Enthusiastic advocates of birth-control claim it as a means of _improving the race_. It is not necessarily anything of the kind. You cannot improve a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle by letting all the individuals breed; whether each individual has a small number or a large number of offspring makes comparatively little difference. The way to improve the flock or herd is to breed only from _the best_ and eliminate the unfit as breeding material. Changes in environment may improve or deteriorate the individuals of one generation, but such changes are not inheritable, excepting in the case of venereal disease. Syphilis, _e.g._, may damage the germ-cells of a man's body, and thus lead to his procreating diseased and damaged offspring--idiots, imbeciles, mental or moral deficients, and so forth, who unfortunately are fertile. Thus the prevention of venereal disease is a eugenic force. It is in fact the _only_ eugenic force in operation at present. Generally speaking, it is the well-developed and high-spirited and enterprising young men who travel most, and who, therefore, are most likely to contract and spread venereal disease. They come in contact with a much larger number of women than those who stay at home instead of wandering abroad. These well-to-do young travellers often marry the finest of our women, and later in life damage or sterilise them through latent or chronic venereal disease. Hence many one-child marriages--due not to the use of contraceptives, but to the action of the gonococcus transferred to the body of the wife. But there is this hope. It is among the mentally alert and well-informed men and women that birth-control is first understood and applied, and it is among this very same class that the medical prevention of venereal disease is also first understood and applied. Thus, there will tend to be less disease among this class than among the mentally torpid and ill-informed masses of the community. This in itself will not _improve_ the race, but it will prevent the deterioration of certain classes and increase their numbers. Nevertheless, so long as the irresponsible and feeble-minded and diseased are permitted to multiply indiscriminately, as at present, they must ultimately outnumber and overwhelm the classes which are practising self-restraint or applying birth-control. This process may even be hastened by a political enfranchisement, which enables twelve feeble-minded persons to outvote two wise men six times over. Thus, to succeed democracy must raise and maintain the general average of brains and character throughout the community. In so far as it permits low-grade individuals to be born in the homes of the masses, and high-grade individuals in the homes of the classes, it is manufacturing a rod to thrash its own back, successful rebellion against which mode of Government ends in mere anarchy and chaos.[D]