And yet the motives which we have enumerated are plainly atavistic and pathological. They belong to a mental condition which would conduct an individual to the prison or the gallows. We do not argue seriously whether the career of the highwayman or burglar is legitimate and desirable; and it is impossible to maintain that what is disgraceful for the individual is creditable for the state. And apart from the consideration that predatory patriotism deforms its own idol and makes it hateful in the eyes of the world, subsequent history has fully confirmed the moral instinct of the ancient Greeks, that national insolence or injustice (hybrist) brings its own severe punishment. The imaginary dialogue which Thucydides puts into the mouth of the Athenian and Melian envoys, and the debate in the Athenian Assembly about the punishment of revolted Mitylene, are intended to prepare the reader for the tragic fate of the Sicilian expedition. The same writer describes the break-up of all social morality during the civil war in words which seem to herald the destruction not only of Athens but of Greek freedom. Machiavelli's 'Prince' shows how history can repeat itself, reiterating its lesson that a nation which gives itself to immoral aggrandisement is far on the road to disintegration. Seneca's rebuke to his slave-holding countrymen, 'Can you complain that you have been robbed of the liberty which you have yourselves abolished in your own homes?' applies equally to nations which have enslaved or exploited the inhabitants of subject lands. If the Roman Empire had a long and glorious life, it was because its methods were liberal, by the standard of ancient times. In so far as Rome abused her power, she suffered the doom of all tyrants.

The illusions of imperialism have been made clearer than ever by the course of modern history. Attempts to destroy a nationality by overthrowing its government, proscribing its language, and maltreating its citizens, are never successful. The experiment has been tried with great thoroughness in Poland; and the Poles are now more of a nation than they were under the oppressive feudal system which existed before the partitions. Our own empire would be a ludicrous failure if it were any part of our ambition to Anglicise other races. The only English parts of the empire were waste lands which we have peopled with our own emigrants. We hauled down the French flag in Canada, with the result that Eastern Canada is now the only flourishing French colony, and the only part of the world where the French race increases rapidly. We have helped the Dutch to multiply with almost equal rapidity in South Africa. We have added several millions to the native population of Egypt, and over a hundred millions to the population of India. Similarly, the Americans have made Cuba for the first time a really Spanish island, by driving out its incompetent Spanish governors and so attracting immigrants from Spain. On the whole, in imperialism nothing fails like success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge; if he treats them well, and 'governs them for their good,' they will multiply faster than their rulers, till they claim their independence. The Englishman now says, 'I am quite content to have it so'; but that is not the old imperialism.

The notion that frequent war is a healthy tonic for a nation is scarcely tenable. Its dysgenic effect, by eliminating the strongest and healthiest of the population, while leaving the weaklings at home to be the fathers of the next generation, is no new discovery. It has been supported by a succession of men, such as Tenon, Dufau, Foissac, de Lapouge, and Richet in France; Tiedemann and Seeck in Germany; Guerrini in Italy; Kellogg and Starr Jordan in America. The case is indeed overwhelming. The lives destroyed in war are nearly all males, thus disturbing the sex equilibrium of the population; they are in the prime of life, at the age of greatest fecundity; and they are picked from a list out of which from 20 to 30 per cent. have been rejected for physical unfitness. It seems to be proved that the children born in France during the Napoleonic wars were poor and undersized—30 millimetres below the normal height. War combined with religious celibacy to ruin Spain. 'Castile makes men and wastes them,' said a Spanish writer. 'This sublime and terrible phrase sums up the whole of Spanish history.' Schiller was right; 'Immer der Krieg verschlingt die besten.' We in England have suffered from this drain in the past; we shall suffer much more in the next generation.

We have fed our sea for a thousand years, And she calls us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead.

We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest, To the shark and the sheering gull, If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha' paid in full.

Aggressive patriotism is thus condemned by common sense and the verdict of history no less than by morality. We are entitled to say to the militarists what Socrates said to Polus:

This doctrine of yours has now been examined and found wanting. And this doctrine alone has stood the test—that we ought to be more afraid of doing than of suffering wrong; and that the prime business of every man [and nation] is not to seem good, but to be good, in all private and public dealings.

If the nations would render something more than lip-service to this principle, the abolition of war would be within sight; for, as Ruskin says, echoing the judgment of the Epistle of St. James, 'The first reason for all wars, and for the necessity of national defences, is that the majority of persons, high and low, in all European countries, are thieves.' But it must be remembered that, in spite of the proverb, it takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

Our own conversion to pacificism, though sincere, is somewhat recent. Our literature does not reflect it. Bacon is frankly militarist:

Above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth most, that a nation do profess arms, as their principal honour, study, and occupation. For the things which we formerly have spoken of are but habilitations towards arms; and what is habitation without intention and act?... It is so plain that a man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth not to be stood upon. It is enough to point at it; that no nation, which doth not directly profess arms, may look to have greatness fall into their mouths.

A state, therefore, 'ought to have those laws or customs, which may reach forth unto them just occasions of war.' Shakespeare's 'Henry V' has been not unreasonably recommended by the Germans as 'good war-reading.' It would be easy to compile a catena of bellicose maxims from our literature, reaching down to the end of the 19th century. The change is perhaps due less to progress in morality than to that political good sense which has again and again steered our ship through dangerous rocks. But there has been some real advance, in all civilised countries. We do not find that men talked about the 'bankruptcy of Christianity' during the Napoleonic campaigns. Even the Germans think it necessary to tell each other that it was Belgium who began this war.

But, though pugnacity and acquisitiveness have been the real foundation of much miscalled patriotism, better motives are generally mingled with these primitive instincts. It is the subtle blend of noble and ignoble sentiment which makes patriotism such a difficult problem for the moralist. The patriot nearly always believes, or thinks he believes, that he desires the greatness of his country because his country stands for something intrinsically great and valuable. Where this conviction is absent we cannot speak of patriotism, but only of the cohesion of a wolf-pack. The Greeks, who at last perished because they could not combine, had nevertheless a consciousness that they were the trustees of civilisation against barbarism; and in their day of triumph over the Persians they were filled, for a time, with an almost Jewish awe in presence of the righteous judgment of God. The 'Persae' of AEschylus is one of the noblest of patriotic poems. The Romans, a harder and coarser race, had their ideal of virtus and gravitas, which included simplicity of life, dignity and self-restraint, honesty and industry, and devotion to the state. They rightly felt that these qualities constituted a vocation to empire. There was much harshness and injustice in Roman imperialism; but what nobler epitaph could even the British empire desire than the tribute of Claudian, when the weary Titan was at last stricken and dying:

Haec est, in gremium victos quae sola recepit, humanumque genus communi nomine fovit matris non dominae ritu, civesque vocavit quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit?

Jewish patriotism was of a different kind. A federation of fierce Bedouin tribes, encamped amid hostile populations, and set in the cockpit of rival empires against which it was impossible to stand, the Israelites were hammered by misfortune into the most indestructible of all organisms, a theocracy. Their religion was to them what, in a minor degree, Roman Catholicism has been to Ireland and Poland, a consecration of patriotic faith and hope. Westphal says the Jews failed because they hated foreigners more than they loved God. They have had good reason to hate foreigners. But undoubtedly the effect of their hatred has been that the great gifts which their nation had to give to humanity have come through other hands, and so have evoked no gratitude. In the first century of our era they were called to an almost superhuman abnegation of their inveterate nationalism, and they could not rise to it. As almost every other nation would have done, they chose the lower patriotism instead of the higher; and it was against their will that the religion of civilised humanity grew out of Hebrew soil. But they gained this by their choice, tragic though it was, that they have stood by the graves of all the empires that oppressed them, and have preserved their racial integrity and traditions in the most adverse circumstances. The history of the Jews also shows that oppression and persecution are far more efficacious in binding a nation together than community of interest and national prosperity. Increase of wealth divides rather than unites a people; but suffering shared in common binds it together with hoops of steel.

The Jews were the only race whose spiritual independence was not crushed by the Roman steam-roller. It would be unfair to say that Rome destroyed nations; for her subjects in the West were barbarous tribes, and in the East she displaced monarchies no less alien to their subjects than her own rule. But she prevented the growth of nationalities, as it is to be feared we have done in India; and the absence of sturdy independence in the countries round the Mediterranean, especially in the Greek-speaking provinces, made the final downfall inevitable. The lesson has its warning for modern theorists who wish to obliterate the sentiment of nationality, the revival of which, after a long eclipse, has been one of the achievements of modern civilisation. For it was not till long after the destruction of the Western Roman Empire that nationality began to assume its present importance in Europe.

