ltar of degeneration England
and Wales offered {49} up in the year 1914 over 600,000 children.[6]
Who can compute the laughter and joyousness, the happiness and the
riches thus consumed at the shrine of our self-indulgence? And every
sign points to this vast sacrifice of life increasing with the years.
For we are emancipated; and we smile at any restraint emanating
from--God! Science has delivered us from that. We know it now--the
voice of law is only the echo of outworn superstitions. And science,
which has broken the chain of restraint, and which has provided the
means for gratifying desire without incurring responsibility, has
blessed us also with the high-explosive shell. This great
deliverer--science--has put into our hands the power of pruning life at
both ends. If the world is to find salvation through the absence of
life--then, salvation is at the gate. In other days it gave {50} our
fathers a shudder to read of the moral depravity of Home ere the
scourge of God fell on it. The old Romans can, alas! cause us to
shudder no longer. We have improved upon them. Science has helped us
greatly, and with its aid we can sound depths of depravity the Roman
never reached. The triumphs of science have in our hands become
instruments of an immorality which would have made even heathen Rome
shudder. And as yet we are only at the top of the declivity. The
momentum of our descent is gathering force with the years.

It may be asserted that this view is alarmist, and that, however bad
our state, we are better than Germany. No thought of an enemy from
without need, therefore, mar our satisfaction in our swift declension
into the morass of vice. That comparison may be granted: we are better
than Germany, though Germany has not yet sacrificed her children in
such hecatombs as we have done. But what we have to consider is not
the birthrate in {51} relation to that of Germany but in relation to
the extent of the earth surface which owns our sway. The end of the
war will find Germany confined within narrow borders with all her
colonies gone. The Germany of to-morrow will have no room for racial
expansion. But we own the fourth of the world's surface. That vast
territory calls to us for men. And if we individually choose our own
selfish ease, and sacrifice the generations to come, we shall have
failed in our imperial calling. We may win an empire on the
battlefield; we will inevitably lose it in the silent nursery.