far developed that there was little left but to accept it. The Great War
of to-day has shown that such barriers against war as we at present
possess may crumble away in a moment at the shock of the war-making
machine.

We are to-day forced to undertake a more searching inquiry into the
forces which, in civilisation, operate against war. I wish to call
attention here to one such influence of fundamental character, which has
not been unrecognised, but possesses an importance we are often apt to
overlook.

"A French gentleman, well acquainted with the constitution of his
country," wrote Thicknesse in 1776,[1] "told me above eight years since
that France increased so rapidly in peace that they must necessarily
have a war every twelve or fourteen years to carry off the refuse of the
people." Recently a well-known German Socialist, Dr. Eduard David,
member of the Reichstag and a student of the population question,
setting forth the same great truth (in _Die Neue Generation_ for
November, 1914) states that it would have been impossible for Germany to
wage the present war if it had not been for the high German birth-rate
during the past half-century. And the impossibility of this war would,
for Dr. David, have been indeed tragic.

A more distinguished social hygienist, Professor Max Gruber, of Munich,
who took a leading part in organising that marvellous Exposition of
Hygiene at Dresden which has been Germany's greatest service to real
civilisation in recent years, lately set forth an identical opinion.
The war, he declares, was inevitable and unavoidable, and Germany was
responsible for it, not, he hastens to add, in any moral sense, but in a
biological sense, because in forty-four years Germans have increased in