Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/165

 cide” is supposed to be most actively at work, is yearly increasing in numbers.

It is interesting to note, moreover, that the French have been increasing faster, that is to say the survival-rate has been higher in recent years just before the war, when the birth-rate was at its lowest, than they were twenty years earlier, with a higher birth-rate. And if we take a wider sweep and consider the growth of the French population towards the end of the eighteenth century, we find the birth-rate estimated at the very high figure of 40. But the death-rate was nearly as high, the average duration of life was only half what it is now. So that the survival-rate in France at that time, with widely different rates of birth and death, was not much unlike it is now. The recent French birth-rate of 19 and less, which automatically causes the “Race-Suicide” marionette to dance with rage, is producing not far from the same result in growth of the population—we are not here concerned with the enormous difference in well being and happiness—as the extremely high rate of 40 which sends our marionettes leaping to the sky with joy. In war-time England, in 1917, the birth-rate sank to 17.8, yet the death-rate was at 14 and the increase of the population continued. The more the human race commits this kind of suicide, one is tempted to exclaim, the faster it grows!