“The good old rule
    Sufficeth him, the simple plan
  That they should take who have the power,
    And they should keep who can.”

It is easy, I think, to show that the theory is utterly false, and that the basis of civilized society is not physical force, but, on the contrary, brains.

In the city where the “Saturday Review” is published, there are three regiments of “Guards” which are the boast of the English army, and are believed by their officers to be the finest troops in the world.  They have deteriorated in size since the Crimean war; but I believe that the men of one regiment still average six feet two inches in height; and I am sure that nobody ever saw them in line without noticing the contrast between these magnificent men and the comparatively puny officers who command them.  These officers are from the highest social rank in England, the governing classes; and if it were the whole object of this military organization to give a visible proof of the utter absurdity of the “Saturday Review’s” theory, it could not be better done.  There is no country in Europe, I suppose, where the hereditary aristocracy is physically equal to that of England, or where the intellectual class has so good a physique.  But set either the House of Lords or the “Saturday Review” contributors upon a hand-to-hand fight against an equal number of “navvies” or “coster-mongers,” and the patricians would have about as much chance as a crew of Vassar girls in a boat-race with Yale or Harvard.  Take the men of England alone, and it is hardly too much to say that physical force, instead of being the basis of political power in any class, is apt to be found in inverse ratio to it.  In case of revolution, the strength of the governing class in any country is not in its physical, but in its mental power.  Rank and money, and the power to influence and organize and command, are merely different modifications of mental training, brought to bear by somebody.

In our country, without class distinctions, the same truth can be easily shown.  Physical power lies mainly in the hands of the masses:  wherever a class or profession possesses more than its numerical share of power, it has usually less than its proportion of physical vigor.  This is easily shown from the vast body of evidence collected during our civil war.  In the volume containing the medical statistics of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, we have the tabulated reports of about 600,000 persons subject to draft, and of about 500,000 recruits, substitutes, and drafted men; showing the precise physical condition of more than a million men.