THE WARFARE OF THE CRADLE

New Zealand Tablet, 13 July 1911, Page 1285

THE WARFARE OF THE CRADLE

MR. ROOSEVELT ON RACE DECADENCE WILL ENGLISH AND FRENCH GIVE WAY TO GERMAN AND SLAV ? An Australian writer, Mr. Beale has written a work on Racial Decay, in substance I believe better worth the study of every sincere patriot, not ■ merely in Australia, Great Britain, and Canada, but in the United States of America, than any other 'book that has been written for years (writes ex-President .Roosevelt in the New York Outlook). Fundamental Facts. It sets forth in detail, and illustrates by chart, certain facts which have long been familiar to students and thinkers who care to face the truth, and whose studies and thought are not superficial. But, unfortunately, the facts set forth, though of -fundamental importance to the whole people, are so unpleasant that ease-loving persons who do not care for anything that causes them disquiet refuse to look them in the face; and the great bulk of good people are in ignorance of them, or at least wholly fail to appreciate their far-reaching significance. Mr. Beale deals with the startling decline of the birthrate in Great 'Britain, the Australian'States, and France, this decline being due to the capital sin, the cardinal sin, against the race and against civilisation—wilful sterility in marriage. He only touches on the United States incidentally; but every student of the subject knows that the United States shares with the other English-speaking conn-* tries the melancholy and discreditable position of coming next to the people of France, among great civilised countries, in that rapid decline of the birth-rate, which inevitably signalises race decay, and which, if unchecked, moans racial death. French Birth’ Rate. , Mr. Beale shows that the decline of the birth rate in France because of wilful sterility in marriage began fifty or sixty years ago, and has continued to such a point that the French race in France for the last decade has been actually decreasing in numbers, the population of France being kept practically level only by the higher birth rate among immigrants, chiefly Italians and Germans. Among the English-speaking peoples there has long been much complacent pointing at France as a nation that no longer held its own among the peoples of the earth. As a matter of fact, the English-speaking peoples have now all entered on the same course which France has followed, until year by year she has become less and less able to rank as the equal of Germany. Moreover, the decline in the birth rate among the English-speaking peoples has proceeded at an. even more rapid rate than in France itself. New Zealand Copies France. One of the strangest and saddest things in the whole sad business is that the decline has been most marked in the very places where one would expect to see the abounding vigor of the race most strikingly displayed. In Australia and New Zealand there is no warrant whatever in economic conditions for a limitation of the birth rate, and the course of events in these great new* countries demonstrates beyond possibility of refutation that the decline in the birth rate is not due to economic .forces, and has no relation whatsoever to hard conditions of living. New Zealand is as large as Great Britain and as fertile. Its population is between one-thirtieth and one-fortieth of that of Great Britain. It is composed of the sons and grandsons of the most enterprising and adventurous people in the Old Country, and the New* Zealand people have realised to an extraordinary degree the institutional and industrial ambitions of democracy every where; yet the rate of natural increase in New Zealand is actually lower than in Great Britain, and has tended steadily to decrease. Australia Lacks Folk. The Australians are sparsely scattered over the fringe of the great island continent. It is a continent which could support, without the slightest difficulty, tenfold the present population, and at the same time raise the general standard of well-being. Yet its sparse population tends to concentrate in-great, cities of disproportionate size compared to the country population, just exactly as is the case

