Before the War, a writer in the _National Review_, desiring to show the impossibility of obviating war by any international agreement, took the example of the conflict with Germany and put the case as follows:-- 'Germany _must_ go to war. Every year an extra million babies are crying out for more room, and as the expansion of Germany by peaceful means seems impossible, Germany can only provide for those babies at the cost of potential foes. 'This ... it cannot be too often repeated, is not mere envious greed, but stern necessity. The same struggle for life and space which more than a thousand years ago drove one Teutonic wave after another across the Rhine and the Alps, is now once more a great compelling force.... This aspect of the case may be all very sad and very wicked, but it is true.... Herein lies the ceaseless and ruinous struggle for armaments, and herein for France lies the dire necessity of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful allies.' 'And so,' adds the writer, 'it is impossible and absurd to accept the theory of Mr. Norman Angell.' Now that theory was, not that Germany and others would not fight--I was very insistent indeed that[26] unless there was a change in European policy they would--but that war, however it might end, would not solve the question. And that conclusion at least, whatever may be the case with others, is proved true. For we have had war; we have beaten Germany; and those million babies still confront us. The German population and its tendency to increase is still there. What are we going to do about it? The War has killed two million out of about seventy million Germans; it killed very few of the women. The subsequent privations of the blockade certainly disposed of some of the weaker among both women and children. The rate of increase may in the immediate future be less. It was declining before the War as the country became more prosperous, following in this what seems to be a well-established rule: the higher the standard of civilisation the more does the birth-rate decline. But if the country is to become extremely frugal and more agricultural, this tendency to decline is likely to be checked. In any case the number of mouths to be fed will not have been decreased by war to the same extent that the resources by which they might have been fed have been decreased. What do we propose to Germany, now that we have beaten her, as the means of dealing with those million babies? Professor Starling, in a report to the British Government,[27] suggests emigration:--