230 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF ANIMALS 



viated if monogamy were less of an ingrained human 

 practice. 



The effects of severe wartime epidemics, which 

 are usually the cause of more deaths than the actual 

 fighting, are subject to the same comments; but with 

 these epidemics the civilian population is also di- 

 rectly affected, as was the case with the influenza 

 pandemic that swept the world in 1918, and carried 

 off in a day more civilians than did many spectacu- 

 lar air raids combined. 



General epidemics tend to fall most heavily on 

 the old and the young; biologically we are most in- 

 terested in the fate of children and young people. 

 Disease and undernourishment drastically reduced 

 the younger population in places well away from the 

 fighting lines in the last war. Homer Folks, (47) U. S. 

 Red Cross commissioner, testifies that in some sec- 

 tions of Italy 60 per cent of the children failed to 

 survive wartime conditions. The children of Ger- 

 many and of Poland suffered greatly. 



If he could know that such severe exposure elimi- 

 nated the relatively weaker specimens and left a 

 stronger, hardier race, the biologist could reconcile 

 himself to the death of these children, though emo- 

 tionally he might rebel. 



But this rationalization is impossible. Study of the 

 after-effects of epidemics upon children (45) does 



