The London County Council performs a service for philosophy.—As we have seen, there exists or seems to exist a radical antagonism in certain groups of cases between the interests of the individual and the interests of the race. You may preserve the quality of the race, as the Spartans did, by exposing defective infants; you may be kind to feeble-minded children, as we are, but you will injure the race in the long run. Darwin saw this more than a generation ago, but instead of suggesting the prohibition of parenthood to the unfit, he said that we must bear the ill effects of their multiplication rather than sacrifice the law of love. Huxley similarly said that moral evolution consisted in opposing natural evolution. Now it has for some time been evident that this antagonism need not be radical if, whilst devoting hospitals and charity and medical science to the care of the unfit, we deny them the privilege of parenthood. On the other hand, the London County Council by its present action has performed a service to biological philosophy by showing that it is possible to combine the maximum of brutality to the individual and to the present with the maximum of injury to the race and to the future. In his report for 1906 Dr. Branthwaite cites the history of a girl who, at the age of fifteen years and nine months, was convicted in 1881 for being drunk and disorderly. During the next quarter of a century she was sentenced 115 times, and in January, 1906, was sent to a reformatory. She has twice attempted to commit suicide. Her case is, of course, now hopeless, and Dr. Branthwaite predicts that her life will end by suicide. Let any one read Dr. Branthwaite's Report or Dr. Robert Jones's account of Jane Cakebread, or let him acquaint himself with instances as they are to be daily seen, and he will agree that the maximum of brutality is no excessive phrase to describe the policy of shame at present pursued in London: if, indeed, seeing that we now have knowledge, it should not be described as something still worse.

As for the injury to the future, we already know what the present policy effects. We may grant, then, to the London County Council that it has performed a service for philosophy in showing that it is possible to combine both kinds of evil in one harmonious policy. Nor let the reader suppose that any partisan feeling infects this protest. The Government is also to blame. Even had the L.C.C. declined to contribute anything at all to the cost of the proper policy, no really educated and honourable Government had any choice but to undertake all the cost itself—even at the cost of office! Better were—in Mr. Balfour's words, the wisest he ever uttered—“the barren exchange of one set of tyrants, or jobbers, for another,” than the horrible birth of thousands of feeble-minded babies.

The argument from economy.—It would be easy to show that the present policy is not economical even as regards the cost of these women themselves, and even if it be assumed that gold is wealth. But consider the remoter cost. During the period when the present writer was making public protests very nearly every day on this matter without any immediate effect, and only one month after the London County Council had attempted to defend itself on the ground of economy when challenged by the Eugenics Education Society, there was formally opened, with a flourish of trumpets, the eighty-seventh school for feeble-minded children established by the London County Council. It accommodates sixty such children (besides sixty physically defective). This school cost £6,000 to build alone. The sixty feeble-minded children whom it accommodates are not a very large proportion of the 7,000 admittedly feeble-minded school children in London—a number which is probably not more than a third or a fourth of the real number. It has been exhaustively proved that feeble-minded children are mainly, at any given time, the progeny of feeble-minded persons such as constitute the majority of chronic inebriates. Ignorance is again in action. On the one hand, the London County Council, quarrelling over pence, effectively suspends the working of the Inebriates Acts, and thus ensures that the supply of feeble-minded children shall be kept up. On the other hand, it takes these children, cares for them until they are capable of becoming parents, and then turns them upon the world. The Chairman at the opening ceremony of the school referred to said that “at the special schools work was being done which would advance the intelligence of the pupils, and thus benefit the entire race.” It would be difficult to concentrate more ignorance in fewer words or in ten times as many.

A Home Office Committee appointed.—The almost continuous protest of two months did, however, bear fruit, the Home Secretary appointing a Committee to consider the question of the amendment of the Inebriates Acts. But the legal brutalities described are still being perpetrated, and the future is being compromised. The London County Council may be advised to make arrangements for building a few score more schools for defective children in anticipation of the growing need which it is assuring.

Never again, when it is past, must we permit the present abominable policy. It is for public opinion to effect this, and public opinion has only to be directed to the case in order to realise its nature. If the reader pleases he may discount altogether the eugenic argument, though I believe that in the long run that is more important than any other. But if he confines his attention solely to the cruelties perpetrated upon these helpless women, infinitely more sinned against than sinning, and especially if he considers the testimony of Sir Alfred Reynolds above quoted, he will surely lend his aid to put an end to a state of affairs which is a disgrace to our civilisation. We talk of progress, and we are indeed incalculably indebted to our ancestors, but let any one consider the case of the poor child, now a wrecked woman, quoted above, and let him consider what it may be to be an heir of all the ages in the greatest city of the world to-day.

