s compared with fifty per cent. among the whites.
The number of suicides in both races remained low throughout the year
1899, and then rose suddenly in 1900, an almost precise correspondence
with the suicide curve of the nation as a whole.

During our Civil War the suicidal tendency was affected in the same way,
but to a much greater extent. I have not been able to find mortality
statistics of the whole country for the period in question, but in New
York City the average rate of suicide in the five years of the Civil War
was forty-two per cent. lower than the average for the five preceding
years, and forty-three per cent. lower than the average for the five
subsequent years. In the State of Massachusetts, where accurate
statistics were kept, the number of suicides decreased seventeen per
cent. in the five-year period from 1861 to 1865, as compared with the
five-year period from 1856 to 1860.

In Europe the restraining influence of war upon the suicidal impulse is
equally marked. The war between Austria and Italy in 1866 decreased the
suicide rate of each country about fourteen per cent. The Franco-German
war of 1870-71 lowered the suicide rate of Saxony 8.0 per cent., that of
Prussia 11.4 per cent., and that of France 18.7 per cent. The reduction
was greatest in France, because the German invasion of that country made
the war excitement there much more general and intense than it was in
Saxony or Prussia.

An explanation of the decrease of suicide in time of war may be found,
perhaps, in the power that any strong excitement has to change the
current of thought and substitute one emotion for another. Suicide,
among civilized peoples, is largely due to morbid introspection and long
brooding over real or imaginary trouble; and anything that takes a man's
mind away from his own unhappiness, and gives him a keen interest in
things or events about him, weakens his suicidal impulse. An unhappy man
might resolve to end his life, and might load a revolver with the
intention of shooting himself; but if he should happen to see a couple
of his neighbors fighting in his front door-yard, he would probably lay
the revolver aside, for a time, and watch the combat. The cause of his
unhappiness would still remain, but the current of his thought would
suddenly be diverted into a new channel and his despondency would give
way to the excitement of a fresh and vivid interest. War acts upon men
in the same way, but with greater force.

Th