ly falling. This is so, for instance, as regards
England and Germany. Germany, especially, it was once thought--though in
actual fact Germany has not fought for over forty years--had an interest
in going to war in order to find an outlet for her surplus population,
compelled, in the absence of suitable German colonies, to sacrifice its
patriotism and lose its nationality by emigrating to foreign countries.
But the German birth-rate is falling, German emigration is decreasing,
and the immense growth of German industry is easily able to absorb the
new generation. Thus the declining birth-rate of civilized lands will
alone largely serve in the end to eliminate warfare, partly by removing
one of its causes, partly because the increased value of human life will
make war too costly.

(4) _The Natural Exhaustion of the Warlike Spirit._ It is a remarkable
tendency of the warlike spirit--frequently emphasized in recent years by
the distinguished zoologist, President D.S. Jordan, who here follows
Novikov[227]--that it tends to exterminate itself. Fighting stocks, and
peoples largely made up of fighting stocks, are naturally killed out,
and the field is left to the unwarlike. It is only the prudent, those
who fight and run away, who live to fight another day; and they transmit
their prudence to their offspring. Great Britain is a conspicuous
example of a land which, being an island, was necessarily peopled by
predatory and piratical invaders. A long series of warlike and
adventurous peoples--Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans--built
up England and imparted to it their spirit. The English were, it was
said, "a people for whom pain and death are nothing, and who only fear
hunger and boredom." But for over eight hundred years they have never
been reinforced by new invaders, and the inevitable consequences have
followed. There has been a gradual killing out of the warlike stocks, a
process immensely accelerated during the nineteenth century by a vast
emigration of the more adventurous elements in the population, pressed
out of the overcrowded country by the reckless and unchecked increase of
the population which occurred during the first three-quarters of that
century. The result is that the English (except sometimes when they
happen to be journalists) cannot now be described as a warlike people.
Old legends tell of British heroes who, when their legs were hacked
away, still fought upon the stumps. Modern poets feel that to pi