AMERICA'S FIGHTING STOCKS 



Half a Dozen Races Available for War, Each Valuable in Its Way— Brunt 

 Battle Will Be Borne by Old Americans of Nordic Descent- 

 Officers Nearly all Nordics 



of 



IN EVERY American city, bright- 

 colored posters appeal to the youth 

 of the nation to enlist for the war. 

 Almost without exception, these 

 posters present pictures of clean-cut. 

 tall, fair, long-skulled youths, with 

 every appearance of possessing the 

 quahties of leadership and initiative. 

 This is America's concept of the typical 

 soldier. 



If an anthropologist should paint a 

 picture of a typical member of the 

 Nordic race, he would portray iust such 

 a man as now appears on the recruiting 

 posters. 



This exact identity of the typical 

 United States soldier and the t3q:)ical 

 Nordic is not a coincidence, nor the 

 result of artistic inventiveness; it is 

 due to the fact that the soldiers of this 

 country have always been Nordic, 

 and will be Nordic at least during the 

 present war, in overwhelming pre- 

 ponderance. Many soldiers will, of 

 course, be found who present the direct 

 opposite of the Nordic characteristics, 

 and for this reason will be more noticed 

 individually than is the common type, 

 but they will not be typical of Amer- 

 ica's fighting forces. 



While the officers of an army built 

 up in time of peace are not chosen 

 primarily for fighting ability, a survey 

 of the ancestral nationality of American 

 army officers is nevertheless of interest. 

 It can be made in a rough way by 

 noting the apparent nationality of 

 the family name. On this basis, 4,233 

 regular commissioned officers of the 

 U. S. Army were taken from the 1916 

 Register and classified as follows: 



Great Britain 89 . 8% 



English 81.0 



Irish 3.5 



Scotch 4.3 



Welsh ] 



Germany 7.7% 



France 2.0 



Holland 1.6 



vScandinavia 1 ■ 5 



Spanish • .5 



Jewish 1 



Even if abundant allowance is made 

 for the inaccuracy of this method, it 

 is evident that more than nine-tenths 

 of the regular army officers are Nordics, 

 nearly all of them Anglo-Saxons. The 

 Mediterraneans are represented by the 

 Welsh and a scattering from other 

 parts of Great Britain, no doubt. The 

 Spanish names in the list belong to 

 Porto Ricans or Filipinos. The French 

 names probably represent Huguenot 

 famihes (mostly Nordic) ; the Hol- 

 landers are doubtless representatives 

 of the old Dutch families of New York. 



The privates, while not so over- 

 whelmingly Nordic, still have for the 

 most part the tall stature and blond- 

 ness characteristic of the Nordic race. 

 According to calculations made by the 

 Surgeon General's Office, the average 

 infantryman is 67.4 inches in height, 

 with chest girth (deflated) of 31.07 

 inches, weighs 147.07 pounds and is 

 30.9 years old. 



THE NORDIC RACE 



The Nordic race probably took its 

 present form somewhere in eastern 

 Russia, although it may have come 

 from Africa at an earlier period in the 

 world's pre-history. It is one of the 

 three principal races of Europe, the 

 other two being the Mediterranean 

 and the Alpine. The former came 

 into Europe from the south—/, e., 

 Africa— and is represented mainly by 

 the Latin races; in appearance it differs 

 from the Nordic mainly in bemg 

 shorter and darker. The Alpine race 

 is made up of a flood of round-headed, 



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