 men in South Africa, 66 in Dongola, 500 others. Lincoln in Lincolnshire. 44 in Nile; 76 in Sutlej and Punjab, 45 at Mooltan, 80 in India. Ely in Cambridgeshire, one tablet only. Peterborough, 96 in Boer War. All this represents a total of 6101 killed, mainly in the wars in India and South Africa. The total number of such cathedral memorials must be about 16,000. There are 15,000 parish churches in Great Britain. These also contain many tablets, perhaps 60,000 names in all. lyS 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!" 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 JVar," Professor L. P. Jacks, editor of Hihbert 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. . . . ^Nation, Jan. 28, 1915. IN GREAT BRITAIN 179 *' The ' Roll of Honor ' of Oxford men who have fallen in the war is already very long and it lengthens 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, no! 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 Revieiv, has published the names of the past and present members of the university who are serving in some capacity in the British army. The number amounts to 7,237, and they are distributed amongst the colleges as follows: Trinity College, 1,840; Pembroke, 760; Gonville and Gains, 616; Clare, 535; Kings, 436; Jesus, 385; Emanuel, 371; Christ's, 359; St. John's, 337; Trinit>- Hall, 328; Magdalene, 214; Queen's, 179; Sidney Sussex, 154; Peterhouse, 140; Downing, 126; Selwyn, 126; St. Catherine's, 117; Corpus Christi, 109; Fitzwilliam Hall, 90; honorary graduates, 16." {School and Society, March, 1915.) 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! 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 2, 1915, is the following statement: " A correspondent informs us that the following German zoologists have been killed in the war: Professor Stanislaus von Prowasek, head of the zoological department of the Institute for Tropic Diseases, Hamburg; Dr. W. Meyer, assistant in the same institute; Dr. W. Mulsow, assistant in the protozoological department of the Institute for Infec- tious Diseases, Berlin; Dr. G. Gantsch, docent for zoology, Kiel; Dr. v. Steudell, Edinger Institut, Frankfurt; Dr. v. Miiller, assistant in the Zoological Institute, Kiel; Dr. v. Grienz, assistant in the Zoological Institute, Konigsberg. " The following have been wounded, but have in some cases recovered: Professor O. zur Strassen, professor of zoology, Frankfurt; Professor L. Rhumbler, professor of zoology, Forest School, Minden; Dr. W. Reichensperger, docent for zoology, Bonn; Dr. C. Thienemann, docent in Miinster." "Of 1400 students in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, 1300 went out at the first call, and three-fourths of those who survive are in the trenches. They left behind only a few cripples and foreigners, such as Russians, natives of the Balkans, and occasional Americans and Englishmen." (Will H. Ir- win.) IN GREAT BRITAIN 181 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- don, 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 were 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 of 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, anaemic, 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 8 From interview with H. B. Needham; Collier's, Febru- ary 27, 1915. i82 WAR AND THE BREED 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 war, 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 183 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." Tommy Atkins 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 trenches by his side. If war Is actually a means of race Improve- i84 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-Resistants 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 Mennonites, 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 185 shed. They argue that the appeal to the hu- man conscience would win in the long run, es- pecially in our days of rapid communication and international friendships. This view may be sound. It has certainly much to com- mend it. But we have no data by which the matter can be tested. No nation has ever tried the plan. It has been stated (March, 191 5) that in the Society of Friends in Great Britain, the per- centage of enlistments among men of the age of 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 non-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 wealdings 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 then the Clan Grant was as numerous as the heather on the hills." (Bailie Grant.) 8 " Proudly they march, but each Cameron knows, He may tread the heather no more." IN GREAT BRITAIN 187 battle with Montrose?' The Mackenzies to- day are few at Lochbroom, 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 Culloden 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. Set in this stormy northern sea, Queen of these restless fields of tide, England ! what 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 f fVhere is our English chivalry? 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 IVUde. XI. THE UNITED STATES AND WAR War Selection 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 war. 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 190 UNITED STATES AND WAR 191 cost a million lives. I saw not long ago in 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 2415538 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 pression 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 broken 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 Higglnson, " from whom the response of patriotism comes more promptly and surely than from Its most highly educated class. All those delusions which pass UNITED STATES AND WAR 193 current in Europe, dating back to De Tocque- ville, in regard to some supposed torpor or alienation should be swept away forever. In the list of Harvard University 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 stoclc 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 Aftermath in Virginia In a little volume called War'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 vet- 1 Professor of Anatomy in the University pf Virginia. UNITED STATES AND WAR 195 erans, men of exceptional character and intelli- gence, has given a degree of certainty to thirty propositions, those most relevant to the present study being the following : ^ 1. The leading men of the South were part of select companies of militia and these were first 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 enlisted 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- feriors. Thus was produced a change in the 2 These propositions are given mainly in the actual lan- guage of some one of the veterans. 