THE WASTE OF WAR.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 746, 17 February 1915, Page 3

THE WASTE OF WAR.

DOES NATURE TAKE COUNT OP THE WASTE OF MEN? "Does Nature take count of our waßte of men in war?" "Is war a law of Nature?" Thssß interesting problems were discussed by Mr W. Ralph Hall Caine before the Interational Society of Philologv. "War, according to modern philosophy, is a divine ordinance for ridaing the earth of decadent peopleß," said Mr Hall Caine. "'But,' it may be asked, 'may no war exterminate the robust manhood of a virile nation, leaving only the very young and immature and the very old and overmature to sustain the-traditions of a race?" " 'ln that case Nature is revenged.' So tuna the reply. 'Following the cloae of the war the number of male births is out of all proportion larger than that of female births. The balance between the Bexes is thus restored, and war, so far as it is an offence to the human family, is atoned, inasmuch as the error of precipitated death is already in process of correction at th"s moment of its occurrence.' "The essence of the argument would seem to be this: That war is an integral part of the divine plan, that it fulfils a purpose in the economy of the human family that has its counterpart in all other forms of life. "Does Nature invent a new law to meet the social conditions produced by a devastating war? Or does watchful motherhood achieve the same result, by jealously guard ing the male child «nd leaving the female child to fend for itself, and perchance die? Tc raise the latter alternative would suggest that under normal conditions, many male children die which otherwise would be saved —a conclusion we refuse to accept. "Under normal conditions, taking wide areas, there is a comparative evenness of the relative birth, of the sexes, male births compared with female births being as 103 to 100. By the end of the first year the relative disparity in the sexes is getting tne other way, and practically all through the chapter of life the scale falls the same way.

"Strike a balancp, and what do we find. That from infancy to old age, a woman has the better chance of life. Nature, therefore, ia not taking count of oar wars, when even under normal conditions she directs a substantial overplus to the male birth rate. She is evidently following a law fixed at the very beginning, one belonging to the fundamental basia of our continuance on this crust of earth. "What is this law? We venture to think that it is nothing more abstruse than the obvious one—the preservation of the species. Why then following a war should Nature, according to repute, still more largely foster the male by a substantial increase in the birth rate? Granted that the statement be fact, the answer ought not to be difficult —because war aims the destruction of the male. "Only the young and the strong, the choicest specimens of a nations' manhood ate found worthy of. a place in the battle line; the sex who are left behind are the physically unfit, the adolescent and the old. Nature learns of her neglect, not by the clash of steel and the boom of big guns on the frontier, but by a slackening of the virility of the male left to propagate the species. "The expedient of men waging war may be urgent, sufficient and inevitable, but it is not the command j of God. We see, therefore, that when a woman is left at the death of her husband from inherent or acquired physical weakness—not by accident — with one chiid, the sex of that child ia nine times out of ten a boy, the exception merely proving the rule. On every hand, we see widowers with daughters. "My one and only point ia this: There are no 'deadends' to the human family, other than those which Nature can and does deal with in her own way."