ations of civilization are being undermined. He finds reasons for
great pessimism as regards the future in the results of the intelligence
tests taken in the American Army during the war.

The American War Department made psychological tests of 1,700,000
officers and men, who were graded as follows:--

Grade. Percentage. Mental Age.

A 41/2 18-19 Very superior intelligence.
B 9 16-17 Superior intelligence.
C1 161/2 15 Average intelligence. (Rarely capable
of finishing high-school course.)
C-- 25 13-14 Low average intelligence.
D 15 11 Inferior intelligence.
D-- 10 10 Very inferior intelligence.

Assuming that these 1,700,000 men are a fair sample of the entire
population of 100,000,000 (and Stoddart says there is every reason to
believe that it is a fair sample), this means that the average mental
age of Americans is only about fourteen; that 45,000,000, or nearly
one-half of the whole population, will never develop mental capacity
beyond the stage represented by a normal twelve-year-old child; that
only 13,500,000 will ever show superior intelligence; and that only
4,500,000 can be considered "talented." "Still more alarming," the
author continues, "is the prospect of the future. The overwhelming
weight of evidence indicates that the A and B elements in America are
barely reproducing themselves, while the other elements are increasing
at rates proportionate to their decreasing intellectual capacity; in
other words, that intelligence is to-day being steadily bred out of the
American population."

The biologist Davenport calculated that at present rates of reproduction
1,000 Harvard graduates of to-day would have only fifty descendants two
centuries hence, whereas 1,000 Roumanians to-day in Boston, at their
present rate of breeding, would have 100,000 descendants in the same
space of time.

Mr. Lothrop Stoddart emphatically scouts the view which is occasionally
put forward to the effect that genius is a form of insanity, and that
therefore one ought to be careful about discouraging the marriage even
of epileptics and mentally unbalanced persons for fear a possible
Napoleon or Julius Caesar or Beethoven should be lost to the world.
"Careful scientific investigation," he says, "has clearly disproved this
not