The transition from medieval to modern history is most strongly marked by the emergence of this principle, with all that it involves. At the end of the Middle Ages Europe was at last compelled to admit that the grand idea of an universal state and an universal church had definitely broken down. Hitherto it had been assumed that behind all national disputes lay a ius gentium by which all were bound, and that behind all religious questions lay the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, from which there was no appeal. The modern period which certainly does not represent the last word of civilisation, has witnessed the abandonment of these ideas. The change took place gradually. France became a nation when the English raids ceased in the middle of the 15th century. Spain achieved unity a generation later by the union of Castile and Aragon and the expulsion of the Moors from the peninsula. Holland found herself in the heroic struggle against Spain in the 16th century. But the practice of conducting wars by hiring foreign mercenaries, a sure sign that the nationalist spirit is weak, continued till much later. And the dynastic principle, which is the very negation of nationalism, actually culminated in the 18th century; and this is the true explanation of the feeble resistance which Europe offered to the French revolutionary armies, until Napoleon stirred up the dormant spirit of nationalism in the peoples whom he plundered. 'In the old European system,' says Lord Acton, 'the rights of nationalities were neither recognised by governments nor asserted by the people. The interests of the reigning families, not those of the nations, regulated the frontiers; and the administration was conducted generally without any reference to popular desires.' Marriage or conquest might unite the most diverse nations under one sovereign, such as Charles V.

While such ideas prevailed, the suppression of a nation did not seem hateful; the partition of Poland evoked few protests at the time, though perhaps few acts of injustice have recoiled with greater force on the heads of their perpetrators than this is likely to do. Poles have been and are among the bitterest enemies of autocracy, and the strongest advocates of republicanism and racialism, in all parts of the world. The French Revolution opened a new era for nationalism, both directly and indirectly. The deposition of the Bourbons was a national act which might be a precedent for other oppressed peoples. And when the Revolution itself began to trample on the rights of other nations, an uprising took place, first in Spain and then in Prussia, which proved too strong for the tyrant. The apostasy of France from her own ideals of liberty proved the futility of mere doctrines, like those of Rousseau, and compelled the peoples to arm themselves and win their freedom by the sword. The national militarism of Prussia was the direct consequence of her humiliation at Jena and Auerstaedt, and of the harsh terms imposed upon her at Tilsit. It is true that the Congress of Vienna attempted to revive the old dynastic system. But for the steady opposition of England, the clique of despots might have reimposed the old yoke upon their subjects. The settlement of 1815 also left the entire centre of Europe in a state of chaos; and it was only by slow degrees that Italy and Germany attained national unity. Poland, the Austrian Empire, and the Balkan States still remain in a condition to trouble the peace of the world. In Austria-Hungary the clash of the dynastic and the nationalist ideas is strident; and every citizen of that empire has to choose between a wider and a narrower allegiance.

Europeans are, in fact, far from having made up their minds as to what is the organic whole towards which patriotic sentiment ought to be directed. Socialism agrees with despotism in saying, 'It is the political aggregate, the state,' however much they may differ as to how the state should be administered. For this reason militarism and state-socialism might at any time come to terms. They are at one in exaggerating the 'organic' unity of a political or geographical enclave; and they are at one in depreciating the value of individual liberty. Loyalty to 'the state' instead of to 'king and country' is not an easy or a natural emotion. The state is a bloodless abstraction, which as a rule only materialises as a drill-sergeant or a tax-collector. Enthusiasm for it, and not only for what can be got out of it, does not extend much beyond the Fabian Society. Caesarism has the great advantage of a visible head, as well as of its appeal to very old and strong thought-habits; and accordingly, in any national crisis, loyalty to the War-lord is likely to show unexpected strength, and doctrinaire socialism unexpected weakness.

But devotion to the head of the state in his representative capacity is a different thing from the old feudal loyalty. It is far more impersonal; the ruler, whether an individual or a council, is reverenced as a non-human and non-moral embodiment of the national power, a sort of Platonic idea of coercive authority. This kind of loyalty may very easily be carried too far. In reality, we are members of a great many 'social organisms,' each of which has indefeasible claims upon us. Our family, our circle of acquaintance, our business or profession, our church, our country, the comity of civilised nations, humanity at large, are all social organisms; and some of the chief problems of ethics are concerned with the adjustment of their conflicting claims. To make any one of these absolute is destructive of morality. But militarism and socialism deliberately make the state absolute. In internal affairs this may lead to the ruthless oppression of individuals or whole classes; in external relations it produces wars waged with 'methods of barbarism.' The whole idea of the state as an organism, which has been emphasised by social reformers as a theoretical refutation of selfish individualism, rests on the abuse of a metaphor. The bond between the dwellers in the same political area is far less close than that between the organs of a living body. Every man has a life of his own, and some purely personal rights; he has, moreover, moral links with other human associations, outside his own country, and important moral duties towards them. No one who reflects on the solidarity of interests among capitalists, among hand-workers, or, in a different way, among scholars and artists, all over the world, can fail to see that the apotheosis of the state, whether in the interest of war or of revolution, is an anachronism and an absurdity.

A very different basis for patriotic sentiment is furnished by the scientific or pseudo-scientific theories about race, which have become very popular in our time. When the history of ideas in the 20th century comes to be written, it is certain that among the causes of this great war will be named the belief of the Germans in the superiority of their own race, based on certain historical and ethnological theories which have acted like a heady wine in stimulating the spirit of aggression among them. The theory, stated briefly, is that the shores of the Baltic are the home of the finest human type that has yet existed, a type distinguished by blond hair, great physical strength, unequalled mental vigour and ability, superior morality, and an innate aptitude for governing and improving inferior races. Unfortunately for the world, this noble stock cannot flourish for very long in climates unlike its own; but from the earliest historical times it has 'swarmed' periodically, subjugating the feebler peoples of the south, and elevating them for a time above the level which they were naturally fitted to reach. Wherever we find marked energy and nobleness of character, we may suspect Aryan blood; and history will usually support our surmise. Among the great men who were certainly or probably Germans were Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, the Founder of Christianity, Dante, and Shakespeare. The blond Nordic giant is fulfilling his mission by conquering and imposing his culture upon other races. They ought to be grateful to him for the service, especially as it has a sacrificial aspect, the lower types having, at least in their own climates, greater power of survival.

This fantastic theory has been defended in a large number of German books, of which the 'Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,' by the renegade Englishman Houston Chamberlain, is the most widely known. The objections to it are numerous. It is notorious that until the invention of gunpowder the settled and civilised peoples of Europe were in frequent danger from bands of hardier mountaineers, forest-dwellers, or pastoral nomads, who generally came from the north. But the formidable fighting powers of these marauders were no proof of intrinsic superiority. In fact, the most successful of these conquerors, if success is measured by the amount of territory overrun and subdued, were not the 'great blond beasts' of Nietzsche, but yellow monsters with black hair, the Huns and Tartars.[9] The causes of Tartar ascendancy had not the remotest connection with any moral or intellectual qualities which we can be expected to admire. Nor can the Nordic race, well endowed by nature as it undoubtedly is, prove such a superiority as this theory claims for it. Some of the largest brains yet measured have been those of Japanese; and the Jews have probably a higher average of ability than the Teutons. Again, the Germans are not descended from a pure Nordic stock. The Northern type can be best studied in Scandinavia, where the people share with the Irish the distinction of being the handsomest race in the world. The German is a mixture of various anatomical types, including, in some parts, distinct traces of Mongolian blood, which indicate that the raiding Huns meddled, according to their custom, with the German women, and bequeathed to a section of the nation the Turanian cheek-bones, as well as certain moral characteristics. Lastly, the German race has never shown much aptitude for governing and assimilating other peoples. The French, by virtue of their greater sympathy, are far more successful.

The French have their own form of this pseudo-science in their doctrine of the persistence of national characteristics. Each nation may be summed up in a formula: England, for example, is 'the country of will.' A few instances may, no doubt, be quoted in support of this theory. Julius Caesar said: 'Duas res plerasque Gallia industriosissime prosequitur, rem militarem et argute loqui'; and these are still the characteristics of our gallant allies. And Madame de Stael may be thought to have hit off the German character very cleverly about the time when Bismarck first saw the light. 'The Germans are vigorously submissive. They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear which transforms that respect into admiration.' But the fact remains that the characters of nations frequently change, or rather that what we call national character is usually only the policy of the governing class, forced upon it by circumstances, or the manner of living which climate, geographical position, and other external causes have made necessary for the inhabitants of a country.

To found patriotism on homogeneity of race is no wiser than to bound it by frontier lines. As the Abbe Noel has lately written about his own country, Belgium,

the race is not the nation. The nation is not a physiological fact; it is a moral fact. What constitutes a nation is the community of sentiments and ideals which results from a common history and education. The variations of the cephalic index are here of no great importance. The essential factor of the national consciousness resides in a certain common mode of conceiving the conditions of the social life.

Belgium, the Abbe maintains, has found this national consciousness amid her sufferings; there are no longer any distinctions between French-speaking Belgians and Walloons or Flemings. This is in truth the real base of patriotism. It is the basis of our own love for our country. What Britain stands for is what Britain is. We have long known in our hearts what Britain stands for; but we have now been driven to search our thoughts and make our ideals explicit to ourselves and others. The Englishman has become a philosopher malgre lui, 'Whatever the world thinks,' writes Bishop Berkeley. 'he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human soul, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.' These words, which were quoted by Mr. Arthur Balfour a few years ago, may seem to make a large demand on the average citizen; but in our quiet way we have all been meditating on these things since last August, and we know pretty well what our summum bonum is for our country. We believe in chivalry and fair play and kindliness—these things first and foremost; and we believe, if not exactly in democracy, yet in a government under which a man may think and speak the thing he wills. We do not believe in war, and we do not believe in bullying. We do not flatter ourselves that we are the supermen; but we are convinced that the ideas which we stand for, and which we have on the whole tried to carry out, are essential to the peaceful progress and happiness of humanity; and for these ideas we have drawn the sword. The great words of Abraham Lincoln have been on the lips of many and in the hearts of all since the beginning of the great contest: 'With malice towards none; with charity for all: with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right—let us strive on to finish the work we are in.'

