Assuming that a nation as a whole prefers a policy of this kind, and aims at such an equilibrium of births and deaths as will set free the energies of the people for the higher objects of civilised life, how will it escape the cacogenic effects of family restriction in the better classes combined with reckless multiplication among the refuse which always exists in a large community?  This is a problem which has not yet been solved.  Public opinion is not ready for legislation against the multiplication of the unfit, and it is not easy to see what form such legislation could take.  Many of the very poor are not undesirable parents; we must not confound economic prosperity with biological fitness.  The ‘submerged tenth’ should be raised, where it is possible, into a condition of self-respect and responsibility; but they must not be allowed to be a burden upon the efficient; and the upper and middle classes should simplify their habits so far as to make marriage and parenthood possible for the young professional man.  Special care should be taken that taxation is so adjusted as not to penalise parenthood in the socially valuable middle class.

For some time to come we are likely to see, in all the leading nations, a restricted birth-rate, prompted by desire for social betterment, combined, however, with concessions to the rival policy of commercial expansion, growing numbers, and military preparation.  The nations will not cease to fear and suspect each other in the twentieth century, and any one nation which chooses to be a nuisance to Europe will keep back the progress and happiness of the rest.  The prospect is not very bright; a too generous confidence might betray some nation into irretrievable disaster.  But the bracing influence of national danger may perhaps be beneficial.  For we have to remember the pitiable decay of the ancient classical civilisation, which was partly due, as we have found, to a desire for comfortable and easy living.  There have been signs that many of our countrymen no longer think the strenuous life worth while; part of our resentment against Germany resembles the annoyance of an old-fashioned firm, disturbed in its comfortable security by the competition of a young and more vigorous rival.  It is even suggested that after the war we should protect ourselves against German competition by tariff walls.  This abandonment of the free trade policy on which our prosperity is built would soon bring our over-populated island to ruin.

In conclusion, if we leave the distant future to fend for itself when the time comes, what should be our policy with regard to population for the next fifty years?  I am led to an opinion which may seem to run counter to the general purport of this article.  For though the British Isles are even dangerously full, so that we are liable to be starved out if we lose the command of the sea, the British Empire is very far from being over-populated.  In Canada and Australasia there is probably room for nearly