It will be sufficiently evident that if any warrant were needed for the formation of the Eugenics Education Society or for the publication of the present volume, it would be found only too abundantly in the outrage upon decency and morality and science and the future which is at present in perpetration. Further, if any warrant were required for the incessant reiteration of the principle that there is no wealth but life, it would be found in the fact that this outrage is being committed in the name of economy. Yet even if the sane and sober London ratepayer were saved a few shillings now, as he will not be, his children will have to pay pounds in the future for the support of these women's children. Economy, forsooth, when the rates of London benefited to the extent of £559,000 out of the sale of intoxicating liquors in 1905, and spent £8,000 in the maintenance of committed inebriates! Need one apologise for declaring again, that we require a new political economy which teaches that gold is for the purchase of life, and not life for the purchase of gold. For the public outrage under discussion, whereby an untold measure of life, present and to come, “breathing and to be,” is to be destroyed and defiled for a squabble over shillings, one can adequately quote only the words of Romeo to the apothecary: “There is thy gold; worse poison to men's souls, doing more murders in this loathsome world, than those poor compounds that thou may'st not sell.”

The last touches of art.—If this protest hurts any one's feelings, that cannot be helped. When the production of thousands of feeble-minded children is involved, the self-esteem of what Mr. George Meredith calls the “accepted imbecile” does not matter. The question is, How soon do we propose to rectify our present course in this respect?—a course which is a shame and a disgrace to our age and nation, and which shall in any case be placed on record in printed words, as well as in young children stamped with degeneracy—in order to point for future ages the question “An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia regitur orbis?” “With how little wisdom”—and, whilst perpetrating this shame, ignoring the one indisputable means by which legislation can and must check drunkenness, nearly all other measures having failed since Babylon was an Empire, they were quarrelling about a temperance measure, so-called, which regarded the question of transference of money from one pocket to another as vital, and ignored the one vital question, which is the question of life: a measure showing scarcely a sign, either in its text or in the words of its supporters or in the words of its opponents, that the question of the future race had ever entered into the head of a public man; a measure which left the protection of children from the public-house to the discretion of local magistrates; a measure which certainly, whatever else it might effect, could not have been more carefully drawn if its object were to promote that secret drinking amongst women[72] which means the poisoning of the racial life even before it sees the light. This, then, “mi fili,” was what was called practical statesmanship in the year 1908 of the Christian Era: and in order that no last touch might be wanted from the hand of ignorance and the blasphemous idolatry which worships gold to the neglect of the only true god, which is life, they announced just at this time the issue of a Royal Commission to enquire and report upon the manufacture and variations in the composition of whiskey. It has been a public joke for years past that no one can answer the question, “What is whiskey?” Well, then, I will answer the question, and we may save the labour of such commissions hereafter. Whiskey is a racial poison, and there is nothing else to know about it worth knowing for the future. Those who will never become, or can no longer become, fathers or mothers, may do as they please about whiskey, so far as the ideal of eugenics or race-culture is concerned. They may say, if they like, that their personal habits are their affair and concern no one else. Under the influence of whiskey they may, perhaps, even believe this. But for those who are to be the fathers and mothers of the future, such a plea is idle. The question is not solely their affair; it is the affair of the unborn, and we who champion the unborn are bound to say so.

The time will come when it is recognised that there are two classes of active mind in society: those who worship and uphold the past, and will always sacrifice the living to the dead, nay more, the unborn to the dead. The ultimate fate of these is the fate of her who looked backwards to the shame and destruction from which she had escaped. She was turned into a pillar of salt. And there are those who worship and work for the future, who will, without hesitation, sacrifice the interests of the dead (who are no longer interested) to those of the living and the coming race—nay, more, who will even sacrifice the interests of a few worthless living to those of many yet unborn, that they may be worthy. Let the dead bury their dead; let the worshippers of the dead and the dying ask themselves whether the life that is and the life that is to be do not demand their homage and service. Not until some such principles as these are recognised shall we rightly deal with the drink problem, amongst many others, and bring to it the mental and moral enlightenment which makes for life on the higher plane, just as surely and just as indispensably as the light of the sun creates all life whatsoever.

