War weakens the blood of the nation by worse than wasting enormous supplies of food material and thus underfeeding those who toil.
War weakens the national blood by tainting the blood of great numbers of soldiers and through these tainting the blood of women and children—with venereal diseases contracted in unusual degree near the barracks and during war, and immediately following war. President William H. Taft, as Secretary of War, has said:[[30]]
“Venereal diseases were again by far the most important diseases affecting the efficiency of the Army during the year. There were constantly on sick report for this class of affections 739 men, equal to the loss for the entire year of the service of about eleven full companies of infantry.... As a cause for discharge venereal diseases were second.”
Still more recently the Secretary of War, Mr. J. M. Dickinson, reports thus on the befouling of the blood of soldiers:[[31]]
“The diseases causing the greatest non-effective rate are in the order of importance: venereal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, rheumatism, tonsilitis, dysentery, diarrhea, bronchitis, measles, typhoid fever.
“Venereal diseases cause a greater sick rate than all the others added together.”
One of the best known publicists in the world, Mr. William T. Stead, puts the matter thus:
“Four out of five of all English soldiers who serve two years or more are tainted with venereal diseases.”[[32]]
In the present chapter, devoted to the cost of war in blood and in cash, there is for the “blood cost” space for but little more than some statistics sufficient to indicate, for illustrative purposes, the amount of blood actually spilt in war during the last three generations. The authority for the statistical matter following is, chiefly, Chatterton-Hill’s Heredity and Selection in Sociology; G. de Lapouge’s Les Selections Sociales; and J. Bloch’s The Future of War.[[33]]
The hot, red flood gushing from the torn veins of the working class, seduced or forced to attend “Death’s feast” to slaughter and be slaughtered in little more than one brief hundred recent years, may be measured thus: