88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



WAB AND MANHOOD 1 



By Pkesident DAVID STARR JORDAN 



STANFORD UNITBESITY 



THE message I shall attempt to-day is a message of peace through 

 the arraignment of war. My attack shall be made from the side 

 of biology, and my text may be found in these words of Sophocles, " War 

 does not of choice destroy bad men, but good men ever." 



I shall leave to those who have had far more experience than I, 

 the discussion of the advantages of law, order and arbitration over 

 brute force, which decides nothing. I shall leave to one side all ques- 

 tions of the relations of war to social, ethical and religious development. 

 I shall leave to others all consideration of the horrors of war, its legacies 

 of sin, and suffering, and life-long agony. I shall not consider the 

 costs of wars long since fought, a burden strapped for all time on the 

 backs of the toilers of Europe. I shall not consider the cost of future 

 wars, never to be fought, but provided for in the budget of every nation, 

 again a burden unbearable on those whose chief relation to the life of 

 nations is the burdens nations needlessly impose. I shall not depict the 

 growing strength of the invisible empire of bondholders who are fast 

 becoming the owners of the civilized world, and whose silent nod deter- 

 mines the issue of every great empire in war or peace. 



My message concerns solely the relations of war to manhood, as 

 shown in the succession of generations. 



Benjamin Franklin once said: 



There is one effect of a standing army which must in time be felt so as to 

 bring about the abolition of the system. A standing army not only diminishes 

 the population of a country, but even the size and breed of the human species. 

 For an army is the flower of the nation. All the most vigorous, stout and 

 well-made men in a kingdom are to be found in the army, and these men, in 

 general, can not marry. 



What is true of standing armies is still more true of the armies that 

 fight and fall. Those men who perish are lost to the future of civiliza- 

 tion, they and their blood forever. For, as Franklin said again, " Wars 

 are not paid for in war time : the bill comes later." 



The last thirty years have seen the period of greatest activity in 

 the study of biology. Among other matters, we have seen the rise of 

 definite knowledge of the process of heredity, and its application to the 

 formation and improvement of races of men and animals. From our 



1 Address (given in German) before the Weltcongress von Freien Christen- 

 tum, Berlin, August 7, 1910. 



