38 The Journal of Heredity 
generations. The same is true of many 
European nations during the nine- 
teenth century. It is this century, and 
especially its last half, that shows the 
maximum years of peace. 
If we take out for study all periods in 
which no monarch or regent is recog- 
nized as ruling and the nation is theore- 
tically a ‘‘republic,’’ ‘‘commonwealth,”’ 
“consulate,” or designated by some 
such word, we have a definite criterion 
for inclusion and can express our results 
numerically. 
If we omit the doubtful ‘“stadholder- 
ship’ in Holland, we have in England 
the Commonwealth, 1649-1660, with 10 
years of war out of 11. France had 
three republics and one consulate with 
21 years of war out of 63. Holland 
had two republics (1759-1766 and 1795- 
1805) and The States which lasted from 
1702 to 1747. During these eras it 
showed 35 war-years out of 84. Spain 
had two years of republic from 1873-1875. 
They were filled with internal war- 
fare. Russia, since the overthrow 
of the Czar, has been in an almost 
constant state of either warfare or 
anarchy. 
The total of all these years of demo- 
cratic control is 163. The total years 
of war are 72. This is 44.2%. It is 
somewhat less than the total for all 
autocratic regimes, which was 51.4%. 
It is considerably less than the average 
for the first ten which was found to be 
63.4. Furthermore, in the instances 
where the democratic forms of govern- 
ment have been associated with an 
extremely high percentage of warfare, 
these popular governments represent 
beginnings in this practice of political 
control. Also England during ‘‘The 
Commonwealth,’ with 10 years of war 
out of 11, was in reality under one of 
the greatest of autocrats, though a 
non-royal one. 
There is some additional argument 
that democracies may be associated 
with an increased amount of peace 
from the fact that the comparatively 
democratic nations, Denmark, Switzer- 
land, Sweden, and Holland, have been 
free from war during the last hundred 
years. 
It has not been possible to include 
in this research non-royal autocrats 
like Cromwell and Richelieu. The diffi- 
culty would be in knowing when to 
stop, since no comprehensive list of 
such statesmen has ever been formu- 
lated. But the logical conclusion is that, 
if royal autocrats predispose towards 
belligerency, non-royal ones also do, and 
therefore some of the fighting periods 
now credited to comparatively non- 
autocratic governments should in reality 
be taken as exhibiting a further proof 
of the truth of the theory here set 
forth. 
AUTOCRATS DIFFICULT TO ABOLISH 
There seems, then, to be no doubt 
that great autocrats are associated with 
wars probably as a contributory cause. 
If they are a cause of war, the question 
then becomes one of vital interest: How 
are they forever to be abolished? This 
is not likely to be an easy matter. 
Autocrats work insidiously and, until 
they have become strong, they are not 
autocrats. By the time they have 
become autocrats they are then strong, 
and consequently difficult to deal with. 
There is much that is permanent in 
human nature that makes easy the 
development of autocratic sway. Man 
is a very exploitable animal, and it is a 
long time before he realizes that he is 
being made into a machine. By the 
time he has been made into a machine 
and is part of a greater machine—that 
is, precisely what he is then willing to 
be or indeed wishes to be—so who is to 
stop the process? It is only the outside 
and outlying nations that can do this 
by uniting for the common cause. This 
they do over and over again, and the 
force of numbers wins for a time until 
again in some unsuspected quarter 
another autocrat has welded together 
another machine. 
False and weak autocracies, like that 
of George III, Louis XVI, and Nicholas 
II, may break from within, but the 
genuine and strong, such as are under 
the personal control of some one great 
leader, require outside interference, 
which only becomes united after the 
autocracy has indeed been formed. 
