HUMAN IMPLICATIONS 229 



best of our young men for exposure to wartime haz- 

 ards. We have space for one bit of evidence. Hunt 

 found that for the drafted American army, 83 per 

 cent of the mentally defective were rejected; those 

 of normal mentality and the 17 per cent who were 

 only slightly subnormal were held for service. A 

 good geneticist would have reversed the procedure, 

 sending the mentally deficient out into wartime risks 

 and keeping the others at home to continue the 

 race. But this is so contrary to fact in all the stand- 

 ards by which armies are selected that it seems faintly 

 ridiculous in the telling. Personal selection, so far as 

 it exists in modern warfare, selects the individual to 

 be killed or wounded because he is physically or 

 mentally superior to those who are left at home. (64) 

 The ill effects of this selection among the young 

 men are evident in a nation where war losses have 

 been heavy, but they are less drastic for people as 

 a whole than they might be if it were not for various 

 mitigating factors. To date only half the race has 

 suffered in so-called civilized warfare, since women 

 have been exempt from actual combat. Also many 

 young men return who, though wounded and per- 

 haps otherwise handicapped, are still physically ca- 

 pable of passing on their gerra plasm to succeeding 

 generations. And even in populations badly shattered 

 by war most of these genetic ill effects could be ob- 



