2o8 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



1. The leading men of the South were part of select companies and 

 these were the first to enlist. 



2. The flower of the people went into the war at the beginning and 

 of these a large part (20 to 40 per cent) died before the end. 



3. War took chiefly the physically fit; the unfit remaining behind. 



4. Conscripts, though in many cases the equal of volunteers, were 

 on the average inferior to the latter in moral and physical quaUties, 

 making poorer soldiers. 



5. A certain rather small mmiber ("bushmen") fled to the hills and 

 other places to avoid conscription. Others deserted from the ranks 

 and joined them. These deserters suffered much inconvenience, but 

 little loss of life. 



6. The volunteer militia companies, having enlisted at the begin- 

 ning, lost more heavily than the conscript companies who entered 

 later. 



7. The result was that the men of highest character and quality 

 bore largely the brunt of the war and lost more heavily than their 

 inferiors. Thus was produced a change in the balance of society by 

 reducing the percentage of the best types without a corresponding 

 reduction of the less desirable ones, a condition which was projected 

 into the next generation because the inferior lived to have progeny 

 and the others did not. 



Most of the widows of soldiers never married again and many 

 soldiers' fiances remained unmarried or married below their 

 previous station. A study of the share of university men in the 

 war showed that a considerably larger proportion fell in battle 

 than of the other men engaged. As a southern officer remarked, 

 "Those who fought the most survived the least." "There is 

 always, in war," says Jordan, "a percentage against the man of 

 intelligence because he is likely to be the man of courage, and the 

 man who will die because he believes it to be the right." 



As Bodart remarks, "The officers of an army almost always 

 suffer a much higher percentage of casualties than the men. This 

 is to be explained by the effort of the officer to set before his men 

 a good example in cool, courageous conduct." Haushofer gives 

 the following statistics of the Prussian losses of different ranks in 

 the Franco-Prussian war: 



