has become endemic may be too
strong for the natural fertility of the nation attacked, as has happened
to several barbarous races; but an invasion of plague, cholera, or
influenza has no permanent effect on the numbers of Europeans. War
resembles plague in its action upon population. When, as in the late
war, nearly the whole of the able-bodied men are on active service, the
loss of population caused by cessation of births is greater than all the
fatal casualties of the battle-field. A rough calculation gives the
result that twelve million lives have been lost to the belligerent
nations by the separation of husbands and wives during the war. And yet
it may be predicted that these losses, added to the eight millions or so
who have been killed, would be made good in a very few years but for the
destruction of capital and credit which the war has caused. If we study
the vital statistics of a country like Germany, which has engaged in
several severe wars since births and deaths began to be registered, we
shall find that the contour-line representing the fluctuations of the
birth-rate indicates a steep ravine in the year or years while the war
lasted, followed by a hump or high table-land for several years after.
In a short time, as far as numbers are concerned, the war is as if it
had never been. When we remember that the number of possible fathers is
much reduced by casualties, this rise in the birth-rate after a war
offers a strong confirmation of the thesis which we have been
maintaining, that the ebb and flow of population are not affected by
conscious intention, but by increased or diminished pressure of numbers
upon subsistence. If the German people, who before the war consumed more
food than was good for them, have been habituated by our blockade to a
reasonable abstemiousness, we shall have contributed to the eventual
increase of the German people, in spite of all their soldiers whom we
killed in France, and the civilians whom we starved in Germany. And if
our success leads to a greater consumption by our working class, our
population will show a corresponding decline. Emigration, as we have
seen, does not diminish the home population by a single unit; and so,
while there are empty lands available for colonisation, it is by far the
best method of adding to the numbers of our race.

It should now be possible to form a judgment on the prospects of the
Anglo-Saxon race in various parts of the world. In India, Burma, Ne