The Detroit times. [volume] (Detroit, Mich.) 1903-1920, 1915-10-28
The Destruction of
the Human Race
~ Or FRANK CRANE
Copyright. 1915. by Frank Crane)


Progress is in the hands of destiny.
Some Mind, bigger than all human
effort, and back of all that humans may
please and do, is managing the race.
making of it something we know not
what.
What will mankind be fifty or hun
dred years from now? The answer is
with God.
Partly.
Partly also with us. As an individual,
by excuses and diseases, can spoil his
life, so the race by long practised crimes
against itself can eventually become .
group Of spindlings!
Mankind to-day, as q result of giving
itself up to those utterly insane passions,
ideals and deeds included in the idea of
war, is rapidly emasculating itself.
For more than twelve months" says
M. Maeterlinck, ION every battlefield,
where the bravest, the most sincere, the
most ardent, and the most devoted
necessarily die the first, and where the
less brave, the less generous, the weak.
the sick-in q word, the least desirable
alone have some chance to escape the
carnage. q monstrous sort Of selection
ruin Of the species"
We are launched upon q programme
LOT self-destruction greater than the
world has ever known. systematically
wedding out the virile, what kind Of crop
of cowardly, effeminate, and unhealthy
milksops will we have in generation or
so?
That, on the one hand. On the other.
every force of peaceful civilization is at
work preserving and propagating the
feeble and vicious.
When the scientists propose a plan
to sterilize the fifteen million subnormal
and defective persons in the United
States we are squeamishly shocked. We
will not tolerate so un-Christian a plan.
We kill recklessly our best in battle.
All the patriots exclaim how grand and
noble thing it is. Yes, yes, we must
be brave and stern and heroic! But we
haven't the courage to take the useless
and septic life of newborn baby,
Predetermined, filled with disease, and
with no prospect of being of any value
to itself or society.
"Our state law" says DR.. Anna E.
Blout, "forbids idiots to marry but il
permits the feeble-minded to do So
Idiots do not marry; the feeble-minded
do. The result is feeble-minded children
The number of children in such family
averages from six to eight; the number
Of children for the family of Harvard
graduate, one and one-half. / am in
favor Of sterilization"
There are means of preventing con-
|ception, enabling parents intelligently to
limit the size of the family. But it is
illegal to publish the means. Only the
comparatively strong, well-equipped, and
capable know and practise the art of con-
trolling birth. The ignorant, unequipped,
anemic, unclean, undernourished, and
|unhygienic breed without limit. Hence
the unfit swarm. Those who enter life
with health and chance are restricted
All our agitation results in cutting down
the number of the vigorous and increas-
ing the number of the puny.
Anybody who can think can see what
the harvest will be.
Two and two will always make four.
The accursed cause Of this lies in the
lack Of world consciousness. We have
no racial coordination. We cannot think
IN terms of mankind. We still revel In
the damned nonsense of German kulture,
English blood, the French national spirit,
Americanism. the Slav destiny. But
what about humanity?
Instead of tearing, biting, poisoning,
ripping. drowning, and pole-axing each
other with flags flying and bugles blow
ing, why can't human beings get togeth-
er and help each other?
II we must kill, why not get together
and mercifully kill. or at least sterilize,
the unfit, instead Of meeting In bloody
Journeys to eliminate the bravest and
noblest of US, cutting off from women
their worthy mates and leaving them, as
fathers to their children, the low-browed
army Of runts?