and I suppose the wildest anti-Teuton could hardly hope that _more_ than
a million Germans will be actually killed in the present conflict--less
than 1-1/2 per cent.--a fraction which would probably soon be
compensated by the increased uxoriousness of the returning troops.

No, War is no solution for the over-population question. If that
question is a difficulty, other means must be employed. We ask
therefore: (1) Is it a serious difficulty? (2) If so, what is the
remedy?

That over-population is in certain localities a serious difficulty few
would deny. China, with her four hundred millions, is probably
over-populated; that is, with her present resources in production the
population presses against the margin of subsistence and can only just
maintain itself. There is evidence to show that in the past the natives
of some of the Pacific islands, isolated in the great ocean and unable
to migrate to other lands, have suffered from the same trouble. Britain
is often said to be over-populated; but here quite other considerations
come in. Though it might be pleasant for many reasons to have more land
at our immediate command, we cannot fairly say that our population
presses against the margin of subsistence, for the simple reason that
with our immense powers of industrial production and the enormous wealth
here yearly obtained the total, if evenly distributed (anything like as
well, for instance, as in China), would yield to every man, woman, and
child in the United Kingdom an ample affluence.[26] The _appearance_
here of over-population arises from the fact that while the wage-earners
actually produce this mass of wealth, two-thirds of it are taken by the
employers and employing classes. Great portions, therefore, of the
actual producers or producing classes _are_ on the margin of
subsistence, while the rest of the wealth of the country is absorbed by
those trading and dividend-consuming classes of whom I have spoken more
than once in previous pages. There is over-population certainly, but it
is an over-population (as any one may see who walks through the West End
of London or the corresponding quarters of any of our large towns) of
idlers and futile people, who are a burden to the nation. With our
extraordinary industrial system--or want of system--it commonly happens
that the abundance of ill-paid or unemployed workers at one end of the
social scale, by reducing the rates of wages and so increasing the rates
of dividends