be used for industrial purposes; but the temptation to exploit the negro and the cheaper European races was too strong to be resisted, and Nature’s heaviest penalty is now being exacted against the descendants of our sturdy colonists.  We did not lose America in the eighteenth century; we are losing it now.  As for South Africa, the Kaffir can live like a gentleman (according to his own ideas) on six months’ ill-paid work every year; the Englishman finds an income of L200 too small.  There is only one end to this kind of colonisation.  The danger at home is that the larger part of the population is now beginning to insist upon a scale of remuneration and a standard of comfort which are incompatible with any survival-value.  We all wish to be privileged aristocrats, with no serfs to work for us.  Dame Nature cares nothing for the babble of politicians and trade-union regulations.  She says to us what Plotinus, in a remarkable passage, makes her say:  ’You should not ask questions; you should try to understand. I am not in the habit of talking.’ In Nature’s school it is a word and a blow, and the blow first.  Before the close of this article I will return to the eugenic problem, and will consider whether anything can be done to solve it.

At the present time, when an apparently internecine conflict is raging between the British Empire and Germany, a more detailed comparison of the vital statistics of the two countries will be read with interest.  In England and Wales the birth-rate culminated in 1876 at a little over 36, after slowly rising from 33 in 1850.  From 1876 the line of decline is almost straight, down to the ante-war figure of about 24.  In Prussia, owing partly to wars, the fluctuations have been violent.  In 1850 the figure (omitting decimals) was 39; in 1855, 34; in 1859, 40; in 1871, 34; in 1875, nearly 41.  From this date, as in England, the steady decline began.  In 1907 the rate had fallen to 33; in 1913 (German Empire) to 27.5.  Here we may notice the abnormally high rate in the years following the great war of 1870, a phenomenon which was marked also throughout Europe after the Napoleonic wars.  We may also notice that the decline has been of late slightly more rapid in Germany, falling from a high birth-rate, than in England, where the maximum was never so high.  Another fact which comes out when the German figures are more carefully examined is that urbanisation in Germany has a sterilising effect which is not operative in England.  Prinzing gives the comparative figures of legitimate fertility for Prussia as follows: 

1879-1882 1894-1897

Berlin 23.8 16.9[20]
Other great towns 26.7 23.5
Towns of 20,000 to 100,000 26.8 25.7
Small towns 27.8 25.9
Country districts 28.8 29.0