Chapter 5

It seems too elementary a point to insist on, yet the mists of ignorance and prejudice are so dense, the cataract of false patriotism is so thick, that for many even the most elementary truths cannot be discerned. In most of the smaller nations, indeed, an intelligent view prevails. Their smallness has, on the one hand, rendered them more open to international culture, and, on the other hand, enabled them to outgrow the illusions of militarism; there is a higher standard of education among them; their birth-rates are low and they accept that fact as a condition of progressive civilisation. That is the case in Switzerland, as in Norway, and notably in Holland. It is not so in the larger nations. Here we constantly find, even in those lands where the bulk of the population are civilised and reasonably level-headed, a small minority who publicly tear their hair and rage at the steady decline in the birth-rate. It is, of course, only the declining birth-rate of their own country that they have in view; for they are "patriots," which means that the fall of the birth-rate in all other countries but their own is a source of much gratification. "Woe to us," they exclaim in effect, "if we follow the example of these wicked and degenerate peoples! Our nation needs men. We have to populate the earth and to carry the blessings of our civilised culture all over the world. In executing that high mission we cannot have too much cannon-fodder in defending ourselves against the jealousy and aggression of other nations. Let us promote parentage by law; let us repress by law every influence which may encourage a falling birth-rate; otherwise there is nothing left to us but speedy national disaster, complete and irremediable." This is not caricature,[2] though these apostles of "race-suicide" may easily arouse a smile by the verbal ardour of their procreative energy. But we have to recognise that in Germany for years past it has been difficult to take up a serious periodical without finding some anxiously statistical article about the falling birth-rate and some wild recommendations for its arrest, for it is the militaristic German who of all Europeans is most worried by this fall; indeed Germans often even refuse to recognise it. Thus to-day we find Professor Gruber declaring that if the population of the German Empire continues to grow at the rate of the first five years of the present century, at the end of the century it will have reached 250,000,000. By such a vast increase in population, the Professor complacently concludes, "Germany will be rendered invulnerable." We know what that means. The presence of an "invulnerable" nation among nations that are "vulnerable" means inevitable aggression and war, a perpetual menace to civilisation and humanity. It is not along that line that hope can be found for the world's future, or even Germany's future, and Gruber conveniently neglects to estimate what, on his basis, the population of Russia will be at the end of the century. But Gruber's estimate is altogether fallacious. German births have fallen, roughly speaking, about one per thousand of the population, every year since the beginning of the century, and it would be equally reasonable to estimate that if they continue to fall at the present rate (which we cannot, of course, anticipate) births will altogether have ceased in Germany long before the end of the century. The German birth-rate reached its climax forty years ago (1871-1880) with 40.7 per 1,000; in 1906 it was 34 per 1,000; in 1909, 31 per 1,000; in 1912, 28 per 1,000; in an almost measurable period of time, in all probability long before the end of the century, it will have reached the same low level as that of France, when there will be little difference between the "invulnerability" of France and of Germany, a consummation which, for the world's sake, is far more devoutly to be wished than that anticipated by Gruber.

We have to remember, moreover, that this tendency is by no means, as we are sometimes tempted to suppose, a sign of degeneration or of decay; but, on the contrary, a sign of progress. When we survey broadly that course of zoological evolution of which we are pleased to regard Man as the final outcome, we note that on the whole the mighty stream has become the less productive as it has advanced. We note the same of the various lines taken separately. We note, also, that intelligence and all the qualities we admire have usually been most marked in the less prolific species. Progress, roughly speaking, has proved incompatible with high fertility. And the reason is not far to seek. If the creature produced is more evolved, it is more complex and more highly organised, and that means the need for much time and much energy. To attain this, the offspring must be few and widely spaced; it cannot be attained at all under conditions that are highly destructive. The humble herring, which evokes the despairing envy of our human apostles of fertility, is largely composed of spawn, and produces a vast number of offspring, of which few reach maturity. The higher mammals spend their lives in the production of a small number of offspring, most of whom survive. Thus, even before Man began, we see a fundamental principle established, and the relationship between the birth-rate and the death-rate in working order. All progressive evolution may be regarded as a mechanism for concentrating an ever greater amount of energy in the production of ever fewer and ever more splendid individuals. Nature is perpetually striving to replace the crude ideal of quantity by the higher ideal of quality.

