WAR SELECTION IN WESTERN EUROPE 143 



WAE SELECTION IN WESTERN EUROPE 



By Chancellor DAVID STARR JORDAN 



STANFORD UNIVERSITY 



France 



TT^UROPE had no finer human stock than that of France, and no 

 -*—^ modern people has suffered more from the ravages of war and 

 glory. The Gauls, as they appear in early history, were a Celtic race. 

 Conquest made them Gallo-Roman. Later, especially in the north and 

 east, their blood was strengthened by Teutonic strains — the Normans 

 from Scandinavia and the Franks from Central Germany. In later 

 days a large influx from Germanic Alsace has made German names 

 common in French society. 



Through reversal of selection by war, the men of France lost in 

 stature, and the nation in initiative. But a good stock possesses power 

 of recuperation, and regenerative processes have been evident in France 

 for the last twenty years. Peace and security, industry and economy 

 enable the natural forces of selection to operate. This means race re- 

 generation. The nation had been sorely wounded by her own sons. 

 She has been making a healthy recovery. 1 



In the Wiertz gallery in Brussels is a. striking painting, dating from 

 the time of Napoleon, called "A Scene in Hell" ("Une Scene dans 

 l'Enfer"). It represents the great marshal with folded arms and face 

 unmoved descending slowly to the land of the shades. Before him 

 filling all the background of the picture, their faces expressing every 

 form of reproach, are the men sent to death before their time by his 



1 ' ' Land, money, tradition and prestige, ' ' says Professor Albert Leon 

 Guerard ("French Civilization in the Nineteenth Century," 1912), "would be 

 naught if the people had lost its. soul. Their wealth would pass into stronger 

 hands, and their prestige to contempt. Once, about twenty years ago, the 

 French themselves wondered if it had not come to that. The cry of a de- 

 cadence was raised by malevolent rivals, by sensationalists, by esthetics in 

 quest of a new pose, by earnest patriots who had lost their star. When a be- 

 lated echo of this reaches us now, how faint and strange and silly it sounds. 

 For the one great asset of the French is their indomitable vitality. Even in 

 wasteful conflict one can not fail to admire the evidence of power. In the 

 twentieth century as ever before the French are among the pioneers. 



"I do not see France as a goddess, austere and remote. I see her in- 

 tensely human, stained with indecencies and blasphemies, scarred with in- 

 numerable battles, often blinded and stumbling on the way, but fighting on un- 

 dismayed, for ideals which she can not always define. An old nation? A 

 wounded nation? Perhaps, but her mighty heart is throbbing with uncon- 

 querable life." 



