r
to finish it properly and within a reasonable period we must work with
a will and in full concord; and that if we fail to do this the job
will be botched, with a risk of sinister consequences to the next
generation. The notion that to impress the public it is necessary to
pile on the agony with statements that no moderately enlightened
person can credit, is a wrong notion, and, like all wrong notions, can
only do harm. The general public is all right, quite as all right as
the present Government or any other. Had it not been so we should not
be where we are today, but in a far less satisfactory position. Not
Governments, not generals, but the masses make success in these mighty
altercations. Read Tolstoi's "War and Peace."

The War and Racial Progress

[From the Morning Post of London, July 2, 1915]

Major Leonard Darwin, in his presidential address on "Eugenics During
and After the War" to the Eugenics Education Society at the Grafton
Galleries yesterday, said that our military system seemed to be
devised with the object of insuring that all who were defective should
be exempt from risks, whilst the strong, courageous, and patriotic
should be endangered. Men with noble qualities were being destroyed,
whilst the unfit remained at home to become fathers of families, and
this must deteriorate the natural qualities of the coming generations.
The chances of stopping war were small, and we must consider how to
minimize its evils. If conscription were adopted future wars would
produce less injury to the race, because the casualty lists would more
nearly represent a chance selection of the population; though whether
a conscript army would ever fight as well as our men were doing in
France was very doubtful. The injurious effects of the war on all
useful sections of the community should be mitigated. Military
training was eugenic if the men were kept with the colours only for
short periods. Officers must, of course, be engaged for long periods,
and amongst them the birth rate was very low. An increase of pay would
be beneficial in this respect, but only if given in the form of an
additional allowance for each living child. In the hope of increasing
the birth rate attempts were likely to be made to exalt the "unmarried
wife," a detestable term against which all true wives should protest.
If a change in moral standards was demanded in the hope that an
increase in the habit of forming irregular unions would result in