“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: In the French Wars of the Revolution, 1789–1795— Frenchmen 1,800,000 Other Europeans 2,500,000 Wars of the Empire, 1795–1815— Frenchmen 2,600,000 Other Europeans 3,500,000 In European and American wars since 1815— According to Lapouge’s estimate 9,450,000 Grand (Extremely Grand) Total 19,850,000[34] This total does not show the spilt blood of perhaps one hundred million men wounded, in battle, but _not killed_. It is specially important to consider also that this enormous total of twenty million—in round numbers—does not include many millions of _non-combatants_ who in one way and another were destroyed during the wars _and in consequence of the wars_, nor the immense number of non-combatants _wounded_ but not _destroyed_ nor the vast amount of blood befouled and weakened with disease.