Patriotism thus spiritualised and moralised is the true patriotism. When the emotion is once set in its right relations to the whole of human life and to all that makes human life worth living, it cannot become an immoral obsession. It is certain to become an immoral obsession if it is isolated and made absolute. We have seen the appalling perversion—the methodical diabolism—which this obsession has produced in Germany. It has startled us because we thought that the civilised world had got beyond such insanity; but it is of course no new thing. Machiavelli said, 'I prefer my country to the salvation of my soul'—a sentiment which sounds noble but is not; it has only a superficial resemblance to St. Paul's willingness to be 'accursed' for the sake of his countrymen. Devil-worship remains what it was, even when the idol is draped in the national flag. This obsession may be in part a survival from savage conditions, when all was at stake in every feud; but chiefly it is an example of the idealising and universalising power of the imagination, which turns every unchecked passion into a monomania. The only remedy is, as Lowell's Hosea Biglow reminds us, to bear in mind that

our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terrestrial organisations are but far-off approaches to so fair a model; and all they are verily traitors who resist not any attempt to divert them from this their original intendment. Our true country is bounded on the north and the south, on the east and west, by Justice, and when she oversteps that invisible boundary-line by so much as a hair's breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses rather to be looked upon quasi noverca.

So Socrates said that the wise man will be a citizen of his true city, of which the type is laid up in heaven, and only conditionally of his earthly country.

The obsession of patriotism is not the only evil which we have to consider. We may err by defect as well as by excess. Herbert Spencer speaks of an 'anti-patriotic bias'; and it can hardly be disputed that many Englishmen who pride themselves on their lofty morality are suffering from this mental twist. The malady seems to belong to the Anglo-Saxon constitution, for it is rarely encountered in other countries, while we had a noisy pro-Napoleonic faction a hundred years ago, and the Americans had their 'Copperheads' in the Northern States during the civil war. In our own day, every enemy of England, from the mad Mullah to the mad Kaiser, has had his advocates at home; and the champions of Boer and Boxer, of Afridi and Afrikander, of the Mahdi and the Matabele, have been usually the same persons. The English, it would appear, differ from other misguided rascals in never being right even by accident. But the idiosyncrasy of a few persons is far less important than the comparative insensibility of whole classes to the patriotic appeal, except when war is actually raging. This is not specially characteristic of our own country. The German Emperor has complained of his Social Democrats as 'people without a fatherland'; and the cry 'A bas la patrie' has been heard in France.

It is usual to explain this attitude by the fact that the manual workers 'have no stake in the country,' and might not find their condition altered for the worse by subjection to a foreign power. A few of our working-men have given colour to this charge by exclaiming petulantly that they could not be worse off under the Germans; but in this they have done themselves and their class less than justice. The anti-militarism and cosmopolitanism of the masses in every country is a profoundly interesting fact, a problem which demands no superficial investigation. It is one result of that emancipation from traditional ideas, which makes the most important difference between the upper and middle classes on the one side and the lower on the other. We lament that the working-man takes but little interest in Christianity, and rack our brains to discover what we have done to discredit our religion in his eyes. The truth is that Christianity, as a dogmatic and ecclesiastical system, is unintelligible without a very considerable knowledge of the conditions under which it took shape. But what are the ancient Hebrews, and the Greeks and Romans, to the working-man? He is simply cut off from the means of reading intelligently any book of the Bible, or of understanding how the institution called the Catholic Church, and its offshoots, came to exist. As our staple education becomes more 'modern' and less literary, the custodians of organised religion will find their difficulties increasing. But the same is true about patriotism. Love of country means pride in the past and ambition for the future. Those who live only in the present are incapable of it. But our working-man knows next to nothing about the past history of England; he has scarcely heard of our great men, and has read few of our great books. It is not surprising that the appeal to patriotism leaves him cold. This is an evil that has its proper remedy. There is no reason why a sane and elevated love of country should not be stimulated by appropriate teaching in our schools. In America this is done—rather hysterically; and in Germany—rather brutally. The Jews have always made their national history a large part of their education, and even of their religion. Nothing has helped them more to retain their self-consciousness as a nation. Ignorance of the past and indifference to the future usually go together. Those who most value our historical heritage will be most desirous to transmit it unimpaired.

But the absence of traditional ideas is by no means an unmixed evil. The working-man sees more clearly than the majority of educated persons the absurdity of international hatred and jealousy. He is conscious of greater solidarity with his own class in other European countries than with the wealthier class in his own; and as he approaches the whole question without prejudice, he cannot fail to realise how large a part of the product of labour is diverted from useful purposes by modern militarism. International rivalry is in his eyes one of the most serious obstacles to the abolition of want and misery. Tolstoy hardly exaggerates when he says: 'Patriotism to the peoples represents only a frightful future; the fraternity of nations seems an ideal more and more accessible to humanity, and one which humanity desires.' Military glory has very little attraction for the working-man. His humanitarian instincts appear to be actually stronger than those of the sheltered classes. To take life in any circumstances seems to him a shocking thing; and the harsh procedure of martial law and military custom is abhorrent to him. He sees no advantage and no credit in territorial aggrandisement, which he suspects to be prompted mainly by the desire to make money unjustly. He is therefore a convinced pacificist; though his doctrine of human brotherhood breaks down ignominiously when he finds his economic position threatened by the competition of cheap foreign labour. If an armed struggle ever takes place between the nations of Europe (or their colonists) and the yellow races, it will be a working-man's war. But on the whole, the best hope of getting rid of militarism may lie in the growing power of the working class. The poor, being intensely gregarious and very susceptible to all collective emotions, are still liable to fits of warlike excitement. But their real minds are at present set against an aggressive foreign policy, without being shut against the appeals of a higher patriotism.

And yet the irritation which is felt against preachers of the brotherhood of man is not without justification. Some persons who condemn patriotism are simply lacking in public spirit, or their loyalty is monopolised by some fad or 'cause,' which is a poor substitute for love of country. The man who has no prejudices in favour of his own family and his own country is generally an unamiable creature. So we need not condemn Moliere for saying, 'L'ami du genre humain n'est pas du tout mon fait,' nor Brunetiere for declaring that 'Ni la nature ni l'histoire n'ont en effet voulu que les hommes fussent tous freres.' But French Neo-catholicism, a bourgeois movement directed against all the 'ideas of 1789,' seems to have adopted the most ferocious kind of chauvinism. M. Paul Bourget wrote the other day in the Echo de Paris, 'This war must be the first of many, since we cannot exterminate sixty-five million Germans in a single campaign!' The women and children too! This is not the way to revive the religion of Christ in France.

The practical question for the future is whether there is any prospect of returning, under more favourable auspices, to the unrealised ideal of the Middle Ages—an agreement among the nations of Europe to live amicably under one system of international law and right, binding upon all, and with the consciousness of an intellectual and spiritual unity deeper than political divisions. 'The nations are the citizens of humanity,' said Mazzini; and so they ought to be. Some of the omens are favourable. Militarism has dug its own grave. The great powers increased their armaments till the burden became insupportable, and have now rushed into bankruptcy in the hope of shaking it off. In prehistoric times the lords of creation were certain gigantic lizards, protected by massive armour-plates which could only be carried by a creature thirty to sixty feet long. Then they died, when neither earth, air, nor water could support them any longer. Such must be the end of the European nations, unless they learn wisdom. The lesson will be brought home to them by Transatlantic competition. The United States of America had already, before this war, an initial advantage over the disunited states of Europe, amounting to at least 10 per cent. on every contract; after the war this advantage will be doubled. It remains to be seen whether the next generation will honour the debts which we are piling up. Disraeli used to complain of what he called 'Dutch finance,' which consists in 'mortgaging the industry of the future to protect property in the present.' Pitt paid for the great war of a hundred years ago in this manner; after a century we are still groaning under the burden of his loans. We may hear more of the iniquity of 'Dutch finance' when the democracies of the next generation have a chance of repudiating obligations which, as they will say, they did not contract. However that may be, international rivalry is plainly very bad business; and there are great possibilities in the Hague Tribunal, if, and only if, the signatories to the conference bind themselves to use force against a recalcitrant member. The conduct of Germany in this war has shown that public opinion is powerless to restrain a nation which feels strong enough to defy it.

