xceptions are
too few to need attention--that it is unnecessary to adduce further
evidence. It is only the intoxicated enthusiasts of the "Race-Suicide" cry
who are able to overlook a fact of which they can hardly be ignorant. The
model which they hold up for the public's inspiration has on the obverse
"More Births!" But on the reverse it bears "More Deaths!" It would be
helpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts'
own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round and
slightly vary the monotony of their propaganda by changing its form and
crying out for "More Deaths!" "It is a hard thing," said Johnny Dunn, "for
a man that has a house full of children to be left to the mercy of
Almighty God."

If, however, we wish to consider the real significance of the facts,
without regard for the wild cries of ignorant cranks, it is scarcely
necessary to point out here that neither the birth-rate taken by itself,
nor the death-rate taken by itself, will suffice to give us any measure
even of the growth of the population, to say nothing of the progress of
civilisation or the happiness of humanity. It is obvious that we must
consider both gains and losses, and put one against the other, if we wish
to ascertain the net result. We may roughly get a notion of what that
result is by deducting the death-rate from the birth-rate and calling the
remainder the survival-rate. If we are really concerned with the question
of the alleged suicide of the race, and do not wish to be befooled, we
must pay little attention to the birth-rate, for that by itself means
nothing: we must concentrate on the survival-rate. Then we may soon
convince ourselves, not only that the human race is not committing
suicide, but that not even a single one of the so-called civilised nations
of which it is mainly composed is committing suicide. Quite the contrary!
Every one of them, even France, where this peculiar "suicide" is supposed
to be most actively at work, is yearly increasing in numbers.

It is interesting to note, moreover, that the French have been increasing
faster, that is to say the survival-rate has been higher in recent years
just before the war, when the birth-rate was at its lowest, than they were
twenty years earlier, with a higher birth-rate. And if we take a wider
sweep and consider the growth of the French population towards the end of
the eighteenth century, we find the birth-rate estimated at the very h