special remedy for the present day criminality. Their work is to point to the breeding of the criminal and to urge the importance of stopping his multiplication. As soon as society begins to take steps towards cutting off the supply of the degenerate there will be no object in perpetuating cruel punishments whose only object was deterrence. Alcoholism may be treated as a separate phase of this great question or it may be regarded as but a manifestation of feeble-mindedness. In either case it can be shown that the children of degenerates are those most often prone to the drink evil. It is not a fact that a drunkard's children necessarily grow up drunkards. This assertion which is sometimes met with in Temperance literature is based on a misconception of what heredity is and a misunderstanding of what alcoholism is. Alcoholism tends to eliminate the alcoholic. The children of the drunkard may not be drunkards but they may exhibit weaknesses, cravings for destructive media or absence of self-control which at length terminate their generation. There is only one final cure for national intemperance and that is a more humane imitation of Nature's own plan. Nature seems cruel in its work because its effectiveness is not hindered by moral or humane considerations. Man cannot and must not imitate Nature's ruthlessness even if the process of elimination becomes a slower one. We can imitate Nature's methodical incisiveness without following Nature's murderous indifference. In some directions we may even accelerate Nature's processes, not by increasing the pains and penalties which she inflicts on a gradually disappearing progeny, but by narrowing the circle of the victims; by declining to longer tolerate the procreation of a hopeless generation. I do not deny that temperance and similar effort at moral suasion form a valuable buttress against the worst phenomena of alcoholism. It serves the same purpose of help that bread does to the starving destitute, it does not solve the problem but it is a necessary work all the same, a valuable adjunct to a radical cure, and only objectionable if it stands in the way of prevention which is better than cure.