210 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
greatly according to the degree to which a nation suffers through 
hardship, disease and other factors that affect the people who de 
not bear arms. It is naturally the population of the defeated 
nation which suffers most. In France, according to Dumas, the 
civilian death rate, in 1869, just before the Franco-Prussian war 
was 23.4 per thousand, but in 1870, it went up to 28.3 and in 1871 
to 34.8; it then fell in 1872 to 21.9. Nearly every great war is 
accompanied by the introduction of some epidemic which rages 
in the civil population. Smallpox, cholera, the plague and various 
other diseases have been carried from one nation to another by 
armies and have often led to losses much greater than those 
sustained by the armies in the field. 
In the recent war the population of Belgium and Serbia have 
been subjected to suffering almost without parallel in modern 
times, but hardship is no stranger in the land of their oppressors, 
especially among the poorer classes. The infant death rate has 
been abnormally high and the birth rate has rapidly fallen since 
the outbreak of war. The actual and potential losses among the 
civilian population have been enormous, and it will require many 
years before the Central Powers can recuperate from the effects of 
this drain upon their human resources. What is the incidence of 
this enhanced civilian death rate? For a considerable part of the 
population who are not fortunately situated it would doubtless, 
on the average, affect those who are constitutionally weak with 
especial severity. Ammon maintains that the high death rate 
during wars is a racial advantage in so far as this is the result of 
epidemics, and Drs. G. A. Reid and Haycraft would probably 
agree with him. The racial effect of the death rate would doubt- 
less depend much upon circumstances which vary from war to 
war. The selective value of epidemics for instance depends 
greatly, as has been pointed out before, on the particular diseases 
which are disseminated. Where general massacres are indulged in 
as in Armenia, or where the inhabitants of certain villages are 
stood up against a stone wall and shot, nothing can be said of the 
selective working of the death rate. Long wars are especially apt 
to work havoc in the general population. But even in the short 