196 WAR AND THE BREED 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 in 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. 3 In this connection we may note that " best blood " from a racial point of view may not be the same as when meas- ured by social standards. Also the percentage above indi- cated may have been true of one county most specially har- assed, but certainly not of the southern states as a whole. UNITED STATES AND WAR 197 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 blessing. " It is not right that war be classed with pestilence and famine in our prayers. It should have an hour, a daily hour to itself alone." ^ Of the states of the Union, Virginia and North Carolina probably suffered most in the Civil War. Virginia furnished 165,000 sol- diers 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 in North Carolina in 1861 was only 115,000, the popu- * Compare with this the remark of Bishop O. B. Fitz- gerald, "War is not the survival of the fittest. It is the survival of those who never ' fit.' " 6 Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, a Virginia woman. 198 WAR AND THE BREED latlon 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 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 intenser 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 vari- 199 200 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. ^A British officer writes thus to fVar and Peace (March, 1915): " 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 fine metaphor, a self-acting machine is not 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 breasts." 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. The Visionary 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 202 WAR AND THE BREED equality, for the sanctity of life, this, too, long before either peace or democracy had ever been dreamed of. Always the best men have stood for the best attainable, however poor that may have been, and from time to time there came to them visions of that far day when murder as an argument should be no more, and when all fear and violence as persuasive forces in matters political, social, or financial should vanish from the minds of men. No one has yet written the whole story of the work for democracy which means peace, and for peace which likewise means democracy. When it is told with all fullness of detail, it will be the noblest of human records. Briefly and roughly, piecing out the limitations of knowl- edge, let us try to interpret it. The story began, let us say, in the dark ages, the very dark, close to the beginning of things, it seems to us now, though things are still in the beginning. For we ourselves are about as near creation as was any one else we ever heard of. We are still in a primitive era along with Moses and Homer, with Trismegistus and Ozymandias and the other fossil relics in the sands of time. In earlier days records were few and costly and the old fables have died out one by one in the telling. In our more resourceful times records are kept by machinery and the air is full of their clamorous insistence. DOES NATURE CHANGE*? 203 The " In-Group " somewhere, sometime, let us say, was gathered round the camp-fire, its warriors rejoicing in victory and rioting in plun- der, its women bewailing their dead. And the slain of the beaten Out-group were being pre- pared for the great feast. But the Visionary among them rose to stay their hand. It was to him unseemly that young men should eat the hearts of their opponents to consummate their own bravery, that wise men should have to eat the brains of sages to complete their own wisdom, that men should devour their brother men in a drunken orgy of blood. And his fellows answered that human nature does not change; always had there been feasts of human flesh after a victory won, and always there would be. In no other way could the Manes of their own fallen heroes be comforted as they rose to Olympus or Valhalla. And the protester was swept aside, while the great feast went on. But a true word outlasts the man who speaks it, and the plea to let the captured bury their dead at last brought about the down- fall of cannibalism.- However, human sacrifice of some sort there had always been, and the gods unchanging still 2 Since writing the above, I have read A Defense of Cannibalism, by Monsieur B. Beau, translated from La Revue, Feb. 15th, 1909, in which, in allegorical form, is described a cannibal feast. The common arguments for war are here advanced as pleas for cannibalism. A mis- sionary, protesting, is driven off by the natives, who, never- 204 WAR AND THE BREED 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 practice. The chieftain insists, however, that " It is absurd to pretend to preserve war while pro- scribing cannibalism, for this is at once the principal cause, the necessary condition and the real justification of it." 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 rack and the pyre became in- struments of faith. Now once more the Visionary raised a voice, protesting against all shackling 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 2o6 WAR AND THE BREED 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 hoHday." 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 NATURE CHANGE? 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 2o8 WAR AND THE BREED 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 3 Like conditions prevailed in Asia at that 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 the 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 this and two following pages is from White's Seven Great Statesmen. DOES NATURE CHANGE? 209 martyrs, ruffians and scoundrels. The domi- nant International gospel was that of Machla- velll, 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 born 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 v/hich came an evolution of humanity which still continues." Hugo Grotius spoke for the Inalienable rights 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 NATURE CHANGE? 