cultural mission of hers; nor can we overlook the fact that the countries with a smaller birth-rate survived the ordeal.  Even from the traditional militaristic standpoint, strength does not reside in numbers, though the Caesars, the Napoleons and the Kaisers of the world have always believed that large exploitable populations were necessary for their own individual power.  If Marxian dictatorship means the dictatorship of a small minority wielding power in the interest of the proletariat, a high-birth rate may be necessary, though we may here recall the answer of the lamented Dr. Alfred Fried to the German imperialists:  “It is madness, the apotheosis of unreason, to wish to breed and care for human beings in order that in the flower of their youth they may be sent in millions to be slaughtered wholesale by machinery.  We need no wholesale production of men, have no need of the `fruitful fertility of women,’ no need of wholesale wares, fattened and dressed for slaughter What we do need is careful maintenance of those already born.  If the bearing of children is a moral and religious duty, then it is a much higher duty to secure the sacredness and security of human life, so that children born and bred with trouble and sacrifice may not be offered up in the bloom of youth to a political dogma at the bidding of secret diplomacy.”

Marxism has developed a patriotism of its own, if indeed it has not yet been completely crystallized into a religion.  Like the “capitalistic” governments it so vehemently attacks, it demands self-sacrifice and even martyrdom from the faithful comrades.  But since its strength depends to so great a degree upon “conversion,” upon docile acceptance of the doctrines of the “Master” as interpreted by the popes and bishops of this new church, it fails to arouse the irreligious proletariat.  The Marxian Socialist boasts of his understanding of “working class psychology” and criticizes the lack of this understanding on the part of all dissenters.  But, as the Socialists’ meetings against the “birth strike” indicate, the working class is not interested in such generalities as the Marxian “theory of value,” the “iron law” of wages, “the value of commodities” and the rest of the hazy articles of faith.  Marx inherited the rigid nationalistic psychology of the eighteenth century, and his followers, for the most part, have accepted his mechanical and superficial treatment of instinct.(5) Discontented workers may rally to Marxism because it places the blame for their misery outside of themselves and depicts their conditions as the result of a capitalistic conspiracy, thereby satisfying that innate tendency of every human being to shift the blame to some living person outside himself, and because it strengthens his belief that his sufferings and difficulties may be overcome by the immediate amelioration of his economic environment.  In this manner, psychologists tell us, neuroses and inner compulsions are fostered.  No true solution is possible, to