Another cause which may give patriots leisure to turn their thoughts away from war's alarms is that the 'swarming' period of the European races is coming to an end. The unparalleled increase of population in the first three quarters of the 19th century has been followed by a progressive decrease in the birth-rate, which will begin to tell upon social conditions when the reduction in the death-rate, which has hitherto kept pace with it, shall have reached its natural limit. Europe with a stationary population will be in a much happier condition; and problems of social reform can then be tackled with some hope of success. Honourable emulation in the arts of life may then take the place of desperate competition and antagonism. Human lives will begin to have a positive value, and we may even think it fair to honour our saviours more than our destroyers. The effects of past follies will then soon be effaced; for nations recover much more quickly from wars than from internal disorders. External injuries are rapidly cured; but 'those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.' The greatest obstacle to progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency to parasitism. The true patriot will keep his eye fixed on this, and will dread as the state's worst enemies those citizens who at the top and bottom of the social scale have no other ambition than to hang on and suck the life-blood of the nation. Great things may be hoped from the new science of eugenics, when it has passed out of its tentative and experimental stage.

In the distant future we may reasonably hope that patriotism will be a sentiment like the loyalty which binds a man to his public school and university, an affection purged of all rancour and jealousy, a stimulus to all honourable conduct and noble effort, a part of the poetry of life. It is so already to many of us, and has been so to the noblest Englishmen since we have had a literature. If Henry V's speech at Agincourt is the splendid gasconade of a royal freebooter, there is no false ring in the scene where John of Gaunt takes leave of his banished son; nor in Sir Walter Scott's 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead,' etc. 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.' We cannot quite manage to substitute London for Zion in singing psalms, though there are some in England—Eton, Winchester, Oxford, Cambridge—which do evoke these feelings. These emotions of loyalty and devotion are by no means to be checked or despised. They have an infinite potency for good. In spiritual things there is no conflict between intensity and expansion. The deepest sympathy is, potentially, also the widest. He who loves not his home and country which he has seen, how shall he love humanity in general which he has not seen? There are, after all, few emotions of which one has less reason to be ashamed than the little lump in the throat which the Englishman feels when he first catches sight of the white cliffs of Dover.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] In his Introduction to Social Psychology.

[9] The reasons of their irresistible strength have been explained in a most brilliant manner by Dr. Peisker in the first volume of the 'Cambridge Medieval History.'



THE BIRTH-RATE

(1917)

The numbers of every species are determined, not by the procreative power of its members, which always greatly exceeds the capacity of the earth to support a progeny increasing in geometrical progression, but by two factors, the activity of its enemies and the available supply of food. Those species which survive owe their success in the struggle for existence mainly to one of two qualities, enormous fertility or parental care. The female cod spawns about 6,000,000 eggs at a time, of which at most one-third—perhaps much less—are afterwards fertilised. An infinitesimal proportion of these escapes being devoured by fish or fowl. An insect-eating bird is said to require for its support about 250,000 insects a year, and the number of such birds must amount to thousands of millions. As a rule there is a kind of equilibrium between the forces of destruction and of reproduction. If a species is nearly exterminated by its enemies, those enemies lose their food-supply and perish themselves. In some sheltered spot the survivors of the victims remain and increase till they begin to send out colonies again. In some species, such as the mice in La Plata, and the beasts and birds which devour them, there is an alternation of increase and decrease, to be accounted for in this way. But permanent disturbances of equilibrium sometimes occur. The rabbit in Australia, having found a virgin soil, multiplied for some time almost up to the limit of its natural fertility and is firmly established on that continent. The brown rat (some say) has exterminated our black rat and the Maori rat in New Zealand. The microbe of the terrible disease which the crews of Columbus brought back to Europe, after causing a devastating epidemic at the end of the fifteenth century, established a kind of modus vivendi with its hosts, and has remained as a permanent scourge in Europe. Other microbes, like those of cholera and plague, emigrate from the lands where they are endemic, like a horde of Tartars, and after slaying all who are susceptible disappear from inanition. The draining of the fens has driven the anopheles mosquito from England, and our countrymen no longer suffer from 'ague.' Cleanlier habits are banishing the louse and its accompaniment typhus fever.

Fertility and care for offspring seem as a rule to vary inversely. The latter is the path of biological progress, and is characteristic of all viviparous animals. That any degree of parental attention is incompatible with the immense fecundity of the lower organisms needs no demonstration. Such fertility is not necessary to keep up the numbers of the higher species, which find abundant food in the swarming progeny of the lower types, and are not themselves exposed to wholesale slaughter. Speaking of fishes, Sutherland says:

Of species that exhibit no sort of parental care, the average of forty-nine gives 1,040,000 eggs to a female each year; while among those which make nests or any apology for nests the number is only about 10,000. Among those which have any protective tricks, such as carrying the eggs in pouches or attached to the body, or in the mouth, the average number is under 1000; while among those whose care takes the form of uterine or quasi-uterine gestation which brings the young into the world alive, an average of 56 eggs is quite sufficient.

Man is no exception to these laws. His evolution has been steadily in the direction of diminishing fertility and increasing parental care. This does not necessarily imply that the modern European loves his children better than the savage loves his. It is grim necessity, not want of affection, which determines the treatment of children by their parents over a great part of the world, and through the greater part of human history. The homeless hunters, who represent the lowest stage of savagery, are now almost extinct. In these tribes the woman has to follow the man carrying her baby. Under such conditions the chances of rearing a large family are small indeed. Very different is the life of the grassland nomads, who roam over the Arabian plateau and the steppes of Central Asia. These tribes, who really live as the parasites of their flocks and herds, depending on them entirely for subsistence, often multiply rapidly. Their typical unit is the great patriarchal family, in which the sheikh may have scores of children by different mothers. These children soon begin to earn their keep, and are taken care of. If, however, the patriarch so chooses, Hagar with her child is cast adrift, to find her way back to her own people, if she can. The grasslands are usually almost as full as they can hold. A period of drought, or pressure by rivals, in former times sent a horde of these hardy shepherds on a raid into the nearest settled province; and if, like the Tartars, they were mounted, they usually killed, plundered, and conquered wherever they went, until the discovery of gunpowder saved civilisation from the recurrent peril of barbarian inroads. Barbarians of another type, hunters with fixed homes, seldom increase rapidly, partly because the dangers of forest-life for young children are much greater than on the steppe.

In the primitive river-valley civilisations, such as Egypt and Babylonia, the conditions of increase were so favourable that a dense population soon began to press upon the means of subsistence. In Egypt the remedy was a centralised government which could undertake great irrigation works and intensive cultivation. In Babylonia, for the first time in history, foreign trade was made to support a larger population than the land itself could maintain. There was little or no infanticide in Babylonia, but the death-rate in these steaming alluvial plains has always been very high.

When we turn to poor and mountainous countries like Greece, the conditions are very different. It was an old belief among the Hellenes that in the days before the Trojan War 'the world was too full of people.' The increase was doubtless made possible by the trade which developed in the Minoan period, but the sources of food-supply were liable to be interfered with. Hence came the necessity for active colonisation, which lasted from the eighth to the sixth century B.C. This period of expansion came to an end when all the available sites were occupied. In the sixth century the Greeks found themselves headed off, in the west by Phoenicians and Etruscans, in the east by the Persian Empire. The problem of over-population was again pressing upon them. Incessant civil wars between Hellenes kept the numbers down to some extent; but Greek battles were not as a rule very bloody, and every healthy nation has a surprising capacity of making good the losses caused by war. The first effect of the check to emigration was that the old ideal of the 'self-sufficient life,' which meant the practice of mixed farming, had to be partially abandoned. The most flourishing States, and especially Athens, had to take to manufactures, which they exchanged for the food-products of the Balkan States and South Russia. The result was an increasing urbanisation, and a new population of free 'resident aliens.' Conservatives hated this change and wished to revive the old ideal of a small self-supporting State, with a maximum of 20,000 or 30,000 citizens. Plato, in his latest work, the 'Laws,' wishes his model city to be not too near the sea, the proximity of which 'fills the streets with merchants and shopkeepers, and begets dishonesty in the souls of men.' On the other side Isocrates, the most far-seeing of Athenian politicians, realised that the day of small city-states was over, and that the limited, 'self-sufficient' community would not long maintain its independence. He urged his countrymen to pursue a policy of peaceful penetration in Western Asia, as the Greeks were soon to do under the successors of Alexander. But the prejudice against industrialism was very strong. Greece in the fifth century remained a poor country; her exports were not more than enough to pay for the food of her existing population; and that population had to be artificially restricted. The Greeks were an exceptionally healthy and long-lived race; their great men for the most part lived to ages which have no parallel until the nineteenth century. The infant death-rate from natural causes may have been rather high, as it is in modern Greece, but it was augmented by systematic infanticide. The Greek father had an absolute right to decide whether a new-comer was to be admitted to the family. In Ephesus alone of Greek cities a parent was compelled to prove that he was too poor to rear a child before he was allowed to get rid of it.[10] Even Hesiod, centuries earlier, advises a father not to bring up more than one son, and daughters were sacrificed more frequently than sons. The usual practice was to expose the infant in a jar; anyone who thought it worth while might rescue the baby and bring it up as a slave. But this was not often done. At Gela, in Sicily, there are 233 'potted' burials in an excavated graveyard, out of a total of 570.[11] The proportion of female infants exposed must have been very large. The evidence of literature is supported by such letters as this from a husband at Oxyrhynchus: 'When—good luck to you—your child is born, if it is a male, let it live; if a female, expose it.'[12] Besides infanticide, abortion was freely practised, and without blame.[13] The Greek citizen married rather late; but as his bride was usually in her 'teens this would not affect the birth-rate. Nor need we attach much importance, as a factor in checking population, to the characteristic Greek vice, nor to prostitution, which throughout antiquity was incredibly cheap and visited by no physical penalty. As for slaves, Xenophon recommends that they should be allowed to have children as a reward for good conduct.[14]

A rapid decline in population set in under the successors of Alexander. Polybius ascribes it to selfishness and a high standard of comfort, which is doubtless true of the upper and middle classes;[15] but the depopulation of rural Greece can hardly be so accounted for. Perhaps the forests were cut down, and the rainfall diminished. It was the general impression that the soil was far less productive than formerly. The decay of the Hellenic race was accelerated after the Roman conquest, until the old stock became almost extinct. This disappearance of the most gifted race that ever inhabited our planet is one of the strangest catastrophes of history, and is full of warnings for the modern sociologist. Industrial slavery, indifference to parenthood, and addiction to club-life were certainly three of the main causes, unless we prefer to regard the two last as symptoms of hopelessness about the future.

