Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/481

Rh stronger in offensive ability and attempt to win back piecemeal what they have lost in the past while still "undrilled." "That they must become at least masters of their own houses can not any longer be doubted."

Against this alarmist view two objections may properly be offered on the score of population increase. In the first place, as the colored races approach the standard of the white civilization, the same influences which have reduced white fecundity will increasingly operate among them. As has already been shown, improved modes of living are already making possible a greater population economy among the colored, and the acquisition of still higher standards will lower the birth-rate to a point consistent with these better standards of living. Secondly, it is not at all true that the expansion of the white race has now reached its final geographical limits. Not to assume that certain elevated districts within the tropics may in time be open to white colonization, there are still vast areas in Siberia, South America, South Africa and Australasia so sparsely settled as to be practically uninhabited. It is therefore nearer the truth to say that the habitat of the colored races is now fixed beyond the possibility of notable change except by sporadic migrations, while the greater regions at present sparsely peopled are within the white sphere of influence.

That there already exists, since the rise of Japan, a well-marked sense of race solidarity among the yellow peoples of eastern Asia need