In human history these same tendencies have continually been illustrated. The Greeks, our pioneers in all insight and knowledge, grappled (as Professor Myres has lately set forth[3]), and realised that they were grappling, with this same problem. Even in the Minoan Age their population would appear to have been full to overflowing; "there were too many people in the world," and to the old Greeks the Trojan War was the earliest divinely-appointed remedy. Wars, famines, pestilences, colonisation, wide-spread infanticide were the methods, voluntary and involuntary, by which this excessive birth-rate was combated, while the greatest of Greek philosophers, a Plato or an Aristotle, clearly saw that a regulated and limited birth-rate, a eugenically improved race, is the road to higher civilisation. We may even see in Greek antiquity how a sudden rise in industrialism leads to a crowded and fertile urban population, the extension of slavery, and all the resultant evils. It was a foretaste of what was seen during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when a sudden industrial expansion led to an enormously high birth-rate, a servile urban proletariat (that very word indicates, as Roscher has pointed out, that a large family means inferiority), and a consequent outburst of misery and degradation from which we are only now emerging.

As we are now able to realise, the sudden expansion of the population accompanying the industrial revolution was an abnormal and, from the point of view of society, a morbid phenomenon. All the evidence goes to show that previously the population tended to increase very slowly, and social evolution was thus able to take place equably and harmoniously. It is only gradually that the birth-rate has begun to right itself again. The movement, as is well known, began in France, always the most advanced outpost of European civilisation. It has now spread to England, to Germany, to all Europe, to the whole world indeed, in so far as the world is in touch with European civilisation, and has long been well marked in the United States.

When we realise this we are also enabled to realise how futile, how misplaced, and how mischievous it is to raise the cry of "Race-suicide." It is futile because no outcry can affect a world-wide movement of civilisation. It is misplaced because the rise and fall of the population is not a matter of the birth-rate alone, but of the birth-rate combined with the death-rate, and while we cannot expect to touch the former we can influence the latter. It is mischievous because by fighting against a tendency which is not only inevitable but altogether beneficial, we blind ourselves to the advance of civilisation and risk the misdirection of all our energies. How far this blindness may be carried we see in the false patriotism of those who in the decline of the birth-rate fancy they see the ruin of their own particular country, oblivious of the fact that we are concerned with a phenomenon of world-wide extension.

The whole tendency of civilisation is to reduce the birth-rate, as Leroy-Beaulieu concludes in his comprehensive work on the population question. We may go further, and assert with the distinguished German economist, Roscher, that the chief cause of the superiority of a highly civilised State over lower stages of civilisation is precisely a greater degree of forethought and self-control in marriage and child-bearing.[4] Instead of talking about race-suicide, we should do well to observe at what an appalling rate, even yet, the population is increasing, and we should note that it is everywhere the poorest and most primitive countries, and in every country (as in Germany) the poorest regions, which show the highest birth-rate. On every hand, however, are hopeful signs. Thus, in Russia, where a very high birth-rate is to some extent compensated by a very high death-rate--the highest infantile death-rate in Europe--the birth-rate is falling, and we may anticipate that it will fall very rapidly with the extension of education and social enlightenment among the masses. Driven out of Europe, the alarmist falls back on the "Yellow Peril." But in Japan we find amid confused variations of the birth-rate and the death-rate nothing to indicate any alarming expansion of the population, while as to China we are in the dark. We only know that in China there is a high birth-rate largely compensated by a very high death-rate. We also know, however, that as Lowes Dickinson has lately reminded us, "the fundamental attitude of the Chinese towards life is that of the most modern West,"[5] and we shall probably find that with the growth of enlightenment the Chinese will deal with their high birth-rate in a far more radical and thorough manner than we have ever ventured on.

One last resort the would-be patriotic alarmist seeks when all others fail. He is good enough to admit that a general decline in the birth-rate might be beneficial. But, he points out, it affects social classes unequally. It is initiated, not by the degenerate and the unfit, whom we could well dispense with, but by the very best classes in the community, the well-to-do and the educated. One is inclined to remark, at once, that a social change initiated by its best social classes is scarcely likely to be pernicious. Where, it may be asked, if not among the most educated classes, is any process of amelioration to be initiated? We cannot make the world topsy-turvy to suit the convenience of topsy-turvy minds. All social movements tend to begin at the top and to permeate downwards. This has been the case with the decline in the birth-rate, but it is already well marked among the working classes, and has only failed to touch the lowest social stratum of all, too weak-minded and too reckless to be amenable to ordinary social motives. The rational method of meeting this situation is not a propaganda in favour of procreation--a truly imbecile propaganda, since it is only carried out and only likely to be carried out, by the very class which we wish to sterilise--but by a wise policy of regulative eugenics. We have to create the motives, and it is not an impossible task, which will act even upon the weak-minded and reckless lowest social stratum.

