It seems necessary to consider the political aspect of eugenics because that aspect is frequently invoked, and a man’s attitude towards this question is frequently determined beforehand by what he considers that Individualism or Socialism demands.  We see that when the question is driven home our political attitude makes no difference.  It is only a shallow Individualism, it is only a still more shallow Socialism, which imagines that under modern social conditions the fundamental racial questions can be left to answer themselves.

III

Many years before the Great War, in all the most civilised countries of the World, there were those who raised the cry of “Race-Suicide!” In America this cry was more especially popularised by the powerful voice of Theodore Roosevelt, but in European countries there were similar voices raised in tones of virtuous indignation to denounce the same crime.  Since the war other voices have been raised in even more high-pitched and feverish tones, but now they are less weighty and responsible voices, since to those who realise that at present there is not food enough to keep the population of the world from starvation it seems hardly compatible with sanity to advocate an increased rate of human production.

Now, though it is easy to do so, we must not belittle this cry of “Race-Suicide!” It is not usually accompanied by definite argument, but it assumes that birth-control is the method of such suicide, and that the first and most immediately dangerous result is that one’s own nation, whichever that may be, is placed in a position of alarming military inferiority to other nations, as a step towards the final extinction.  It is useless to deny that it really is a serious matter if there is danger of the speedy disappearance of the human race from the earth by its own voluntary and deliberate action, and that within a measurable period of time—­for if it were an immeasurable period there would be no occasion for any acute anxiety—­the last man will perish from the world.  This is what “Race-Suicide” means, and we must face the fact squarely.

It can scarcely be said, however, that the meaning of “Race-Suicide” has actually been squarely faced by those who have most vehemently raised that cry.  Translated into more definite and precise terms this cry means, and is intended to mean:  “We want more births.”  That is what it definitely means, and sometimes in the minds of those who make this demand it seems also to imply nothing more.  Yet it implies a great number of other things.  It implies certain strain and probable ill-health on the mothers, it implies distress and disorder in the family, it implies, even if the additional child survives, a more acute industrial struggle, and it further involves in this case, by the stimulus it gives to over-population, the perpetual menace of militarism and war.  What, however, even at the outset, more births most distinctly and most unquestionably