SURVIVAL OF UNFIT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 161, 14 December 1914, Page 6

SURVIVAL OF UNFIT.

WAR'S TOLL OF THE RACE. A recent article in the CanadianToronto Globe, of which Dr J. A. Moodonald is editor, shows vividly how war takes its toll of the best blood. ' "The biological law, by which the race I is developed and 'real civilisation' ad- | vanced through natural selection and the survival of the fittest in the strug- | gle for existence—that law is reversed in war. "War's call is: 'Send us the best ye I breed.' The best are chosen first, and . are first to fall. The fittest stand in the ■ forefront and do not survive. War's ; reversed selection makes for the survival of the unfit. The law works both ways: by it the nation climbs through i breeding from its fit; by it the nation | sinks by breeding from its unfit. This !is the desolation war works in the i human breed. The fittest do not survive. I WAR AND THE HUMAN BREED. I "Two newspaper paragraphs should be | read together. One paragraph tells of I the recruiting in Scotland of Lord ! Kitchener's army; more than 1100 enlisted in tlie Royal Scots Fusiliers in Ayr; Lord Lovat is rallying his clansmen to the Highland Mounted Brigade; Lochiel will command a thousand Cam- ! eron Highlanders; almost the entire l' male population is enlisted from many ■'of the glens and islands; scarcely a man [ of war age will be left on Lewis. " 'Next morning early we hear the I clatter of lroofs, the rattle of wheels, and (the. cheering of many voices, and the ' Glemirnuhart men drive past us on th'eir way to Beaufort—outwardly at least all ' smiles and merriment. The baigpip.js .'play mournfully the appropriate' tune, i "Leaving Glenurquliart.'' Someone says Gaelic, "The Scouts are to bo sent 'to Belgium," and like fire on the ' heather the news spreads—Jo'hnnie and 'Alec and Donald are going to 'Belgium!' J A BIOLOGICAL LIE. !_ "The other dispatch quotes a stai'e'ment of Bernhardt, the German military I expert, whose book, 'Germany and the I Next War,' and his more recent puiblieai tion, translated into English, 'War of To-day,' presents the plain un- ! varnished philosophy of militarism not j in Germany alone, but in Franco and | Britain and America. Bernhardi says: j " 'War is a biological necessity of the 1 first importance, a regulative element, in i the life of mankind which cannot be dis- \ pensed with, since witihout it an unI healthy development will follow, which I excludes every advancement of ill' race, | and therefore all real civilisation.' ' I "'Biological,' forsooth! Let J-cofanrt ranswer. Let Germany answer. Never 'since the days of the Stuarts has Seofc- | land, and especially fJici 'Scottish High- / [lands been free from the toll talc en by j the recruiting sergants for Britain's I 'army The history of the Celts is, in one 1 sentence, 'Forever iihey went out to 1 battle,, and forever they fell.' The clan followed its chief; thc^,chiefs followed f their King, then their. Stuart Prince. I'nnd now ihe'ir 'British King. If war-'s a 'biological necessity,' wh.it life, what' '[virility, What a race of. giants the moors .'and glens must yield to-day! / WHAT GERMANY WILL LOSE. ' "In more than -10 years Germany lias | 'had no war. In the struggle, for exist- j i'ence the German Empire has developed 'in the 'survivals' not of war but of peace. ,'ln their industrial competitions of peace I'the strongest have survived and the i weakest have gone to the wall. Now •that they Jiavo for the first time tn,'fered the struggle of war—all their \ physical fit, morn than (i,' 000,,000 of the | best they breed— what will bo the answer ,'of the next .generation of Germans ? i"Will the blood poured ouii in such wild ,'iprodigality in the valleys of France, and the blood that will yet soak like red i'ain the roads from France on the west 1o Berlin, and from Russia to Berlin on the east—will that waste of Germany's | 'best blood make for the biological betterment of the German nation? I SCOTLAND SPEAKS. I "Scotland speaks from long and sad 'experience. Every heathery hill looks j down on a glen that* generation, after : generation, sent in answer to the fiery j cross and pines of war the best its 'home's j had bred. On those moors and through vthose intervals life at best was hard. I The weaklings died in infancy. Uy the j'Jaw of the survival of the fittest'there | was bred a race of giants whose kilted I'regimcnts, every man of them six feet I oi' more, were the pride of their race i' and til-; glory of British arms. What I now says biology? Wluit 'has been the 1 biological issue for Scotland? THE HIGHLAND CLANS. ' r "In the awful days of the Forty-live, 'out of this very Glenurquliart. 800 men of the clansmen's mould marched to Culloden for .their 'Bonnie Prince 'Charlie,' but a fortnight ago among 'those who marched out to 'Leaving Glenurquhart,' not a corporal's guard. , 'though they took their best from Locli i I'Ness to Corrimony, could pass tlhe heroic I'standard of the olden days. Grantu ! i from that glen and from Strathsprey . i' stained witJi their blood the marble pal- , aces of India, and saved the honour of !! humanity in the awful days of the ■ 'Mutiny; but to-day few of their clan [ -are left 'in their am dear glen.' The ■ 'sturdy Chishouns. are gone from Strath- . 'glass. Wild and high, as through Bel- - gium to Waterloo a lmndred years ago, i the 'Cameron's Gathering' rose this very i monMi when Lochiel called for his men, r "but how many had the 'biological' ex- - cellenee of the clan 'what time the plaidt ed chiefs .came down to battle with - Montrose?' Tiio to-day are i few at Lochbroom. } la the gloaming glens of the West :• Highlands there is silence dee)) as death 1 'where one; a thousand Campbells would 3 start up in a night at, the call of Argyll. ' No Lord of the Isles who sleeps in lona s could ever again gather a clan worthy i 'lis tartar though he, blew all night on >' '.! he pibroch of Donald. THE PHANTOM HOST. "They went out, those Highland s 'clans, wherever the- Royal Standard 1 blew. Again those Highland clans go cut, the best and bravest of filieir 'breed, 'and they never come back. Biology doee tjhe rest. Bernhardi's 'biological - necessity' accomplishes its work. War's commercial dislocations and war's finanr. I eial ruin are bad enough, but war'a bioe | logical reaction is damage beyond ree pair. Its waste in blood, its waste in g human protoplasm, its incalculable waste I. before their time of Whole generations of a .unborn sons of .'heroic sires—that waste. e umrekoii'.'d and prodigal, can never be h gathered up again. If biology means ], anything, if blood tells, then the wholer fale slaughter of youth and vigour in ,1 the tieneh.?s and on the wide iiuman ,] abattoir' of Europe is loss that has no r 'gain k) match. And the loss is not alone n c.f tli' stalwarts in their teens and {. i twenties and thirties. (. | "There is a never-ending phantom I I 'rest who ought fio have been but never e 'shall be—the unborn sons of soldier „ fathers who faced wars' biological ner ' ceasity.' "The Weaklings survive, the cowards ' escape, the physically unfit are not callj ■ c<l, the morally imcourageous are left to 'breed after their kind for the next generation; but the strong, the daring, ", t'lo willing—they leave no breed behind. That is loas beyond repair."