persons a year are directly murdered. In China, between three and
six millions of infants are annually destroyed, while the total
infanticide record of the whole world is appalling. In Africa,
now, human beings are dying by millions of the sleeping sickness.
More destructive of life than war, is industry. In all civilised
countries great masses of people are crowded into slums and
labour-ghettos, where disease festers, vice corrodes, and famine
is chronic, and where they die more swiftly and in greater numbers
than do the soldiers in our modern wars. The very infant
mortality of a slum parish in the East End of London is three
times that of a middle-class parish in the West End. In the
United States, in the last fourteen years, a total of coal-miners,
greater than our entire standing army, has been killed and
injured. The United States Bureau of Labour states that during
the year 1908, there were between 30,000 and 35,000 deaths of
workers by accidents, while 200,000 more were injured. In fact,
the safest place for a working-man is in the army. And even if
that army be at the front, fighting in Cuba or South Africa, the
soldier in the ranks has a better chance for life than the
working-man at home.
And yet, despite this terrible roll of death, despite the enormous
killing of the past and the enormous killing of the present, there
are to-day alive on the planet a billion and three quarters of
human beings. Our immediate conclusion is that man is exceedingly
fecund and very tough. Never before have there been so many
people in the world. In the past centuries the world’s population
has been smaller; in the future centuries it is destined to be
A Collection of Stories
7
larger. And this brings us to that old bugbear that has been so
frequently laughed away and that still persists in raising its
grisly head–namely, the doctrine of Malthus. While man’s
increasing efficiency of food-production, combined with
colonisation of whole virgin continents, has for generations given
the apparent lie to Malthus’ mathematical statement of the Law of
Population, nevertheless the essential significance of his
doctrine remains and cannot be challenged. Population DOES press
against subsistence. And no matter how rapidly subsistence
increases, population is certain to catch up with it.
When man was in the hunting stage of development, wide areas were
necessary for the maintenance of scant populations. With the
shepherd stages, the means of subsistence being increased, a
larger population was supported on the same territory. The
agricultural stage gave support to a still larger population; and,
to-day, with the increased food-getting efficiency of a machine
civilisation, an even larger population is made possible. Nor is
this theoretical. The population is here, a billion and three
quarters of men, women, and children, and this vast population 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-
A Collection of Stories
8
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
A Collection of Stories
9
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