THE BIONOMICS OF WAR
RACE MODIFICATION BY MILITARY SELECTION
VERNON L. KELLOGG, M.S.
Professor of Entomology, Stanford UniversityI
At the bottom of the affairs of life, and in the long run, heredity plays the great part. And in many of these affairs the run is not so very long, nor the bottom too deep to be out of sight. By no virtue of social environment can a race be raised considerably or permanently above the level of its inheritance, nor can any disadvantage in such environment do more than hinder inherited capacity from revealing itself. It cannot prevent it.
If a treatment of that aspect of the war question which concerns heredity seems, therefore, at first thought, to be too academic to concern the practical philanthropist, let him consider that what any given man or family or nation or race of men is at the present time, is primarily a matter of heredity, and that the men who are coming after us will mostly be what they are by reason of that same potent factor. Variation, or differences; selection, or the choice among these differences; and heredity, or the inheritance of these chosen differences, are the chief factors in all organic evolution; and organic evolution means the evolution of man, as well as that of the plants and lower animals. If, therefore, the war question actually has an aspect which concerns heredity, that aspect is likely to be an important one.
Now the variation and the heredity factors in evolution are provided, and unescapably so, by nature. And for most living kinds she provides the selection also. But man, through his endowment of mind, has gained the great privilege of determining, in large measure, the character of the selection of his own kind and that of any other kind of animal or plant for which he pleases to exercise it. The animal and plant breeders do exercise this privilege constantly, and they direct heredity here and there as they please, to the effect of making very useful new kinds of cattle and fruit and very absurd pigeons and chrysanthemums. They do their selecting artificially and consciously, and by doing it drastically as well, they speed up evolution to a rate quite extraordinarily rapid compared with her more natural pace.
As it is to this category of artificial selection that man's selective modification of his own kind belongs it also can be effected very rapidly. So that the possible objection to the slowness of the workings of any form of human selection, based on an analogy with natural selection, is less valid than the objectors seem to think it is.
In sum, the discussion of the selective possibilities of such a race-modifying agent as militarism is by no means1 a purely academic one, but one which may be made very pertinent and practical. It is such a practical discussion of it that the writer wishes to present.
II
The theoretical consideration of the matter, however, should not be dismissed without a word. If we can accept the whole great theory of natural selection upon a basis of two logical conclusions derived from two premises of observed fact -- and we do exactly this -- then we should recognize the strength of the similar argument for military selection.
The observed facts of constant variation and constant overproduction warrant the logical conclusions of a struggle for existence and a consequent survival of the fittest. That is natural selection.
In times of war we see many or even most of the able-bodied men of a sorely pressed nation drafted for death or disablement by wounds or disease. And yet we note that little diminution occurs in the birth rate of the nation. On these observations we conclude that in such times the new generations are produced by inferior men, or that at least a larger proportion of them is so produced than would be the case were there no war. We breed our new generations not from the best but from less than the best; even, in severe cases, from the worst. We conclude, then, that war produces a deplorable artificial human selection, which may be called military selection.
But we can do better than make logical conclusions. We can do better than the natural selectionist. For we can see our deplorable artificial selection actually working and actually producing measurable results. And we can see further that this military selection is not dependent on actual war alone for its effects, but that the preparedness for war is also a condition which sets it agoing. We can see the specific results of military selection arising from the existence of militarism, even though war itself never or but rarely come.
III
France has kept, for over a century, an interesting set of official records which offers most valuable data for the scrutiny of the biologic student of war. They are the records of the physical examination of all the male youths of France as these youths reach their twentieth year of age, and offer themselves, compulsorily, for conscription. To determine who realize the condition of minimum height, weight, chest measurement, and the freedom from infirmity and disease necessary for actual service, all are examined and the results recorded. These records show, therefore, for each year very clearly and precisely the physical status of the new generation of Frenchmen.
The minimum physical condition for actual enlistment has varied much with the varying needs of the nation for men of war. In certain warring periods of her history France has had to drain to the very limit her resources in men able to bear arms. Most notably this condition obtained during the nearly continuous twenty-year period of the Napoleonic Wars.
Louis XIV in 1701 fixed the minimum height of soldiers at 1624 mm. But Napoleon reduced it in 1799 to 1598 mm. (an inch lower) and in 1804 he lowered it two inches further namely to 1544 mm. It remained at this figure until the Restoration, when (1818) it was raised by an inch and a quarter, that is, to 1570 mm. In 1830, at the time of the war with Spain, it was lowered again to 1540 mm., and finally, in 1832 again raised to 1560 mm. Napoleon had also to reduce the figure of minimum military age.
