Obviously 'selfishness' is not operating so far as the mass is concerned, except of course in the sense that a yielding to the passion of hate is self-indulgence. Selfishness, in the sense of care for social security and well-being, might save the structure of European society. It would bring the famine to an end. But we have what a French writer has called a 'holy and unselfish hate.' Balkan peasants prefer to burn their wheat rather than send it to the famished city across the river. Popular English newspapers agitate against a German trade which is the only hope of necessitous Allies obtaining any considerable reparation from Germany. A society in which each member is more desirous of hurting his neighbour than of promoting his own welfare, is one in which the aggregate will to destruction is more powerful than the will to preservation. The history of these last years shows with painful clarity that as between groups of men hostilities and hates are aroused very much more easily than any emotion of comradeship. And the hate is a hungrier and more persistent emotion than the comradeship. The much proclaimed fellowship of the Allies, 'cemented by the blood shed on the field,' vanished rapidly. But hate remained and found expression in the social struggle, in fierce repressions, in bickerings, fears, and rancours between those who yesterday fought side by side. Yet the price of survival is, as we have seen, an ever closer cohesion and social co-operation. And while it is undoubtedly true that the 'hunger of hate'--the actual desire to have something to hate--may so warp our judgment as to make us see a conflict of interest where none exists, it is also true that a sense of conflict of vital interest is a great feeder of hate. And that sense of conflict may well become keener as the problem of man's struggle for sustenance on the earth becomes more acute, as his numbers increase and the pressure upon that sustenance becomes greater. Once more, as millions of children are born at our very doors into a world that cannot feed them, condemned, if they live at all, to form a race that will be defective, stunted, unhealthy, abnormal, this question which Malthus very rightly taught our grandfathers to regard as the final and ultimate question of their Political Economy, comes dramatically into the foreground. How can the earth, which is limited, find food for an increase of population which is unlimited?