" Macedonia,
however, furnishes a fairly close parallel--D. S. Jordan found whole
villages there in 1913 in which not a single man remained: only women
and children. Conditions were not so very much better in parts of the
South at the close of the Civil War, particularly in Virginia and North
Carolina, where probably 40% of the young men of reproductive age died
without issue. And in a few of the Northern states, such as Vermont,
Connecticut and Massachusetts, the loss was proportionately almost as
great. These were probably as good men as any country has produced, and
their loss, with that of their potential offspring, undoubtedly is
causing more far-reaching effects in the subsequent history of the
United States than has ever been realized.
In the past and still among many savage peoples, inter-group selection
has been affected by the stealing of women from the vanquished. The
effect of this has been very different, depending on whether these women
would otherwise have been killed or spared, and also depending on the
relative quality of their nation to that of their conquerors.
To sum up, there are so many features of natural selection, each of
which must be separately weighed and the whole then balanced, that it is
a matter of extensive inquiry to determine whether a certain war has a
preponderance of eugenic or dysgenic results.
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