208 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
1. The leading men of the South were part of select companies and 
these were the first to enlist. 
2. The flower of the people went into the war at the beginning and 
of these a large part (20 to 40 per cent) died before the end. 
3. War took chiefly the physically fit; the unfit remaining behind. 
4. Conscripts, though in many cases the equal of volunteers, were 
on the average inferior to the latter in moral and physical qualities, 
making poorer soldiers. 
5. A certain rather small number (“‘bushmen’’) fled to the hills and 
other places to avoid conscription. Others deserted from the ranks 
and joined them. These deserters suffered much inconvenience, but 
little loss of life. 
6. The volunteer militia companies, having enlisted at the begin- 
ning, lost more heavily than the conscript companies who entered 
later. 
4. The result was that the men of highest character and quality 
bore largely the brunt of the war and lost more heavily than their 
inferiors. Thus was produced a change in the balance of society by 
reducing the percentage of the best types without a corresponding 
reduction of the less desirable ones, a condition which was projected 
into the next generation because the inferior lived to have progeny 
and the others did not. 
Most of the widows of soldiers never married again and many 
soldiers’ fiancés remained unmarried or married below their 
previous station. A study of the share of university men in the 
war showed that a considerably larger proportion fell in battle 
than of the other men engaged. As a southern officer remarked, 
“Those who fought the most survived the least.” ‘‘There is 
always, in war,” says Jordan, ‘‘a percentage against the man of 
intelligence because he is likely to be the man of courage, and the 
man who will die because he believes it to be the right.” 
As Bodart remarks, ‘‘The officers of an army almost always 
suffer a much higher percentage of casualties than the men. This 
is to be explained by the effort of the officer to set before his men 
a good example in cool, courageous conduct.” MHaushofer gives 
the following statistics of the Prussian losses of different ranks in 
the Franco-Prussian war: 
