=The last touches of art.=--If this protest hurts any one's feelings, that cannot be helped. When the production of thousands of feeble-minded children is involved, the self-esteem of what Mr. George Meredith calls the “accepted imbecile” does not matter. The question is, How soon do we propose to rectify our present course in this respect?--a course which is a shame and a disgrace to our age and nation, and which shall in any case be placed on record in printed words, as well as in young children stamped with degeneracy--in order to point for future ages the question “_An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia regitur orbis?_” “With how little wisdom”--and, whilst perpetrating this shame, ignoring the _one_ indisputable means by which legislation can and must check drunkenness, nearly all other measures having failed since Babylon was an Empire, they were quarrelling about a temperance measure, so-called, which regarded the question of transference of money from one pocket to another as vital, and ignored the one vital question, which is the question of life: a measure showing scarcely a sign, either in its text or in the words of its supporters or in the words of its opponents, that the question of the future race had ever entered into the head of a public man; a measure which left the protection of children from the public-house to the discretion of local magistrates; a measure which certainly, whatever else it might effect, could not have been more carefully drawn if its object were to promote that secret drinking amongst women[72] which means the poisoning of the racial life even before it sees the light. This, then, “_mi fili_,” was what was called practical statesmanship in the year 1908 of the Christian Era: and in order that no last touch might be wanted from the hand of ignorance and the blasphemous idolatry which worships gold to the neglect of the only true god, which is life, they announced just at this time the issue of a Royal Commission to enquire and report upon the manufacture and variations in the composition of whiskey. It has been a public joke for years past that no one can answer the question, “What is whiskey?” Well, then, I will answer the question, and we may save the labour of such commissions hereafter. Whiskey is a _racial poison_, and there is nothing else to know about it worth knowing _for the future_. Those who will never become, or can no longer become, fathers or mothers, may do as they please about whiskey, so far as the ideal of eugenics or race-culture is concerned. They may say, if they like, that their personal habits are their affair and concern no one else. Under the influence of whiskey they may, perhaps, even believe this. But for those who are to be the fathers and mothers of the future, such a plea is idle. The question is not solely their affair; it is the affair of the unborn, and we who champion the unborn are bound to say so.