in England and the United States, and in so many of , the countries of Europe ; ’ and it increases so slowly that, even if the present rate were maintained, the population would not double itself in the next century; while, if the rate of decrease of the last decade continues, the population will have become stationary'by the middle of the century. T f this is so, then the men who rally to the battle-cry of ‘ A White Australia have indeed ground for anxiety as they think of the teeming myriads steadily increasing north of them in Asia. In private life no man can permanently hold land of which he makes no use, and in the life of nations it is absolutely certain that in the end no race can hold a territory save on condition, of developing and populating it. ■ - - ’ : ' . United States Birth Rate. '*:■ * The same causes that are at work in Australia and New Zealand are at work in just as acute a form among the English-speaking people of Canada, and in a less acute form,-but in a form constantly growing "more acute, in Great Britain. Moreover, they are at work here in the United States no less actively, and their efforts are only partially obscured by the enormous immigration hither. In most of the Southern States there is as yet a purer and higher standard of conduct in this matter; the men and women are truer to the old standards of duty and morality in these fundamental matters which touch the very life of a race, and therefore the birth rate has not yet materially fallen. But throughout, the North and West there has been the .same shrinkage as. in Australia, Canada, and Great Britain, and in the New England States the shrinkage has been not only greater than in the British Empire, but greater than in France itself. New England’s Conscience. There has been much talk of the New England conscience. Most certainly in the past the New England conscience has been a mighty factor in the spiritual growth of this nation. But the New England conscience how sadly needs to be awakened to the frightful and fundamental immorality which it has ignored and condoned. It is utterly vain, .it is a shameful thing, to be conscientious about minor, and relatively unimportant matters,, and yet unconscientious about one great and all-important' matter. Entirely disregarding the effects of emigration, it is true that there are fewer New Englanders of old American ancestry in the New England States to-day than there were fifty.years ago at the outbreak of the Civil War. Sterile American Stock, : The American stock is being cursed with the curse of sterility, and it is earning the curse, because the sterility is wilful. It is due to moral, and not physiological, shortcomings. It .is due to coldness, to selfishness, to love of ease, to shrinking from risk, to an utter and pitiful failure in sense of perspective and in power of weighing what really makes the. highest Joy,- and to a rooting out of the sense of duty or a twisting of that sense into improper channels. Moreover, this same racial crime is spreading almost as rapidly among the sons and daughters of immigrants as among the descendants of the native ; born. If it were confined to Americans of old stock, while it would be a matter of shame to us who are of the old stock, wo could at least feel that the traditions and principles and purposes of the founders of the Republic would, find their believers and exponents among .their descendants by adoption; and in such case I, for one, would heartily throw in my fate with the men of alien stock who were true to the old American principles rather than with the men of the old American stock' who were .traitors to the old American principles. - • y - ... Sterile Immigrants. But the children of the immigrants show the same wilful sterility that is shown by the people of the old stock. It is almost unnecessary to say that the sterility is not physiological—of course, disregarding the naturally numerous exceptions—and in no sense due to the change from Europe to another land. For over two centuries after coming here the descendants of the European settlers were among, the most prolific of mankind; and the same is Uue now of the whites of the Southern: Appalachian region ; while there is probably no race on the face of the earth more prolific than the French of Canada, who have become and continued such during the . very centuries which have seen the sterility among their kinsfolk, the French of Europe, grow until the race is actually going backward in point of numbers. ~ P T l Ui n ? t ,le last decade the increase in population of the United States was almost two-thirds by immigration the increase by birth rate showing a far lower percentage than ever before. Lincoln rarely ventured to prophesy. His chief prophecy, which looked far ahead into the future was about our growth of population, and this has been lamentably falsified by the facts. He prophesied that by this time we would have over two hundred millions of people* and so we would have had if the United States had continued to increase at the rate that it increased during Lincoln s lifetime. As it is, if the present rate of decrease in the birth rate continues, this country will have' become stationary in population by the middle of the century and so will the English-speaking peoples of the British Empire. .. The Strength of Germany. . Men have striven to take comfort to themselves hv saying that all civilised races are having the same experi-

ence. It is not so. There are some of the smaller states of Europe Which has already begun to show similar decadence; but the people of Germany hav^e'as yet hardly begun to show it. ' The great cities, Berlin and Hamburg, for. instance, do show it substantially, as it is, shown in New York, Chicago,, and 'London and if this tendency is not checked, . Germany, in its turn, will begin to travel the same road which France has long travelled, and which the English-speaking peoples are now travelling. It was the warfare of the cradle more than anything else which during the nineteenth century gave Germany its preponderant and dominating position in Europe. In this, warfare Germany now shows signs of yielding to the Slavonic peoples, for the Slavonic races have been hitherto totally unaffected by. the movement. Why the Boer Prospers. What I saw a year ago in East Africa was illuminating. Jn British East Africa the men who discovered the countr-v, who annexed it, who started to settle it. who are governing it, who have made it what it is, are the English. But the men who are breeding its future citizens and masters are the Dutch! ‘The Englishmen there are fine fellows; they, are doing excellent general work; I like and admire them. But as settlers they are hopelessly behind the Boer farmers whom I met, because they have,very small families, and most of them do not look on the^country as their permanent home. Of ten settlers of each nationality the ten Englishmen will bo the leading men in the present life of the colony; but most of them are looking forward to going :i home,’ as they call it, to England; only, three or four of them will be married, and those will among them have only five or six children. The ten Boers think of Africa as their home; each is married, and almost every one has a good-sized, probably a large, family; and. unless conditions change, the future is theirs so, far as the white race in that part of Africa is concerned. Again, to quiet their uneasy consciences, cheap and Shallow men and women, when confronted with these facts, answer that ‘quality is better than quantity,’ and that decrease of numbers will mean increase in individual prosperity. It is false. When quantity falls off, thanks to wilful sterility, the quality will go down, too.- During the half-ccntury in which France has remained nearly stationary, while Germany has nearly doubled in population, the average of individual prosperity has grown much faster in Germany than in France; and social and indus-

trial unrest and discontent have grown faster in France than in Germany.y • , ■ ; / :y . If the processes now at work for a generation continue to work in the same manner and at the same rate of increase during the present century, .by its end France will not carry the weight in the civilised world that Belgium now does, and the English-speaking peoples will, not carry anything like the weight that the Spanish-speaking peoples now do, and the future of the white race will rest in the hands of the German and the Slav; V , A Question for Americans. ; Are. Americans really content, that this land of promise, this land of the future, this abounding and vigorous nation, shall become decrepit in what ought to be the flower of its early manhood? Our forefathers were the heroes of the tremendous epic that tells of the conquest of a continent. The conquerors, the men who dared and did, with hear,ts of steel and the thews of iron, looked fearlessly into tier eyes of the future, and quailed before no task and no danger; are their sons and daughters, in love, of effortless ease and fear of all work and risk, to let the. blood of the pioneers die out of the land, because they shrink from tho most elemental duties of manhood and womanhood? .-