Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/97

 Rh a psychological interest of practical power. As a matter of fact, the recruit tends to put on, with his uniform, a more primitive and sexually challenging behavior than he assumes as a civilian in the restraining circumstances of western society. To the women of the nation, male personality became, during the war, of paramount importance, and the conflicting values went almost completely into the discard. Whether this effect will be carried over into the postbellum period remains to be seen.

It is entirely improbably that a war of less than ten years’ duration has any injurious effect upon the stocks of a nation. Conclusions that the effects of short wars are damaging have entirely neglected the psychological factors, which are the most important of all. A war lasting throughout a generation would have quite different effects, and is not to be made the basis of arguments concerning briefer conflicts. The incidental benefits which war confers upon a nation are not reasons