Mr. Balfour on legislation.—Surely the moral of this argument is clear. The most important, the most radical, the most practicable of all temperance measures is that which attacks the main source of supply of the drunkard. When a Licensing Bill is brought before the House of Commons, Mr. Balfour repeats the ancient piece of nonsense that you cannot make people moral by Act of Parliament—an assertion that any child can see to be a muddle. We may let that pass for the moment, but Mr. Balfour is a thinker, a student of biology, and heredity in especial, and he has lately been lecturing on “Decadence.” Might it not have been expected that such a man would take an opportunity to say what the humblest serious student of the subject would have said, and thereby to bring far more damaging criticism against the opposing party's bill than any he hinted at? He might have said, “Your bill, even if passed, will accomplish little, or relatively little, at great cost, because you have no grasp of the principles of the subject. You have no idea of what drunkenness really is. If your bill were worth a straw it would seek as a primary principle to safeguard the race by arresting the supply of potential drunkards. Your endless financial clauses deal merely with the re-distribution of money, but your bill has no clause that deals with the only business of governments, the creation and the economy of the only real wealth, which is human life.” That is what the ex-Premier did not say. He had plenty of passion, plenty of party-feeling to give fire to his words, but so far as knowledge is concerned or any conception of what alone is the wealth of nations, there was nothing to choose between Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith. Passion you must have if you are to do anything, but not party-passion: whereas if you have passion for life and for children, not only will it be effective, but, notwithstanding all that the psychologists tell us as to the vitiation of judgment by emotion, it will actually teach you the supreme and eternal truths.

In this book hitherto little has been said as to formal eugenic legislation. I believe with Etienne that it is opinion which governs the world: legislation in front of public opinion brings all law into contempt. But in his first speech opposing the Licensing Bill of 1908, Mr. Balfour, the author of the Licensing Bill of 1904, decried legislation. “Intemperance,” he said, “is a vice”: and legislation can do practically nothing in dealing with a vice. Plainly Mr. Balfour is ignorant of the nature of intemperance, which largely depends upon transmitted and inherent brain defect. He therefore lost his opportunity of pointing out in what fashion you can actually, notwithstanding the parrots, make people sober by Act of Parliament—viz., by forbidding parenthood to those whose children would almost certainly become drunkards. We who are not politicians, much less ex-Premiers, must make our own proposals then. Last year's criticism of the London County Council began, I believe, to educate public opinion to the necessary point. In the name of race-culture and the New Patriotism, in the name of morality and charity and science, we must demand, obtain and carry into effect the most stringent and comprehensive legislation, such as effectively to forbid parenthood on the part of the chronic inebriate. Ere long, the person who would have become a chronic inebriate will be cared for and protected during childhood and thereafter,—with the same result. This solution of the problem is denounced, says Dr. Archdall Reid,

Women and children first.—The noble cry on a sinking ship is “women and children first.” This perhaps is a plea for the service of helplessness as such, though it might be equally warranted as a demand for the sacrifice of the present to the future. And assuredly the cry for a sinking society must also be “women and children first.” It is well if the cry be raised when the ship of state is not yet sinking, but only water-logged or alcohol-logged. Temperance legislation and the agitation for temperance reform are themselves in need of reform. Their appalling record of failure—for it is such a record—should help even the fanatic, one thinks, to accept the introduction of the eugenic idea as a new principle of life for the temperance cause. In the present state of custom and opinion, the teetotaler cannot force his own wise habits upon the vast majority who do not agree with him. If he has an infinite amount of energy and resources, let him spend as much of both as he pleases upon the sort of propaganda with which we are familiar: he will, by the hypothesis, still have an infinite amount of both available for the cause to which the principle of race-culture would direct him. If, however, his energy and resources are finite,—if, indeed, they are by no means excessive in proportion to the urgent task which the ideal of race-culture asks of him, then let him not fritter away a moment or a penny or a breath until he has achieved the process of salvage or salvation which is expressed in the phrase “women and children first.” More accurately, perhaps, our cry must be “parents and possible parents first,” and this for present practical purposes is equivalent to “women and children first.”