211 liam of Orange, " nothing certain in the world." And to build up a foundation of certainty which 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 coffin 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- 212 WAR AND THE BREED 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 better 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 of DOES NATURE CHANGE*? 213 women's suffering, set forth in IFaffen Niedcr, turned the current of thought for thousands of other women. " IFaffen 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- smothered brutalities have broken out again, the league of women rises to plead for the sacred- ness of human life, calling to men to stop this wicked war. Fifty years ago and more a great battle was fought on the hills above Desenzano, near the blue Lake of Garda. There on the field of Solferino, more than forty thousand men killed and wounded lay for three days untended under the hot June sun of Lombardy, the prey of flies and mosquitoes. In those merciless times a wounded soldier, like a broken musket, was not worth saving. It happened, however, that Henri Dunant of Geneva, a tourist in Verona, led by curiosity went out at last to see the bat- tlefield. There and then he touched one of the first modern notes in regard to war, human sym- pathy. This, he said, is no field of glory. " It is a European calamity." And he set to work with the help of the people of Desenzano to relieve the suffering of that hideous day. Then and there began the Red Cross movement which now spreads the world over. 214 WAR AND THE BREED Dunant died at Heiden in Switzerland, Octo- ber 31st, 19 10, 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 light 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 ! 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 man! XIII. AFTER WAR, WHAT? The Great War will eventually come to a close through exhaustion, through lack of money, through starvation or through sorrow and mourning. There is at present (March, 19 15) little prospect that it will end in any sweeping victory. It may be that Jean de Bloch was right and that the armies of today 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, 215 2i6 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-booters 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, things essential to the future security and well- being of Europe. But we shall not get many of them. We may not get any. It may be 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, WHAT'? 217 There are many things we need to make civil- ization stable and wholesome. Every gain counts. We want foi'eign exploitation limited by law and justice. We want to have diplo- 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. We 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, 2i8 WAR AND THE BREED 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 in rivalry of borrowing. We would welcome the day of fewer kings, all with limited au- thority. Furthermore we would like to see manhood 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 see 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 Interests of freedom and fair play. We would like to see the small nations left as stable as great ones, for small 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 " If you try to find a great nation in Europe, you must look among the small ones." (Gobat.) AFTER WAR, WHAT? 219 individual initiative along with most abundant life. We would like to see 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- 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, 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- tion. 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 APPENDIX In this appendix are added a number of pertinent ex- tracts which illustrate matters considered in the fore- going pages. A. THE LONG COST OF WAR ^ Caleb Williams Saleeby. The people who will live in the years to come get none of the glory for which rulers wage war; they, at least, are innocent; they are 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 are 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 that their hearts do not beat as hearts must beat on the march; or, if they cannot see, or hear, or stand on their feet at all, then the men stay at home and are 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. '^Westminster Gazette, Feb. ii, 1915. 223 224 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 ckan 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 he 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 tlian 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 largely dependent upon what our ancestors were for what we can be, the future of any race de- pends upon the quality of those who become its fathers and mothers. . , . 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. Impey {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 schools, 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, at 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 anti-educational, re- pressing the personality instead of " leading it out," and stultifying initiative. 2. Instruction 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 work 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, parading, APPENDIX 227 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 either 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 difficulty 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 228 APPENDIX growing and promiscuously-fed or under-fed boy, the result can but be exhausting and devitalizing, if it fall short of actual heart-strain. 6. Musketry instruction. Aiming and firing are 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-eyework are ripening to their full development at a much earlier age than that at which a child can be 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 are 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. 9. 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 either 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 are 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. 230 APPENDIX C. MILITARY SERVICE IN GERMANY Oswald Garrison 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 loi.) 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 1 Germany Embattled, a Neiv Interpretation, by Oswald Garrison Villard. