196 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
EXPECTATION OF LIFE IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1911-1912." 
MALES. 
an Ty ee 9 Area 
Age et) c d County Urban Rural 
Soeriy Boroughs | Districts Districts 
0: 49-5 AT B19)! 56-3 | 
5: 55:3 54-7 57:6 60-2 
15- 46°8 46-3 49-0 51-4 
45- 22-5 | 22:2 24-1 26:3 
65- 10-5 | 10-0 10-8 | 11-9 
85: 3-6 35 3-6 3-6 
General health has often to be estimated from the records of mortality, 
though it must be remembered that morbidity is much greater than 
mortality and that the after-effects of injury or disease may long affect the 
physique of the sufferer. Lethal agencies are sometimes local, sometimes 
widespread in their action, and may at times exert a selective action on the 
population affected. Tertullian long ago maintained that earthquakes 
and wars, famine and pestilence have to be regarded as a means of pruning 
the luxuriance of the human race. These vary greatly in their mode of 
action and powers of selection. Earthquakes need not be considered so 
far as England is concerned during the historic period. 
War in early culture might occasionally wipe out a whole population, 
but more often the skilful and strong survived; in modern war the 
selection favours those whose physique does not permit of active military 
service and is thus opposite in tendency. This indeed has been offered as 
a partial explanation of the poorer physique recorded of those French 
conscripts who had been born during the wars at the beginning of the last 
century, when the fittest of the adult male population were absent or 
killed. War acts more lethally through the social disorganisation, and the 
consequent famine and disease, which follow in its train, than through any 
casualties in the field; from these direct experiences on its own soil, 
England had been singularly free since the Norman period. Philip de 
Comines remarked ‘ England has this peculiar grace that neither the 
country, nor the people, nor the houses are wasted or demolished ; but 
the calamities fall only on the soldiers and especially on the nobility.’ ® 
The wider effects of war were only felt, and then but locally, in the cam- 
paigns of the Stuart reigns, though there was great suffering earlier in the 
forays on the marches of Wales and Scotland. Thanks perhaps to the 
great demand for labour and to the separation allowances, as well as to 
the seat of action being abroad, the recent war has exerted no obvious 
harmful effects. The children have been well nourished and there was no 
great increase of defective children, such as had been anticipated by some, 
even in the areas most exposed to air raids. There was, it is true, an 
increase in the number of children who were troublesome and educationally 
14 Supplement to 75th Annual Report of Registrar-General of England and Wales, 
Part II., p. 34. 
15 Philip de Comines ed. Godefroy, Mémoires, III., p. 155. Quoted by 
L. Creighton, Hist. of Epidemics in Britain, vol.i., p. 224. 
