238 CORRADO GINI 



demic degrees. In the Civil War, the students of the University of Missis- 

 sippi who died in the war had made a better scholastic record than those 

 who survived, whereas among Harvard students the death-rate was lower 

 among the ten highest-standard graduates. 



Among the supplementary researches on this question included in the 

 Committee's program, those concerned with the death-rate of each of the 

 social classes are most important, although we cannot be blind to the diffi- 

 culty of estimating the comparative eugenic value of the various social classes, 

 independently of the effects caused by the differences of wealth, environ- 

 ent, education, and of the stage of evolution of the plasm. Hunt's re- 

 searches show that the percentage of dead among Harvard students was 

 greater than that of the general population during the Great War, but 

 smaller during the Civil War. Szel, for Hungary, states that the losses were 

 greater for the country people than for the city dwellers, and greater for 

 the workers, peasants, and miners than for the white-collar men. 



Another particularly important supplementary investigation is that con- 

 cerning the comparative death-rate of soldiers and officers. Also on this 

 point the results are conflicting. For America, Hunt shows that the sol- 

 diers' death-rate is greater than that of the officers; Burgdorfer finds the 

 opposite to be the case for Germany, and it is very likely that it is also the 

 case for the majority of the European belligerents. It is probable that this 

 difference is connected with the different percentage which those who died 

 of disease and those who died of wounds represent in the losses of the 

 American and European armies. 



The physical and psychic characters of the dead service-men, as compared 

 with those of the survivors, may also differ systematically, according to the 

 importance which those who died of illness and those who died of wounds 

 assume among the losses. Granted that those who died of wounds are 

 representative of the totality of the combatants, it should follow, according 

 to the data gathered by Boldrini for Italy, that the constitution of those who 

 died of disease was of a more slender character which in youth is generally 

 associated with less endurance. 



Hunt gives us data concerning the percentage of those not accepted for 

 military service, and their constitutional and psychic characters. These 

 data, although surely not devoid of significance, should be supplemented 

 by those relative to the men fit for, but exempted from, service and to the 

 soldiers assigned to stationary or territorial service, in order to be able to 

 judge of the youths drafted who were not exposed to the direct dangers of 

 the war. Such data, nevertheless, could not estimate exactly the selection 



