WAR SELECTION IN WESTERN EUROPE 145 



young, untrained troops, and it was remarked that the conscripts born in the 

 year of terror had not the stamina of the earlier levies. Brave they were, 

 superbly brave, and the emperor sought by every means to breathe into them 

 his indomitable spirit. (J. H. Eose.) Truly the emperor could make boys 

 heroes, but he could never repair the losses of 1812. . . . Soldiers were want- 

 ing, youths were dragged forth. ... To fill hell with heroes, 



— in these words some one has summed up the life-work of Napoleon. 

 " J'ai cent mille hommes de rente/' " My income is a hundred thousand 

 men/' said Napoleon. But to a terrible degree he lived beyond his 

 income. 



French writers have been very frank in the discussion of national 

 deficiencies and mistakes. They have wished to conceal nothing from 

 France and therefore nothing from the world. Their admissions have 

 been exaggerated by unfriendly critics. It has been claimed that 

 modern France, with the other Latin nations, is a " decadent state," that 

 she has passed her prime and is now in the weakness and sterility of 

 old age, her place as the dominating force on the continent of Europe 

 having been yielded to a younger and more aggressive power. If its 

 strong strains are not wholly extirpated, peace and security will renew 

 its youth. Decrepitude in a nation is due not to age, but to the opera- 

 tions of war, as we have several times insisted, followed by the loss of 

 its best strains of blood and their replacement by recruiting from im- 

 migrants of the weaker races. Though France has suffered grievously 

 from war, as a nation she has lost little from immigration and not 

 much from emigration. 



Certain features of French life have been indicated as evidences of 

 injury from reversal of selection. The birthrate of France, already 

 low, has been steadily falling. This is apparently a result of the sur- 

 vival of the cautious, for Napoleon's dashing grenadiers could hardly be 

 imagined to limit their families for prudential reasons of economy. In- 

 deed, the French in Canada, not affected by war, are notoriously fecund. 

 Another evidence of the survival of the cautious is found in the relative 

 lack of business enterprise in France. The gold hoarded in her stock- 

 ings has been used mainly for^ international loans, rarely for business 

 development, foreign loans yielding a higher interest with less personal 

 responsibility. And the absence of factory towns emphasizes the fall in 

 the birthrate, as in civilized nations a high rate of increase occurs 

 mainly in industrial centers. 



Edmond Demolins in a clever book asks : " In what constitutes the 

 superiority of the Anglo-Saxon?" He finds his answer in the false 

 standards in French life, in defects of training and of civic and per- 

 sonal ideals. The desire for seats in a government bureau and for 

 similar safe places of routine and without initiative has been termed 

 in Italy " Impiegomania," the " craze for sitting down." The eagerness 

 to secure such positions is said to be a besetting sin of the youth of 

 both Italy and France. But the fault may be due to over-centraliza- 



