Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/154

 of this inequality? Here we encounter two widely divergent views. Most members of civilized countries believe that their national and racial population is superior in mental, moral, and other cultural values to the peoples of the backward countries, and in a less degree to the peoples of other civilized countries. “We are the best people” seems a natural sentiment for patriots. It is certainly the valuation of Britons, Americans, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and the Russians of to-day. If, therefore, an “optimum” population for the world is to be an avowed aim for a world policy, these self-declared superiorities of nation and race must be taken into account. But such a theoretic accountancy is not either feasible or logically defensible. Such sense of national or racial supremacy may be natural, but it cannot be taken as a disinterested judgment. But are we, therefore, to deny that any inherent superiority of human values attaches to any or all of the civilized white peoples, and that it matters nothing if they decline in population and are displaced by the more prolific populations of Asia and Africa? Even the minority of thinkers who are persuaded that no inherent differences of racial values exist and that all the higher qualities of civilized life are due to differences of environment and education, would have to admit that these differences require a considerable time for their beneficial operation, and that a rapid decline of the more civilized peoples could not be compensated immediately by the fuller oppor-