Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/94

 were so great that men would not long face them. Events discredited Bloch; we found unexpected reservoirs of valor in the human spirit. Every week, along the great line, bodies of men performed acts of sacrifice which made Thermopylæ, the Alamo and the Charge of the Light Brigade seem poor and spiritless. Normal Angell, writing from the economic viewpoint, predicted not that war could not be, but that it would not pay; the victor would lose as well as the vanquished. Events so far have tended to vindicate Norman Angell’s view; perhaps the next ten years may vindicate him entirely. The third work, less known than the others, came out of Armageddon unshaken. It is Dr. David Starr Jordan’s “War and the Breed.”

Jordan is an evolutionist, and looks at all society from the viewpoint of the so-called Darwinian theory. The reader may belong to a sect or a scientific creed which rejects evolution. But he need not be a Darwinian to accept Jordan’s argument. He need only believe—I assume every one does—that the characteristics of ancestors are transmitted to their offspring, that strong men and women breed strong descendants, that weak men and women breed weak descendants. And Jordan maintained that a general war, fought by conscript armies under modern conditions, would set back the quality of races for centuriesthat it would be a gigantic accomplishment in reverse breeding.

This is how it works: if you are a grower of