JlTNE 4, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



555 



France, 2/ = 84.0669 + 21.0285 x. Origin at 

 1912. (ii) 



Prussia, 2/ = 59.9 + 17.1 x. Origin at 1913, 



(iii) 



Bavaria, 2/ = -12.4668 + 18.0571 x. Origin at 

 1912. (iv) 



England and Wales, y = 45.9335 + 6.2571 x. 

 Origin at 1912. (v) 



From tliis diagram and the data of Table I. 



we note. 



1. In the year prior to the beginning of 

 the war the death-birth ratio of France was at 

 nearly twice as high a level as in any of the 

 other countries dealt with. This fact was of 

 course well known. With a very low birth- 

 rate and a death-rate of the same general 

 order of magnitude as that prevailing in other 

 European coimtries the French death-birth 

 ratio could not be anything but extremely 

 high. 



2. In all the countries here dealt with the 

 death-birth ratio in general rises throughout 

 the war pieriod. This means that the pro- 

 portion of deaths to births increased as long 

 as the war continued. In France it was 

 slightly more than double in 1918 what it was 

 in 1913. The same was in general true of 

 Prussia and Bavaria. These states started 

 from a very diiferent base in 1913, and the 

 relative rise was even greater. 



3. In England and Wales, while the death- 

 birth ratio increased throughout the war 

 period, the rate of this increase was markedly 

 slower than in any of the other countries 

 dealt with. 



4. A straight line is not a particularly good 

 fit to the French curve, but it has been used 

 in order to demonstrate more clearly the gen- 

 eral trend. In 1915 and 1916 the French 

 percentage rose markedly above the straight 

 line. These were perhaps the years when the 

 forces of war impinged most heavily upon the 

 French. 



5. It is noteworthy that despite the epi- 

 demic of influenza in 1918, imprecedented in 

 its severity so far as this disease is concerned, 

 none of the curves shows any sharp or marked 

 rise in that year. The curve for England and 

 Wales comes nearest to showing an effect of 



the epidemic, but even then the rise in 1918 

 is not so marked as one might have expected. 



6. The straight lines for France, Prussia 

 and Bavaria are nearly parallel, or in other 

 words have slopes of about the same order of 

 magnitude (cf., the values of h which deter- 

 mine the slope in the straight line equations). 

 The slope of the line for England and Wales 

 is very different from that of the other three. 



These facts raise many interesting points 

 for discussion. The fieople of Prussia and 

 Bavaria suffered progressive deprivations in 

 respect of food and other comforts of life 

 throughout the war. The sufferings of the 

 French people in these respects were undoubt- 

 edly less severe than those of the Germans. 

 All, however, lived for several years on an 

 inadequate diet. u?his fact alone unquestion- 

 ably contributed to an ever-increasing death- 

 rate, particularly at the two ends of the life 

 cycle. This same dietary factor undoubtedly 

 also played a considerable part in producing 

 the steady fall in the birth-rate. Here, how- 

 ever, the psychological factor also had a large 

 role, and this introduces a point of great 

 interest. Psychologically, the civilian French 

 population and the civilian German popula- 

 tion were on a different footing. In the one 

 case, until well into 1918, the attitude was 

 that of the iwtential conqueror, fighting as an 

 invader in the other's territory. In the other 

 case a war of defense against invasion and 

 further destruction of the home land was 

 being fought. Yet the net effect on the vital 

 indices of the population was, as is shown 

 by the essential parallelism of the straight 

 lines, substantially the same in the one case as 

 in the other. In any other game than war 

 the psychological attitude of offender pro- 

 duces far different results from that of de- 

 fender. Here the essential and out standing 

 fact is that the net biological outcome of the 

 complex interplay of forces resulting from 

 war was almost identically the same in 

 France and Germany. 



Another interesting point is that while 

 France started in 1913 with a death-birth 

 ratio 40 per cent higher than that of the 

 German states — she having at that time an 



