WAR'S AFTERMATH 



Survey of Parts of the South Yields Evidence of Biological Injury to Nation through 



Civil War, with No Evidence of Any 



Countervailing Effects 



Review of a Book by 

 David Starr Jordan and Harvky Ernest Jordan 



IT IS fairly obvious to any thinking 

 person that war is a tremendous 

 factor in cacogenics, because it 

 destroys men who are superior — 

 physically, at least — and leaves the 

 relatively inferior to perpetuate the 

 race. Biologists have been calling at- 

 tention to this fact for many years, but 

 until recently no efTort has been made to 

 particularize the indictment of militar- 

 ism. An attempt has recently been 

 made in this direction, by David Starr 

 Jordan and Harvey Ernest Jordan, 

 working under auspices of the World 

 Peace Foundation. Their results have 

 been ])ubli.shed in a little book' called 

 "War's Aftermath." This is the first 

 attem]jt in history to put the postulate 

 that war reverses the action of natural 

 selection to the test of actual investiga- 

 tion. 



At the very start of the research, 

 there were certain facts available whose 

 meaning could be hardly misinter- 

 l)rcted. It was known that nearly a 

 million young men, largely of su])erior 

 fitness, had i^erished in the Civil War, 

 and it was inconcei\'a1)le that their loss 

 should not have afTected the racial 

 stock of the nation. The loss was 

 not unequally divided between North 

 and South; but it rejarcsented 2% of 

 the white ]}opulation of the North, 

 and 10% of the white pojnilation of 

 the South. "The Southern lo.ss of 

 human wealth was therefore five times 

 as heavy as in the North, and the 

 results of this loss should be corre- 

 spondingly more evident. This is in 



fact the case, although in certain 

 Northern vStates, as Vermont, Connect- 

 icut, Massachusetts, the loss was almost 

 as great relatively to the population as 

 in \'irginia or Georgia. 



"This loss fell on the men of that part 

 of the community racially most valuable, 

 the voung men between the ages 

 of 18 and 35. At least 40% of 

 these in the South died without issue. 

 Even among the Southern States this 

 loss was unequally distributed, Virginia 

 and North Carolina apparently suffering 

 most. Both Virginia and North Caro- 

 lina were settled mainly by the same 

 British stock, many Scotch being re- 

 presented and in certain localities the 

 Pennsylvania Germans. The racial 

 quality throughout was high, and it 

 may be assumed to have been about 

 equally high and as good as the best 

 in the United States or in the world, 

 at the time of the outbreak of the war." 



EXACT MEASUREMENTS WANTED 



Such broad facts were known, but it 

 seemed desirable to make a more 

 inten.sive study of some small ]3ortion 

 of the area most affected, in order to 

 determine the exact nature of the war's 

 aftermath. The in\'estigators knew 

 that some racial hurt has been caused; 

 they wanted to find out how much. 

 After a careful survey of the field, 

 Rockbridge and Sjiottsylvania counties, 

 in Virginia, and Col)b county, in 

 Georgia, were chosen as likely to yi(>ld 

 the most satisfactorv results. 



• War's Aftermath: a preliminary study of the Eugenics of War, as ilUistrated l)y the Civil War 

 of the Unitcfi States and the late wars in the Balkans; by David Starr Jordan, Chancellor of 

 Stanforfl University, anfl Harvey Ernest Jordan, professor of histoloRv and emhryoloRv in the 

 University of Virginia. Pp. xx.xi-|-104, price 7.S cents net. Boston and New York, Houghton 

 Mifflin Comjjany, 1914. 



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