Essays in War-Time | Page 8

that is
the question we have to answer.
"Wars are not paid for in war-time," said Benjamin Franklin, "the bill
comes later." Franklin, who was a pioneer in many so fields, seems to
have been a pioneer in eugenics also by arguing that a standing army
diminishes the size and breed of the human species. He had, however,
no definite facts wherewith to demonstrate conclusively that
proposition. Even to-day, it cannot be said that there is complete
agreement among biologists as to the effect of war on the race. Thus we
find a distinguished American zoologist, Chancellor Starr Jordan,
constantly proclaiming that the effect of war in reversing selection is a
great overshadowing truth of history; warlike nations, he declares,
become effeminate, while peaceful nations generate a fiercely militant
spirit.[1] Another distinguished American scientist, Professor Ripley, in
his great work, The Races of Europe, likewise concludes that "standing
armies tend to overload succeeding generations with inferior types of
men." A cautious English biologist, Professor J. Arthur Thomson, is
equally decided in this opinion, and in his recent Galton Lecture[2] sets
forth the view that the influence of war on the race, both directly and
indirectly, is injurious; he admits that there may be beneficial as well as
deteriorative influences, but the former merely affect the moral
atmosphere, not the hereditary germ plasm; biologically, war means
wastage and a reversal of rational selection, since it prunes off a
disproportionally large number of those whom the race can least afford

to lose. On the other hand, another biologist, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell,
equally opposed to war, cannot feel certain that the total effect of even
a great modern war is to deteriorate the stock, while in Germany, as we
know, it is the generally current opinion, scientific and unscientific,
equally among philosophers, militarists, and journalists, that not only is
war "a biological necessity," but that it is peace, and not war, which
effeminates and degenerates a nation. In Germany, indeed, this doctrine
is so generally accepted that it is not regarded as a scientific thesis to be
proved, but as a religious dogma to be preached. It is evident that we
cannot decide this question, so vital to human progress, except on a
foundation of cold and hard fact.
Whatever may be the result of war on the quality of the breed, there can
be little doubt of its temporary effect on the quantity. The reaction after
war may create a stimulating influence on the birth-rate, leading to a
more or less satisfactory recovery, but it seems clear that the drafting
away of a large proportion of the manhood of a nation necessarily
diminishes births. At the present time English Schools are sending out
an unusually small number of pupils into life, and this is directly due to
the South-African War fifteen years ago. Still more obvious is the
direct effect of war, apart from diminishing the number of births, in
actually pouring out the blood of the young manhood of the race. In the
very earliest stage of primitive humanity it seems probable that man
was as untouched by warfare as his animal ancestors, and it is
satisfactory to think that war had no part in the first birth of man into
the world. Even the long Early Stone Age has left no distinguishable
sign of the existence of warfare.[3] It was not until the transition to the
Late Stone Age, the age of polished flint implements, that we discern
evidences of the homicidal attacks of man on man. Even then we are
concerned more with quarrels than with battles, for one of the earliest
cases of wounding known in human records, is that of a pregnant
young woman found in the Cro-magnon Cave whose skull had been cut
open by a flint several weeks before death, an indication that she had
been cared for and nursed. But, again at the beginning of the New
Stone Age, in the caverns of the Beaumes-Chaudes people, who still
used implements of the Old Stone type, we find skulls in which are
weapons of the New Stone type. Evidently these people had come in

contact with a more "civilised" race which had discovered war. Yet the
old pacific race still lingered on, as in the Belgian people of the Furfooz
type who occupied themselves mainly with hunting and fishing, and
have their modern representatives, if not their actual descendants, in the
peaceful Lapps and Eskimo.[4]
It was thus at a late stage of human history, though still so primitive as
to be prehistoric, that organised warfare developed. At the dawn of
history war abounded. The earliest literature of the Aryans--whether
Greeks, Germans, or Hindus--is nothing but a record of systematic
massacres, and the early history of the Hebrews, leaders in the world's
religion and morality, is complacently