It would have been well if the temperance propaganda from the first, say two generations ago in Great Britain, had adopted this motto. But its adoption is far more urgent to-day in consequence of the fact, unfortunately no longer to be questioned, that drinking amongst women, the mothers of the future, is, and has been for some time, steadily increasing. Children yet unborn must be protected from the injury which may be inflicted upon them by those who will be their mothers. Yet though there is more need for action in this regard than ever before, and though Mr. G. R. Sims in his books The Cry of the Children and The Black Stain has lately drawn wide attention to the subject, we have seen that the principle of women and children first, a principle derived from the ideal of race-culture, and directly serving that ideal, was almost wholly ignored in the Licensing Bill of 1908. The motto “Money, not motherhood,” is a bad one for the framers of a temperance measure. If ever we have a temperance measure worthy the name the motto of its framers will be “Motherhood, not money.” Such a measure will most certainly have to introduce the principle of indeterminate sentences—or rather, indeterminate care—in the treatment of the chronic inebriate. There is no possibility of two opinions as to the urgent and indispensable necessity of such treatment, nor yet as to its scrupulous humanity both for the unfortunate victim himself or herself and for the unborn.

The word “reformatory” had better be abolished from official language, since it leads accredited people to write to The Times such foolishness as “reformation, not mere detention.”

Further, the expense of dealing with the chronic inebriate in this, the only humane and economical way, had better fall entirely and directly upon the state. It must not be possible again for a local authority, even the London County Council, however ignorant or criminally careless, to commit a public indecency like that already recorded—but the full record of which none of us will live to see.

An unpunished magistrate.—Yet again, in this measure there must be some means of compelling such magistrates as cannot be educated. At present, even when accommodation is provided, the unfortunate creature of the Jane Cakebread type, when she is only just beginning to enter into competition with that horrible record, and when she is therefore most dangerous as regards the possibility of motherhood, can be detained only by the magistrate's order. Now it is very much less trouble for all concerned to say “five shillings or a week” than to make the necessary enquiries in such cases. Further, in putting this measure of one's dreams upon the statute book, we shall have to remember that the idea of protective care and the eugenic idea are, to say the least, not native in the mind of every magistrate. In Dr. Welsh Branthwaite's report for 1906, there is quoted a case where a woman had been habitually drunken for at least thirteen years previous to her committal to a reformatory. Her known sentences included 27 fines, and 138 terms of imprisonment. She was feeble-minded. On the termination of her reformatory sentence the discharge certificate described her as “quite unfit to control her own actions,” and “certain to succumb to the first temptation to drink.” The woman was found drunk a few hours after discharge. Said the magistrate, “this case clearly proves that it is almost useless trying to reform such women as this.... I think, after all, the old way is best and therefore I sentence her to one month with hard labour.” I refrain from suggesting a suitable sentence for the magistrate: doubtless he got off scot-free.

Surely we might agree, as regards this racial poison, that at least parenthood and the future must be kept out of its clutches. It may be, it assuredly is, a deplorable thing that the woman of fifty, to take an instance, should become alcoholic, but at the worst this is only the fate of an individual—in the main at any rate. Such principles as these will some day be the cardinal principles of legislation, and not only in regard to alcohol. The time will and must come when public opinion will urge, whether in the name of a New Imperialism or of common morality or of self-protection, that in our attempts to deal with alcohol we shall begin by removing its fingers from the throat of the race: “Women and children first.”

The Report of the Inebriates Committee.—In January, 1909, the Committee which was at last appointed to consider this matter made its Report.[73] I have not the literary capacity to comment adequately upon the political wisdom which brings in a Licensing Bill, devotes vast labour and much time to it and has it rejected by the House of Lords, while such a Committee as this is at work. The spirit of the politician who spoke of “those damned professors” still reigns over us, and will certainly ruin us unless speedily deposed. However, here is the Report, and its recommendations are earnestly to be commended to the study of all students. New legislation, as it shows, is urgently required, and it is pre-eminently the duty of every eugenist to hasten its coming. This is not a party question, but merely a national one, and will therefore be dealt with by politicians only under external pressure, such as produced the Committee itself. The finger of public opinion must apply that pressure forthwith.

The recommendations of the Committee are so admirable and thorough and eugenic in effect as to temper one's disappointment that the Report contains no definite, overt recognition of the eugenic idea. I had hoped that the evidence prepared and submitted to the Committee for the Eugenics Education Society would suffice to ensure the recognition of the eugenic idea in the Report, for the first time, we may suppose, in official history. For the present we may merely note that the suggestions made in preceding pages are confirmed by the Committee's Report, and that the next legislation bearing on the question of temperance will undoubtedly have to attack the subject in this radical manner—by what will be in effect the sterilisation of the habitual drinker of either sex and any social status. The Committee do not recognise that that is what their Report involves, much less that that gives it its real value; but so it is, as the year 1950 will be late enough to show.

