ANGLO-SAXON RACE SUICIDE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9363, 10 October 1908, Page 2

ANGLO-SAXON RACE SUICIDE.

AND THE ONCOMING OF THE COLOURED NATIONS. i (By an IMPERIALIST, in the " Pall | | Mall Gazette.") I Of the many subjects debated by the j gjeat Pan-Anglican gathering of eccle- J siastics and laymen in. London, none j have posessod greater importance than that of race-suicide. It may be doubted, however, -whether many of these who listened were enabled to gather any very clear idea of how the facts involved in this question are operating at the present time upon the permanence of our national influence and upon all the hopes and ambitions associated with what wo call our national destiny. It iv of little avail for Church and people to entertain noble aspirations for the future of Christendom, and for their own place and part therein, if they and their fellow-nations who for so lon^ have headed the march of social and moral progress are exhibiting unmistakable signs of a declining fertility, pointing to ultimate extinction or supersession by some other form of racial evolution. j Since Charles Pearson^ in his coleI brated and closply-reasftned work " NaI tional Life and Character," foretold the eventual submergence of tho white by the coloured races of the world, t statistics have pointed with much more alarming iteration to the constant decline in man-power of all those nations representing THE HIGHEST STANDARD OF THE I WORLD'S CIVILISATION. But what invests these statistics with so much apprehensive significance is the simultaneous advance in numerical strength and efficiency of the coloured and non-Christian races of the world. In fact, this relative movement — of declension on the one hand and increase on the otlior- -has in our tinio reached such recognised proportions as to suggest ethnological developments containing a formidable menaces to tho future of the white peoples, and to give a serious colour to the racial antagonisms which have already developed in a number of different directions. In Australia, .New Zealand, South Africa and the United States of America the increasing pressure of the coloured races is beginning to make itself felt and to cause alarm. And what we are witnessing in these several quarters is simply the first manifestation of the coming world struggle for elbowroom between the prolilic and the unfertile races of humanity, which threatens to mark the twentieth century with changes as startling as any which history can show. It is because the Anglo-Saxon has been the last great colonising and conquering race which tho world has seen that it is the one now experiencing the first impetus of this new racial movement. But on this account the magniI tude of the danger to the position of j the white races is the more serious, inasmuch as. if we except the caso of France, it i? in tho Anglo-Saxon that declining fertility has become, meet ap- j ' parent.. Tho Teuton, although clam- j j curing for a world-empire, is already i in the throes of tho same declension ; : but in a comparison of racial power ; strictly confined to tho white nations i lio may still justify his ambition to j supersede tho Anglo-Saxon by statistics ' showing, not an increase., but a much i less rapid decline in man-power than his rivals. And the meaning of this is that by the time the Teuton was, comparatively, ready to supersede the An-glo-Saxon, he would be faced by a far more powerful competitor for empire in those races of tho more highly prolific coloured world which hnvo already exhibited ECONOMIC AND MILITARY EFFI- ! GIENCY OF THE HIGHEST CHARACTER. But, whether the Anglo-Saxon race were ousted by the Teuton or by the teeming millions of a conquering coloured Power, its doom would be equally melancholy. HoAvover we. look at it, it seems to have committed itself to a ! process of racial suicide which, despite the lamentations of ecclesiastics, can j only have one ultimate outcome. A century ago, amidst a rising tide of national prosperity, the British population was going up by leaps and bounds, and pouring a stream of colonising energy into the northern conti- | nont of America and Australasia. But I thirty-two years ago the British birthI rate reached its maximum of 3G.3 per | thousand. Since then it has fallen I I steadily to the extent of 20 per cent in a generation, and double that figure in some of our large centres of population. It is claimed that we have reduced the death-rate, but this merely means that we have postponed the decrease of the older and inefficient part of our population, while the infant death-rate is almost as high as ever; and this, in connection with a lower birth-rate, is what bears upon the future of our race. The fact remains that the British population are nowaI days marrying late and are bearing I fetver children. I ' Now, it kn.ti been sugjjefitecl by Radi-

