thousand in 1874 decreased to 33.7 in 1880, 32.9 in 1886, 30.4 in 1890,
and to 23.8 in 1912. If the city of Edinburgh is sacrificing at the
fountain-head half of its possible population, the rest of the
English-speaking race is following hard in its wake. The facts which
to-day confront us spell doom. In the year 1911 the legitimate births
in England and Wales numbered 843,505, but if the birthrate had
remained as it was in the years 1876-80, the number would have been
1,273,698. 'That is to say, there was a potential loss to the nation
of 430,000 in that one year 1911.'[1] In the year 1914 the loss is
even greater, for it amounted to 467,837. The nation as a whole is now
sacrificing every year a third of its possible population. This is
surely a terrible fact. The ravages of war, awful though these ravages
have been, are nothing to the ravages which have been self-inflicted.
In the years that are past, the race recovered from the {4} greatest
calamities of war and pestilence because there was a power mightier
than these--that of the child. The abounding birthrate rapidly
replaced the wastage of war. Through the greatest calamities the
nation ever marched forward on the feet of little children. One
generation might be overwhelmed, but

'Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring our boats ashore.'

But alas! when the greatest of all calamities has overtaken the race;
when the young, the noble, and the brave have lain down in death that
the nation might live, the feet of the little children, on which
erstwhile the race marched forward, are not there. We have offered
them up a sacrifice to Moloch.

II

The nation must be wakened to the dire peril in which the steadily
falling birthrate has placed the race. Militarism {5} slays its
thousands; this has strangled its hundreds of thousands. But no
warning note has been sounded by our statesmen. They were doubtless
waiting to see!

The might of every nation depends on the reservoir of its vitality.
Let that desiccate and the nation desiccates. Of this France is the
proof. That France which, a hundred years ago, overran Europe, fifty
years later lay prostrate under the feet of Germany. Twenty years
before that national humiliation, France began to sacrifice her
children. Lord Acton pointed out the inevitable result; the wise of
their own number warned them--but France went on its way down the slope
of mo