4i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and the conspicuously brave are particularly liable to be killed. The 

 point need not be labored: what Darwin said of even ancient times is 

 true to-day : 



The bravest men, who were always willing to come to the front in war, and 

 who freely risked their lives for others, would on an average perish in larger 

 numbers than other men. 



Our suspicion that war has a dysgenic influence grows when we think 

 of countries with a voluntary system of military service. In the mak- 

 ing of our armies there is a process of discriminate selection which 

 works in the wrong way from the eugenic point of view. The call of 

 their country attracts a larger proportion of the more chivalrous, the 

 more virile, the more courageous. In the patriotic response not only 

 in this country, but throughout the Empire, we are proud to recognize 

 a multitude of men of character that is precious. We have to face the 

 fact, of which we are socially proud, that Britain is sending to the battle- 

 fields large numbers of the best of her sons, whose early death would 

 mean an impoverishment of the race. They will not all come home. 

 Already one knows of many irreparable losses in fine families. 



It is so important to avoid exaggeration that one wishes to hear the 

 other side. It is pointed out quite justly that a large nucleus of 

 genuinely brave men must stay at home to keep things going, and that 

 they form a eugenic bulwark. Tliis is true, but after gratefully allow- 

 ing for these we can not shut our eyes to the large body of men of 

 military age who can not fight or who will not fight, whose ranks, 

 therefore, will not be thinned as those of the combatants are. 



It is said again that elimination is confined to the men, so that the 

 women remain, as they usually are, a eugenic safeguard. But they can 

 not directly act in this way unless they have children, and it is to be 

 feared that the war will seriously increase the disharmony already in- 

 volved in the unwholesomely large number of unmarried women. 

 Moreover we have only to think of the mothers in Belgium and Servia to 

 see that the terrible sifting is not confined to the men. Severe and 

 protracted war tends to lower physical vigor throughout wide circles of 

 non-combatants; the maternal depression, like that induced by famine, 

 tends to result in arrests of development and in the production of 

 under-average types. We have no reason to believe that the germ-plasm 

 is specifically affected, yet it is quite conceivable that very unfavorable 

 nurtural conditions may induce prejudicial germinal variations of a 

 heritable sort. 



We are told that many join the ranks simply in a desire for adven- 

 ture. This is very difficult to prove, but even if it be true, what then ? 

 The adventurous spirit is no bad thing, often implying, for instance, a 

 healthy-minded lack of preoccupation with one's precious self. It is 



