Stand up, ye dead.' At the wild cry the wounded arose, and the
half-dead began to shoot with unsteady hands. By a resurrection from
the dead the trench was saved. To a race that has set its face towards
decay, there ringeth from heaven the cry, 'Stand up, ye dead.' It is
not yet too late to save the race, the empire, and the world.

[1] _The Declining Birthrate_, p. 247.

[2] _The Declining Birthrate_, p. 343.

[3] _The Declining Birthrate_, p. 93.

[4] _The Declining Birthrate_, p. 126.

{24}

CHAPTER II

THE ROOTS OF THE EVIL

If a disease is to be combated the first thing to be done is to
diagnose it. It is only when the destructive powers of an enemy are
realised that the full power of a nation is mobilised; and the moral
forces of a nation will only be mobilised for its own salvation when it
realises the full sweep of the forces of degeneration which are united
for its ethical destruction. Hitherto the attitude of society towards
the evils which threaten its very existence has been one of assumed
ignorance. Ostrich-like it buried its head in conventions and was
determined not to see. The result has been that the evils grew in an
atmosphere of artificial darkness and ignorance, until to-day the
fountains of the national life are at one and {25} the same time going
through a process of desiccation and of pollution. The elements in
society which have in them a promise of strength are limiting their own
existence; the elements which have in them the least promise of
vitality are passing on the stream of life diseased alike by
inheritance and by infection. It is a disagreeable and distasteful
duty to contemplate the foul diseases which prey on the body-politic,
but we must face the duty. We must remove the blinkers which have too
long hid from us the sweep of those forces which will inevitably work
destruction unless the nation be roused to its peril.

I

It is a startling fact that in the very days when the flower of the
manhood of the race is perishing by the hundred thousand on land and
sea, a campaign is being conducted in London with the express purpose
of preventing the wastage of life being replaced by the advent of life.
It is almost incredible that such a {26} thing could be, but those who
carry on the propaganda are not even conscious that they are doing
wrong. In this very unconsciousness of evil we see the depths to which
the nation is falling. In his evidence submitted