Should not this be enough to suggest to us the real meaning of the consequence which has followed when men changed swords for ledgers, and which even those who hate war as a vile blasphemy against life must recognise? It is that, as we have seen, when a nation is making its way there is selection of the fittest by the stern arbitrament of war, in which the battle is to the individually strong and fleet and brave and quick-witted. Later, “when men change swords for ledgers,” selection ceases; and that is why nothing fails like success. Yet later still, as France should know, selection by war must take the form of reversed selection, the flower of a nation's youth being immolated on the battle-field, whilst its future is determined by the weak and small and diseased, whom the recruiting sergeant rejects. “You are not good enough to be a soldier,” he says; “stay at home and be a father.” That was what Napoleon did for France. But to return--for the relations of war to eugenics would really demand a volume--it may be noted that, though rejecting the Lamarckian theory--the theory on which nothing should succeed like success--Mr. Balfour nowhere emphasises the amazing paradox of history that nothing fails like success. If we consider this fact with the idea of natural selection in our minds (not between societies but within them), we cannot fail to perceive that success involves failure because it involves failure of selection, and therefore indiscriminate survival; or indeed, survival of the worst. =Politics and domestics.=--It is, perhaps, a noteworthy comment upon what may be called the political state of mind, that even when the idea of natural selection has entered it, the bias is towards associating it with international and not with intra-national or domestic politics. The time will come, however, when the politician--or shall we say the statesman?--realises that it is the domestic policy, it is the internal struggle for survival within a society, that conditions and fore-ordains all international politics. The history of nations is determined not on the battlefield but in the nursery, and the battalions which give lasting victory are battalions of babies. _The politics of the future will be domestics._