in 1890
to at least 50,000,000 at the outbreak of war, the same tendency was
present in a less degree, the annual excess of births over deaths being
about half a million, out of which, however, there was an annual
emigration of some quarter of a million persons.

To understand the present situation, we must apprehend with vividness
what an extraordinary center of population the development of the
Germanic system had enabled Central Europe to become. Before the war the
population of Germany and Austria-Hungary together not only
substantially exceeded that of the United States, but was about equal to
that of the whole of North America. In these numbers, situated within a
compact territory, lay the military strength of the Central Powers. But
these same numbers--for even the war has not appreciably diminished
them[2]--if deprived of the means of life, remain a hardly less danger
to European order.

European Russia increased her population in a degree even greater than
Germany--from less than 100,000,000 in 1890 to about 150,000,000 at the
outbreak of war;[3] and in the year immediately preceding 1914 the
excess of births over deaths in Russia as a whole was at the prodigious
rate of two millions per annum. This inordinate growth in the population
of Russia, which has not been widely noticed in England, has been
nevertheless one of the most significant facts of recent years.

The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the
growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which,
escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary
observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism
of atheists. Thus the extraordinary occurrences of the past two years in
Russia, that vast upheaval of Society, which has overturned what seemed
most stable--religion, the basis of property, the ownership of land, as
well as forms of government and the hierarchy of classes--may owe more
to the deep influences of expanding numbers than to Lenin or to
Nicholas; and the disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may
have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than
either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

II. _Organization_

The delicate organization by which these peoples lived depended partly
on factors internal to the system.

The interference of frontiers and of tariffs was reduced to a minimum,
and not far short of three hundred millions