MODERN WARS AND MILITARISM 819 



for that time from ordinary civilian life, and is thus temporarily 

 prevented from following his career — ^it is obvious that this man 

 is placed at a disadvantage in the economic struggle for existence 

 as compared with the man whose career is not thus arbitrarily 

 interrupted. And as in our industrial civilisation to-day the 

 economic aspect is the predominant one, it follows that the 

 biologically less fit have more chances of gaining a livelihood and 

 marrying early, consequently of rearing a numerous progeny, 

 than the biologically more fit. 



See here the contradiction to which the military system 

 prevalent in Europe brings us ! But this state of afEairs has 

 consequences more far-reaching still. If the biologically unfit 

 are favoured at the expense of the biologically fit — and it cannot 

 seriously be questioned that two or three years' start in the 

 economic struggle constitutes an immense advantage — the ulti- 

 mate result must be a biological regression of the entire race. 

 Early marriage means greater fecundity ; and if the biologically 

 unfit are able to obtain, at an early age, the means necessary for 

 founding a family, their average fecundity must be somewhat 

 greater than the average fecundity of the biologically fit. If 

 we suppose the fecundity of the former to be only very slightly 

 greater — for instance, in the proportion of 3'3 to 3'4, i.e., in the 

 proportion of 1 : 1'03 — nevertheless, in the course of time, the 

 more fertile race will have doubled its numbers at the expense 

 of the less fertile. Thus : 



l-03a: = 2 

 X = 23^.1 



That is to say that after 23| generations the race of the bio- 

 logically unfit will have doubled at the expense of the race of 



1 If we suppose a population composed of two different races, each of 

 which is represented by an equal number of individuals, but whose fer- 

 tility is slightly different, each couple of the race A producing 3'3, and 

 each couple of the race B producing 3'4 children ; then at the end of 

 23^ generations the race B will have doubled the numbers of A — the 

 numbers of both being originally equal, and the initial inequality of 1 : 1'03 

 having commenced with the second generation. 



