212 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
contractent an moins des blennorhagies, et il n’y a guére d’officier 
qui n’en compte plusieurs; la syphilis est presque aussl fréquente. 
Ces deux affections sont d’une importance extréme au point de 
vue du mariage et de la reproduction.” 
The effect of wounds, epidemics and hardship tend to leave 
large numbers of soldiers in a decrepid state, by which they are 
handicapped economically and are to a certain extent kept from 
marrying. The superior opportunities for marrying enjoyed by 
the officers do not eventuate in much racial benefit since the birth 
rate in military sets is unusually low. 
On the whole it is quite probable, I believe, that the effect 
of military selection is dysgenic. So far as the direct effect of 
conflict is concerned there would be little doubt of this and it has 
been admitted by many who have claimed that war in general is 
to be commended on biological grounds. It is a matter of serious 
doubt whether the counteracting factors come near outweighing 
the selective effect of battle. 
There have been several attempts to show that the children 
born during war time do not develop into such large and vigorous 
men as those who are born before or after the war, and who 
therefore come to a larger degree from fathers who were in mili 
tary service. Kellogg states that the statistics kept by the French 
Government on the physical character of recruits show that “‘the 
average height of the men of France began notably to decrease 
with the coming of age, in 1813 and on, of the young men born in 
the years of the Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), and that it 
continued to decrease in the following years with the coming of 
age of youths born during the Wars of the Empire. Soon after 
the cessation of these terrible man-draining wars, for the main- 
tenance of which a great part of the able-bodied male population 
of France had been withdrawn from their families and the duties 
of reproduction, and much of this part actually sacrificed, a new 
type of boys began to be born, boys indeed that had in them an 
inheritance of stature that carried them by the time of their com- 
ing of age in the later 1830’s and 1840’s to a height one inch 
greater than that of the earlier generations born in war time. The 