Much time and trouble were spent in preparing for the Eugenics Education Society answers to many of the questions submitted to it by the Committee, and the Society may fairly claim, I think, that its original services to this matter were well-continued. The present writer also prepared for the Society a Memorandum (Minutes of Evidence, p. 189), which perhaps fairly sums up, in the briefest possible space, the indisputable relations between alcohol and parenthood, and which may therefore be reprinted here. The reader will notice an omission in that nothing is said as to the effects of alcohol in injuring the germ-cells of healthy stock of either sex. The omission was made in order that nothing possibly disputable might be included. It has already been argued that on grounds both of fact and of theory there is every reason to recognise in alcohol, as in syphilis and in lead, a racial poison, originating racial degeneration which, in accordance with generally recognised principles, shows itself in the latest, highest and therefore most delicate portions of the organism.

The Memorandum is as follows:—

“It may be pointed out that the children of the drunkard are on the average less capable of citizenship on account of

“It would appear, then, that the drunkard, if not effectively restrained, conduces to the production of a defective race, involving a grave financial burden upon the sober portion of the community, to say nothing of higher considerations. It therefore seems to the Eugenics Education Society of extreme importance that some substantial effort should be made for the reform of existing drunkards, or the permanent control of the irreformable.

“Scientific warrant for the foregoing propositions is now to be found in no small abundance. Reference may be made, for instance, to the chapter on ‘Alcoholism and Human Degeneration,’ in Dr. W. C. Sullivan's recent work Alcoholism (Nisbet, 1906). Dr. Sullivan quotes the results of more than a dozen observers in this and other countries, and special attention may be drawn to his own well-known study of the history of 600 children born of 120 drunken mothers. The works of Professor Forel of Zurich are widely known in this connection, notably Die Sexuel Frage, and The Hygiene of Nerves and Mind (Translation, Murray, 1907). Parental alcoholism as a true cause of epilepsy in the offspring is now generally recognised. For numerous and detailed proofs from many sources reference may be made to page 210 of the last work named.

“It is not necessary, however, to go over the ground which has doubtless been covered by the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded.

“The existing laws comply to only a very small and almost negligible extent with the eugenic requirement. They only deal with (a) the very minute proportion of inebriates who can be induced to voluntarily sign away their liberty, and (b) those who are also criminal or all but hopeless and who have done harm already, either as individuals or in becoming parents. The third group of inebriates (c) not included in (a) or (b) constitutes the overwhelming majority of the whole. They are absolutely untouched by the present law, and further powers are urgently required to deal with them.

“Such legislation would be by no means without precedent, and may avail itself of the experience of several of our own colonies and various foreign countries. Such methods as compulsory control on petition, guardianship and so forth are in employment, for instance, in the Australian Commonwealth and New Zealand, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, various cantons in Switzerland, Nova Scotia, etc.

“To sum up, the Society advocates the retention of the present law so far as classes (a) and (b) are concerned, but would most strongly urge the addition of powers to deal with that great majority of inebriates whom the present law does not touch.”

The friends of alcohol.—Those who defend the alcoholic poisoning of the race may be easily classified. Some few honestly stand for liberty. Like Archbishop Magee, they would rather see England free than England sober, not asking in what sense England drunken could be called free. Some are merely irritated by the temperance fanatic. Many fear that their personal comfort may be interfered with. But probably the overwhelming majority are concerned with their pockets. They live by this cannibal trade; by selling death and the slaughter of babies, feeble-mindedness and insanity, consumption and worse diseases, crime and pauperism, degradation of body and mind in a thousand forms, to the present generation and therefore to the future, the unconsulted party to the bargain. Their motto is “Your money and your life.” So powerful are they that most of them are frank. They form associations for their defence, and hold mass meetings at which they condemn any temperance measure that is before the country, “whilst ready to welcome any real temperance reform.” They demand adequate compensation: though, if they disgorged every farthing they possess, and devoted themselves body and soul for the rest of their lives to the human cause, they could never compensate us who are alive, let alone the dead or the unborn, for the human ruin on which they build their success. They build their palaces before our eyes; one of the largest and newest, not far from Piccadilly Circus, I often pass; but where most see only fine stone, the student of infant mortality, the lover of children, he who works and looks for the life of this world to come, sees the bodies of the children of men and is tempted to recall the curse of Joshua, “He shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”

