CONTRA-SELECTION IN ENGLAND 375 



Now let us look at the results. England has not that rough-and-ready 

 yard-stick available in every country with military conscription; we get 

 however the best picture of the general virility of our population from the 

 recruiting records of the three national services, Army, Navy and Police, 

 although recruiting is voluntary. At the time of the Boer War, 1900, 

 only one man in three could be accepted for service, in a period when recruit- 

 ing was exceedingly heavy. Recently in London rejects have reached the 

 figure of three out of four, to four out of five. This has to be put against 

 the steadily lowered standard for every measure of physical vigour. Re- 

 ports for the Navy where virility is essential, give rejects as nine out of 

 every ten. Recruiting today for our Police Force is intensive, as the Com- 

 missioner of Police is insatiable in his requirements; the standards required 

 include intelligence, education and character; on the other hand, the youths 

 presenting themselves are already a well-selected group. Acceptances 

 among Police recruits for the last seven years have not been more than 

 five per cent. 



We have two other sets of figures indicative of national status correlated 

 with mental health. I will take first the feeble-minded. A careful sample 

 study by mental testing was made under a Royal Commission 1906-8 and 

 reported the certifiable feeble-minded as between four and five per thousand. 

 A similar investigation undertaken in the years 1926-8 by a Departmental 

 Committee has given the figure of certifiable defectives as between eight 

 and nine per thousand. 



Insanity is notably an unknown quantity in every country. In England, 

 however, the law regarding certification leaves the medical practitioner 

 responsible open to severe financial penalties in any case of error; this is 

 sufficient to secure great caution in certification, and this legal procedure 

 remained unchanged since the middle of last century till two years ago. 

 Our figures for insanity give only certified patients in mental hospitals, 

 ignoring those who return to the community on recovery. The proportion 

 in 1859 was roughly one in 500 of the population; in 1913, one in 250. This 

 increase lay almost entirely within the publicly assisted group of patients 

 and is, in itself, a measure of the growth of the socially inadequate, among 

 whom the recent study of the Departmental Committee on Mental De- 

 ficiency has shown insanity to be high. 



Studies assessing intelligence for samples of any population give the same 

 biometric curve of distribution that one expects to find in a biological char- 

 acter depending upon multiple genetic factors. Thus a very slightly higher 

 grading for certification would give a much greater number falling within 

 the group. These facts are a wholesome reminder that, with the exception 



