I3I2 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



fact of war is a detestable anachronism, and one full of deadly peril 

 to the character of combatants and non-combatants alike. It seems 

 to come upon the nations because the past is still too strong for 

 them, as a surge of reversion which sweeps them off their feet. Yet 

 also because no better solution has been found in time; and also 

 because the better ideals of Peace have not yet been adequately 

 thought out and set before mankind, save in too simply general 

 and idealistic ways, not yet developed into Policy. 



But our special problem here is to apply the second — the bio- 

 logical — test. Leaving, without forgetting, the social heiitage, we 

 have to ask how war affects the natural inheritance of a race, and 

 whether there is in Organic Nature any object lesson which may 

 make clearer to us the significance of human warfare. 



EFFECT OF WAR ON THE RACE.— Various positions are held 

 in regard to the effect of war on the heritable qualities of a race, 

 (i) There is the view of the extreme militarists that war is indis- 

 pensable. The nations have to be bled periodically, else they will 

 become soft and adipose. According to Bernhardi: "War is a funda- 

 mental law" of evolution. War is a biological necessity of the first 

 importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind. It cannot 

 be dispensed with, since without it an unhealthy development will 

 follow, which excludes every advancement of the race and therefore 

 all real civilisation." (2) There is the view that in ancient times war 

 was (sometimes, if not always) an eliminating process that made for 

 progress, strengthening a tribe by the continual sifting out of those 

 less fit, for times when fighting was the order of the day; and 

 strengthening the race by the occasional "wiping out" of a weaker 

 clan by a stronger; but that this discriminate elimination, even if 

 really useful to the race, has entirely ceased with the change of 

 conditions in modern warfare. (3) Hence the position that war is 

 radicall}^ dysgenic; that is to say, that it persistently sifts in the 

 wrong direction, impoverishing the race by the loss of a dispropor- 

 tionate number of the more chivalrous, courageous, and patriotic. 

 The best statement of this position is to be found in Chancellor 

 Starr Jordan's impressive Human Harvest. We should also recall 

 Darwin's sentence in the fifth chapter of The Descent of Man: 'The 

 bravest men, who were always willing to come to the front in war, 

 and who freely risked their lives for others, would on an average 

 perish in larger numbers than other men." (4) Some biometricians, 

 however, still hold the severely scientific position that the influence 

 of war on a nation, biologically regarded, has not yet been investi- 

 gated by competent statistical methods, and that no certain con- 

 clusion can be drawn. 



Against the view that war is indispensable if the virile virtues are 

 to be kept alive, it must be firmly maintained that in the tasks of 