Alcoholic Imperialism.—At least let the alcoholic party refrain from calling themselves Imperialists. Amongst them, for instance, is the “Imperial bard,” the “poet of empire,” he who has appealed to the “god of our fathers,” and who warns us lest it shall be said that “all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre”: and appeals to deity—

This prophet of what some may think a blasphemous Imperialism gives his name to the association which frankly in this matter of alcohol stands for gold as against life. We are to beware lest “drunk with sight of power” we boast as do the “lesser breeds” to whom the “awful Hand” of God has not granted dominion: nor are we to put our trust in reeking tube and iron shard. We may freely call ourselves Imperialists, however, even though we should be numbered amongst those whom Ruskin, himself the son of a wine merchant, called the “vendors of death.” One wonders whether the “Lord God” exists that he can withhold his “awful Hand” at such a spectacle as this. If some amongst us are to win gold by the sale of this racial poison, and if it must be so, let them at least be consistent, and label themselves the very littlest of little Englanders, which they are. An alcoholic Imperialism is of the kind which no Empire can long survive.

Those of us whom such things as these make sick, and who yet, with true poets like Wordsworth, are proud of “the tongue that Shakespeare spake,” and who with him declare:—

—those of us who know that the foundations of any empire are living men and women, and that, to quote Mr. Kipling, “when breeds are in the making everything is worth while,” may wonder what process has been afoot that in three generations English poetry should pass from the sonnets of Wordsworth to “Duke's son, cook's son,” etc.; and may even at times, especially those of us who know what alcohol costs in life, feel a momentary recession of our faith that Great Britain need not now be writing the last page of her great history. Meanwhile, we read the controversy in Parliament and the press concerning alcohol. We see the cannibal cause of beer and spirits, which makes many widows and orphans every day,[74] represented, with an effrontery to which no parallel can ever be imagined, as the cause of widows and children, and we recall the lines which Wordsworth wrote rather more than a century ago:—

CHAPTER XIV
THE RACIAL POISONS: LEAD, NARCOTICS, SYPHILIS

The term racial poisons teaches us to distinguish, amongst substances known to be poisonous to the individual, those which injure the germ-plasm: and amongst substances poisonous to the expectant mother herself, we must distinguish those which may also poison her unborn child. Alcohol is pre-eminently the racial poison, thus defined, and I plead for its recognition as primarily a racial poison, this being immeasurably the most important aspect of the whole alcohol question. Readers of Professor Forel will not lightly question this assertion.

The total number of racial poisons is, of course, very large. Amongst them must theoretically be included all abortifacient drugs. There are also various poisons of disease to be included in this category. Later pages must be devoted to what is by far the most important of these. But we may observe in passing that such a disease as rheumatic fever or acute rheumatism has especial significance for the student of race-culture since, as he knows, its poisons circulating in the blood of an expectant mother may not only injure her own heart for life but may pass through the placenta and deform the valves of the child's heart, with the subsequent result loosely described as “congenital heart disease.” The conditions giving rise to rheumatic fever, then, are conditions from which the expectant mother, even more than the ordinary individual, is entitled to be protected. But this is of minor importance. We may here refer, however, to one or two striking cases, especially since they bear in some degree upon social and individual duty.

The racial influence of lead.—In the first place, it is necessary to draw attention to a really notable racial poison, viz., lead.

Says Sir Thomas Oliver,[75] “Lead destroys the reproductive powers of both men and women, but its special influence upon women during pregnancy is the cause of a great destruction of human life.” It may be said that in a sense the production of miscarriages and still-births, and also of infant mortality by lead, does not concern the student of race-culture. Nevertheless some of these children survive. Says Sir Thomas Oliver: “I have seen both cretinism and imbecility in infants in whom, as there could have been no possible influence of alcohol, and presumably none of syphilis, the occupation of one or other parent as a lead worker must have determined the imperfectly developed nervous system of the child.” Later he says (page 202): “Salpétrière and Bicêtre are large hospitals in Paris set aside for the reception and treatment of nervous diseases. The experience of the physicians of these institutions is unrivalled. One of the physicians, M. Roques, speaking of the degenerates found in these hospitals, says that slowly induced lead poisoning on the part of both parents or in one or other of them is not only a cause of repeated abortions, high percentage of still-births and high death-rate of infants, but is the cause of convulsions, imbecility, and idiocy in many of the children who survive the first year of existence. Of nineteen children born to parents who were lead workers, Rennert found that one child was still-born and that seventeen were macrocephalic. In his studies upon hereditary degeneration and idiocy, Bourneville places house-painters in the unenviable first rank of the occupations followed by parents of mentally weak children. Out of eighty-seven cases relating to unhealthy trades, fifty-one were connected with white lead in some form or another, while syphilis was only responsible for nineteen.”