The same disease fell upon Italy, and was coincident not with the murderous war against Hannibal and the subsequent campaigns, costly though they were, in Spain, Syria, and Macedonia, but with the Hellenisation of social life. Lucan, under Nero, complains that the towns have lost more than half their inhabitants, and that the country-side lies waste. Under Titus it was estimated that, whereas Italy under the Republic could raise nearly 800,000 soldiers, that number was now reduced by one-half. Marcus Aurelius planted a large tribe of Marcomanni on unoccupied land in Italy. In the fourth century Bologna, Modena, Piacenza, and many other towns in North Italy were in ruins. The land of the Volscians and Aequians, once densely populated, was a desert even in Livy's time. Samnium remained the wilderness that Sulla had left it; and Apulia was a lonely sheep-walk.

The causes of this depopulation have been often discussed, both in antiquity and in our own day. Slavery, infanticide, celibacy, wars and massacres, large estates, and pestilence have all been named as causes; but I am inclined to think that all these influences together are insufficient to account for so rapid a decline. The toll of war was lighter by far than in periods when the population was rising; infectious disease (unless we suppose, as some have suggested, that malaria became for the first time endemic under the Roman domination) invaded the empire in occasional and destructive epidemics, but a healthy population recovers from pestilence, as from war, with great rapidity. The large grazing ranches displaced farms because corn-growing in Italy was unprofitable, but there was a large supply of grain from Sicily, Africa, and other districts. Slavery undoubtedly accounts for a great deal. This institution is excessively wasteful of human life; it is never possible to keep up the numbers of slaves without slave-hunting in the countries from which they come. And we must remember that ancient civilisation was almost entirely urban. The barbarians found ample waste lands between the towns, which they did not as a rule care to visit, probably because those who did so soon fell victims to microbic diseases. The sanitary condition of ancient cities was better than in the Middle Ages; but the death-rate was probably too high to permit of any increase in the population. But after admitting that all these causes were operative, it may be that we shall be obliged to acknowledge also a psychological factor. If a nation has no hopes for the future, if it is even doubtful whether life is worth living, if it is disposed to withdraw from the struggle for existence and to meet the problems of life in a temper of passive resignation, it will not regard children as a heritage and gift that cometh from the Lord, but rather as an encumbrance. That such was the temper of the later Roman Empire may be gathered not only from the literature, which is singularly devoid of hopefulness and enterprise, but from the rapid spread of monasticism and eremitism in this period. The prevalence of this world-weariness of course needs explanation, and the cause is rather obscure. It does not seem to be connected with unfavourable external conditions, but rather with a racial exhaustion akin to senile decay in the individual. But there is no real analogy between the life of an individual and that of a nation, and it would be very rash to insist on the hypothesis of racial decay, which perhaps has no biological basis.

The influence of Christianity on population is very difficult to estimate. Nothing is more unscientific than to collect the ethical precepts and practices of nations which profess the Christian religion, and to label them as 'the results of Christianity.' The historian of religion would indeed be faced by a strange task if he were compelled to trace the moral ideals of Simeon Stylites and of Howard the philanthropist, of Francis of Assisi and Oliver Cromwell, of Thomas Aquinas and Thomas a Becket, to a common source. The only ethical and social principles which can properly be called Christian are those which can be proved to have their root in the teaching and example of the Founder of Christianity. But the Gospel of Christ was a product of Jewish soil. It is historically connected with the Jewish prophetic tradition, which it carried to its fullest development and presented in an universalised and spiritualised form. Its social teaching consists chiefly of general principles which have to be applied to conditions unlike those contemplated by its first disciples, who were under the influence of the apocalyptic expectations prevalent at the time. Jewish morality was in its origin the morality of a tribe of nomad Bedouins; and we have seen that infant life is held sacred by these peoples. Marriage is regarded as a duty, and childlessness as a misfortune or a disgrace. The forward look, characteristic of the Hebrews from the first, made every Jew desirous to leave descendants who might witness happier times, and one of whom might even be the promised Deliverer of his people. No Hebrew of either sex was allowed to be a servant of vice; abnormal practices, though screened by Canaanite religion, were far less common than in Greece or Italy. To this wholesome morality Christianity added the doctrines of the value, in the sight of God, of every human life, and of the sanctity of the body as the 'temple of God.' To the Pagans, the continence of the Christians was, next to their affection for each other, their most remarkable characteristic. From the first, the new religion set itself firmly against infanticide and abortion, and won one of its most signal moral triumphs in driving underground and greatly diminishing homosexual vice. Its encouragement of celibacy, especially for those who followed the 'religious' vocation, was an offset to its healthy influence on family life, and ultimately, as Galton has shown, worked great mischief by sterilising for centuries many of the gentlest and noblest in each generation; but this tendency was adventitious to Christianity, and would never have taken root on Palestinian soil. The cult of virginity has lasted on, with much else that belongs to the later Hellenistic age, in Catholicism.

In the Middle Ages the population question slumbered. The miserable chaos into which the old civilisation sank after the barbarian invasions, the orgies of massacre and plunder, the almost total oblivion of medical science, and the pestiferous condition of the medieval walled town, which could be smelt miles away, averted any risk of over-population. Families were very large, but the majority of the children died. Millions were swept away by the Black Death; millions more by the Crusades. Such books as that of Luchaire, on France in the reign of Philip Augustus, bring vividly before us the horrible condition of society in feudal times, and explain amply the sparsity of the population.

The early modern period contains another notable example of a sudden and unaccountable decline in population. The scene is Spain, which, after playing an active and very prominent part in the world's history, sank quickly into the lethargy from which it has never recovered. It may be noted that here, as in the case of Rome, the decay of population and energy followed a great influx of plundered wealth. On the other hand, the increase of population in our newly-planted North American colonies must have been extremely rapid for two or three generations.

The enormous multiplication of the European races since the middle of the eighteenth century is a phenomenon quite unique in history, and never likely to be repeated.[16] It was rendered possible by the new labour-saving inventions which immensely increased the exports which could be exchanged for food, and by the opening up of vast new food-producing areas. The chief method by which the increase was effected, especially in the later period, has been the lengthening of human life by improved sanitation and medical science.[17] Since 1865 the average duration of life in England and Wales has been raised by a little more than one-third. Other European countries show the same ratio of improvement. This astonishing result, so little known and so seldom referred to, was bound to have a great effect on the birth-rate. So long as the swarming period continued at its height, a net annual increase of 15 or even 20 per thousand could be sustained; but the expansion of the European peoples has now passed its zenith, and a tendency to revert to more normal conditions is almost everywhere observable. One of the most advanced nations, France, has already reached the equilibrium towards which other civilised nations are moving. The old-established families in the United States are believed to be actually dwindling.

The student of international vital statistics will be struck first by the very wide differences in the birth-rate of different countries. He will then notice that the more backward countries have on the whole a considerably higher birth-rate than the more advanced. Thirdly, he will observe the parallelism between the birth-rate and death-rate, which makes the net increase in countries with a high birth-rate very little larger than that of countries with a low birth-rate. The following figures will illustrate these points; they are taken from the Registrar-General's Blue Book for 1912.

Birth-rate Death-rate Net rate of increase United Kingdom 23.9 13.8 10.1 Australia 28.7 11.2 17.5 Austria 31.3 20.5 10.8 Belgium 22.9 16.4 6.5 France 19.0 17.5 1.5 Germany 28.6 17.3 11.3 Italy 32.4 18.2 14.2 New Zealand 26.5 8.9 17.6 Norway 25.4 13.4 12.0 Roumania 43.4 22.9 20.5 Russia 44.0 28.9 15.1

It will be seen that Australia and New Zealand, with low birth-rates and the lowest death-rates in the world increase more rapidly than Russia with an enormous birth-rate and proportionately high death-rate. No one can doubt that our colonies achieve their increase with far less friction and misery than the prolific but short-lived Slavs. Civilisation in a high form is incompatible with such conditions as these figures disclose in Russia. The figures for Egypt and India are similar to the Russian, but in India, which is overfull, the mortality is greater than even in Russia, and the same is true of China, in which we are told that seven out of ten children die in infancy. It has been suggested that the fairest measure of a country's well-being, as regards its actual vitality, is the square of the death-rate divided by the birth-rate.