The death list, both in actual numbers and in percentage of all men called to the colors, during the long and terrible wars of the Revolution and Empire, was enormous. And the actual results in racial modification due to the removal from the breeding population of France of its able-bodied male youth, leaving its feeble-bodied youth and senescent maturity at home to be the fathers of the new generation, is plainly visible in the condition of the conscripts of later years.
From the recruiting statistics, as officially recorded, it may be stated with confidence 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 maintenance 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 that had in them an inheritance of stature that carried them by the time of their coming of age in the late 1830's and 40's to a height an inch greater than that of the earlier generations born in war time. The average height of the annual conscription contingent born during the Napoleonic Wars was about 1625 mm.; of those born after the war it was about 1655 mm.
The fluctuation of the height of the young men of France had as obvious result a steady increase and later decrease in the number of conscripts exempted in successive years from military service because of undersize. Immediately after the Restoration, when the minimum height standard was raised from 1544 mm. to 1570 mm., certain French departments were quite unable to complete the number of men which they ought to furnish as young soldiers of sufficient height and vigor according to proportion of their population.
Running nearly parallel with the fluctuation in number of exemptions for undersize is the fluctuation in number of exemptions for infirmities. These exemptions increased by one-third in twenty years. Exemptions for undersize and infirmities together nearly doubled in number. But the lessening again of the figure of exemptions for infirmities was not so easily accomplished as was that of the figure for undersize. The influence of the Napoleonic Wars was felt by the nation, and revealed by its recruiting statistics, for a far longer time in its aspect of producing a racial deterioration as to vigor than in its aspect of producing a lessening stature.
It is sometimes claimed that military selection is of biological advantage to the race as a purifier by fire. This might indeed be true if it were the whole population that was exposed. But it is only a certain part of it that is so exposed, a part chosen on a basis of conditions very pertinent to racial integrity. For in the first place it is composed exclusively of men, its removal thus tending to disturb the sex-equilibrium of the population, and to prevent normal and advantageous sexual selection. Next, these men are all of them of greatest sexual vigor and fecundity. Finally they are all men, none of whom fall below and most of whom exceed a certain desirable standard of physical vigor and freedom from infirmity and disease.
War's selection is exercised on an already selected part of the population. And every death in war means the death of a man physically superior to at least some other one man retained in the civil population. For the actual figures of present-day recruitment in the great European states show that of the men gathered by conscription, as in France and Germany, or by voluntary enlistment, as in Great Britain, from 40 to 50 per centum are rejected by the examining boards as unfit for service because of undersize, infirmities, or disease.
Nor is it necessary that these selected men be actually removed by death in order that militarism may effect its deplorable racial hurt. For this removal even for a comparatively short time of a considerable body of these men from the reproductive duties of the population, and their special exposure to injury and disease -- disease, we shall see, of a particularly dangerous character to the race -- is in itself a factor sufficient to make military selection a real and dangerous thing.
IV
Death in war comes not always nor even most often in battle. It comes more often from disease. And disease, until very recent years, and even now except in the armies of certain few countries, has stricken and still strikes soldiers not only in war time but in the pipingest time of peace. And, what is almost worse for the individual and decidedly so for the race, its stroke is less often death than permanent infirmity. The constant invaliding home of the broken-down men to join the civil population is one of the most serious dysgenic features of militarism.
In the French army in France, Algeria, and Tunis in the 13-year period 1872-1884, with a mean annual strength of 413,493 men, the mean annual cases of typhoid were 11,640, or one typhoid case to every 36 soldiers! In the middle of the last century the mortality among the armies on peace footing in France, Prussia, and England was almost exactly 50 per cent, greater than among the civil population. When parts of the armies were serving abroad, especially if in the tropics, the mortality was greatly increased. In 1877 the deaths from phthisis in the British army were two to one in the civil population. And how suggestive this is, when we recall that the examining boards reject all obviously phthisis-tainted men from the recruits. The proportion was still three to two as late as 1884. In the last war of our own scientifically enlightened country, the deaths from disease in camp were eight to one from the incidents of battle. But we could do better now. And so could France and England.
In fact, the modern humane war against disease has made life much safer for the soldier. That is to be admitted. But there has occurred so far but one conspicuous radical exception to the general rule of a much greater percentage of deaths from disease than from bullets and bayonet in war time. That, of course, is the record of the Japanese armies in the Russo-Japanese war. The records of the recent war in the Balkan States are like those of a century ago.