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1915. APPENDIX 231 moment, forgotten. The entire citizenship was drawn together by the leveling influence 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 extraordinary rise and prosperity. The army is re- garded as a vital part of the German system of educa- tion. 232 APPENDIX 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 officers can make existence a hell for any man they do APPENDIX 233 not like. 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 2 Said to average one a day, for some time before the war. D. S. J. 234 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 mediaeval character of the code of honor, but they are 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 Albert Leon Guerard. (Our best account of military discipline from the stand- point of an intelligent conscript is that furnished me in a private letter ^ by my friend and colleague, Professor Al- bert Leon Guerard. See pages loi and 151.) I served 309 days — we counted them from the very first, and shouted every morning " Encore tant et la fuite!" — as second-class private in the 129th regi- ^ Printed with the author's permission in the Popular Science Monthly for April, 1911. 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 1903-04, under the old (1889) law. University students, teachers, artists, artisans and craftsmen (ouvriers d'art), ministers and men having a family to support {soutiens de 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 halt 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 236 APPENDIX did not dream of. Children seemed to be brought up on "Calvados" (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 dispenses, 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 APPENDIX 237 France was a republic. I gathered a library of 600 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 238 APPENDIX healthy individuals of an adaptable tjpe; satisfactory for the great majority. From the moral 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 I 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, I 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 compulsory 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 first 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 differ- ences, 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 vin, I'amour 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 240 APPENDIX three groups : ( i ) A few clever, ambitious young men. These, all too rare anyway, scorned the routine of bar- rack life. They spent little 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 Lucien Descaves's sordid and disgusting book, Sous- Offsy does not slander them. The pay is exceedingly APPENDIX 241 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 fllunkej's — and they have all the vices of flunkeys — laziness, arrogance and servility. They are 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 men fla- 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 242 APPENDIX 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 {vulgo " tirer au flanc"). 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 1905 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, it 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- raphy, rural economy, " prevoyance," etc.), complained that drills, marches, and manoeuvers 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 strikes, of the railroad strikes, of the Seine flood, the army was called upon to fulfill 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-Dreadnoughts. 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 battle array. Soldiering is a pretty game, although mur- dering is an ugly business. It is possible that wars may be abolished generations before armies are suppressed. (Professor Guerard adds the following note, May, 1915.) It must be remembered that this article refers to the conditions that prevailed in the French Army twelve years ago. The revival of the military spirit, due in a minor degree to the dismal failure of Dreyfusist Radicalism, and chiefly to the threatening attitude of Germany, has radically modified these conditions. For the last few years, the army and the nation have been one as never before. So much the worse for the nation, but so much the better for the army. The " Poilus " of 1915 have little in common with the " tireurs au flanc " here described. E. A DIGRESSION ON UNIFORMS ' Alfred G. Gardiner. So long as the world allows the Kaisers and the Caesars and the Napoleons to play with its destinies there will be war. I would have no king who wore a uniform or pranced at the head of soldiers. The head of a State should be its chief citizen, and he should come on to the parade ground as the symbol of the civic power. Make him a soldier and he will soon subordinate the council chamber to the parade ground. Give him a uniform, gold epaulettes and a brass helmet and he will soon be- gin to think of government in the terms of Krupp and Armstrong. His diplomacy will be the diplomacy not of internal peace but of external conquest. It will look abroad rather than at home. He will think of his peo- ple not as citizens whom he can serve, but as soldiers 1 Daily Neivs and Leader, London. 246 APPENDIX whom he can command, and every art of peace, every victory of science will be diverted to the purposes of war. 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 lim- ited term of office) would keep so perfect an example of the Napoleon breed as Theodore Roosevelt from de- 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 INDIAN 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 Daughters 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 officers 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 be ex- Andrew and Katherine C. Bushnell, London, 1899. See also an article, "Bella, Bella, Horrida Bella," by F. J. Corbet, fV estminster Review, March, 1903. 248 APPENDIX 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 regimentally. 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 at the disposal of Commanding Officers to enforce a more careful avoidance of contact with women who arc 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. 