It is well known that a decline in the birth-rate set in about forty years ago in this country, and has gone on steadily ever since, till the fall now amounts to about one-third of the total births. It thus corresponds very nearly to the fall in the death-rate during the same period. It is also well known that this decline is not evenly distributed among different classes of the people. Until the decline began, large families were the rule in all classes, and the slightly larger families of the poor were compensated by their somewhat higher mortality. But since 1877 large families have become increasingly rare in the upper and middle classes, and among the skilled artisans. They are frequent in the thriftless ranks of unskilled labour, and in one section of well-paid workmen—the miners. The highest birth-rates at present are in the mining districts and in the slums. The lowest are in some of the learned professions. In the Rhondda Valley the birth-rate is still about forty, which is double the rate in the prosperous residential suburbs of London. In the seats of the textile industry the decline has been very severe, although wages are fairly good; among the agricultural labourers the rate is also low. It will be found that in all trades where the women work for wages the birth-rate has fallen sharply; the miner's wife does not earn money, and has therefore less inducement to restrict her family. In agricultural districts the housing difficulty is mainly responsible; in the upper and middle classes the heavy expense of education and the burden of rates and taxes are probably the main reasons why larger families are not desired. We may add that in almost all the professions old men are overpaid and young men under-paid. Mr. and Mrs. Whetham[18] have found that, before 1870, 143 marriages of men whose names appear in 'Who's Who' resulted in 743 children, an average of 5.2 each; after 1870 the average is only 3.08. Celibacy also is commoner among the educated. 'From the reports issued by two Women's Colleges, it appears that, excluding those who have left college within three years or less, out of 3000 women only 22 per cent. have married, and the number of children born to each marriage is undoubtedly very small.' The writers consider that this state of things is extremely dangerous for the country, inasmuch as we are now breeding mainly from our worst stocks (the feeble-minded are very prolific), while our best families are stationary or dwindling. Without denying the general truth of this pessimistic conclusion,[19] it may be pointed out that the miners are, physically at least, above the average of the whole population, and that the very low birth-rate of residential districts is partly due to the presence in large numbers of unmarried domestic servants. The death-rate of the slums is also very high.

The fears of the eugenist about the quality of the population are far more reasonable than the invectives of the fanatic about its defective quantity. Of the latter class we may say with Havelock Ellis that 'those who seek to restore the birth-rate of half a century ago are engaged in a task which would be criminal if it were not based on ignorance, and which is in any case fatuous.' And yet I hope to show before the close of this article that for two or three generations the British Empire could absorb a considerable increase, and that the Government might with advantage stimulate this by schemes of colonisation. The lament of the eugenist resounds in all countries alike. The German complains that the Poles, whom he considers an inferior race, breed like rabbits, while the gifted exponents of Kultur only breed like hares. The American is nervous about the numbers of the negro; he has more reason to be nervous about the fecundity of the Slav and South Italian immigrant. Everywhere the tendency is for the superior stock to dwindle till it becomes a small aristocracy. The Americans of British descent are threatened with this fate. Pride and a high standard of living are not biological virtues. The man who needs and spends little is the ultimate inheritor of the earth. I know of no instance in history in which a ruling race has not ultimately been ousted or absorbed by its subjects. Complete extermination or expropriation is the only successful method of conquest. The Anglo-Saxon race has thus established itself in the greater part of Britain, and in Australasia. In North America it has destroyed the Indian hunter, who could not be used for industrial purposes; but the temptation to exploit the negro and the cheaper European races was too strong to be resisted, and Nature's heaviest penalty is now being exacted against the descendants of our sturdy colonists. We did not lose America in the eighteenth century; we are losing it now. As for South Africa, the Kaffir can live like a gentleman (according to his own ideas) on six months' ill-paid work every year; the Englishman finds an income of L200 too small. There is only one end to this kind of colonisation. The danger at home is that the larger part of the population is now beginning to insist upon a scale of remuneration and a standard of comfort which are incompatible with any survival-value. We all wish to be privileged aristocrats, with no serfs to work for us. Dame Nature cares nothing for the babble of politicians and trade-union regulations. She says to us what Plotinus, in a remarkable passage, makes her say: 'You should not ask questions; you should try to understand. I am not in the habit of talking.' In Nature's school it is a word and a blow, and the blow first. Before the close of this article I will return to the eugenic problem, and will consider whether anything can be done to solve it.

At the present time, when an apparently internecine conflict is raging between the British Empire and Germany, a more detailed comparison of the vital statistics of the two countries will be read with interest. In England and Wales the birth-rate culminated in 1876 at a little over 36, after slowly rising from 33 in 1850. From 1876 the line of decline is almost straight, down to the ante-war figure of about 24. In Prussia, owing partly to wars, the fluctuations have been violent. In 1850 the figure (omitting decimals) was 39; in 1855, 34; in 1859, 40; in 1871, 34; in 1875, nearly 41. From this date, as in England, the steady decline began. In 1907 the rate had fallen to 33; in 1913 (German Empire) to 27.5. Here we may notice the abnormally high rate in the years following the great war of 1870, a phenomenon which was marked also throughout Europe after the Napoleonic wars. We may also notice that the decline has been of late slightly more rapid in Germany, falling from a high birth-rate, than in England, where the maximum was never so high. Another fact which comes out when the German figures are more carefully examined is that urbanisation in Germany has a sterilising effect which is not operative in England. Prinzing gives the comparative figures of legitimate fertility for Prussia as follows:

1879-1882 1894-1897

Berlin 23.8 16.9[20] Other great towns 26.7 23.5 Towns of 20,000 to 100,000 26.8 25.7 Small towns 27.8 25.9 Country districts 28.8 29.0

Now urbanisation is going on even more rapidly in Germany than in England. The death-rate in England and Wales rose from 21 in 1850 to 23.5 in 1854; after sharp fluctuations it reached 23.7 in 1864; since then it has declined to its present figure (in normal times) of 14. In Prussia after the war of 1870 and the small-pox epidemic of 1871, there has been a steady fall from 26 to 17.3 (German Empire in 1911). The net increase is only slightly larger (in proportion to the population) in Germany than in England; and the increase in our great colonies, especially in Australasia, is much higher than in Germany. There is therefore no reason to suppose that a rapid alteration is going on to our disadvantage.

It is widely believed that the Roman Catholic Church, by sternly forbidding the artificial limitation of families, is increasing its numbers at the expense of the non-Catholic populations. To some extent this is true. The Prussian figures for 1895-1900 give the number of children per marriage as:

Both parents Catholic 5 Both parents Protestant 4 Both parents Jews 3.7

An examination of the entries in 'Who's Who' gives about the same proportion for well-to-do families in England. The Catholic birth-rate of the Irish is nearly 40.[21] The French-Canadians are among the most prolific races in the world. On the other hand, their infant mortality is very high, and it is said that French-Canadian parents take these losses philosophically. It is quite a different question whether it is ultimately to the advantage of a nation which desires to increase its numbers to profess the Roman Catholic religion. The high birth-rates are all in unprogressive Catholic populations. When a Catholic people begins to be educated, the priests apparently lose their influence upon the habits of the laity, and a rapid decline in the births at once sets in. The most advanced countries which did not accept the Reformation, France and Belgium, are precisely those in which parental prudence has been carried almost to excess. We must also remember that the Dutch Boers, who are Protestants, but who live under simple conditions not unlike those of the French-Canadians, are equally prolific, as were our own colonists in the United States before that country was industrialised. The advantages in numbers gained by Roman Catholicism are likely to be confined to half-empty countries, where there is really room for more citizens, and where social ambition and the love of comfort are the chief motives for restricting the family.

The population of a settled country cannot be increased at will; it depends on the supply of food. The choice is between a high birth-rate combined with a high death-rate, and a low birth-rate with a low death-rate. The great saving of life which has been effected during the last fifty years carries with it the necessity of restricting the births. The next question to be considered is how this restriction is to be brought about. The oldest methods are deliberate neglect and infanticide. In China, where authorities differ as to the extent to which female infants are exposed, the practice certainly prevails of feeding infants whom their mothers are unable to suckle on rice and water, which soon terminates their existence. Such methods would happily find no advocates in Europe. The very ancient art of procuring miscarriage is a criminal act in most civilised countries, but it is practised to an appalling extent. Hirsch, who quotes his authorities, estimates that 2,000,000 births are so prevented annually in the United States, 400,000 in Germany, 50,000 in Paris, and 19,000 in Lyons. In our own country it is exceedingly common in the northern towns, and attempts are now being made to prohibit the sale of certain preparations of lead which are used for this purpose. Alike on grounds of public health and of morality, it is most desirable that this mischievous practice should be checked. Its great prevalence in the United States is to be attributed mainly to the drastic legislation in that country against the sale and use of preventives, to which many persons take objection on moral or aesthetic grounds, but which is surely on an entirely different level from the destruction of life that has already begun. The 'Comstock' legislation in America has done unmixed harm. It is worse than useless to try to put down by law a practice which a very large number of people believes to be innocent, and which must be left to the taste and conscience of the individual. To the present writer it seems a pis aller which high-minded married persons should avoid if they can practise self-restraint. Whatever injures the feeling of 'sanctification and honour' with which St. Paul bids us to regard these intimacies of life, whatever tends to profane or degrade the sacraments of wedded love, is so far an evil. But this is emphatically a matter in which every man and woman must judge for themselves, and must refrain from judging others.

