WAR AND MANHOOD 89 



scientific knowledge, men have developed the fine art of selective breed- 

 ing. With men, as with animals, " Like the seed is the harvest." In 

 every vicissitude of race of men or of breed of animals, it is always 

 those who are left who determine what the future shall be. 



All progress in whatever direction is conditioned on selective breed- 

 ing. There is no permanent advance not dependent on advance in the 

 type of parenthood. There is no decline except that arising from breed- 

 ing from the second-best instead of the best. The rise and fall of races 

 of men in history is, in a degree, conditioned on such elements as deter- 

 mine the rise and fall of a breed of cattle or of a strain of horses. As 

 progress in blood is conditioned on normal selection or the choice of the 

 best for parenthood, so racial decline is conditioned on reversal of selec- 

 tion, the choice of the worst for survival. 



Always and ever, says Novicow, " war brings about the reversal of 

 selection." These traits of character, physical strength, agility, courage, 

 dash, patriotism, desired in the soldier, are lost in the race which de- 

 crees the destruction of the soldierly. The delusion that war in one 

 generation sharpens the edge of warriorhood in the next generation, 

 has no biological foundation. The man who is left determines always 

 the future. 



Once, on the flanks of the Apennines, there dwelt a race of free men, 

 fair and strong, self-reliant and confident. They were men of courage 

 and men of action — men " who knew no want they could not fill for 

 themselves." " They knew none on whom they looked down, and none 

 to whom they regarded themselves inferior." And for all things which 

 men could accomplish, these plowmen of the Tiber and the Apennines 

 felt themselves fully competent and adequate. " Vir" they called 

 themselves in their own tongue, and virile, virilis, men like them are 

 called to this day. It was the weakling and the slave who was crowded 

 to the wall ; the man of courage begat descendants. In each generation 

 and from generation to generation the human harvest was good. And 

 the great wise king who ruled them ; but here my story halts — for there 

 was no king. There could be none. For it was written, men fit to be 

 called men, men who are Viri, " are too self-willed, too independent, 

 too self-centered to be ruled by anybody but themselves." Elings are 

 for weaklings, not for men. Men free-bom control their own destinies. 

 " The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." 

 For it was later said of these same days : " There was a Brutus once, 

 who would have brooked the Eternal Devil to take his seat in Rome, as 

 easily as a king." And so there was no king to cherish and control these 

 men his subjects. The spirit of freedom was the only ruler they knew, 

 and this spirit being herself metaphoric called to her aid the four great 

 genii which create and recreate nations. Variation was ever at work, 

 while heredity held fast all that she developed. Segregation in her 



