h is reproducing itself slowly is in a
stable and organized condition which permits it to undertake adequately
the guardianship of its new members. The high infantile mortality of the
community with a high birth-rate merely means that that community is
unconsciously making a violent and murderous effort to attain to the
more stable and organized level of the country with a low birth-rate.

The English Registrar-General in 1907 estimated the natural increase by
excess of births over deaths as exceptionally high (higher than that of
England) in several Australian Colonies, in the Balkan States, in
Russia, the Netherlands, the German Empire, Denmark, and Norway, though
in the majority of these lands the birth-rate is very low. On the other
hand, the natural increase by excess of births over deaths is below the
English rate in Austria, in Hungary, in Japan, in Italy, in Sweden,
Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, and Ontario, though in the majority of
these lands the birth-rate is high, and in some very high.[102] In most
cases it is the high death-rate in infancy and childhood which exercises
the counterbalancing influence against a high birth-rate; the death-rate
in adult life may be quite moderate. And with few exceptions we find
that a high infantile mortality accompanies a high birth-rate, while a
low infantile mortality accompanies a low birth-rate. It is evident,
however, that even an extremely high infantile mortality is no
impediment to a large natural increase provided the birth-rate is
extremely high to a more than corresponding extent. But a natural
increase thus achieved seems to be accompanied by far more disastrous
social conditions than when an equally large increase is achieved by a
low infantile death-rate working in association with a low birth-rate.
Thus in Norway on one side of the world and in Australasia on the
opposite side we see a large natural increase effected not by a profuse
expenditure of mostly wasted births but by an economy in deaths, and the
increase thus effected is accompanied by highly favourable social
conditions, and great national vigour. Norway appears to have the lowest
infantile death-rate in Europe.[103]

Rubin has suggested that the fairest measure of a country's well-being,
as regards its actual vitality--without direct regard, of course, to the
country's economic prosperity--is the square of the death-rate divided
by the birth-rate.[104] Sir J.A. Baines, who accepts this test, states