ng to priests, which
probably gives much encouragement and consolation to unhappy but devout
believers, and thus induces many of them to struggle on in spite of
misfortune and depression.

The Salvation Army, in attempting to lessen self-destruction by opening
"anti-suicide bureaus" in large cities, and by inviting persons who are
contemplating suicide to visit these bureaus and talk over their
troubles, is virtually introducing a system of confession which, so far
as this particular evil is concerned, resembles that of the Catholic
Church.

In view, however, of the conflicting nature of the evidence, and the
extreme difficulty of disentangling religious factors from other
important factors, I doubt the possibility of drawing any trustworthy
conclusions with regard to the dependence of suicide upon religious
belief. It may be said, as a matter of record, that the tendency to
self-destruction is greatest among Protestant Christians, next largest
among Roman Catholics and Orthodox Greeks, and lowest among Mohammedans
and Jews; but the differences are not certainly due to religion.

The dependence of suicide upon nationality and race presents a number of
problems of great interest, but of extraordinary difficulty and
complexity. I can state a few of these problems, but I cannot solve any
of them.

Among the highest suicide rates in Europe are those of Saxony and
Denmark, and among the lowest those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain. You
may perhaps conclude, from this, that the tendency to self-destruction
is much greater among the Slavs and Scandinavians of the north than it
is among the Latin peoples of the south, and that the differences are
due to latitude or race; but your specious generalization is shattered
when you discover that the suicide rates of Norway and Russia, both
northern countries inhabited by Scandinavians and Slavs, are almost as
low as those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain, all southern countries
inhabited by Latins.

From an ethnological point of view, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are
nearly homogeneous Scandinavian states, and we should therefore expect
their suicide rates to be nearly if not quite identical; but the rate of
Denmark is twice that of Sweden and three times that of Norway.

The Slavs of Bohemia do not differ ethnologically from the Slavs of
Dalmatia, but the suicide rate of the one group is 158 per million,
while that of the other is only 14 per million. Saxony is not far away,
geogra