192 THOMAS D. CROTHERS 



ranges of a new continent that is yet to be explored and map- 

 ped out. The armies of inebriates are the same degenerate, 

 diseased victims, who become unfit, disabled, and sorely 

 wounded, and are left on the field to die. In our ignorance 

 we fail to realize this, and join in the delusion that they are 

 yet to do battle for civilization. 



The laws of elimination go on crowding them out every 

 where, and the losses and injuries they inflict on both the 

 present and future generations are great obstacles to the sur- 

 vival of the fittest. Here nature is teaching the true remedy 

 in the elimination and separation of those unfit, and hurrying 

 them on to death by insanity, criminality, and various allied 

 degenerations: the grinding, crushing battle of civilization; 

 the struggle of man upward and outward, with its exposure, 

 its strains and drains; its shot and shell, wounding, crippling, 

 and disabling; and its force of hereditary injuries, coming 

 from the past and reaching out into the future. This is the 

 struggle along the front line, in which over a million of poor 

 victims are engaged. 



Nature separates, eliminates, and destroys. Science 

 teaches that separation and isolation may be followed by 

 restoration. The same laws and forces which accelerate dis- 

 solution may be turned into currents of evolution. This army 

 of inebriates can be halted and forced back to the rear, and 

 diverted into conditions of growth and developmert. Al- 

 ready the polluted springs of heredity and the recruiting sta- 

 tions of the saloons and unregulated marriages are apparent. 

 Already there are in sight vast ranges of causes and conditions 

 that can be utilized and sent into practical operation for the 

 prevention as well as the cure of inebriety. 



