11.2 17.5
Austria 31.3 20.5 10.8
Belgium 22.9 16.4 6.5
France 19.0 17.5 1.5
Germany 28.6 17.3 11.3
Italy 32.4 18.2 14.2
New Zealand 26.5 8.9 17.6
Norway 25.4 13.4 12.0
Roumania 43.4 22.9 20.5
Russia 44.0 28.9 15.1

It will be seen that Australia and New Zealand, with low birth-rates and
the lowest death-rates in the world increase more rapidly than Russia
with an enormous birth-rate and proportionately high death-rate. No one
can doubt that our colonies achieve their increase with far less
friction and misery than the prolific but short-lived Slavs.
Civilisation in a high form is incompatible with such conditions as
these figures disclose in Russia. The figures for Egypt and India are
similar to the Russian, but in India, which is overfull, the mortality
is greater than even in Russia, and the same is true of China, in which
we are told that seven out of ten children die in infancy. It has been
suggested that the fairest measure of a country's well-being, as regards
its actual vitality, is the square of the death-rate divided by the
birth-rate.

It is well known that a decline in the birth-rate set in about forty
years ago in this country, and has gone on steadily ever since, till the
fall now amounts to about one-third of the total births. It thus
corresponds very nearly to the fall in the death-rate during the same
period. It is also well known that this decline is not evenly
distributed among different classes of the people. Until the decline
began, large families were the rule in all classes, and the slightly
larger families of the poor were compensated by their somewhat higher
mortality. But since 1877 large families have become increasingly rare
in the upper and middle classes, and among the skilled artisans. They
are frequent in the thriftless ranks of unskilled labour, and in one
section of well-paid workmen--the miners. The highest birth-rates at
present are in the mining districts and in the slums. The lowest are in
some of the learned professions. In the Rhondda Valley the birth-rate is
still about forty, which is double the rate in the prosperous
residential suburbs of London. In the seats of the textile industry the