Page:The Slavs among the nations by T G Masaryk.djvu/12

 This danger appears to them even more threatening for the future than now. The birth-rate among the Slavs is much greater than among the Germans and the Latins, so that soon the Slavs will be twice as numerous as the other European nations. To-day men are no longer content with a policy which has regard to the present alone; true statesmen also think of the distant future of their nation, and that is why the fertility of the race, or, in concrete terms, the time which a population takes to double itself, is for them a matter of supreme importance. This factor plays such a part that the youth of to-day will doubtless witness a complete transformation of Europe.

The Slavs, and in particular the Russians, the density of whose population is very small compared with the vast territories that they occupy, have the great advantage of possessing lands of an enormous area for their future increase of population.

German politicians call the attention of their fellow-countrymen, more particularly, to this advantageous position of the Russians, and have been fearful at the insufficiency of the German