find these, as we pass them in review, to be extraordinary enough,
though not very new.

In the first place, "genetic research will make it possible for a nation
to elect by what sort of beings it will be represented not very many
generations hence, much as a farmer can decide whether his byres shall
be full of shorthorns or Herefords. It will be very surprising indeed if
some nation does not make trial of this new power. They may make awful
mistakes, but I think they will try" (S., p. 8). It is curious how the
war, which had just commenced when these addresses were being delivered,
has absolutely disposed, or ought to have disposed, of some of the
prophecies of the President. Nothing, at any rate, seems more certain
than that one result of this most disastrous struggle will be an urgent
demand by all the States engaged in it for at least as many male
children as the mothers of each country can supply, without special
regard to their other characters, breedable or not breedable. We are
even told that Germany is resorting to expedients which cannot be
justified on Christian principles to fill her depleted homes. Whether
this be true or not the fact remains that nothing is now more to be
desired by all the combatant nations than what we call in Ireland "long
families." But even if there had been no war, there is one other factor
which makes it quite certain that no country ever will try, or if it
ventures to try, will ever succeed in any such experiment, and that
factor, forgotten by philosophers of this kind, is human nature. Mr.
Frankfort Moore years ago wrote a pleasant story, called "The Marriage
Lease," in which doctrinaire legislation of a somewhat similar kind was
described, and its inevitable failure most amusingly depicted. The war
disposes of another of the President's maxims (S., p. 10), that the
decline in the birth-rate of a country is nothing to be grieved about,
and that "the slightest acquaintance with biology" shows that the
"inference may be wholly wrong," which asserts that "a nation in which
population is not rapidly increasing must be in a decline" (S., p. 10).
Human nature was neglected in the first-mentioned case, and here it is
the turn of history to pass into the shade, history which, _pace_ the
President, has really a good deal more bearing upon a question of this
kind than the "school-boy natural history" which he thinks capable of
settling it. Thus we advance from breeding to Malthusianism. It i