NOTES.
War and Parentage.
In the interests of unborn children we should, so far as possible, remove from the world those causes which, acting on the mother, either directly or indirectly, may injure them by lowering the standard of their health, or by altering and debasing their moral and intellectual natures. One of the most potent of the causes for harm is war. War has generally been regarded as one of the ennobling professions. If we look upon it in its most favorable light, all that we can say in its favor is that among primitive and barbarous races it has perhaps resulted in the preservation and spread of the most capable ones, and that it has at the same time welded them together into larger groups, and finally into nations, and habituated them to those restraints which are necessary to social existence; but we no longer require it for this purpose, and the industrial pursuits and the evolution of civilization are so disturbed by them that they should cease, and especially should they cease in the interest of our children, both born and unborn.
How can war injure children? We have already shown in the chapter on [Prenatal Culture] that when the mother is under the influence of any powerful mental emotion, such as fear, depression, anger and similar passions during the months in which the child is being developed in her womb, there is very great danger of permanent injury to it. Only the strongest mothers, those with the most robust health, or who have the most stable nerves, those who are rarely thrown off their balance, are capable of resisting the intense excitements to which they are subject during some of the phases of war.
As I mentioned in my early work on Marriage and Parentage, Esquirol, a French historian, gives details of a considerable number of cases of children born soon after some of the sieges of the French Revolution, which were weakly, nervous and idiotic, on account of the terrible strain to which their mothers had been subjected. In every war where a city is besieged, even if its women and children are sent away, they cannot be altogether free from anxieties and mental strains of a most unwholesome nature, and if some of them are soon to become mothers, the offspring not yet born must suffer. No one can estimate the vast number of children injured under such conditions in the ages past. They have been only incidentally referred to in history. The fame and glory of conquerors must not be dimmed by the relation of such occurrences.
Joseph A. Allen, in The Christian Register, gives the results of some of his observations which bear on this subject. He says:
"So much is being said about war and its effects, that I am prompted to send you the result of my observations.
"I was in charge of the Massachusetts State Reform School for several years, when every inmate (there were between three and four hundred) was born before the Civil War—during the time of the great anti-slavery agitation, which did so much to educate the moral sense of the people.
