DESTRUCTION OCCASIONED BY WAR 321 



logically fitter members of the race ; this annihilation is thus 

 equivalent to a positive impoverishment of the latter. 



Space and food are both limited ; and we must recollect that 

 the greater the multiphcation of the less fit, the greater the 

 chances of the degeneracy of the whole race. For the greater the 

 amount of space and food monopolised by the unfit, the less space 

 and food is there left for the fit, whose multiplication is thus 

 hindered. And the organic welfare of the race as a whole 

 depends on the multiplication of its fittest members. The 

 21,000,000 lives lost through war may be taken as representing 

 as a whole the biologically fitter elements of Eujope ; their 

 destruction means the loss of progeny to a great number who 

 were as yet unmarried. Even if we suppose only 10,000,000 of 

 these to have been unmarried — which is an underestimate — we 

 may, calculating an average of two children to each, reckon a 

 loss of 20,000,000 children in the second generation ; and at the 

 end of five generations, had these wars not intervened, we might 

 reckon on an increase of 160,000,000 children belonging to the 

 biologically fitter elements of the race. If we suppose that non- 

 appearance of these has been compensated for by the produc- 

 tion of an equal number of progeny among the inferior elements, 

 we may reckon at 320,000,000 the number of organically fitter 

 iadividuals lost to the race La the space of five generations through 

 war alone. 



But this is only the direct consequence of war ; the deficit of 

 320,000,000 biologically fit individuals is due to the direct de- 

 struction occasioned on the field of battle. There are, however, 

 indirect consequences ; the very circumstances under which all 

 war is waged must necessarily cause an increase in the normal 

 death-rate among non-combatants. It is calculated by Lapouge 

 that the Franco-German War of 1870 caused an excess of upwards 

 of 450,000 deaths among the non-combatants above the normal 

 rate.^ The exact figures are always diflSicult to obtain in such a 



1 G. de Lapouge, Lea Sdectiong sociales, p. 231. Paris, 1896. 



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