WAR AND MANHOOD 3°3 



degeneration, it is something else to which these journalists refer. 

 Their problem is that of the London slums, of sweat-shops and child- 

 labor, of wasting overwork and of lack of nutrition, of premature old 

 age and of sodden drunkenness — influences which bring about the 

 degeneration of the individual, the inefficiency of the social group, but 

 which for the most part leave no trace in heredity and are therefore no 

 factor in the degeneration of the race. Such degradation is at once 

 cause, effect and symptom — a sign of racial inadequacy, a cause of 

 further enfeeblement and an effect of unjust and injurious social, polit- 

 ical and industrial conditions in the past. 



But the problem before us is not the problem of the slums. What 

 mark has been left on England by her great struggles for freedom and 

 by the thousand petty struggles to impose on the world the semblance 

 of order called " Pax Britannica," the British peace ? 



To one who travels widely through the counties of England some 

 part of the cost is plain. 



There's a widow in sleepy Chester 



Who mourns for her only son; 

 There's a grave by the Pabeng Eiver — 



A grave which the Burmans shun. 



This is a condition repeated in every village of England, and its 

 history is recorded on the walls of every parish church. Everywhere 

 can be seen tablets in memory of young men — gentlemen's sons from 

 Eton and Rugby and Winchester and Harrow, scholars from Oxford 

 and Cambridge, who have given up their lives in some far-off petty war. 

 Their bodies rest in Zululand, in Cambodia, in the Gold Coast, in the 

 Transvaal. In England only they are remembered. In the parish 

 churches these records are numbered by the score. In the cathedrals 

 they are recorded by the thousand. Go from one cathedral town to 

 another — Canterbury, Winchester, Chidester, Exeter, Salisbury, Wells, 

 Ely, York, Lincoln, Durham, Litchfield, Chester (what a wonderful 

 series of pictures this list of names calls up!), and you will find always 

 the same story, the same sad array of memorials to young men. What 

 would be the effect on England if all of these " unreturning brave " and 

 all that should have been their descendants could be numbered among 

 her sons to-day? Doubtless not all of these were young men of char- 

 acter. Doubtless not all are worthy even of the scant glory of a memo- 

 rial tablet. But most of them were worthy. Most of them were brave 

 and true, and most of them looked out on life with "frank blue 

 Briton eyes." 



This too we may admit, that war is not the only destructive agency 

 in modern society, and that in the struggle for existence the England 

 of to-day has had many advantages which must hide or neutralize the 

 waste of war. 



It suggests the inevitable end of all empire, of all dominion of man 