250 APPENDIX G. THE ADVENTURES OF SIMPLICIUS SIMPLICISSIMUS (From the ancient chronicle of the Thirty Years' War of the Seventeenth Century, by Christopherus GrimmeU- hausen of Rechen in the Black Forest (1624-1676), we take the following illustrative paragraphs. The translation is 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 they 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 meat, 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 they 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 farm- ers, and to torture the poor fellows as though they had been witches. One of them they put into the oven and started the fire. 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 fire, 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 my master's wife and her daughter did not fare any bet- ter than the rest. During all this misery, I turned the 252 APPENDIX spit and had no cares because I did not understand what 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 1 170 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 Aue, 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 1 Here printed for the first time. (See pages 166 and 167.) APPENDIX 253 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 time 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 (Geschichte der deut- schen Litteratur, 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 Bartels' Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur, vol. I, p. 56. Bartels 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 was 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 Scherer and Bartels have contented themselves with merely presenting a theory, 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 development of German civilization as a whole. We cannot separate the literary life of a peo- ple from its religious, political, and economic life; we are unable to interpret the literature of a people un- less we know the physical, intellectual, and spiritual conditions which produced it. What 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 expression 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- stand. It was a Standespoesie, 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 Ritterstand of that time really represented the pick and flower of the Ger- man nation, not only physically but intellectually as well. For the Ritterstand had not yet become the ex- clusive nobility into which it developed in 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 a 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 positions. 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 Beamtenaristokratie, they still play a predominant part in the social and political life of Germany. The second are the " Ritter," mounted troopers who devoted their life to professional warfare, who came into existence as a class about the tenth cen- tury, at a time when the old German army, fighting on foot, and consisting of every freeborn German who could bear arms, came to be supplanted by an army of trained soldiers fighting on horseback. These knights were the old freeholders, but after about 1150 their ever decreasing number was supplemented by serfs who had won distinction by their courage. Both of these groups were alike in that they received fiefs in payment of their services and so, in the course of time, they were welded into one. They formed the Ritterstand with its peculiar Standeskultur and, as has already been stated, with a Standespoesie of their own. They de- veloped their own code of honor, their Standesehre, and they were supported by a highstrung selfconscious- ness and a firm belief in their own value, their Standes- bewusstsein. And yet they were not altogether cut oiif 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 ap- pealed 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 individuality. 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 forward 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 in 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 258 APPENDIX did all this glory vanish so suddenly and so completely? Shall we 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 Dt. Seeck's Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken 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 Seeck's study of the downfall of the ancient world the following 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- 26o APPENDIX fined to a limited class of society. What we would call " the people " did not 5^et 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. APPENDIX 261 Again religious enthusiasm and the spirit of ad- venture induced the best and most energetic among the German knights to follow the summons of the cross. Thousands of them perished or were slain on the peril- ous marches through the deserts of Asia Minor, many were carried off 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 12th and 13th centuries the ranks of the German knights. But knighthood did not only lose in numbers, it lost in 262 APPENDIX quality and in character. Its best blood disappeared and " only the weaklings remained to propagate the race." This was so much the more serious because the more stable an institution chivalry had become the more exclusive it grew. Its ranks were not replenished and no new blood was infused. My conclusion then is simply this: Just as in the ancient world so in Germany towards the end of the middle ages the best died out and, owing to the social and economic conditions existing in Germany during the 1 2th and 13th centuries, " the best " were the knights. And with them died their peculiar culture, chivalry, as well as their poetry, 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 13th 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 medieval 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 263 intellectual pursuits in other lines not cultivated by the knights were not affected. Slowly a new class, the Biirgerstand {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 see 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. 264 APPENDIX I. PEACE AND DEGENERACY^ Will H. Irwin. No war in history was ever so severe as this. What we 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 Ypres 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 back. 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 the San Francisco Chronicle. 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. llllllilllllllllllllllillHil AA 000 997 140