cal writers that this declining fertility is only to be expected of an old and stable community. Such people are characteristically only capable of comprehending Britain as an old kingdom, not as a young and incomplete Empire. It is in the latter sense that the decreased fertility observable In the United Kingdom becomes so alarming when we see it in an even more aggravated, form in THE GREAT OFFSHOOTS OF THE BRITISH RACE OVERSEAS. In Australia for the last twenty- five to thirty-fivo years the birth-rate has 6hown a steady decline. It is now between that of Great Britain and France. In some of the colonies the decline" has been exceptionally rapid, a« much as a fall of 7to 10 per 1000. In Victoria and South Australia it has fallen over 23 per cent in the last ten years. In New Zealand, the most prosperous and advanced of our offshoots in the Pacific, the birth-rate is steadily falling from ite former position at the head of all tho Australasian colonies. The marriage rate is not less, but marriages are ur.fertilo. In Canada, in. spite of constant reinforcements by immigration, the Anglo--Saxon shows precisely the same tendency — a steady decline, in face of a wonderful fertility on the part of the lirench-Canadian, with a birth-rate of 3o to 40 per 1000. When we compare this with a Birth-rate of 21 per 1000 in Ontario, which is almost exclusively ! Anglo-Saxon, it is impossible to ignore the inference that hero, too, our Tace is forfeiting tho one condition of permanence. But the Anglo-Saxon is declining outside the limits of the British Empire. The increase contributed to the population of the United. States by AngloSaxon marriages is now insignificant compared with the ratio of early days — with the right children per marriago- of the seventeenth century, over six oi tho eighteenth, or four and five of the early nineteenth century. It is now between two and one, while the statistics of sterility show a far higher percentage among the Anglo-Saxon than among the foreign stock of America. In fact, tho fertility of the former is very much lower than even that of France. It is too evidently dwindling away. The full significance, of this last comparison will be apparent if we realise that Franco, as a whole nation, presents the most serious instance of racial felo do pp. Lcfis than fifty years ago her population equalled Germany's, and wa* much above that '»f Great Britain, if is now inferior to both, and, with | death-rate almost equal to its annual birth-rate, has PRACTICALLY LOST ITS POWER OF GROWTH. In short, of the leading white Taces to-day, Great Britain's birth-rate has fallen within the last fifteen years from 30 to 27 per 1000,, and her colonies show an even greater loss of Anglo-Saxon man-power; Germany's, within thejtast four years, has declined from 35.7 to 34.1. In the United States tho decrease is so marked as to point to the conclusion that foreign immigration is entirely responsible for tho increase shown.. And with regard to the few European countries where the birthrate is stationary or shows a flight increase, adverse moral and sanitary conditions are responsible for a largo destruction of the increase. By themselves these facts are sufficiently disquieting. They become alarming when placed side by side with established (acts relating to the enormously swelling multitudes 01. the coloured peoples, headed by the two great and civilised branches of the yellow race. Nothing in racial statistics is more remarkable than the upward rush of Japan's population in the last twenty-seven years. Within that period, in spite of a great advance in civilisation, her birth-rate has shown tho extraordinary rise of from IV to dl per 1000. Looking at China, we find her teemine; millions, wlucn have lor a long time been overflowing her limits, have only been restrained from pouring 1 forth in'an inundating flood by reason of the general practice of infanticide, j But reforming efforts are already being made to put an end to this, which, if effective, will be certain to result in a vast overflow into the outside world. Simultaneously, the growing swarms of India are adding their weight to the ever-increasing pressure, fhile the black masses of Africa are multiplying as never before in times of continual internecino warfare, and throughout the Dark Continent there is emerging a problem full of future menace to the j predominant but i DWINDLING RACES OF OVER- i CIVILISED WHITE PEOPLE. : who havo maiy.tuin.e4 their position ;

! hitherto by a- monopoly of mental and material advantages which is fast leaving them. The white race is steadily losing ground, and the coloured is as steadily gaining it. What is to be the ultimate outcome of this phenomenon which almost promises to resuscitate the supremacy of Asia and Africa? And why not? For it will be prudent to remember that it was these which endowed the world with its earliest civilisation, its first ethical ideas, all the primitive axioms of science, and all the germs of social organisation. Or does the phenomenon mean that racial death is the inevitable end of civilising effort, that the highest stages are only attainable over the piled-up strata of dead empires and perished races? I have no space here to analyse the cause of the growing infertility of the best white nations. But, as one who would not too readily despair of his own race. I would point to the fact that Britain displayed the most vigorous powers of reproduction when her energies were stimulated by the onward sweep of commercial prosperity a hundred years ago. Foreign rivals in thick protective armour have checked our commercial advance, and we are now reduced to an enervating defensive and to the unstimulating task of holding our oavilV In all history true prosperity implies advance and a spirit of elan. Tins we have lost, and have settled down to a condition of stagnating civilisation, the amount of prosperity we still retain both at home and iv tho colonies being tempered by an enervating selfishness characteristic of a commercial status which, to use a slang expression, has got the push instead of giving; it. For the rest, it is little wonder that racial reproduction is checked by A DESIRE TO LIVE FOR THE PRESENT INSTEAD OF THE FUTURE. These broad lines of racial decadence tlie chastened Cobdenite, pointing with a satisfied eye to " improved social condition!?." accepts resignedly as the natural fruits of evolution. In his hands the Empire will continue its downward course to perdition. And yet it i/s an Empire of little more than pillars and foundations. Surely it was meant to be roofed in, walled round, and completed as an homogeneous unity. I It is yeb possible. All that is required lis a revivifying influence. Mr ChaniI berlain has shown us how to inspire the commercial organisation of va united Empire with the same_ elan and progressive enthusiasm which marked the trade of the mother islands a century ago, when the British birth-fate kept pace with our trading activity. As it was on an insular scale, so may it be on an Imperial scale. But to this there is only one way, and the alternative is national decay.