EUROPE'S DANGER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 14, 17 January 1930, Page 9

EUROPE'S DANGER

OVER-POPULATION

A CRAMPING INFLUENCE

CHANGE IN HISTOEY

(By Guglieimo Ferrero.)

(Copyright.) All civilisations that succeeded one another i... Europe until the century before last were dominated by the fear of developing themselves unduly one day at the risk of the next day's means of survival. In those times famine ran rife; civilisations shrank before them, avoiding rapid development so as to placate the evil that threatened them.

On the whole, we are most ill informed on ancient populations. One thing is certain. They were few and far between, slow to increase., and prompt at disappearance. Oliganthropy, as the Greeks called scarcity of the human race, was then an evil that seemed to be without remedy.

• A few symptoms tend indirectly to- - wards a supposition that, the Middle Ages were more prolific than the ages of antiquity. Merit attaches to the advance of Christianity. Christianity ordained the family Around the domestic hearth in making a sacrament of marriage. But religious celebacy, anarchy, and poverty were general factors acting in a sense against the new light that had broken upon society. Again, from time to time, plagues and pestilence swept over entire countries and in a few months destroyed progress that represented the work of many years. Then, what remained of'civilisation had to start all over again. Gradually, as we come nearer to our own epoch, we see an increase in Europen populations and after the French Revolution, in the XIX century, our ancient continent became vertably the "Mother of the Peoples." PERPLEXING QUESTION. The greatest audacity of modern civilisation may perhaps have been the revolt of poverty against the prudence ■of its ancestors; against the spirit of reason commanding populations not to increase and multiply regardless of means of obtaining their daily bread. The poorest nations and classes were those which, until the XIX century, increased the most rapidly, even in the most sterile, regions, in open defiance of the threat of starvation that at one time had been held like a sword of Damocles over their ancestors? heads. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, and at the dawn of the nineteenth, Europe took alarm. The economists of the day queried one another with the vexed interrogation as to how the general increase in population would "be fed, for the world was iio more, an earthly paradise then than it is now. But the miracle which the wisdom of ancient times had decreed as impossible, actually manifested itself. Fam : me, which neither precaution nor sterility had had the power to combat, was disarmed by foolhardiness. In the face of emergencies resources multiplied with the augmented populations, and then—the miracle—resources surpassed populations 1 Hand in hand with necessity, abundance came upon the . heels of need. Space was exploited, the possibilities of nature extended. In one hundred years, humanity, long-suffer-ing and famine-driven, became a giant with capacious limbs that developed the power of conquering continents and . oceans alike. , And by, degrees, the economist, at .first so troubled and unsure, took courage During the XIX century Europe arose and multiplied; she was the mother of might and riches, and condemned in verse and prose alike Christian asceticism; and caution; she chose as sign of valour the flourishing multiplication of the human race. Now of late, experts have* started again to Bhow signs of disquietude, exactly as they did at the end of the eighteenth century and the opening of the'nineteenth. HOW EUROPE LIVES. How did Europe of the nineteenth century succeed in accomplishing the miracle of nourishing in abundance a population whose, density exceeded by . a large margin the resources of her territories! Merely by a clever combination of work and capital. Europe has succeeded in living on the whole world, by sending out in countries that were too' young and in countries that were too old, intelligence, vigour, capital; .manufactured products, works of art; in short, everything that the countries in question lacked; every requisite they might need in the living and modelling ©f themselves according to the European standard and in the exploiting of the virgin riches still hidden in their coil. Commerce, emigration, political domination, banking, sciences, and arts . lave only been the varied forms of that conquest of the whole earth on the reeults of which the greatest nations of Europe thrive until 1914. The. whole universe paid yearly an immense monetary tribute to Europe in fraw materials in exchange for capital, {manufactured products, works of art, -J»nd the results of scientific researches Jfrith which Europe furnished it. But the World War and subsequent Revolutions have destroyed in part this universal empire of capital and work «n which Europe thrived. All around 'jus, this vast Continent that had spread widened since 1848, is narrowing Sts boundaries. Europe is being cramped once more, aad the cramping influence threatens to stifle her. Bussia, the greatest part of China, .fend Turkey, are now closed to labour, :*to capital, and to the merchandises ■lEurope used to export there. Those 'jgates have been shut by the triple catastrophe of war, revolution, and knisery. Half of Europo and of Asia, vast regions in America, in Russia, Germany, (and Austria, Hungary, Turkey, China, {and Mexico are immense cemeteries of credits, where the thrift of Seountless generations lies buried and Jost under the ruins of a disintegrated [world. North America that before the war Jised to absorb one million Europeans to almost completely closed to immigration. Hitherto the banker of the whole jrorld, Europe for the last fifteen years las been indebted to the riches of its children, the United States. CAPITAL LACKING. Factories multiplied during the war put part of our custom is . dispersed how. While the nations of Europe were busy in their work of mutual destruction, other nations learned how to capture industry. They seized and held their prizes—the markets for woven goods; foundry works, smelting, etc. Manufacture of goods that were once the prerogative of most important nations changed hands as these other countries grasped their opportunity. Capital is lacking everywhere in Europe. The middle-classes have become poor, and thus'lessened the possibilities of saving and thrift. Success is relegated to a few groups of tho biggest capitalists. Taxes, debts, and laws operating against acquired riches *—all these obstacles against progress ihat arise in different forms in all the different States only tend to aggravate $he evil. We are coming to a turning-point in history. Part of Europe will soon see fhat the Continent is over-populated, jpad that this excess is one of the fun-

damental causes of the social and political unease that torments its civilisation.

Over-population has its origins far removed from the present day, since that trend had begun to be apparent more than a century ago. But the exceptional circumstances in which Europe lived since 1848 up till 1914 did not permit the people to feel the effects of that excess. Bapid multiplication of the species had even been transformed into a decisivo advantage. It has been tho principal cause of Europe's conquest of the earth effected during the nineteenth century by armed force work, thought, the coming of the railway and the telegraph, etc.

Social and industrial progress gave birth to the supreme illusion of optimism. It is still believed that Europe is capable of supporting the burden of unlimited populations. But the immovable limits of reality and logic are enforcing a progressive slow-ing-up process in those over-populated regions of Europe. That slowing-up process was fated to produce itself, but the World War hastened its progress. That is one of the least apparent, but one of the most important and fundamental changes that arc taking place in the life of Europe to-day.