Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/31

Rh normal families are born later in life—that would not be of great moment in itself—it means far more than this. The majority of children are more often born in the earlier half of married life, before the age of thirty-five. Hence a postponement of matrimony means not only later children but fewer children. Herein lies the great significance of the phenomenon for us. Standing armies tend in this respect to overload succeeding generations with inferior types of men. This selection is, in operation, akin to the influence which Galton has invoked as a partial explanation for the mental darkness of the middle ages. This he ascribes to the beliefs and customs by which all the finer minds and spirits were withdrawn from the field of matrimony by the Church, leaving the entire future population to the loins of the physically robust and adventurous portion of the community. Mind spent itself in a single generation of search for knowledge; physique, bereft of intellect, was left to its own devices among the common people.

The intensity of this military selection, potent enough in time of peace, is of course highly augmented during the prosecution of a war. At such periods the normal men are not only isolated for an indefinite period; their ranks are permanently decimated by the mortality at the front. The selective influence is doubly operative. Fortunately, we possess data which appear to afford illustration of its effects. Detailed investigation in various parts of France is bringing to light certain curious after-effects of the late Franco-Prussian War. We do not always fully realize what such an event means for a nation, quite irrespective of the actual mortality, and of the direct economic expenditure. Every family in the land is affected by it; and the future bears its full share with the contemporaneous population. In France, for example, during the year of the war, there were seventy-five thousand fewer marriages than usual. In 1871, upon its conclusion, an unprecedented epidemic of them broke out, not equaled in absolute numbers since the veterans returned from the front in 1813, on the cessation of hostilities at that time.

Two tendencies have been noted, from the comparison of the generations of offspring severally conceived before, during, and after the war. This appeared in the conscripts who came before the recruiting commissions in 1890-’92, at which time the children conceived in war times became, at the age of twenty, liable for service. In the population during the progress of the war the flower of French manhood, then in the field, was without proportionate representation. There must have been an undue preponderance, not only of stunted men, rejected from the army for deficiency of stature alone, but of those otherwise physically unfitted for service. Hence, the population born of this time ought,