320 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE RACE 



War, as it was waged until very recently, must have exerted an adverse 

 selection upon populations. The strongest and physically most perfect 

 males were not only removed from the population during a part of their 

 reproductive period but were also subjected to increased mortality 

 hazards. Men unfit for military service were left to reproduce unchecked. 

 Proportionately fewer of the (physically) better individuals and more of 

 the poorer were able to transmit their genes to another generation. 1 

 Modern warfare, with its bombing of civilian populations, destruc- 

 tion of merchant shipping, intense industrial effort, and often general 

 lowering of living standards, is a very different thing from the old 

 conflicts between picked armies. What its hereditary effects may be is 

 not clear. 



The differential birth rate is one of the most subtle and persistent types 

 of unconscious selection by society. Census returns from practically all 

 civilized countries show that the various elements of the population do 

 not reproduce their proportionate quota of offspring. On the contrary, 

 there is almost invariably a definitely inverse ratio between the social, 

 economic, and intellectual status of a group and the proportionate num- 

 ber of children it produces. 2 This is illustrated by the following tables. 



Number of Children per 100 Wives in Selected Areas of the United States 



1 Perhaps one of the clearest and least prejudiced discussions of the very complicated 

 and controversial subject of the biological effects of war is to be found in War's After- 

 math, by D. S. and H. E. Jordan, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1914. This is a 

 study of our own Civil War and its effects on racial stocks. 



2 There is a huge amount of data in support of this conclusion, much of which has 

 been summarized by S. J. Holmes in his Human Genetics and its Social Import, 

 McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1914. The tables here presented are 

 taken from this work. 



