Essays in War Time

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These considerations are very elementary, and a year or two ago they
might have seemed to many--though not to all of us--merely academic,
chiefly suitable to put before schoolchildren. But now they have ceased
to be merely academic; they have indeed acquired a vital actuality
almost agonisingly intense. For one realises to-day that the
considerations here set forth, widely accepted as they are, yet are not
generally accepted by the rulers and leaders of the greatest and
foremost nations of the world. Thus Germany, in its present Prussianised
state, through the mouths as well as through the actions of those rulers
and leaders, denies most of the conclusions here set forth. In Germany
it is a commonplace to declare that war is the law of Nature, that the
"struggle for existence" means the arbitration of warfare, that it is by
war that all evolution proceeds, that not only in savagery but in the
highest civilisation the same rule holds good, that human war is the
source of all virtues, the divinely inspired method of regenerating and
purifying mankind, and every war may properly be regarded as a holy war.
These beliefs have been implicit in the Prussian spirit ever since the
Goths and Vandals issued from the forests of the Vistula in the dawn of
European history. But they have now become a sort of religious dogma,
preached from pulpits, taught in Universities, acted out by statesmen.
From this Prussian point of view, whether right or wrong, civilisation,
as it has hitherto been understood in the world, is of little
consequence compared to German militaristic Kultur. Therefore the German
quite logically regards the Russians as barbarians, and the French as
decadents, and the English as contemptibly negligible, although the
Russians, however yet dominated by a military bureaucracy (moulded by
Teutonic influences, as some maliciously point out), are the most humane
people of Europe, and the French the natural leaders of civilisation as
commonly understood, and the English, however much they may rely on
amateurish methods of organisation by emergency, have scattered the
seeds of progress over a large part of the earth's surface. It is
equally logical that the Germans should feel peculiar admiration and
sympathy for the Turks, and find in Turkey, a State founded on military
ideals, their own ally in the present war. That war, from our present
point of view, is a war of States which use military methods for special
ends (often indeed ends that have been thoroughly evil) against a State
which still cherishes the primitive ideal of warfare as an end in
itself. And while such a State must enjoy immense advantages in the
struggle, it is difficult, when we survey the whole course of human
development, to believe that there can be any doubt about the final
issue.

For one who writes as an Englishman, it may be necessary to point out
clearly that that final issue by no means involves the destruction, or
even the subjugation, of Germany. It is indeed an almost pathetic fact
that Germany, which idealises warfare, stands to gain more than any
country by an assured rule of international peace which would save her
from warfare. Placed in a position which renders militaristic
organisation indispensable, the Germans are more highly endowed than
almost any people with the high qualities of intelligence, of
receptiveness, of adaptability, of thoroughness, of capacity for
organisation, which ensure success in the arts and sciences of peace, in
the whole work of civilisation. This is amply demonstrated by the
immense progress and the manifold achievements of Germany during forty
years of peace, which have enabled her to establish a prosperity and a
good name in the world which are now both in peril. Germany must be
built up again, and the interests of civilisation itself, which Germany
has trampled under foot, demand that Germany shall be built up again,
under conditions, let us hope, which will render her old ideals useless
and out of date. We shall then be able to assert as the mere truisms
they are, and not as a defiance flung in the face of one of the world's
greatest nations, the elementary propositions I have here set forth. War
is not a permanent factor of national evolution, but for the most part
has no place in Nature at all; it has played a part in the early
development of primitive human society, but, as savagery passes into
civilisation, its beneficial effects are lost, and, on the highest
stages of human progress, mankind once more tends to be enfolded, this
time consciously and deliberately, in the general harmony of Nature.

[1] P. Chalmers Mitchell, _Evolution and the War_, 1915.

[2] On the advantages of war in primitive society, see W. MacDougal's
_Social Psychology_, Ch. XI.

[3] It is doubtless a task beset by difficulties, some of which are set
forth, in no hostile spirit, by Lord Cromer, "Thinking Internationally,"
_Nineteenth Century_, July, 1916; but the statement of most of these
difficulties is enough to suggest the solution.

