d not find any. Dr. Harry Campbell has
found a few who could claim London grandparents; they were poor
specimens of humanity.[137] Even on the intellectual side there are no
great Londoners. It is well known that a number of eminent men have been
born in London; but, in the course of a somewhat elaborate study of the
origins of British men of genius, I have not been able to find that any
were genuinely Londoners by descent.[138] An urban life saps that calm and
stolid strength which is necessary for all great effort and stress,
physical or intellectual. The finest body of men in London, as a class,
are the London police, and Charles Booth states that only 17 per cent of
the London police are born in London, a smaller proportion than any
other class of the London population except the army and navy. As Mr.
N.C. Macnamara has pointed out, it is found that London men do not
possess the necessary nervous stability and self-possession for police
work; they are too excitable and nervous, lacking the equanimity,
courage, and self-reliance of the rural men. Just in the same way, in
Spain, the bull-fighters, a body of men admirable for their graceful
strength, their modesty, courage, and skill, nearly always come from
country districts, although it is in the towns that the enthusiasm for
bull-fighting is centred. Therefore, it would appear that until urban
conditions of life are greatly improved, the more largely urban a
population becomes, the more is its standard of vital and physical
efficiency likely to be lowered. This became clearly visible during the
South African War; it was found at Manchester (as stated by Dr. T.P.
Smith and confirmed by Dr. Clayton) that among 11,000 young men who
volunteered for enlistment, scarcely more than 10 per cent could pass
the surgeon's examination, although the standard of physique demanded
was extremely low, while Major-General Sir F. Maurice has stated[139]
that, even when all these rejections have been made, of those who
actually are enlisted, at the end of two years only two effective
soldiers are found for every five who enlist. It is not difficult to see
a bearing of these facts on the birth-rate. The civilized world is
becoming a world of towns, and, while the diminished birth-rate of towns
is certainly not mainly the result of impaired vitality, these phenomena
are correlative facts of the first importance for every country which
is using up its rural population and becoming a land of