ty.' That is near the truth. London has been built up by that
iniquity which has made the home-counties of England waste; and the
life-blood of islands and fair valleys and hill-sheltered glens has
been drained that Glasgow might grow and its slums be enlarged. The
call to repentance which comes to our ears is a call summoning us to
right the wrong wrought by blinded politicians, to restore again to the
people the decencies of life and the possibilities of happiness. The
call to national repentance is not a call to emotion but a call to
action. Of old prophets summoned a race fast hurrying to decay to
return to God. The way of return was the way of action. They were
exhorted to people the waste places, to curb licentiousness, and to
walk in the path of righteousness. And to-day the call of national
repentance is the same. {96} It is the call to the realisation of an
ideal of life in which masses of the people will not be damned from
birth by a social organism in whose grip they are powerless. All in
vain does a mission, appealing to the soul, feeble of help, wage
conflict in a slum with the forces of the State, wielded through a
dozen public-houses, that depress and enslave. As things now are there
can be no escape and no salvation for the man in the slum.

[1] Dr. Chalmers has pointed out in the _Proceedings of the Royal
Society of Medicine_, 1913, vol. vi., that the mortality of infants
varied inversely with the number of rooms occupied up to four.

Infant mortality in one-apartment houses, per thousand, 210
" " two " " " 164
" " three " " " 129
" " four " " " 103

[2] The following quotation from a newspaper of this summer is
illuminating:--

'A woman with six children, who sought advice at Acton, said that so as
to get a flat she told the landlord that she had only three.

'He accepted her deposit, and allowed her to enter the flat, but on
learning of the other three children, ordered her to leave, and would
not take her rent. He described her as a trespasser, and threatened to
eject her unless she left.

'"If I had told him the truth," said the woman, "he would not have
taken me. As soon as I say I have six children, people will not listen
any longer."

'The magistrate told applicant that she must make arrangements to
leave.'

[3] _The Declining Birthrate_, p.