This racial influence of lead is by no means generally recognised—even by Royal Commissioners. Its parallelism with the case of alcohol is striking. We may note, for instance, that paternal lead-poisoning, like paternal alcoholism, can cause degeneration in the offspring, if not indeed death before or shortly after birth. To quote Oliver again: “Taking seven healthy women who were married to lead workers, and in whom there was a total of thirty-two pregnancies, Lewin tells us that the results were as follows: eleven miscarriages, one still-birth, eight children died within the first year after birth, four in the second year, five in the third, and one subsequent to this, leaving only two children out of thirty-two pregnancies, as likely to live to manhood. In cases where women have a series of miscarriages so long as their husbands worked in lead, a change of industrial occupation on the part of the husbands restores to the wives normal child-bearing powers.” According to the statistical enquiry of Rennert, the malign influence of lead is exerted upon the next generation, ninety-four times out of one hundred when both parents have been working in lead, ninety-two times when the mother alone is affected, and sixty-three times when it is the father alone who has worked in lead. Here, then, as in the case of alcohol, the racial poison may act either through the father or through the mother, but especially through the mother. The importance of the demonstration as regards the father in the case of both poisons is that it means a poisoning of the paternal germ-cell. The facts may be commended to those extremists, so much more Weismannian than Weismann, who regard the germ-cells as existing in a universe of their own, wholly unrelated to the rest of existence.

Another extremely interesting parallel between these two racial poisons may be noted. It is found, according to Professor Oliver, that “while following a healthy occupation these women, after having frequently miscarried when working in lead factories, would have two or three living healthy children, but circumstances necessitating the return of these women to town, and resumption of work in the lead factory, they in each successive pregnancy again miscarried.” He then quotes the following most remarkable case: “Mrs. K., aged thirty-four, had four children before going into the factory and two children after. She then had six miscarriages in succession, when she came under my care in the Royal Infirmary, having become the victim of plumbism and having lost the power in her arms and legs. She made a slow but good recovery and did not return to the lead works. In her next pregnancy she went to full term and gave birth to a living child.”

We see here that, as is also true in the case of alcoholism, the germinal tissue itself may escape or at any rate may recover from the effects of chronic poisoning of the individual who is its host. The race is more resistant than the individual. If, however, the poisoning continues whilst a new individual is being formed—that is to say, during pregnancy—that new individual succumbs, and indeed is far more gravely affected than its mother. Such a pregnant woman presents three distinct living objects for our study. Her own body is one: and this is already developed. It has some measure of resistance to the poison but is gravely affected. The embryo is the second; it is developing and because developing is susceptible. It is usually killed before birth. The third is the germ-plasm or the race, and this, as we have seen, may withstand the poison so well that when the poisoning is discontinued healthy children may be produced from it. Undoubtedly the case is the same as regards alcohol. The race or germ-plasm is most resistant, the developing individual is least resistant, and the adult individual—that is to say, the mother—occupies an intermediate position in this respect.

This parallelism, which has escaped previous observers, may be pointed out and its remarkable interest and significance suggested as a definite advance upon the absurd view that the germ-plasm is incapable of being poisoned. On the contrary, we know that many poisons will kill it outright, so that sterility results. But its high degree of resistance is a fact of great interest. Doubtless Dr. Archdall Reid's acute explanation of it is correct: namely, that natural selection would tend to evolve a resistant germ-plasm. Dr. Reid will, I think, be interested to notice in these remarkable observations on lead-poisoning a conspicuous illustration of this resistance.

Our business here, however, is with the practical issue. This fortunately is plain, nor are there the same difficulties of vested interests which arise in the case of alcohol. Lead-poisoning must be ended in the interests of race-culture and the essential wealth of the nation, or, if it is to be continued, it must at least have its clutches kept clear of parenthood.