These facts have a significance which many of us have failed to realise. The Great War has brought home the gravity of that significance. It has been the perpetual refrain of the Pan-Germanists for many years that the vast and sudden expansion of the German peoples makes necessary a new movement of the German nations into the world and a new enlargement of frontiers, in other words, War. It is not only among the Germans, though among them it may have been more conscious, that a similar cause has led to the like result. It has ever been so. The expanding nation has always been a menace to the world and to itself. The arrest of the falling birth-rate, it cannot be too often repeated, would be the arrest of all civilisation and of all humanity.

[1] Ralph Thicknesse, _A Year's Journey Through France and Spain_, 1777, p. 298.

[2] The last twelve words quoted are by Miss Ethel Elderton in an otherwise sober memoir (_Report on the English Birth-rate_, 1914, p. 237) which shows that the birth control movement has begun, just where we should expect it to begin, among the better instructed classes.

[3] J.L. Myres, "The Causes of Rise and Fall in the Population of the Ancient World," Eugenics Review, April, 1915.

[4] Roscher, _Grundlagen der National--konomie_, 23rd ed., 1900, Bk. VI.

[5] G. Lowes Dickinson, _The Civilisation of India, China, and Japan_, 1914, p. 47.

VII

WAR AND DEMOCRACY

When we read our newspapers to-day we are constantly met by ingenious plans for bringing to an end the activities of Germany after the War. German military activity, it is universally agreed, must be brought to an end; Germany will have no further need of a military system save on the most modest scale. Germany must also be deprived of any colonial empire and shut out from eastward expansion. That being the case, Germany no longer needs a fleet, and must be brought back to Bismarck's naval attitude. Moreover, the industrial activities of Germany must also be destroyed; the Allied opponents of Germany will henceforth manufacture for themselves or for one another the goods they have hitherto been so foolish as to obtain from Germany, and though this may mean cutting themselves aloof from the country which has hitherto been their own best customer, that is a sacrifice to be cheerfully borne for the sake of principle. It is further argued that the world has no need of German activities in science; they are, it appears, much less valuable than we had been led to believe, and in any case no self-respecting people would encourage a science tainted by Kultur. The puzzled reader of these arguments, overlooking the fallacies they contain, may perhaps sometimes be tempted to ask: But what are Germans to be allowed to do? The implied answer is clear: Nothing.

The writers who urge these arguments with such conviction may be supposed to have an elementary knowledge of the history of the Germans. We are concerned, that is to say, with a people which has displayed an irrepressible energy, in one field or another, ever since the time, more than fifteen hundred years ago, when it excited the horror of the civilised world by sacking Rome. The same energy was manifested, a thousand years later, when the Germans again knocked at the door of Rome and drew away half the world from its allegiance to the Church. Still more recently, in yet other fields of industry and commerce and colonisation, these same Germans have displayed their energy by entering into more or less successful competition with that "Modern Rome," as some have termed it, which has its seat in the British Islands. Here is a people,--still youthful as we count age in our European world, for even the Celts had preceded them by nearly a thousand years,--which has successfully displayed its explosive or methodical force in the most diverse fields, military, religious, economic. From henceforth it is invited, by an allied army of terrified journalists, to expend these stupendous and irresistible energies on just Nothing.

We know, of course, what would happen were it possible to subject Germany to any such process of attempted repression. Whenever an individual or a mass of individuals is bidden to do nothing, it merely comes about that the activities aimed at, far from being suppressed, are turned into precisely the direction most unpleasant for the would-be suppressors. When in 1870 the Germans tried to "crush" France, the result was the reverse of that intended. The effects of "crushing" had been even more startingly reverse, on the other side--and this may furnish us with a precedent--when Napoleon trampled down Germany. Two centuries ago, after the brilliant victories of Marlborough, it was proposed to crush permanently the Militarism of France. But, as Swift wrote to Archbishop King just before the Peace of Utrecht, "limiting France to a certain number of ships and troops was, I doubt, not to be compassed." In spite of the exhaustion of France it was not even attempted. In the present case, when the war is over it is probable that Germany will still hold sufficiently great pledges to bargain with in safeguarding her own vital interests. If it were not so, if it were possible to inflict permanent injury on Germany, that would be the greatest misfortune that could happen to us; for it is clear that we should then be faced by a yet more united and yet more aggressively military Germany than the world has seen.[1] In Germany itself there is no doubt on this point. Germans are well aware that German activities cannot be brought to a sudden full stop, and they are also aware that even among Germany's present enemies there are those who after the War will be glad to become her friends. Any doubt or anxiety in the minds of thoughtful Germans is not concerning the continued existence of German energy in the world, but concerning the directions in which that energy will be exerted.

