Eugenics, the War Instinct and Democracy 



255 



ficial causes (the commercial interests of 

 a few, the whims of a monarch) is not 

 beneficial; for it goes without saying 

 that the desire of a few obsessed mam- 

 mon-worshipers does not represent the 

 innate instinct of the mass. Only such 

 war as is inevitable is beneficial, for 

 again too much war will surely lead to 

 extinction. It then follows that we 

 should remove all superficial causes of 

 war and only indulge in such wars as 

 are dictated by nature, i. e., by the 

 desire of the people of a given nation as 

 shown by a popular vote. By this 

 method and by this method only can 

 we evade interference with nature. 



Hence it follows that whether neither, 

 either, or both of the postulates that 

 war is beneficial and that war is inevi- 

 table arc true, our course of action 

 should be the same — to forestall the 

 possibility' of war in every way. 



The other bone I have to pick is 

 Ireland's article in the December num- 

 ber: "Democracy and the Accepted 

 Facts of Heredity." Ireland makes the 

 point that some people by their intel- 

 lectual heritage are more fit to govern 

 than others, and that these individuals 

 should be given something of a free rein 

 in governing. If these people would 

 govern for the good of their nation at 

 large, and not for the good of them- 

 selves and their small cliques of sup- 

 porters, this would be true enough. 

 But although certain men have the 

 intellectual ability to govern efficiently, 

 I dare say that not one in a century has 

 sufficient moral strength to govern 

 justly if he is not held in check by the 

 chances of dethronement. I do not 

 hold up popular control as the panacea 

 of all evils, but it is likely to exert a 

 restraining influence on the ambitious. 

 It is a historical fact, of course, in 

 practically every country, that social 

 and economic reforms (decent housing 

 conditions, living wages, etc.) have not 

 come from the governing classes, but 

 from and because of the demands and 

 unrest of the masses. And while I 

 do not support any religious dogma, I 

 do hold that every man has a right to 



a square deal. Moreover, I hold tha> 

 war is, to all intents and purposes 

 the offspring of a government by (and 

 therefore for) the few. If war had only 

 been declared after a popular vote had 

 shown a people in favor of it, I venture 

 to say that there would have been very 

 few wars in history.- And I venture 

 to say that the individual nation and 

 the world at large would be no worse off 

 if this custom prevailed. The German 

 and Russian workers and peasants 

 would scarcely have been sufficiently 

 interested in the jealousies of their 

 masters to have started the holocaust 

 that has just terminated. As to Mr. 

 Ireland's fear for the fate of the indi- 

 vidual, such individuals as Napoleon, 

 the late Kaiser, or Bismarck would 

 doubtless feel themselves hampered by 

 a democratic government. And it is 

 unfortunately to Napoleonism and Bis- 

 marckism that brilliant minds run 

 when given unlimited power. As far 

 as the arts and sciences go, I think Mr. 

 Ireland can safely put away his fears. 

 When even such a radically popular 

 government as the one at Moscow 

 puts such a man as Lunacharsky at the 

 head of its educational system it does 

 not point to a disapproval of personal 

 genius. Even Trotsky would scarcely 

 advocate that pictures be painted by 

 referendum or that esthetic criticism 

 be put upon a communistic basis. 

 Moreover, even though Mr. Ireland 

 may not consider the ten million odd 

 of the hoi polloi killed in the recent 

 war — precipitated by autocratic govern- 

 ments — to be important, still he must 

 admit by his own argument that the 

 death of such men as Gaudier-Brzeska, 

 Rupert Brooke, Peguy, Frakl, etc., 

 were a genuine and irremediable loss to 

 civilization, provided, of course, that 

 he has ever heard of these men. And no 

 one knows how many potential Shake- 

 speares and Newtons there were among 

 the nineteen and twenty-year-olds that 

 were slaughtered and broken. 



The chief crime of democracy would 

 seem, then, to be a relative inefficiency 

 in the handling of public affairs, of 



2 This should be decided by a systematic appeal to the facts of history. Some facts as j^et 

 unpublished indicate that democracies are quite as prone to war as are autocracies. 



