HUMAN CONSERVATION 529 



five feet six inches. Neither the man nor the woman should have dark 

 hair. Its tint may range from blonde to auburn. The eyes of the 

 pair should be pure blue without any tint of brown. The complexion 

 should be fair to ruddy without any suggestion of heaviness or 'beefi- 

 ness.' The nose ought to be strong and narrow, the chin square and 

 powerful, and the skull well developed at the back. The man and the 

 woman must be of German descent and must bear a German name and 

 speak the language of Germany. These 'mated couples' are to get 

 a wedding gift of $125 and an additional grant for each child born. 

 The couples may settle in the United States if they prefer." This 

 reported attempt to establish a Prussian type of "Hauser blondes" at 

 least points the way to one sort of a positive eugenic method that 

 might possibly be employed with respect to certain physical charac- 

 teristics. 



It should be remembered, however, that the eugenic ideal is not 

 by any means confined to physical traits alone. 



b) BY ENLARGING INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITY 



Much good human germplasm goes to waste through ineffective- 

 ness on account of unfavorable environment or lack of a suitable 

 opportunity to develop. 



Every agency which contributes toward increasing the opportunity 

 of the individual to attain to a better development of his latent 

 possibilities is in harmony with a thoroughly positive eugenic practice. 

 Thus better schools, better homes, better living conditions, in short, 

 all euthenic endeavor, directly serves the eugenic ideal by making the 

 best out of whatever germinal equipment is present in man. 



c) BY PREVENTING GERMINAL WASTE 



Much good protoplasm fails to find expression in the form of off- 

 spring because one or the other of possible parents is cut off either by 

 preventable death or by social hindrances. To avoid such calamities 

 is a part of the positive program of eugenics. 



1. Preventable death. — War, from the eugenic point of view, is the 

 height of folly, since presumably the brave and the physically fit 

 march away to fight, while in general the unqualified stay at home to 

 reproduce the next generation. When a soldier dies on the battlefield 

 or in the hospital, it is not alone a brave man who is cut off, but it is 

 the termination of a probably desirable strain of germplasm. The 

 Thirty Years' War in Germany cost 6,000,000 lives, while Napoleon 

 in his campaigns drained the best blood of France. 



