--those of us who know that the foundations of any empire are living men and women, and that, _to quote Mr. Kipling_, “when breeds are in the making everything is worth while,” may wonder what process has been afoot that in three generations English poetry should pass from the sonnets of Wordsworth to “Duke's son, cook's son,” etc.; and may even at times, especially those of us who know what alcohol costs in life, feel a momentary recession of our faith that Great Britain need not now be writing the last page of her great history. Meanwhile, we read the controversy in Parliament and the press concerning alcohol. We see the cannibal cause of beer and spirits, which makes many widows and orphans every day,[74] represented, with an effrontery to which no parallel can ever be imagined, as the cause of widows and children, and we recall the lines which Wordsworth wrote rather more than a century ago:-- “How piteous, then, that there should be such dearth Of knowledge; that whole myriads should unite To work against themselves such fell despite; Should come in frenzy and in drunken mirth, Impatient to put out the only light Of liberty that yet remains on earth!” CHAPTER XIV THE RACIAL POISONS: LEAD, NARCOTICS, SYPHILIS The term racial poisons teaches us to distinguish, amongst substances known to be poisonous to the individual, those which injure the germ-plasm: and amongst substances poisonous to the expectant mother herself, we must distinguish those which may also poison her unborn child. Alcohol is pre-eminently _the_ racial poison, thus defined, and I plead for its recognition as primarily a racial poison, this being immeasurably the most important aspect of the whole alcohol question. Readers of Professor Forel will not lightly question this assertion. The total number of racial poisons is, of course, very large. Amongst them must theoretically be included all abortifacient drugs. There are also various poisons of disease to be included in this category. Later pages must be devoted to what is by far the most important of these. But we may observe in passing that such a disease as rheumatic fever or acute rheumatism has especial significance for the student of race-culture since, as he knows, its poisons circulating in the blood of an expectant mother may not only injure her own heart for life but may pass through the placenta and deform the valves of the child's heart, with the subsequent result loosely described as “congenital heart disease.” The conditions giving rise to rheumatic fever, then, are conditions from which the expectant mother, even more than the ordinary individual, is entitled to be protected. But this is of minor importance. We may here refer, however, to one or two striking cases, especially since they bear in some degree upon social and individual duty.