Moreover, in speaking of the rise that has come through the stress of competition in our modern societies, and of the keenness of this stress in the societies that have gone fastest, Mr. Kidd overlooks certain very curious features in human society. In the first place he speaks as though the stress under which nations make progress was primarily the stress produced by multiplication beyond the limits of subsistence. This, of course, would mean that in progressive societies the number of births and the number of deaths would both be at a maximum, for it is where the births and deaths are largest that the struggle for life is keenest. If, as Mr. Kidd’s hypothesis assumes, progress was most marked where the struggle for life was keenest, the European peoples standing highest in the scale would be the South Italians, the Polish Jews, and the people who live in the congested districts of Ireland. As a matter of fact, however, these are precisely the peoples who have made least progress when compared with the dominant strains among, for instance, the English or Germans. So far is Mr. Kidd’s proposition from being true that, when studied in the light of the facts, it is difficult to refrain from calling it the reverse of the truth. The race existing under conditions which make the competition for bare existence keenest, never progresses as fast as the race which exists under less stringent conditions. There must undoubtedly be a certain amount of competition, a certain amount of stress and strain, but it is equally undoubted that if this competition becomes too severe the race goes down and not up; and it is further true that the race existing under the severest stress as regards this competition often fails to go ahead as fast even in population as does the race where the competition is less severe. No matter how large the number of births may be, a race cannot increase if the number of deaths also grows at an accelerating rate. To increase greatly a race must be prolific, and there is no curse so great as the curse of barrenness, whether for a nation or an individual. When a people gets to the position even now occupied by the mass of the French and by sections of the New Englanders, where the death rate surpasses the birth rate, then that race is not only fated to extinction but it deserves extinction. When the capacity and desire for fatherhood and motherhood is lost the race goes down, and should go down; and we need to have the plainest kind of plain speaking addressed to those individuals who fear to bring children into the world. But while this is all true, it remains equally true that immoderate increase in no way furthers the development of a race, and does not always help its increase even in numbers. The English-speaking peoples during the past two centuries and a half have increased faster than any others, yet there have been many other peoples whose birth rate during the same period has stood higher.