is
increasing on itself by leaps and bounds.

A heavy European drift to the New World has gone on and is going
on; yet Europe, whose population a century ago was 170,000,000,
has to-day 500,000,000. At this rate of increase, provided that
subsistence is not overtaken, a century from now the population of
Europe will be 1,500,000,000. And be it noted of the present rate
of increase in the United States that only one-third is due to
immigration, while two-thirds is due to excess of births over
deaths. And at this present rate of increase, the population of
the United States will be 500,000,000 in less than a century from
now.

Man, the hungry one, the killer, has always suffered for lack of
room. The world has been chronically overcrowded. Belgium with
her 572 persons to the square mile is no more crowded than was
Denmark when it supported only 500 palaeolithic people. According
to Mr. Woodruff, cultivated land will produce 1600 times as much
food as hunting land. From the time of the Norman Conquest, for
centuries Europe could support no more than 25 to the square mile.
To-day Europe supports 81 to the square mile. The explanation of
this is that for the several centuries after the Norman Conquest
her population was saturated. Then, with the development of
trading and capitalism, of exploration and exploitation of new
lands, and with the invention of labour-saving machinery and the
discovery and application of scientific principles, was brought
about a tremendous increase in Europe's food-getting efficiency.
And immediately her population sprang up.

According to the census of Ireland, of 1659, that country had a
population of 500,000. One hundred and fifty years later, her
population was 8,000,000. For many centuries the population of
Japan was stationary. There seemed no way of increasing her food-
getting efficiency. Then, sixty years ago, came Commodore Perry,
knocking down her doors and letting in the knowledge and machinery
of the superior food-getting efficiency of the Western world.
Immediately upon this rise in subsistence began the rise of
population; and it is only the other day that Japan, finding her
population once again pressing against subsistence, embarked,
sword in hand, on a westward drift in search of more room. And,
sword in hand, killing and being killed, she has carved out for
herself Formosa and Korea, and driven the vanguard of her drift
far into the rich interior of Manchuria.

For an immense period of time China's population has remained at
400,000,000--the saturation point. The only reason that the
Yellow River periodically drowns millions of Chinese is that there
is no other land for those millions to farm. And after every such
catastrophe the wave of human life rolls up and now millions flood
out upon that precarious territory. They are driven to it,
because they are pressed remorselessly against subsistence. It is
inevitable that China, sooner or later, like Japan, will learn and
put into application our own superior food-getting efficiency.
And when that time comes, it is likewise inevitable that her
population will increase by unguessed millions until it again
reaches the saturation point. And then, inoculated with Western
ideas, may she not, like Japan, take sword in hand and start forth
colossally on a drift of her own for more room? This is another
reputed bogie--the Yellow Peril; yet the men of China are only
men, like any other race of men, and all men, down all history,
have drifted hungrily, here, there and everywhere over the planet,
seeking for something to eat. What other men do, may not the
Chinese do?

But a change has long been coming in the affairs of man. The more
recent drifts of the stronger races, carving their way through the
lesser breeds to more earth-space, has led to peace, ever to wider
and more lasting peace. The lesser breeds, under penalty of being
killed, have been compelled to lay down their weapons and cease
killing among themselves. The scalp-talking Indian and the head-
hunting Melanesian have been either destroyed or converted to a
belief in the superior efficacy of civil suits and criminal
prosecutions. The planet is being subdued. The wild and the
hurtful are either tamed or eliminated. From the beasts of prey
and the cannibal humans down to the death-dealing microbes, no
quarter is given; and daily, wider and wider areas of hostile
territory, whether of a warring desert-tribe in Africa or a
pestilential fever-hole like Panama, are made peaceable and
habitable for mankind. As for the great mass of stay-at-home
folk, what percentage of the present generation in the United
States, England, or Germany, has seen war or knows anything of war
at first hand? There was never so much peace in the world as
there is to-day.

War itself, the old red anarch, is passing. It is safer to be a
soldier than a working-man. The chance for life is greater in an
active campaign than in a factory or a coal-mine. In the matter
of killing, war is growing impotent, and this in face of the fact
that the machinery of war was never so expensive in the past nor
so dreadful. War-equipment to-day, in time of peace, is more
expensive than of old in time of war. A standing army costs more
to maintain than it used to cost to conquer an empire. It is more
expensive to be ready to kill, than it used to be to do the
killing. The price of a Dreadnought would furnish the whole army
of Xerxes with killing weapons. And, in spite of its magnificent
equipment, war no longer kills as it used to when its methods were
simpler. A bombardment by a modern fleet has been known to result
in the killing of one mule. The casualties of a twentieth century
war between two world-powers are such as to make a worker in an
iron-foundry turn green with envy. War has become a joke. Men
have made for themselves monsters of battle which they cannot face
in battle. Subsistence is generous these days, life is not cheap,
and it is not in the nature of flesh and blood to indulge in the
carnage made possible by present-day machinery. This is not
theoretical, as will be shown by a comparison of deaths in battle
and men involved, in the South African War and the Spanish-
American War on the one hand, and the Civil War or the Napoleonic
Wars on the other.

Not only has war, by its own evolution, rendered itself futile,
but man himself, with greater wisdom and higher ethics, is opposed
to war. He has learned too much. War is repugnant to his common
sense. He conceives it to be wrong, to be absurd, and to be very
expensive. For the damage wrought and the results accomplished,
it is not worth the price. Just as in the disputes of individuals
the arbitration of a civil court instead of a blood feud is more
practical, so, man decides, is arbitration more practical in the
disputes of nations.

War is passing, disease is being conquered, and man's food-getting
efficiency is increasing. It is because of these factors that
there are a billion and three quarters of people alive to-day
instead of a billion, or three-quarters of a billion. And it is
because of these factors that the world's population will very
soon be two billions and climbing rapidly toward three billions.
The lifetime of the generation is increasing steadily. Men live
longer these days. Life is not so precarious. The newborn infant
has a greater chance for survival than at any time in the past.
Surgery and sanitation reduce the fatalities that accompany the
mischances of life and the ravages of disease. Men and women,
with deficiencies and weaknesses that in the past would have
effected their rapid extinction, live to-day and father and mother
a numerous progeny. And high as the food-getting efficiency may
soar, population is bound to soar after it. "The abysmal
fecundity" of life has not altered. Given the food, and life will
increase. A small percentage of the billion and three-quarters
that live to-day may hush the clamour of life to be born, but it
is only a small percentage. In this particular, the life in the
man-animal is very like the life in the other animals.

And still another change is coming in human affairs. Though
politicians gnash their teeth and cry anathema, and man, whose
superficial book-learning is vitiated by crystallised

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