Naturally it is difficult to trace the accumulation of ability in the upper social strata which is theoretically to be expected. On the other hand, in some subjects at any rate, the symptoms of a world-wide dearth of ability are becoming unmistakable. The Great War, though it made abundantly manifest the prevalence of incompetents in high places, did not reveal the existence either of a great general or of a great statesman anywhere. It is superfluous to insist either on the fatuity of a social organization such as this, or on the certainty of racial degeneration which it entails: but it may be well to draw attention to the _rapidity_ with which these degenerative processes are at present sapping the vitality and value of our civilized races. The failure to reproduce does not, as in former times, affect merely the aristocracy in the highest social strata; it has spread to the whole of the professional and middle classes, and to most classes of skilled labour. It is not too much to say that, with the exception of the miners, none of the desirable elements in the nation are doing their bit to keep up the population, and that its continued growth is mainly due to the unrestrained breeding of the casual labourers and the feeble-minded. In the rest of the population its increase is checked by birth-control and the postponement of marriage, neither of which affects the undesirables. They are too stupid, reckless, and ignorant to practise the former, and have nothing to gain by the latter. Also, to make it quite certain that they shall form a true ‘proletariate,’ the wisdom of our rulers ordains that a knowledge of birth-control shall be a (fatal) privilege reserved for the intelligent and well-to-do. They instruct the police to prevent it from penetrating to the poor and stupid--apparently from the mistaken idea that the State needs plenty of cheap labour and cheap cannon-fodder. So child-bearing remains compulsory for the wretched women of the poor, whereas elsewhere only those women produce children who desire them, and natural selection is thus allowed gradually to eliminate the temperament of the unwilling (and, therefore, probably less competent) mother.