III

WAR AND EUGENICS

In dealing with war it is not enough to discuss the place of warfare in
Nature or its effects on primitive peoples. Even if we decide that the
general tendency of civilisation is unfavourable to war we have scarcely
settled matters. It is necessary to push the question further home.
Primitive warfare among savages, when it fails to kill, may be a
stimulating and invigorating exercise, simply a more dangerous form of
dancing. But civilised warfare is a different kind of thing, to a very
limited extent depending on, or encouraging, the prowess of the
individual fighting men, and to be judged by other standards. _What
precisely is the measurable effect of war, if any, on the civilised
human breed?_ If we want to know what to do about war in the future,
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 bloodthirsty. Lapouge considers
that in modern times, though wars are fewer in number, the total number
of victims is still about the same, so that the stream of bloodshed
throughout the ages remains unaffected. He attempted to estimate the
victims of war for each civilised country during half a century, and
found that the total amounted to nine and a half millions, while, by
including the Napoleonic and other wars of the beginning of the
nineteenth century, he considered that that total would be doubled. Put
in another form, Lapouge says, the wars of a century spill 120,000,000
gallons of blood, enough to fill three million forty-gallon casks, or
to create a perpetual fountain sending up a jet of 150 gallons per hour,
a fountain which has been flowing unceasingly ever since the dawn of
history. It is to be noted, also, that those slain on the battlefield by
no means represent the total victims of a war, but only about half of
them; more than half of those who, from one cause or another, perished
in the Franco-Prussian war, it is said, were not belligerents. Lapouge
wrote some ten years ago and considered that the victims of war, though
remaining about absolutely the same in number through the ages, were
becoming relatively fewer. The Great War of to-day would perhaps have
disturbed his calculations, unless we may assume that it will be
followed by a tremendous reaction against war. For when the war had
lasted only nine months, it was estimated that if it should continue at
the present rate (and as a matter of fact its scale has been much
enlarged) for another twelve months, the total loss to Europe in lives
destroyed or maimed would be ten millions, about equal to five-sixths of
the whole young manhood of the German Empire, and nearly the same number
of victims as Lapouge reckoned as the normal war toll of a whole
half-century of European "civilisation." It is scarcely necessary to add
that all these bald estimates of the number of direct victims to war
give no clue to the moral and material damage--apart from all question
of injury to the race--done by the sudden or slow destruction of so
large a proportion of the young manhood of the world, the ever widening
circles of anguish and misery and destitution which every fatal bullet
imposes on humanity, for it is probable that for every ten million
soldiers who fall on the field, fifty million other persons at home are
plunged into grief or poverty, or some form of life-diminishing trouble.

The foregoing considerations have not, however, brought us strictly
within the field of eugenics. They indicate the great extent to which
war affects the human breed, but they do not show that war affects the
quality of the breed, and until that is shown the eugenist remains
undisturbed.

There are various circumstances which, at the outset, and even in the
absence of experimental verification, make it difficult, or impossible,
that even the bare mortality of war (for the eugenical bearings of
war are not confined to its mortality) should leave the eugenist
indifferent. For war never hits men at random. It only hits a carefully
selected percentage of "fit" men. It tends, in other words, to strike
out, temporarily, or in a fatal event, permanently, from the class of
fathers, precisely that percentage of the population which the eugenist
wishes to see in that class. This is equally the case in countries with
some form of compulsory service, and in countries which rely on a
voluntary military system. For, however an army is recruited, it is only
those men reaching a fairly high standard of fitness who are accepted,
and these, even in times of peace are hampered in the task of carrying
on the race, which the less fit and the unfit are free to do at their
own good pleasure. Nearly all the ways in which war and armies disturb
the normal course of affairs seem likely to interfere with eugenical
breeding, and none to favour it. Thus at one time, in the Napoleonic
wars, the French age of conscription fell to eighteen, while marriage
was a cause of exemption, with the result of a vast increase of hasty
and ill-advised marriages among boys, certainly injurious to the race.
Armies, again, are highly favourable to the spread of racial poisons,
especially of syphilis, the most dangerous of all, and this cannot fail
to be, in a marked manner, dysgenic rather than eugenic.

