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 _ædicephalous_ 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
Achæans 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.
But there are other factors in the problem which should make us beware
of hasty generalisations. It is obvious that since the American Republic
contains many climates in its vast area, there may be parts of it which
are perfectly healthy for Anglo-Saxons, and other parts where they
cannot live without degenerating. Very few athletes, we are told, come
from south of the fortieth parallel of latitude. But the decline in the
birth-rate is most marked in the older colonies, the New England States,
where for a long period the English colonists, living mainly on the
land, not only throve and developed a singularly virile type of
humanity, but multiplied with almost unexampled rapidity. The same is
true not only of the French Canadian farmers, but of the South African
Boers, who rear enormous families in a climate very different from that
of Holland. The inference is that Europeans living on the land may
flourish in any tolerably healthy climate which is not tropical.
There are, in fact, two other causes besides climate which may prevent
immigrants from multiplying in a new country. The first of these is the
presence of microbic diseases to which the old inhabitants are wholly or
partially immune, but which find a virgin soil in the bodies of the
newcomers. The strongest example is the West Coast of Africa, of which
Miss Mary Kingsley writes: 'Yet remember, before you elect to cast your
lot with the West Coasters, that 85 per cent, of them die of fever, or
return home with their health permanently wrecked. Also remember that
there is no getting acclimatised to the Coast. There are, it is true, a
few men out there who, although they have been resident in West Africa
for years, have never had fever, but you can count them on the fingers
of one hand.' There can be no acclimatisation where the weeding out is
as drastic as this. Either the anopheles mosquito or the European must
quit. There are parts of tropical America where the natives have
actually been protected by the malaria, which keeps the white man at
arm's length. But more often the microbe is on the side of the civilised
race, killing off the natives who have not run the gauntlet of
town-life. The extreme reluctance of the barbarians who overran the
Roman Empire to settle in the towns is easily accounted for if, as is
probable, the towns killed them off whenever they attempted to live in
them. The difference is remarkable between the fate of a conquered race
which has become accustomed to town-life, and that of one which has not.
There are no 'native quarters' in the towns of any country where the
aborigines were nomads or tillers of the soil. To the North American
Indian, residence in a town is a sentence of death. The American Indians
were accustomed to none of our zymotic diseases except malaria. In the
north they were destroyed wholesale by tuberculosis; in Mexico and Peru,
where large towns existed before the conquest, they fared better. Fiji
was devastated by measles; other barbarians by small-pox. Negroes have
acquired, through severe natural selection, a certain degree of
immunisation in America; but even now it is said that 'every other negro
dies of consumption.' There are, however, two races, both long
accustomed to town-life under horribly insanitary conditions, which have
shown that they can live in almost any climate. These are the Jews and
the Chinese. The medieval Ghetto exterminated all who were not naturally
resistant to every form of microbic disease; the modern Jew, though
often of poor physique, is hard to kill. The same may be said of the
Chinaman, who, when at home, lives under conditions which would kill
most Europeans.
The other factor, which is really promoting the gradual disappearance of
the Anglo-Saxons from the United States, is of a very different
character. The descendants of the old immigrants are on the whole the
aristocracy of the country. Now it is a law which hardly admits of
exceptions, that aristocracies do not maintain their numbers. The ruling
race rules itself out; nothing fails like success. Gibbon has called
attention to the extreme respect paid to long descent in the Roman
Empire, and to the strange fact that, in the fourth century, no
ingenuity of pedigree makers could deny that all the great families of
the Republic were extinct, so that the second-rate plebeian family of
the Anicii, whose name did appear in the Fasti, enjoyed a prestige far
greater than that of the Howards and Stanleys in this country. Our own
peerage consists chiefly of parvenus. Only six of our noble families, it
is said, can trace their descent in the male line without a break to the
fifteenth century. The peerage of Sweden tells the same tale. According
to Gallon, the custom or law of primogeniture, combined with the habit
of marrying heiresses who, as the last representatives of dwindling
families, tend to be barren, is mainly responsible for this. Additional
causes may be the greater danger which the officer-class incurs in war,
and, in former times, the executioner's axe. In our own day the
reluctance of rich and self-indulgent women to bear children is
undoubtedly a factor in the infertility of the leisured class.
This brings us naturally to the second part of our discussion--the
consideration of the causes which lead to the increase or decrease of
population. It is the most important part of our inquiry; for it is
usually assumed that the British Isles will continue to send out
colonists in large numbers, as it did in the last century, and the hopes
of the imperialist that a large part of the world will speak English for
all time depend on the untested assurance that the swarming-time of our
race is not yet over. Our starting-point must be that the pressure of
population upon the means of subsistence is a constant fact in the human
race, as in every other species of animals and plants. There is no
species in which the numbers are not kept down, far below the natural
capacity for increase, by the limitation of available food. It may not
always be easy to trace the connection between the appearance of new
lives and the passing away of old, nor to say whether it is the
birth-rate which determines the death-rate, or the death-rate the
birth-rate. But it is well known that, wherever statistics are kept, the
numbers of births and of deaths rise and fall in nearly parallel lines,
so that the net rate of increase hardly alters at all, unless some
change, which can easily be traced, occurs in the habits of the people
or in the amount of the food supply. In civilised countries the greater
care taken of human life, and its consequent prolongation, has reduced
the birth-rate, just as in the higher mammals we find a greatly
diminished fertility as compared with the lower, and a much higher
survival-rate among the offspring born. The average duration of life in
this country has increased by about one-third in the last sixty years,
and the birth-rate has fallen in almost exactly the same proportion. The
position of a nation in the scale of civilisation may almost be gauged
by its births and deaths. The order in Europe, beginning with the lowest
birth-rate, is France, Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Switzerland,
Norway, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Spain, Austria, Italy, Hungary, the
Balkan States, Russia. The order of death-rates, again beginning at the
bottom, is Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Serbia, Spain,
Bulgaria, Hungary, Roumania, Russia. These two lists, as will be seen,
correspond very nearly with the scale of descending civilisation, the
only notable exception being the low position of France in the second
list. This anomaly is explained by the fact that France having a
stationary population, the death-rate in that country corresponds nearly
with the mean expectation of life, whereas in countries where the
population is increasing rapidly, either by excess of births over deaths
or by immigration, the preponderance of young lives brings the
death-rate down. We must, therefore, be on our guard against supposing
that countries with the lowest death-rates are necessarily the most
healthy. In New Zealand, for example, the death-rate is under 10 per
1000, the lowest in the world; and though that country is undoubtedly
healthy, no one supposes that the average duration of life in New
Zealand is a hundred years. To ascertain whether a nation is long-lived,
we must correct the crude death-rate by taking into account the average
age of the population. When this correction has been made, a low
death-rate, and the low birth-rate which necessarily accompanies it, is
a sign that the doctors are doing their duty by keeping their patients
alive. If our physicians desire more maternity cases, they must make
more work for the undertaker. Large families almost always mean a high
infant mortality; and it is significant that a twelfth child has a very
much poorer chance of survival than a first or second. The agitation for
the endowment of motherhood and the reduction of infant mortality is
therefore futile, because, while other conditions remain the same, every
baby 'saved' sends another baby out of the world or prevents him from
coming into it. The number of the people is not determined by
philanthropists or even by parents. Children will come somehow whenever
there is room for them, and go when there is none. But other conditions
do not remain the same, and it is in these other conditions that we must
seek the causes of expansion or contraction in the numbers of a
community.