In every modern civilised country population is restricted partly by the deliberate postponement of marriage. In many cases this does no harm whatever; but in many others it gravely diminishes the happiness of young people, and may even cause minor disturbances of health. Moreover, it would not be so widely adopted but for the tolerance, on the part of society, of the 'great social evil,' the opprobrium of our civilisation. In spite of the failure hitherto of priests, moralists, and legislators to root it out, and in spite of the acceptance of it as inevitable by the majority of Continental opinion, I believe that this abomination will not long be tolerated by the conscience of the free and progressive nations. It is notorious that the whole body of women deeply resents the wrong and contumely done by it to their sex, and that, if democracy is to be a reality, the immolation of a considerable section of women drawn from the poorer classes cannot be suffered to continue. It is also plain to all who have examined the subject that the campaign against certain diseases, the malignity and wide diffusion of which are being more fully realised every year, cannot be successful through medical methods alone. If the institution in question were abolished, medical science would soon reduce these scourges to manageable limits, and might at last exterminate them altogether; but while it continues there is no hope of doing this. I believe then that the time will come when the trade in vice will cease; and if I am right, early marriages will become the rule in all classes. This will render the population question more acute, especially as the diseases which we hope to extirpate are the commonest cause both of sterility and of infant mortality. Under this pressure, we must expect to see preventive methods widely accepted as the least of unavoidable evils.

When we reflect on the whole problem in its widest aspects, we see that civilised humanity is confronted by a Choice of Hercules. On the one side, biological law seems to urge us forward to the struggle for existence and expansion. The nation in that case will have to be organised on the lines of greatest efficiency. A strong centralised government will occupy itself largely in preventing waste. All the resources of the nation must be used to the uttermost. Parks must be cut up into allotments; the unproductive labours of the scholar and thinker must be jealously controlled and limited. Inefficient citizens must be weeded out; wages must be low and hours of work long. Moreover, the State must be organised for war; for its neighbours, we must suppose, are following the same policy. Then the fierce extra-group competition must come to its logical arbitrament in a life and death struggle. And war between two over-peopled countries, for both of which more elbow-room is a vital necessity, must be a war of complete expropriation or extermination. It must be so, for no other kind of war can achieve its object. The horrors of the present conflict will be as nothing compared with a struggle between two highly-organised State socialisms, each of which knows that it must either colonise the territory of the other or starve. It is idle to pretend that such a necessity will never arise. Another century of increase in Europe like that of the nineteenth century would bring it very near. If this policy is adopted, we shall see all the principal States organising themselves with a perfection far greater than that of Germany to-day, but taking German methods as their model; and the end will be the extermination of the smaller or looser organisations. Such a prospect may well fill us with horror; and it is terrible to find some of the ablest thinkers of Germany, such as Ernst Troeltsch, writing calm elegies over 'the death of Liberalism' and predicting the advent of an era of cut-throat international competition. Juvenal speaks of the folly of propter vitam vivendi perdere causas; and who would care to live in such a world? But does Nature care whether we enjoy our lives or not?

The other choice is that which France has made for herself; it is on the lines of Plato's ideal State. Each country is to be, as far as possible, self-sufficing. If it cannot grow sufficient food for itself, it must of course export its coal or its gold, or the products of its industry and ingenuity. But it must know approximately what 'the number of the State' (as Plato said) should be. It must limit its population to that number, and the limit will be fixed, not at the maximum number who can live there anyhow, but at the maximum number who can 'live well.' The object aimed at will not be constant expansion, but well-being. The energies liberated from the pitiless struggle for existence will be devoted to making social life wiser, happier, more harmonious and more beautiful. Have we any reason to hope that this policy is not contrary to the hard laws which Nature imposes on every species in the world?

In the first place, would such a State escape being devoured by some brutal 'expanding' neighbour? What would have happened to France if she had stood alone in this war? The danger is real; but we may answer that France, as a matter of fact, did not stand alone, because other nations thought her too precious to be sacrificed. And the completely organised competitive State which I have imagined would be a far more unlovely place than Germany, and more unpleasant to live in. The spectacle of a saner and happier polity next door would break up the purely competitive State from within; the strain would be too great for human nature. We cannot argue confidently from the struggle for existence among the lower animals to our own species. For a long time past, human evolution has been directed, not to living anyhow, but to living in a certain way. We are guided by ideals for the future, by purposes winch we clearly set before ourselves, in a way which is impossible to the brutes. These purposes are common to the large majority of men. No State can long maintain a rigid and oppressive organisation, except under the threat of danger; and a nation which aims only at perfecting its own culture is not dangerous to its neighbours. It is probable that without the supposed menace of another military Power on its eastern flank German militarism would have begun to crumble.

In the second place, would the absence of sharp competition within the group lead to racial degeneration? This is a difficult question to answer. Perhaps a diminution of pugnacity and of the means to gratify this instinct would not be a misfortune. But it is certainly true that, if the operation of natural selection is suspended, rational selection must take its place. Failing this, reversion to a lower type is inevitable. The infant science of eugenics will have much to say on this subject hereafter; at present we are only discovering how complex and obscure the laws of heredity are. The State of the future will have to step in to prevent the propagation of undesirable variations, whether physical or mental, and will doubtless find means to encourage the increase of families that are well endowed by Nature.

Assuming that a nation as a whole prefers a policy of this kind, and aims at such an equilibrium of births and deaths as will set free the energies of the people for the higher objects of civilised life, how will it escape the cacogenic effects of family restriction in the better classes combined with reckless multiplication among the refuse which always exists in a large community? This is a problem which has not yet been solved. Public opinion is not ready for legislation against the multiplication of the unfit, and it is not easy to see what form such legislation could take. Many of the very poor are not undesirable parents; we must not confound economic prosperity with biological fitness. The 'submerged tenth' should be raised, where it is possible, into a condition of self-respect and responsibility; but they must not be allowed to be a burden upon the efficient; and the upper and middle classes should simplify their habits so far as to make marriage and parenthood possible for the young professional man. Special care should be taken that taxation is so adjusted as not to penalise parenthood in the socially valuable middle class.

For some time to come we are likely to see, in all the leading nations, a restricted birth-rate, prompted by desire for social betterment, combined, however, with concessions to the rival policy of commercial expansion, growing numbers, and military preparation. The nations will not cease to fear and suspect each other in the twentieth century, and any one nation which chooses to be a nuisance to Europe will keep back the progress and happiness of the rest. The prospect is not very bright; a too generous confidence might betray some nation into irretrievable disaster. But the bracing influence of national danger may perhaps be beneficial. For we have to remember the pitiable decay of the ancient classical civilisation, which was partly due, as we have found, to a desire for comfortable and easy living. There have been signs that many of our countrymen no longer think the strenuous life worth while; part of our resentment against Germany resembles the annoyance of an old-fashioned firm, disturbed in its comfortable security by the competition of a young and more vigorous rival. It is even suggested that after the war we should protect ourselves against German competition by tariff walls. This abandonment of the free trade policy on which our prosperity is built would soon bring our over-populated island to ruin.

In conclusion, if we leave the distant future to fend for itself when the time comes, what should be our policy with regard to population for the next fifty years? I am led to an opinion which may seem to run counter to the general purport of this article. For though the British Isles are even dangerously full, so that we are liable to be starved out if we lose the command of the sea, the British Empire is very far from being over-populated. In Canada and Australasia there is probably room for nearly 200,000,000 people. These countries are remarkably healthy for Northern Europeans; there is no reason why they should not be as rich and powerful as the United States are now. We hope that we have saved the Empire from German cupidity—for the time; but we cannot tell how long we may be undisturbed. It would be criminal folly not to make the most of the respite granted us, by peopling our Dominions with our own stock, while yet there is time. This, however, cannot be done by casual and undirected emigration of the old kind. We need an Imperial Board of Emigration, the officials of which will work in co-operation with the Governments of our Dominions. These Governments, it may be presumed, will be anxious, after the war, to strengthen the colonies by increasing their population and developing their resources. They, like ourselves, have had a severe fright, and know that prompt action is necessary. Systematic plans of colonisation should be worked out, and emigrants drafted off to the Dominions as work can be found for them. Young women should be sent out in sufficient numbers to keep the sexes equal. We know now that our young people who emigrate are by no means lost to the Empire. The Dominions have shown that in time of need they are able and willing to defend the mother country with their full strength. Indeed, a young couple who emigrate are likely to be of more value to the Empire than if they had stayed at home; and their chances of happiness are much increased if they find a home in a part of the world where more human beings are wanted. But without official advice and help emigration is difficult. Parents do not know where to send their sons, nor what training to give them. Mistakes are made, money is wasted, and bitter disappointment caused. All this may be obviated if the Government will take the matter up seriously. The real issue of this war is whether our great colonies are to continue British; and the question will be decided not only on the field of battle, but by the action of our Government and people after peace is declared. The next fifty years will decide for all time whether those magnificent and still empty countries are to be the home of great nations speaking our language, carrying on our institutions, and valuing our traditions. When the future of our Dominions is secure, the part of England as a World-Power will have been played to a successful issue, and we may be content with a position more consonant with the small area of these islands.

