SPENDING OUR BRAIN.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIX, Issue 3997, 22 November 1918, Page 3

SPENDING OUR BRAIN.

SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR.

At the Summer School of Civics

and Eugenics, held at Oxford, an interesting address was delivered by Professor J. A. Lindsay, of Belfast, on the subject of "The Eugenic and Social Influence of the War."

He said a fundamental question was " What would be the wastage of man power in this war and what would be the effect of that wastage ?" Dr. Louis C. Parkes reckoned the number of males in the five chief combatant nations to the end of the year 1915 killed or unable to support a family at nine millions. It would hardly be rash t,o assume that this figure had been more than trebled since that date.

The loss of life in war was a question not only of quantity, but ol quality. The casualties amongst officers, had been exceptionally heavy. Many only sons had fallen, and many old families had 1 become extinct. The loss to literature, science, politics, and administration had been very grave. Poet,s, writers, artists, thinkers, and scientists—the intelligence of the nation—had fallen in large numbers. The universities had in some cases been practically emptied, with the inevitable result that the supply of trained intelligence would hereafter tend to run short. The nation was spending in this great conflict not only its blood, but its brain, and' the latter could only be replaced much more slowly than the former.

One of the most obvious results of the slaughter of young men in this war would be an accentuation 6f the disproportion between the sexes, which was already marked in the prewar period. On a moderate calculation there would be three million more women than men in the British Islands in the not distant future. The social effects of thisi disproportion were likely to be intricate and farreaching, and were not to be judged exclusively from the standpoint of matrimony.

One of the most certain results of the present war would be a vast extension of female employment, not alone because there would be fewer men, but also because. women had fully established their capacity to do work, and to do it well, which was formerly thought to be naturally reserved for. men. When they came to count up the gains'and losses of the war there could be little doubt to which the balance would incline. The nation would have lost heavily in man power, in brain power, in capital, and in industrial resources.