THE SELECTIVE INFLUENCE OF WAR 219 



indemnities and suffer economic restrictions, but the people are 

 left free to multiply and they frequently increase more rapidly 

 than those of the victorious nation. The biologically defensible 

 wars are wars of extermination, such as those carried on by the 

 Dyaks and the Israelites. Wars for political purposes, and eco- 

 nomic advantage, especially when they do not lead to the acquire- 

 ment of new colonial regions in which to expand, often have 

 little apparent effect on the biological fortunes of either party. 

 The biological victory, such as it is, may often belong to the side 

 which loses in battle. In future wars the successful nations may 

 see to it that such a result will not follow. It would only be the 

 part of consistency for those who justify war on the grounds of 

 biological necessity to strive to convert future conflicts into wars 

 of extermination. We have seen a tolerably close approximation 

 to such a policy put into practice in the present great war. The 

 widespread advocacy in Germany of the expropriation of the land 

 of conquered nations, its settlement by Germans in order to in- 

 crease the population and strength of the empire, and the banish- 

 ment of the previous inhabitants or their reduction to hewers of 

 wood and drawers of water should they prove sufficiently amen- 

 able, reveals a grim determination to use victory to the utmost for 

 attaining the desired end. Professor H. G. Holle {Polit.-Anlhrop. 

 Monatschr., 14, 1915) advises his countrymen: "If the national 

 will to live, which has so gloriously manifested itself in the war, 

 shall not yield to a culpable renunciation we must annex foreign 

 dominions to the east and the west. ... If we really come to 

 make such dominions our own then such inhabitants, who on 

 account of their race or characteristics are not adapted to us and 

 upon whose gradual Germanization we cannot rely must be 

 banished and their settlement must be imposed upon our oppo- 

 nents as a condition of peace. If we then credit the freed land, 

 which is more valuable to us than gold, against the war indemnity 

 thinly populated France would willingly accept this condition and 

 gladly take over any of the Walloons who desired to be French. 

 Also in regard to the Polish inhabitants of our present eastern 

 boundary so far as they do not wish to remain German, the 



