imply is more deaths.  It is nowadays so well known that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a high death-rate—­the exceptions are too few to need attention—­that it is unnecessary to adduce further evidence.  It is only the intoxicated enthusiasts of the “Race-Suicide” cry who are able to overlook a fact of which they can hardly be ignorant.  The model which they hold up for the public’s inspiration has on the obverse “More Births!” But on the reverse it bears “More Deaths!” It would be helpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts’ own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round and slightly vary the monotony of their propaganda by changing its form and crying out for “More Deaths!” “It is a hard thing,” said Johnny Dunn, “for a man that has a house full of children to be left to the mercy of Almighty God.”

If, however, we wish to consider the real significance of the facts, without regard for the wild cries of ignorant cranks, it is scarcely necessary to point out here that neither the birth-rate taken by itself, nor the death-rate taken by itself, will suffice to give us any measure even of the growth of the population, to say nothing of the progress of civilisation or the happiness of humanity.  It is obvious that we must consider both gains and losses, and put one against the other, if we wish to ascertain the net result.  We may roughly get a notion of what that result is by deducting the death-rate from the birth-rate and calling the remainder the survival-rate.  If we are really concerned with the question of the alleged suicide of the race, and do not wish to be befooled, we must pay little attention to the birth-rate, for that by itself means nothing:  we must concentrate on the survival-rate.  Then we may soon convince ourselves, not only that the human race is not committing suicide, but that not even a single one of the so-called civilised nations of which it is mainly composed is committing suicide.  Quite the contrary!  Every one of them, even France, where this peculiar “suicide” is supposed to be most actively at work, is yearly increasing in numbers.

It is interesting to note, moreover, that the French have been increasing faster, that is to say the survival-rate has been higher in recent years just before the war, when the birth-rate was at its lowest, than they were twenty years earlier, with a higher birth-rate.  And if we take a wider sweep and consider the growth of the French population towards the end of the eighteenth century, we find the birth-rate estimated at the very high figure of 40.  But the death-rate was nearly as high, the average duration of life was only half what it is now.  So that the survival-rate in France at that time, with widely different rates of birth and death, was not much unlike it is now.  The recent French birth-rate of 19 and less, which automatically causes the “Race-Suicide” marionette to dance with rage, is producing not far from the same