It is an important question whether a crowded population adds to the security of a nation or not.  Numbers are undoubtedly of great importance in modern warfare.  The French would have been less able to resist the Germans without allies in 1914 than they were in 1870.  But we must not suppose that France could support a much larger population without reducing her standard of living to the point of under-deeding; and an under-fed nation is incapable of the endurance required of first-class soldiers.  A nation may be so much weakened in physique by under-feeding as to be impotent from a military point of view, in spite of great numbers; this is the case in India and China.  Deficient nourishment also diminishes the day’s work.  If European and American capital goes to China, and provides proper food for the workmen, we may have an early opportunity of discovering whether the supporters of the League of Nations have any real conscientious objection to violence and bloodshed.  We may surmise that the European man, the fiercest of all beasts of prey, is not likely to abandon the weapons which have made him the lord and the bully of the planet.  He has no other superiority to the races which he arrogantly despises.  Under a regime of peace the Asiatic would probably be his master.  To return from a short digression, we must note further that a nation with a low standard has no reserve to fall back upon; it lives on the margin of subsistence, which may easily fail in war-time, especially if much food is imported when conditions are normal.  It can hardly be an accident that in this war the nations with a high birth-rate broke up in the order of their fecundity, while France stood like a rock.  The sacrifice of comfort to numbers, which we have seen to be possible by maintaining a low standard of living, not only diminishes the happiness of a nation, and keeps it low in the scale of civilisation; it may easily prove to be a source of weakness in war.

The expedients often advocated to encourage denser population—­which those who urge them thoughtlessly assume to be a good thing—­such as endowment of parenthood, and better housing at the expense of the taxpayer—­have no effect except to penalise and sterilise those who pay the doles, for the benefit of those who receive them.  They are intensely dysgenic in their operation, for they cripple and at last eliminate just those stocks which have shown themselves to be above the average in ability.  The process has already advanced a long way, even without the reckless legislation which is now advocated.  The lowest birth-rates, less than half that of the unskilled labourers, are those of the doctors, the teaching profession, and ministers of religion.  The position of this class, intellectually and often physically the finest in the kingdom, is rapidly becoming intolerable, and it is the wastrels who mainly benefit by their spoliation.