THE BLOOD OF TEE NATION. 129 



THE BLOOD OF THE NATION. 



A STUDY OF THE DECAY OF RACES THROUGH THE SURVIVAL OF 



THE UNFIT.— II. IN WAR 



By DAVID STARR JORDAN, 



PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANTOKD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. 



XXV. Not long ago I visited the town of Novara, in northern 

 Italy. There, in a wheatfield, the farmers have plowed up 

 skulls of men till they have piled up a pyramid ten or twelve feet 

 high. Over this pyramid some one has built a canopy to keep 

 off the rain. These were the skulls of young men of Savoy, 

 Sardinia and Austria — men of eighteen to thirty-five years of age, 

 without physical blemish so far as may be, peasants from the 

 farms and workmen from the shops, who met at Novara to kill 

 each other over a matter in which they had very little concern. 

 Should the Prince of Savoy sit on his unstable throne or yield it to 

 some one else, this was the question. It matters not the decision. 

 History doubtless records it, as she does many matters of less moment. 

 But this fact concerns us — here in thousands they died. Farther on. 

 Frenchmen, Austrians and Italians fell together at Magenta, in the 

 same cause. You know the color that we call Magenta, the hue of the 

 blood that flowed out under the olive trees. Go over Italy as you will, 

 there is scarcely a spot not crimsoned by the blood of France, scarcely 

 a railway station without its pile of French skulls. You can trace them 

 across to Egypt, to the foot of the Pyramids. You will find them in 

 Germany — at Jena and Leipzig, at Liitzen and Bautzen and Austerlitz. 

 You will find them in Kussia, at Moscow; in Belgium, at Waterloo. 'A 

 boy can stop a bullet, as well as a man,' said Napoleon; and with the 

 rest are the skulls and bones of boys, 'ere evening to be trodden like 

 the grass.' 'Born to be food for powder' was the grim epigram of the 

 day, summing up the life of the French peasant. Eead the dreary 

 record of the glory of France, the slaughter at Waterloo, the wretched 

 failure of Moscow, the miserable deeds of Sedan, the waste of Algiers, 

 the poison of Madagascar, the crimes of Indo-China, the hideous results 

 of barrack vice and its entail of disease and sterility, and you will 

 understand the 'Man with the Hoe.' The man who is left, the man 

 whom glory cannot use, becomes the father of the future men of France. 

 As the long-horn cattle reappear in a neglected or abused herd of 

 Durhams, so comes forth the aboriginal man, 'the man of the hoe,' in a 

 wasted race of men. 



VOL. LIX.— 9 



