Pass on, again, from that—you see I am only touching each point—and take a question of national import, the deterioration of the physique of the people who live in our large cities. That has been going on now for generations, and it has been shown very plainly in the lowering standard of height for enlistment in the Army. On the other hand, if you look at the well-to-do classes you will find rather an increase in strength and physique amongst them, especially amongst the women, because these take so much more part in outdoor life than they did in the past, and so you find they are growing taller and stronger, but the great mass of the population is growing shorter and weaker. But it is that great mass of the population from which the majority of your nation comes. They reproduce most rapidly; they are the people who swell the Registrar-General’s returns; from them the future nation is most largely produced; and it is no good to have upper classes strong and vigorous and well-fed if the mass of your population is deteriorating in strength and vigour. There, again, you have one of these pressing problems which it is necessary to answer; for these problems are like the questions of the Sphinx: the Sphinx put the question, and if the man could not answer it, the Sphinx devoured him. And so with these problems in social organisation; the question is put, and the penalty for not answering is to be devoured, and for the civilisation to pass away. Remedies of sorts are being put forward by doctors and sociologists; sterilisation of the unfit is one of the favourite nostrums or quack remedies of the day. But such remedies are worse than the disease, for they are brutal, and lead to deterioration of _morale_ as well as of physique. You must go down to the root of the causes that make these the unfit, and not bring them forth from the social organisation by the myriad, and then try to find means to check their numbers; and so on that side, again, this insoluble difficulty is facing us.