420 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a race, while severe and protracted war makes for their impoverishment. 

 There is rough sifting, and the meshes of the sieve are not eugenically 

 determined. How far the impoverishment will go is hidden from us, 

 how far it can be counteracted remains to be seen, and what pluses there 

 are to set against the minuses is a question for careful consideration, 

 but some degree of impoverishment is certain. 



We are reminded, however, that the race does not live by the germ- 

 plasm alone, and that war with its terrible sifting may be worth all it 

 costs. But who can predict of any war what all its cost may be? In 

 his famous essay on "The Moral Equivalent of War," William James 

 said eloquently: 



Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and legends, are the most 

 ideal part of what we now own, a sacred, spiritual possession, worth more than 

 all the blood poured out. 



Perhaps it is so, especially if victory is thrown in ! Already in Britain 

 there has been a remarkable widening of sympathies, and waking up 

 to the needs and interests of others. 



Every one will agree that there are worse things than war — such 

 as slavery, rottenness, softness, and dishonor; they are worse even than 

 extinction. Let us admit that war may help " to preserve our ideals of 

 hardihood," " to protect human nature against its weaker and more cow- 

 ardly self," "to keep heroism and the martial virtues alive," and even 

 to re-impress us with the imperativeness of eugenics, but in these con- 

 cessions let us not admit that there are not tasks of peace capable of 

 evoking and disciplining an equal hardihood and heroism. Let us not 

 seek to conceal the fact that war, biologically regarded, means wastage 

 and a reversal of eugenic or rational selection, since it prunes off a dis- 

 proportionately large number of those whom the race can least afford 

 to lose. 



II. The Length and Breadth of the Struggle for Existence 



Let us turn to another question, which concerns the struggle for 

 existence. In spite of many protests, beginning with Darwin's, there 

 is a widespread belief that Nature's message to man is: "Each for 

 himself, and extinction take the hindmost," "contention is the vital 

 force," careers are open to talons. There is indeed a measure of truth 

 here, for we undoubtedly see much stern sifting in wild Nature, much 

 redness of tooth and claw, extraordinary infantile and juvenile mortal- 

 ity, and, apart from parasitism, a ceaseless condemnation of the unlit 

 lamp and the ungirt loin. 



But when we look into matters more closely we find that we have 

 not been careful enough either as regards Nature or Darwin's interpre- 

 tation of it. For the struggle for existence, in and by which Nature 



