EUGENICS AND WAR 423 



To sum up, man is not bound to follow Nature, but if he does he is 

 not shut up to an imitation of that mode of the struggle for existence 

 in which rats excel, namely internecine competition. And if he does 

 pursue this method, as in war, he can not console himself with the be- 

 lief that the result will be the survival of the fittest in any desirable 

 sense. 



III. War, Biologically Considered, a Eeversion to the Crudest 

 Form of the Struggle for Existence 



We have considered the fact that serious sustained international war, 

 considered biologically, implies a reversal of rational selection, and we 

 have discussed a widespread misunderstanding due to a narrow con- 

 ception of the struggle for existence. Let us pass for a little to the 

 proposition that war, biologically regarded, is a return to the most 

 primitive and crude form of the struggle for existence. Looking at this 

 great war socially, we are, as a nation, practically unanimous in the 

 resolution to resist to the uttermost an outrage on civilization, and to 

 stand with our allies at all costs for freedom and justice; we are proud 

 of those who are fighting, enduring, and dying for their country; we 

 know publicly and privately of the virtues to which the war has afforded 

 opportunity among combatants and non-combatants alike. But, ad- 

 mitting all this and more, can we deny that war, biologically regarded, 

 is a return to the rat versus rat mode of the struggle for existence? 

 No escape seems possible. 



If this unpalatable fact be true why mention it, since after a cer- 

 tain, or rather uncertain, date in history this war was inevitable ? We 

 mention it because it behoves us to mingle fear with our pride. The 

 implied reversion brings with it terrible risks, and when we hold up 

 our hands at the frightfulnesses committed -by our enemies, we should 

 remember that we are not exempt from the risk of slipping down the 

 rungs of the steep ladder of evolution. In the actual environment of 

 war, as Mr. Theodore Chambers said in his admirable lecture on 

 " Eugenics and the War," " the decent garments of custom are often torn 

 off," and the Berserk discovered; and for those who are not fighting 

 there is also, and less excusably, a tendency to reversion because of our 

 necessary preocciipation with a struggle which, though embellished 

 with the latest scientific devices and illumined with the finest heroism, 

 involves a recrudescence of primitive passion. We may already see 

 the deterioration in ungenerous and inaccurate depreciation of German 

 culture, in unworthy scares, in unkindness to aliens, in suggestions of 

 barbarous reprisals, and so forth. On the whole we are behaving well, 

 yet it may not be amiss to remind ourselves of the solemn biological and 

 psychological fact, that the past lives on in our present, with the risk 

 of "Eeversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud." What sowings 



