As I can recall an article in this same journal, written during the course of the Boer War, in which Ireland was likened to a “serpent whose head must be crushed beneath the heel,” the Daily Telegraph’s praise to-day of the Irish disposition should leave Irish boys profoundly unmoved—­and still ashore.

There is yet another aspect of the growing stream of British emigration.  “Death removes the feeble, emigration removes the strong.  Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, have no use for the sick and palsied, or of those incapable of work through age or youth.  They want the workers and they get them.  Those who have left the United Kingdom during 1912 are not the scum of our islands, but the very pick.  And they leave behind, for our politicians to grapple with, a greater proportion of females, of children and of disabled than ever before.” (London Magazine!)

The excess of females over males, already so noteworthy a feature of England’s decay, becomes each year more accentuated and doubtless accounts for the strenuous efforts now being made to entrap Irish boys into the British army and navy.

If we compare the figures of Germany and Great Britain, and then contrast them with those of Ireland, we shall see, at a glance, how low England is sinking, and how vitally necessary it is for her to redress the balance of her own excess of “militants” over males by kidnapping Irish youths into her emasculated services and by fomenting French and Russian enmities against the fruitful German people.

Germany 1910, males, 32,031,967; females, 32,871,456; total, 64,925,993.  Excess of females, 739,489.

Great Britain, 1911: 

England and Wales—­Males, 17,448,476; females, 18,626,793; total, 36,075,269.  Excess of females, 1,178,317.

Scotland—­Males, 2,307,603; females, 2,251,842; total, 4,759,445.  Excess of females, 144,239.

Total for Great Britain, 40,834,714.  Excess of females, 1,322,556.

Thus on a population much less than two thirds that of Germany Great Britain has almost twice as many females in excess over males as Germany has, and this disproportion of sexes tends yearly to increase.  We read in every fresh return of emigration that it is men and not women who are leaving England and Scotland.  That Irish emigration, appalling as its ravages have been since 1846, is still maintained on a naturally healthier basis the sex returns for 1911 make clear.  The figures for Ireland at the census were as follows: 

Ireland—­Males, 2,186,802; females, 2,195,147; total, 4,381,949.  Excess of females, 8,346.

Ireland, it is seen, can still spare 100,000 or 150,000 males for the British armed forces and be in no unhealthier sex plight than Scotland or England is in.  It is to get this surplus of stout Irish brawn and muscle that Mr. Churchill and the British War Office are now touting in Ireland.

I take the following Government advertisement from the Cork Evening Echo (of March, 1913), in illustration: