210 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



greatly according to the degree to which a nation suffers through 

 hardship, disease and other factors that affect the people who do 

 not bear arms. It is naturally the population of the defeated 

 nation which suffers most. In France, according to Dumas, the 

 civilian death rate, in 1869, just before the Franco-Prussian war 

 was 23.4 per thousand, but in 1870, it went up to 28.3 and in 1871 

 to 34.8; it then fell in 1872 to 21.9. Nearly every great war is 

 accompanied by the introduction of some epidemic which rages 

 in the civil population. Smallpox, cholera, the plague and various 

 other diseases have been carried from one nation to another by 

 armies and have often led to losses much greater than those 

 sustained by the armies in the field. 



In the present war the population of Belgium and Serbia have 

 been subjected to suffering almost without parallel in modern 

 times, but hardship is no stranger in the land of their oppressors, 

 especially among the poorer classes. The infant death rate has 

 been abnormally high and the birth rate has rapidly fallen since 

 the outbreak of war. The actual and potential losses among the 

 civilian population have been enormous, and it will require many 

 years before the Central Powers can recuperate from the effects of 

 this drain upon their human resources. What is the incidence of 

 this enhanced civilian death rate? For a considerable part of the 

 population who are not fortunately situated it would doubtless, 

 on the average, affect those who are constitutionally weak with 

 especial severity. Ammon maintains that the high death rate 

 during wars is a racial advantage in so far as this is the result of 

 epidemics, and Drs. G. A. Reid and Haycraft would probably 

 agree with him. The racial effect of the death rate would doubt- 

 less depend much upon circumstances which vary from war to 

 war. The selective value of epidemics for instance depends 

 greatly, as has been pointed out before, on the particular diseases 

 which are disseminated. Where general massacres are indulged in 

 as in Armenia, or where the inhabitants of certain villages are 

 stood up against a stone wall and shot, nothing can be said of the 

 selective working of the death rate. Long wars are especially apt 

 to work havoc in the general population. But even in the short 