The Napoleonic wars furnished the first opportunity of testing the truth
of Franklin's assertion concerning the disastrous effect of armies on
the race, by the collection of actual and precise data. But the
significance of the data proved unexpectedly difficult to unravel, and
most writers on the subject have been largely occupied in correcting the
mistakes of their predecessors. Villerme in 1829 remarked that the long
series of French wars up to 1815 must probably reduce the height of the
French people, though he was unable to prove that this was so. Dufau in
1840 was in a better position to judge, and he pointed out in his
_Traite de Statistique_ that, comparing 1816 and 1835, the number of
young men exempted from the army had doubled in the interval, even
though the regulation height had been lowered. This result, however, he
held, was not so alarming as it might appear, and probably only
temporary, for it was seemingly due to the fact that, in 1806 and the
following years, the male population was called to arms in masses, even
youths being accepted, so that a vast number of precocious marriages of
often defective men took place. The result would only be terrible, Dufau
believed, if prolonged; his results, however, were not altogether
reliable, for he failed to note the proportion of men exempted to those
examined. The question was investigated more thoroughly by Tschuriloff
in 1876.[5] He came to the conclusion that the Napoleonic wars had no
great influence on stature, since the regulation height was lowered in
1805, and abolished altogether for healthy men in 1811, and any defect
of height in the next generation is speedily repaired. Tschuriloff
agreed, however, that, though the influence of war in diminishing the
height of the race is unimportant, the influence of war in increasing
physical defects and infirmities in subsequent generations is a very
different matter. He found that the physical deterioration of war
manifested itself chiefly in the children born eight years afterwards,
and therefore in the recruits twenty-eight years after the war. He
regarded it as an undoubted fact that the French army of half a million
men in 1809 increased by 3 per cent. the proportion of hereditarily
infirm persons. He found, moreover, that the new-born of 1814, that is
to say the military class of 1834, showed that infirmities had risen
from 30 per cent. to 45.8 per cent., an increase of 50 per cent. Nor is
the _status quo_ entirely brought back later on, for the bad heredity of
the increased number of defectives tends to be still further propagated,
even though in an attenuated form. As a matter of fact, Tschuriloff
found that the proportion of exemptions from the army for infirmity
increased enormously from 26 per cent. in 1816-17, to 38 per cent. in
1826-27, declining later to 34 per cent. in 1860-64, though he is
careful to point out that this result must not be entirely ascribed to
the reversed selection of wars. There could, however, be no doubt that
most kinds of infirmities became more frequent as a result of military
selection. Lapouge's more recent investigation into the results of the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870 were of similar character; when examining
the recruits of 1892-93 he found that these "children of the war" were
inferior to those born earlier, and that there was probably an undue
proportion of defective individuals among their fathers. It cannot be
said that these investigations finally demonstrate the evil results of
war on the race. The subject is complicated, and some authorities, like
Collignon in France and Ammon in Germany,--both, it may be well to note,
army surgeons,--have sought to smooth down and explain away the dysgenic
effects of war. But, on the whole, the facts seem to support those
probabilities which the insight of Franklin first clearly set forth.

It is interesting in the light of these considerations on the eugenic
bearings of warfare to turn for a moment to those who proclaim the high
moral virtues of war as a national regenerator.

It is chiefly in Germany that, for more than a century past, this
doctrine has been preached.[6] "War invigorates humanity," said Hegel,
"as storms preserve the sea from putrescence." "War is an integral part
of God's Universe," said Moltke, "developing man's noblest attributes."
"The condemnation of war," said Treitschke, "is not only absurd, it is
immoral."[7] These brave sayings scarcely bear calm and searching
examination at the best, but, putting aside all loftier appeals to
humanity or civilisation, a "national regenerator" which we have good
reason to suppose enfeebles and deteriorates the race, cannot plausibly
be put before us as a method of ennobling humanity or as a part of God's
Universe, only to be condemned on pain of seeing a company of German
professors pointing the finger to our appalling "Immorality," on their
drill-sergeant's word of command.

