CHAPTER IX 



THE SELECTIVE INFLUENCE OF WAR 



"Though, during barbarism and the earher stages of civihzation, 

 war has the effect of exterminating the weaker societies, and of weed- 

 ing out the weaker members of the stronger societies, and thus in both 

 ways furthering the development of those valuable powers, bodily 

 and mental, which war brings into play; yet during the later stages of 

 civihzation, the second of these actions is reversed. . . . But when 

 the industrial development has become such that only some of the 

 adult males are drafted into the army, the tendency is to pick out and 

 expose to slaughter the best-grown and healthiest; leaving behind the 

 physically-inferior to propagate the race,"— Herbert Spencer, The 

 Study of Sociology. 



The subject of the present chapter really belongs under the 

 heading of the preceding one. Of the many forms of selective 

 elimination which are at work in human society, war is one of the 

 most conspicuous. It involves a struggle for existence in the 

 most literal sense of that term, but whether in general it even- 

 tuates in the survival of the fittest depends upon many circum- 

 stances which are often difficult to estimate. Although many 

 have written about it as if it consisted merely in the struggle of 

 rival contestants of which the strongest or most skillful worsted 

 his adversary, the biological effect of war is no simple problem. 

 "If it were not for war," says General Bernhardi, "we should 

 find that inferior and degenerated races would overcome healthy 

 and youthful ones by their wealth and their numbers. The 

 generative importance of war lies in this, that it causes selection, 

 and thus war becomes a biological necessity. It becomes an indis- 

 pensable regulator, because without war there could never be 

 racial nor cultural progress." 



The same position has been developed by many writers, some of 

 them militarists, and others who have been led to this view-point 



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