358 pearl: biology and war 



While we are on this subject of natural selection, it will be well 

 to examine into another aspect of the subject in its relation to 

 war. It has been contended by various persons that war has an 

 unfortunate selective action on the individuals engaged in it. 

 The operation of war is supposed to be selective within the race 

 for the elimination of the best and the preservation o!" the worst 

 germ plasm. This is alleged on the general ground that the 

 physically, mentally, and morally best of the youth of the nation 

 are those most likely to take part in war in the first place, and in 

 the second place, most likely, because of these characteristics, to 

 be killed in the course of the conflict. Dire pictures have been 

 drawn of the effect upon the race of engaging in war, through the 

 supposed operation of this dysgenic selection. The more one 

 examines the facts, however, the more is it apparent that the case 

 has been very much exaggerated. 



Many considerations lead to this conclusion. In the first 

 place, the future of the race, in the narrowly biological sense, is 

 solely dependent upon the continuity of its germ plasm. In the 

 human species the germ plasm of the race is equally borne by both 

 the males and the females. But, putting the very worst com- 

 plexion on the dysgenic argument, the females of the race are not 

 elimated in war. So that if we were to grant for the moment the 

 contention that the best males of the race are killed off, it would 

 still remain the fact that but very slight deleterious racial effect 

 would result, because there would be left behind in the surviving 

 females at least half of the total racial germ cells of all qualities. 

 Mendel's principles of inheritance teach us that even in such an 

 extremely unlikely circumstance that all the germ plasm borne 

 in spermatozoa was at the end of the war of an inferior quality, it 

 would still be possible through the operation of segregation to 

 have again a preponderant stock of superior individuals aft r a 

 few generations, provided there were no social restrictions on 

 assortative mating, which, broadly speaking, there are not. 



Furthermore, the hypothesis of racial degeneration by elimi- 

 nation of the best tacitly assumes that those males eliminated in 

 battle have not left progeny before their elimination, whereas, as 

 a matter of statistical fact, a considerable portion of them do 



