Essays in War-Time - Further Studies in the Task of Social Hygiene by Havelock Ellis
page 21 of 201 (10%)
page 21 of 201 (10%)
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descendants, in the peaceful Lapps and Eskimo.[4]
It was thus at a late stage of human history, though still so primitive as to be prehistoric, that organised warfare developed. At the dawn of history war abounded. The earliest literature of the Aryans--whether Greeks, Germans, or Hindus--is nothing but a record of systematic massacres, and the early history of the Hebrews, leaders in the world's religion and morality, is complacently bloodthirsty. Lapouge considers that in modern times, though wars are fewer in number, the total number of victims is still about the same, so that the stream of bloodshed throughout the ages remains unaffected. He attempted to estimate the victims of war for each civilised country during half a century, and found that the total amounted to nine and a half millions, while, by including the Napoleonic and other wars of the beginning of the nineteenth century, he considered that that total would be doubled. Put in another form, Lapouge says, the wars of a century spill 120,000,000 gallons of blood, enough to fill three million forty-gallon casks, or to create a perpetual fountain sending up a jet of 150 gallons per hour, a fountain which has been flowing unceasingly ever since the dawn of history. It is to be noted, also, that those slain on the battlefield by no means represent the total victims of a war, but only about half of them; more than half of those who, from one cause or another, perished in the Franco-Prussian war, it is said, were not belligerents. Lapouge wrote some ten years ago and considered that the victims of war, though remaining about absolutely the same in number through the ages, were becoming relatively fewer. The Great War of to-day would perhaps have disturbed his calculations, unless we may assume that it will be followed by a tremendous reaction against war. For when the war had lasted only nine months, it was estimated that if it should continue at the present rate (and as a matter of fact its scale has been much |
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