hat he called 'Dutch finance,' which
consists in 'mortgaging the industry of the future to protect property
in the present.' Pitt paid for the great war of a hundred years ago in
this manner; after a century we are still groaning under the burden of
his loans. We may hear more of the iniquity of 'Dutch finance' when the
democracies of the next generation have a chance of repudiating
obligations which, as they will say, they did not contract. However that
may be, international rivalry is plainly very bad business; and there
are great possibilities in the Hague Tribunal, if, and only if, the
signatories to the conference bind themselves to use force against a
recalcitrant member. The conduct of Germany in this war has shown that
public opinion is powerless to restrain a nation which feels strong
enough to defy it.

Another cause which may give patriots leisure to turn their thoughts
away from war's alarms is that the 'swarming' period of the European
races is coming to an end. The unparalleled increase of population in
the first three quarters of the 19th century has been followed by a
progressive decrease in the birth-rate, which will begin to tell upon
social conditions when the reduction in the death-rate, which has
hitherto kept pace with it, shall have reached its natural limit. Europe
with a stationary population will be in a much happier condition; and
problems of social reform can then be tackled with some hope of success.
Honourable emulation in the arts of life may then take the place of
desperate competition and antagonism. Human lives will begin to have a
positive value, and we may even think it fair to honour our saviours
more than our destroyers. The effects of past follies will then soon be
effaced; for nations recover much more quickly from wars than from
internal disorders. External injuries are rapidly cured; but 'those
wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.' The greatest obstacle to
progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency
to parasitism. The true patriot will keep his eye fixed on this, and
will dread as the state's worst enemies those citizens who at the top
and bottom of the social scale have no other ambition than to hang on
and suck the life-blood of the nation. Great things may be hoped from
the new science of eugenics, when it has passed out of its tentative and
experimental stage.

In the distant future we may reasonably hope that patriotism will be a
senti