What is Germany's greatest danger? That is the subject of a pamphlet by Rudolf Goldscheid, of Vienna, now published in Switzerland, with a preface by Professor Forel, as originally written a year earlier, because it is believed that in the interval its conclusions have been confirmed by events.[2] Goldscheid is an independent and penetrating thinker in the economic field, and the author of a book on the principles of Social Biology (_Hoeherentwicklung und Menschenoekonomie_) which has been described by an English critic as the ablest defence of Socialism yet written. By the nature of his studies he is concerned with problems of human rather than merely national development, but he ardently desires the welfare of Germany, and is anxious that that welfare shall be on the soundest and most democratic basis. After the War, he says, there must necessarily be a tendency to approximate between the Central Powers and one or other of their present foes. It is clear (though this point is not discussed) that Italy, whose presence in the Triple Alliance was artificial, will not return, while French resentment at German devastation is far too great to be appeased for a long period to come. There remain, therefore, Russia and England. After the War German interests and German sympathies must gravitate either eastwards towards Russia or westwards towards England. Which is it to be?

There are many reasons why Germany should gravitate towards Russia. Such a movement was indeed already in active progress before the war, notwithstanding Russia's alliance with France, and may easily become yet more active after the war, when it is likely that the bonds between Russia and France may grow weaker, and when it is possible that the Germans, with their immense industry, economy and recuperative power, may prove to be in the best position--unless America cuts in--to finance Russia. Industrially Russia offers a vast field for German enterprise which no other country can well snatch away, and German is already to some extent the commercial language of Russia.[3]

Politically, moreover, a close understanding between the two supreme autocratic and anti-democratic powers of Europe is of the greatest mutual benefit, for any democratic movement within the borders of either Power is highly inconvenient to the other, so that it is to the advantage of both to stimulate each other in the task of repression.[4] It is this aspect of the approximation which arouses Goldscheid's alarm. It is mainly on this ground that he advocates a counter-balancing approximation between Germany and England which would lay Germany open to the West and serve to develop her latent democratic tendencies. He admits that at some points the interests of Germany and England run counter to each other, but at yet a greater number of points their interests are common. It is only by the development of these common interests, and the consequent permeation of Germany by democratic English ideas, that Goldscheid sees any salvation from Czarism, for that is "Germany's greatest danger," and at the same time the greatest danger to Europe.

That is Goldscheid's point of view. Our English point of view is necessarily somewhat different. With our politically democratic tendencies we see very little difference between Russia and Prussia. As they are at present constituted, we have no wish to be in very close political intimacy with either. It so happens, indeed, that, for the moment, the chances of fellowship in War have brought us into a condition of almost sentimental sympathy with the Russian people, such as has never existed among us before. But this sympathy, amply justified, as all who know Russia agree, is exclusively with the Russian people. It leaves the Russian Government, the Russian bureaucracy, the Russian political system, all that Goldscheid concentrates into the term "Czarism," severely alone. Our hostility to these may be for the moment latent, but it is as profound as it ever was. Czarism is even more remote from our sympathies than Kaiserism. All that has happened is that we cherish the pious hope that Russia is becoming converted to our own ideas on these points, although there is not the smallest item of solid fact to support that hope. Otherwise, Russian oppression of the Finns is just as odious to us as Prussian oppression of the Poles, and Russian persecution of Liberals as alien as German persecution of War-prisoners.[5] Our future policy, in the opinion of many, should, however, be to isolate Germany as completely as possible from English influence and to cultivate closer relations with Russia.[6] Such a policy, Goldscheid argues, will defeat its own ends. The more stringently England holds aloof from Germany the more anxiously will Germany cultivate good relationships with Russia. Such relationships, as we know, are easy to cultivate, because they are much in the interests of both countries which possess so large an extent of common frontier and so admirably supply each other's needs; it may be added also that the Russian commercial world is showing no keen desire to enter into close relations with England. Moreover, after the War, we may expect a weakening of French influence in Russia, for that influence was largely based on French gold, and a France no longer able or willing to finance Russia would no longer possess a strong hold over Russia. A Russo-German understanding, difficult to prevent in any case, is inimical to the interests of England, but it would be rendered inevitable by an attempt on the part of England to isolate Germany.[7]

Such an attempt could not be carried out completely and would break down on its weakest side, which is the East. So that the way lies open to a League of the Three Kaisers, the Dreikaiserbuendnis which would form a great island fortress of militarism and reaction amid the surrounding sea of democracy, able to repress those immense possibilities of progress within its own walls which would have been liberated by contact with the vital currents outside.