Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

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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.

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