Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1905-11-30
JAPANESE AN AQUATIC PEOPLE
Their War Ship Crews Drilled to Per
fiction.

Their War Ship Crews Drilled to Per
fiction.
American Medcine.-The brain be
hind the gun has at last been recog
nized as the main weapon in warfare
The Russian government possessed
the finest battle ships which have
ever been built and the world is now
| trying to explain the recent naval dis,
aster. The general trend Of expert
| opinion rather points TO defective
training of the sailors, as the main, if
not the sole reason, for the notorious
inefliciency of the Russian navy. 1t is
noted that the Japanese train their
men in the minutest detail S. Their
soldiers, for instance have railroad
cars in the barrack yards, and are
drilled daily in the rapid loading of a
| train, and at the naval barracks
dummy furnaces are constructed, and
the embryo fireman Is practiced day
after day in the mere act Of shoVeling
coal 50 that he can place each piece
exactly where it is needed. Each
man becomes perfect machine, but
there Is no such system among the
Russians. 1t Is only here and there
that writer has noted that all the
training in the world cannot make
| the Russian peasant sailor. He is
a landsman, and his ancestors have al
ways been such. The Japanese have
survived as people simply because
they are at nome on the water for all
others were killed off long ago in
their interminable conflicts with Ma.
ture and their neighbors. 1t is a ma.
tural selection producing race of
sailors. They claim that through
these past bloody conflicts the west
ern half of the Pacific ocean belongs
to them by right Of conquest, just as
America belongs to the white race
Anthropology rightly studied would
seem to indicate that their claim is
good, and that their rights must be
respected by the rest of the world.
There were aquatic brains behind
the japanese guns and terrestrial
ones behind the Russian.
The lesson of the recent naval
battle which Is Of most interest to
physicians and Of vital importance to
the nation, Is not so much the ships
and training Of the personel, but the
enlistment of the proper races of men
for the navy. If brains do not count,
then 1t should be possible to man our
navy with anything in the shape of
man and make him efficient by con.
slant training. It is now becoming
moro and more evident that man fol !
lows the law operative among the
lower races. that under aquatic con
dltions species become aquatic bv
survival of only that type. 1t is a .
new problem of psychology hitherto
untouched but the facts are now evi- !
dent. The control of the oceans of
the world is passing to the types of
man which have been aquatic for mil
llnnius and now survive simply be-
cause they inherited us favorable
psychic variation. The first settlers
of America belonged to this aquatic
race of Europe, and 1t was an easy
matter to man our ships in early days
and their deeds are famous. The
mass of our immigrants are now of
different types which have never un-
dergone this selection by nature.
Some Of them, no doubt, could be
made into sailors by training, but the
mass could not Hence the future
DrOh1pm Df fhp naval nutbDrifinu IN !
the enlistment of sailors is to select
them from among the aquatic types
OF Baltic ancestry. As our salvation
as nation seems dependent upon a
navy which requires many years to
build It is good policy to give heed to
this now psychic lesson OF the Japan
Csc victories.