I believe, then, that if facilities for migration are given by Government action, it will be not only possible but desirable for the increase in the population of the Empire, taken as a whole, to be maintained during the twentieth century. It is, of course, possible that chemical discoveries and other scientific improvements may greatly increase the yield of food from the soil, and that in this way the final limit to the population of the earth may be further off than now seems probable. But within a few centuries, at most, this limit must be reached; and after that we may hope that the world will agree to maintain an equilibrium between births and deaths, that being the most stable and the happiest condition in which human beings can live together.[22]

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Myres, Eugenics Review, April, 1915.

[11] Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Kultur der Gegenwart, 2, 4, 1.

[12] Cimon, Pericles, and Socrates all had three sons, and apparently no daughters.—Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth, p. 331.

[13] Cf. (e.g.) Plato, Theaetetus, 149.

[14] We may suppose that the disproportion of the sexes, caused by female infanticide, was about rectified by the deaths of males in battle and civic strife. We do not hear that the Greek had any difficulty in finding a wife.

[15] Families, he says, were limited to one or two 'in order to leave these rich.'

[16] The population of England and Wales is said to have been 4,800,000 in 1600, and 6,500,000 in 1750. It was 8,890,000 in 1801, 32,530,000 in 1901, and approximately 37,000,000 in 1914.

[17] Statistics are wanting for the early part of the industrial revolution, but my study of pedigrees leads me to think that the average duration of life was considerably increased in the eighteenth century.

[18] The Family and the Nation, p. 143.

[19] The births per 1000 married men under fifty-five in the different classes are:—Upper and middle class, 119; Intermediate, 132; Skilled workmen, 153; Intermediate, 158; Unskilled workmen, 213.

[20] It must be remembered that the illegitimate birth-rate in Berlin is scandalously high.

[21] The crude birth-rate of Ireland is wholly misleading, because so many young couples emigrate before the birth of their first child.

[22] The possible effect of the labour movement in diminishing the population is considered in the next Essay. The last two years have, in my opinion, made the outlook less favourable.



THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE

(THE GALTON LECTURE, 1919)

In the year 1890 Sir Charles Dilke ended his survey of 'Greater Britain' and its problems with the prediction that 'the world's future belongs to the Anglo-Saxon, the Russian, and the Chinese races.' This was in the heyday of British imperialism, which was inaugurated by Seeley's 'Expansion of England' and Froude's 'Oceana,' and which inspired Mr. Chamberlain to proclaim at Toronto in 1887 that the 'Anglo-Saxon stock is infallibly destined to be the predominant force in the history and civilisation of the world.' It was an arrogant, but not truculent, mood, which reached its climax at the 1897 Jubilee, and rapidly declined during and after the Boer war. These writers and statesmen were utterly blind to the German peril, though the disciples of Treitschke were already working out a theory about the future destinies of the world, in which neither Great Britain nor Russia nor China counted for very much. There were illusions on both sides of the North Sea, which had to be paid for in blood. In both countries imperialism was a sentiment curiously compounded of idealism and bombast, and supported by very doubtful science. In the case of Germany the distortion of facts was deliberate and monstrous. Not only was every schoolboy brought up on cooked population statistics and falsified geography, but the thick-set, brachycephalous Central European persuaded himself that he belonged to the pure Nordic race, the great blond beasts of Nietzsche, which, as he was taught, had already produced nearly all the great men in history, and was now about to claim its proper place as master of the world. Political anthropology is no genuine science. Race and nationality are catchwords for which rulers find that their subjects are willing to fight, as they fought for what they called religion four hundred years ago. In reality, if we want to find a pure race, we must visit the Esquimaux, or the Fuegians, or the Pygmies; we shall certainly not find one in Europe. Our own imperialists had their illusions too, and we are not rid of them yet, because we do not realise that the fate of races is decided, not in the council-chamber or on the battle-field, but by the same laws of nature which determine the distribution of the various plants and animals of the world. It may be that by approaching our subject from this side we shall arrive at a more scientific, if a more chastened, anticipation of our national future than was acceptable to the enthusiasts of expansion in the last twenty years of Queen Victoria's reign.

The history of the world shows us that there have been three great human reservoirs which from time to time have burst their banks and flooded neighbouring countries. These are the Arabian peninsula, the steppes of Central Asia, and the lands round the Baltic, the original home of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples. The invaders in each case were pastoral folk, who were driven from their homes by over-population, or drought and famine, or the pressure of enemies behind them. It is easy for nomads to 'trek,' even for great distances; and till the discovery of gunpowder they were the most formidable of foes. The Arabs and Northern Europeans have founded great civilisations; the Mongol hordes have been an unmitigated curse to humanity. The invaders never kept their blood pure. The famous Jewish nose is probably Hittite, and certainly not Bedouin. There are no pure Turks in Europe, and the Hungarians have lost all resemblance to Mongols. The modern Germans seem to belong mainly to the round-headed Alpine race, which migrated into Europe in early times from the Asiatic highlands. In England there is a larger proportion of Nordic blood, because the Anglo-Saxons partially exterminated the natives; but the old Mediterranean race, which had made its way up the warm western coasts, still holds its own in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and the Western Highlands; and within the last hundred years, owing to frequent migrations, has mixed so thoroughly with the Anglo-Saxon stock that the English are becoming darker in each generation. This is not the result of a racial decay of the blonds, as the American, Dr. Charles Woodruff, supposes, but is to be accounted for by the fact that dark eyes seem to be a Mendelian dominant, and dark hair a more potent character than light. The inhabitants of these islands are nearly all long-headed, this being a characteristic of both the Nordic and Mediterranean races. The round-headed invaders, who perhaps brought with them the so-called Celtic languages at a remote period, and imposed them upon the inhabitants, seem to have left no other mark upon the population, though their type of head is prevalent over a great part of France.

The ability of races to flourish in climates other than their own is a question of supreme importance to historians and statesmen, and, it need not be said, to emigrants. But it is only lately that it has been studied scientifically, and the results are still tentative. German ethnologists, of what we may call the aedicephalous school, already referred to, regard it as one of the tragedies of nature that the noble Nordic race, to which they think they belong, dies out when it penetrates southwards. In accordance with this law, the yellow-haired Achaeans decayed in Greece, the Lombards in North Italy, the Vandals in Spain and Africa. After a few generations of life in a warm climate the Aryan stock invariably disappears. We shall show reasons for thinking that this theory is much exaggerated; but there is undoubtedly some truth in it. It has been found to be impossible for white men to colonise India, Burma, tropical America, and West Africa. It has been said that 'there is in India no third generation of pure English blood.' It is notoriously difficult to bring up even one generation of white children in India. The French cannot maintain themselves without race admixture in Martinique and Guadaloupe, nor the Dutch in Java, though it is said that the expectation of life for a European in Java is as good as in his own country. It seems to be also true that the blond race suffers most in a hot climate. In the Philippines it was observed that the fair-haired soldiers in the American army succumbed most readily to disease. In Queensland the Italian colonists are said to stand the heat better than the English, and Mr. Roosevelt, among other items of good advice which he bestowed so liberally on the European nations, advised us to populate the torrid parts of Australia with immigrants from the Latin races. In Natal the English families who are settled in the country are said to be enervated by the climate; and on the high plateaux of the interior our countrymen find it necessary to pay periodical visits to the coast, to be unbraced. The early deaths and not infrequent suicides of Rand magnates may indicate that the air of the Transvaal is too stimulating for a life of high tension and excitement. There are even signs that the same may be true in a minor degree of the United States of America. Both the capitalist and the working man, if they come of English stock, seem to wear out more quickly than at home; and the sterility of marriages among the long settled American families is so pronounced that it can hardly be due entirely to voluntary restriction of parentage. The effects of an unsuitable climate are especially shown in nervous disorders, and are therefore likely to tell most heavily on those who engage in intellectual pursuits, and perhaps on women rather more than on men. The sterilising effects of women's higher education in America are incontrovertible, though this inference is hotly denied in England. At Holyoake College it was found that only half the lady graduates afterwards married, and the average family of those who did marry was less than two children. At Bryn Mawr only 43 per cent, married, and had 0.84 children each; the average family per graduate was therefore 0.37. If it be objected that new immigrants and their children are healthy and vigorous in America, it may be truly answered that the effects of an unfavourable climate are manifested fully only in the third and later generations. The argument may be further supported by the fate of black men who try to settle in Europe. Their strongly pigmented skin, which seems to protect them from the actinic rays of the tropical sun, so noxious to Europeans, and their broad nostrils, which inhale a larger number of tubercle bacilli than the narrow nose-slits of the Northerner, are disadvantages in a temperate climate. In any case, of the many thousands of negro servants who lived in England in the eighteenth century, it would be difficult to find a single descendant.