At the same time, this glorification of the regenerating powers of war
quite overlooks the consideration that the fighting spirit tends to
destroy itself, so that the best way to breed good fighters is not to
preach war, but to cultivate peace, which is what the Germans have, in
actual practice, done for over forty years past. France, the most
military, and the most gloriously military, nation of the Napoleonic
era, is now the leader in anti-militarism, altogether indifferent to the
lure of military glory, though behind no nation in courage or skill.
Belgium has not fought for generations, and had only just introduced
compulsory military service, yet the Belgians, from their King and their
Cardinal-Archbishop downwards, threw themselves into the war with a high
spirit scarcely paralleled in the world's history, and Belgian
commercial travellers developed a rare military skill and audacity. All
the world admires the bravery with which the Germans face death and the
elaborate detail with which they organise battle, yet for all their
perpetual glorification of war there is no sign that they fight with any
more spirit than their enemies. Even if we were to feel ourselves bound
to accept war as "an integral part of God's Universe," we need not
trouble ourselves to glorify war, for, when once war presents itself as
a terrible necessity, even the most peaceable of men are equal to the
task.

This consideration brings us to those "moral equivalents of war" which
William James was once concerned over, when he advocated, in place of
military conscription, "a conscription of the whole youthful population
to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted
against _Nature_."[8] Such a method of formally organising in the cause
of civilisation, instead of in the cause of savagery, the old military
traditions of hardihood and discipline may well have its value. But the
present war has shown us that in no case need we fear that these high
qualities will perish in any vitally progressive civilisation. For they
are qualities that lie in the heart of humanity itself. They are not
created by the drill-sergeant; he merely utilises them for his own, as
we may perhaps think, disastrous ends. This present war has shown us
that on every hand, even in the unlikeliest places, all the virtues of
war have been fostered by the cultivation of the arts and sciences of
peace, ready to be transformed to warlike ends by men who never dreamed
of war. In France we find many of the most promising young scientists,
poets, and novelists cheerfully going forth to meet their death. On the
other side, we find a Kreisler, created to be the joy of the world,
ready to be trampled to death beneath the hoofs of Cossack horses. The
friends of Gordon Mathison, the best student ever turned out from the
Medical Faculty of the Melbourne University and a distinguished young
physiologist who seemed to be destined to become one of the first
physicians of his time, viewed with foreboding his resolve to go to the
front, for "Wherever he was he had to be in the game," they said; and a
few weeks later he was killed at Gallipoli on the threshold of his
career. The qualities that count in peace are the qualities that count
in war, and the high-spirited man who throws himself bravely into the
dangerous adventures of peace is fully the equal of the hero of the
battlefield, and himself prepared to become that hero.[9]

It would seem, therefore, on the whole, that when the eugenist takes a
wide survey of this question, he need not qualify his disapproval of war
by any regrets over the loss of such virtues as warfare fosters. In
every progressive civilisation the moral equivalents of war are already
in full play. Peace, as well as war, "develops the noblest attributes of
man"; peace, rather than war, preserves the human sea from putrescence;
it is the condemnation of peace, rather than the condemnation of war,
which is not only absurd but immoral. We are not called upon to choose
between the manly virtues of war and the effeminate degeneracy of peace.
The Great War of to-day may perhaps help us to realise that the choice
placed before us is of another sort. The virtues of daring and endurance
will never fail in any vitally progressive community of men, alike in
the causes of war and of peace.[10] But on the one hand we find those
virtues at work in the service of humanity, creating ever new marvels of
science and of art, adding to the store of the precious heirlooms of the
race which are a joy to all mankind. On the other hand, we see these
same virtues in the service of savagery, extinguishing those marvels,
killing their creators, and destroying every precious treasure of
mankind within reach. That--it seems to be one of the chief lessons of
this war--is the choice placed before us who are to-day called upon to
build the world of the future on a firmer foundation than our own world
has been set.

[1] D.S. Jordan, _War and the Breed_, 1915; also articles on "War and
Manhood" in the _Eugenics Review_, July, 1910, and on "The Eugenics of
War" in the same Review for Oct., 1913.

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