V
The actual dysgenic importance of the diseases fostered and diffused by militarism, though certainly real, is hard to get at in any quantitative way. The problem of the inheritance of disease, or better of the inheritance of the diathesis of disease, is one as yet only in the beginnings of scientific elucidation. But of the congenital transmission and racial importance of one terrible disease, of the venereal disease group, and one that more than any other is characteristic of military service, there is no shadow of doubt. It is a disease communicable by husband to wife, by mother to children, and by these children to their children. It is a disease that causes more suffering and disaster than phthisis or cancer. It is a disease accompanied by a dread cloud of other ills that it causes, such as paralysis, malformations, congenital blindness, idiocy, and insanity, all of them particularly dysgenic in character. It is a disease that renders marriage an abomination and child-bearing a social danger. And as a crowning misfortune this disease does not kill but only ruins its victims. While phthisis and cancer carry off their subjects at the rate, in England today, of 1000 per year to each 1,000,000 of population, syphilis kills but 50 persons a million. It is not a purifying but wholly a contaminating disease. It does not select by death. It is, then, a disease of great possibilities and importance in relation to racial deterioration.
Venereal disease1 [1. Syphilis and gonococcus infections.] is a scourge fostered especially by militarism. The statistics reveal this at once. It is the cause of more hospital admissions among soldiers than any other disease or group of related diseases. It caused 31.8 per cent, of the total military inefficiency in the British army in 1910. It was the cause of one-fifth of all the British military hospital admissions for that year, yet it caused but one one-hundredth of the total military deaths. It causes one-third of all the illness of the British navy, both at home and abroad. The admissions to the hospital for venereal disease in the British army in India reached in 1895 as terrible a figure as 537 per 1000 men. Conditions are bettered, but are still bad.
Nor is the British army by any means the greatest sufferer from the scourge. The army of the United States has twice as many hospital admissions for the same cause. Russia has about the same as Great Britain, Austria and France less, and Germany least of all. Germany, indeed, has done much more to control the disease than any other great nation, unless it be Japan, for which I have not been able to get data. The following figures from the British Army Medical Report for 1910 show the rates of prevalence of venereal disease in different armies:
Country / Year / Per 1000
Germany......................................... / 1905-06 / 19.8
France ........................................... / 1906 / 28.6
Austria........................................... / 1907 / 54.2
Russia ........................................... / 1906 / 62.7
United Kingdom.................................. / 1907 / 68.4
United States..................................... / 1907 / 167.8
A measure of the prevalence of syphilis and other venereal disease in the civil population is difficult to get at. But certain facts are most suggestive. Of the young men who offered themselves for enlistment in the British army in 1910, 1-1.2 per 10,000 were rejected because of syphilis, while for the same year in the army, 230 per 10,000 were admitted to hospital with syphilis. And for all venereal disease the proportion was 31-1/2 per 10,000 of those applying for enlistment rejected, and 1000 per 10,000 of those in the army admitted to hospital. In other words, while the army recruiting boards discover in the civil population, and reject back into it, but two or three syphilitic men per 1000, the army finds within itself a constant proportion of infected men of many times that number.
It is obvious from these figures that venereal disease finds in armies a veritable breeding ground. That such disease is highly dysgenic, i.e., race deteriorating in influence, is indisputable. The frightful effects of syphilis and its direct communication from parents to children are fairly well known popularly. But with regard to the serious effects of gonorrhea the popular mind is not equally as well impressed. Indeed it is too commonly regarded as a mild and not very shameful disease. But medical opinion is really doubtful whether it is not, in some of its effects, as bad as, or even worse than syphilis. About 50 per cent, of young women infected by young men are made sterile by it. Many are made chronic invalids. It is the commonest cause of infant blindness (opthalmia neonatorum). In Prussia 30,000 such blind persons are to be found.
The congenital transmission of venereal disease is what gives it its particularly dysgenic importance. Such transmission has all the force of actual inheritance. Indeed, if tainting the germ cells so that the fertilized egg is predetermined to develop into a syphilitic individual is heredity, then syphilis is literally an hereditary disease. But as between a taint at conception and one at birth, either of which can be handed on to successive generations, there is little choice from the point of view of the student of race deterioration. The effect is typically that of hereditary transmission. Indeed, as an authority has strongly put it, "Syphilis is the hereditary disease par excellence. Its hereditary effects are more inevitable, more multiple, more diverse, and more disastrous in their results on the progeny and the race than in the case of any other disease. Syphilis, in fact, has a more harmful influence on the species than on the individual."
VI
The facts speak for themselves. Serious war and the preparedness for serious war mean the temporary or permanent withdrawal from the population of a part of it selected for physical vigor and often for courage, patriotism, and idealism, and the exposure of this part to special danger from death and disease. This death and disease, under the circumstances, are not race-purifying or race-enhancing, but race-deteriorating, through the encouragement of poor breeding and the fostering of heritable, race-poisoning disease. Every race needs its best possible inheritance. Any institution that tends to give it less than that is a race-injuring institution. Militarism is such an institution.