226 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



places of soldiers/' he said ; but he had eventually 

 to be content with boys. " The mighty swirl of 

 the Moscow campaign sucked in 150,000 lads of 

 under twenty years of age into the devouring 

 vortex " ; out of 600,000 who crossed the Niemen 

 to conquer Russia, 20,000 famished, frost-bitten 

 spectres staggered back. It was the rapid suc- 

 cession of skimmings that told. " In less than 

 half a year after the loss of half a million men a 

 new army, nearly as numerous, was forthcoming 

 and the grim roll-call of wasted men, many of 

 them wasted heroes about half of whom were 

 French amounted, according to some, to three 

 millions." It is true that glorious France survived 

 all this bleeding, but how impoverished, qualita- 

 tively as well as quantitatively ! and even a great 

 life-saver like Pasteur could not restore the cubit 

 of stature which the great life-destroyer had 

 lopped off. 1 



We admit that wars have been necessary and 

 righteous especially necessary and that they 

 may be so still, but this opinion does not affect the 

 fact that prolonged war in which a nation takes 

 part is bound to impoverish the breed, since the 

 character of the breed always depends on the men 

 who are left. How else can we understand what 

 has happened so often, that an older civilisation 



1 While I plead guilty to disbelief in the biological value of 

 modern war, I do not think this is inconsistent with an appreciation 

 of the soldier's qualities. Who does not admire what Mr. Sandeman 

 describes in his " Uncle Gregory " ? (1909) ..." That quite un- 

 mistakable note that you get in a very few people who, in one way 

 or another, have actually accepted death, and are only, so to speak, 

 alive in the meantime. It belongs to the flawless perfection of the 

 military spirit, with its entire detachment from life itself, from self- 

 will, from, fear, and from ease, and from all pretences." 



