HUMAN CONSERVATION 259 



Germany cost 6,000,000 lives, while Napoleon in his 

 campaigns drained the best blood of France. 



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." 



2. 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 

 germplasm 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 ob- 

 tainable, yet this blood is denied a direct part in 

 molding posterity, since marriage is either forbidden 

 or regarded as a serious handicap in such lines of 

 work. Advertisements concerning "unincumbered 

 help" and "childless apartments" tell their own 

 deplorable tale. 



