333 GENETICS 



stay at home to reproduce the next generation. When 

 a soldier dies on the battlefield or in the hospital, it 

 is not alone a brave man who is cut off, but it is the 

 termination of a probably desirable strain of germ- 

 plasm. 



David Starr Jordan has presented this matter very 

 clearly. He points out that the "man with a hoe" 

 among the European peasantry is not the result of 

 centuries of oppression, as he has been pictured, but 

 rather the dull progeny resulting from generations of 

 the unfit who were left behind when the fit went off to 

 war never to return. 



Benjamin Franklin, with characteristic wisdom, sums 

 up the situation in the following epigram: "Wars are 

 not paid for in war time; the bill comes later." 



b. Social Hindrances 



There are many conditions of modern society which 

 act non-eugenically. 



For instance, the increasing demands of profes- 

 sional life prolong the period necessary for prepara- 

 tion, which, with the "cost of high living," tends 

 toward late marriage. In this way much of the best 

 gennplasm is very often withheld from circulation 

 until it is too late to be effective in providing for the 

 succeeding generation. 



Certain occupations such as school-teaching and 

 nursing by women are filled by the best blood obtainable, 

 yet this blood is denied a direct part in molding pos- 

 terity, since marriage is frequently either forbidden or 



