"The greater the number of children," as Hamburger puts it, "the greater the cost of each survivor to the family and to the State." Russia presents not only the most typical but the most stupendous and appalling example of this process. Thirty years ago the mortality of infants under one year was three times that of Norway, nearly double that of England. More recently (1896-1900) the infantile mortality in Russia has fallen from 313 to 261, but as that of the other countries has also fallen it still preserves nearly the same relative position, remaining the highest in Europe, while if we compare it with countries outside Europe we find it is considerably more than four times greater than that of South Australia. In one town in the government of Perm, some years ago if not still, the mortality of infants under one year regularly reached 45 per cent, and the deaths of children under five years constituted half the total mortality. This is abnormally high even for Russia, but for all Russia it was found that of the boys born in a single year during the second half of the last century only 50 per cent reached their twenty-first year, and even of these only 37.6 per cent were fit for military service. It is estimated that there die in Russia 15 per thousand more individuals than among the same number in England; this excess mortality represents a loss of 1,650,000 lives to the State every year.[106] Thus Russia has the highest birth-rate and at the same time the highest death-rate. The large countries which, after Russia, have the highest infantile mortality are Austria, Hungary, Prussia, Spain, Italy, and Japan; all these, as we should expect, have a somewhat high birth-rate.