The possible racial influence of narcotics.—Alcohol is of course a narcotic poison, or, more precisely still, a narcotic-irritant poison, but here we may briefly refer to the possible racial influence of certain other poisons. There is, for instance, the case, noted on p. 212, of the disastrous racial consequences of the cocaine habit. The matter demands only a paragraph, since for the present, at least, it is of small general importance, and since we must beware of going beyond the facts; but when once the idea of race-culture has reached the popular and professional mind—the latter at present frequently feeding the pregnant woman with alcohol, as we all know—the whole question of narcomania will have to be looked at from this aspect, and the measure of danger in particular cases will then be ascertained. It is probably safe to assume, however, that, on the whole, alcohol will be found to stand somewhat apart from other narcotics, and for the reason that it is not a pure narcotic but also an irritant. Thus, to take the case of opium, it will probably be very difficult and, one may hope, impossible to show that, shall we say, opium smoking or eating has an injurious racial influence where it is practised. Here we have a narcotic which is not an irritant. The individual may recover perfectly from its abuse, as he may often fail to recover from the abuse of alcohol, since this poison leaves permanent changes in the brain, and elsewhere, dependent upon the fact that it is not merely a narcotic but also a local irritant. The action of a pure narcotic on the germ-plasm as compared with the action of a narcotic which is also an irritant may afford a parallel. The abuse of opium by the expectant mother (see p. 212) is not of the same order: it means simply dosing a very small baby with opium.

Tobacco and the race.—The poisonous compounds absorbed from tobacco smoke are of interest in this connection. The question as to the proportion of nicotine included amongst them is immaterial here. It suffices to know, as we do, that certain substances, doubtless including some proportion of nicotine, rapidly absorbed into the blood by the smoker, are poisons to the individual body. The familiar fact of the acquirement of immunity affects in no degree the statement as to the toxic character of these substances.

No one but the fanatic would venture to say that any racial degeneration can be traced to tobacco-smoking. It would be hard to prove the existence of any injury thus inflicted upon the children of the father who is a smoker, though the question of the acquirement of immunity is not without relevance here. The immunising substances or anti-toxins which are doubtless produced in the smoker's blood may protect the germ-plasm which he bears as well as his own body.

But in the case of the expectant mother there is more warrant for offering an opinion even in the absence hitherto of definite evidence. Apart from any opinion as to the propriety of smoking by women in general, there is a definite issue in the case of the expectant mother. A very young child is now being exposed to the poisons of tobacco smoke, and if we are right in passing laws to prevent this poisoning in the case of the urchin of eight years (who is really, of course, eight years and nine months old), what shall we say regarding the unborn child who is only eight months old? I have observed that the expectant mother may have her liking for tobacco replaced by violent dislike during pregnancy.

The poison of syphilis.—Brief mention must here be made of syphilis as a racial poison. Sooner or later the eugenic campaign must and will face this question, about which a murderous silence is now maintained. No other disease can rival syphilis in its hideous influence upon parenthood and the future. But it is no crime for a man to marry, infect his innocent bride and their children: no crime against the laws of our little lawgivers, but a heinous outrage against Nature's decrees. When, at last, our laws are based on Nature's laws, criminal marriages of this kind may be put an end to.

The lay reader should acquaint himself with the play of Brieux, Les Avariés. The student may be referred to Forel's Sexual Question, Dr. C. F. Marshall's Syphilology and Venereal Diseases, and his article, “Alcohol and Syphilis” in the British Journal of Inebriety, January, 1908.

This chapter and the last do not profess to do more than indicate the field of eugenics which the term racial poisons suggests. Our business in the present volume is, if possible, to see eugenics whole: to treat of this new science adequately is not for one author or one generation. It is earnestly to be hoped that the medical profession will speedily take up this question of the racial poisons. Already the profession is beginning to become the great instrument of individual hygiene: and every year will enhance the importance of this work, as compared with the cure of disease. Now negative eugenics is substantially racial hygiene: and the next great epoch in the evolution of medicine and the medical profession will be the enrolment of its knowledge and influence in the cause of racial hygiene. May this book do a little to hasten that day.

The two next chapters are designed to introduce that aspect of our subject which may be called National Eugenics, and especially with reference to decadence. Here is a matter which appeals to minds of type and training often very different from the typical medical mind. But it is part of one's purpose to show, if possible, that the historian must become a eugenist, just as the physician must, for eugenics needs and claims the work and help of both.

CHAPTER XV
NATIONAL EUGENICS: RACE-CULTURE AND HISTORY[76]

The reader will not expect to be insulted here with any discussion of the garbage and gossip, records of scoundrels, courts and courtesans, battles, murder and theft, which we were taught at school, under the great name of history.[77] If history be, as nearly all historians have conceived it, and as Gibbon defined it, “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind,” it is an empty and contemptible study, save for the social pathologist. But if history, without by any means ignoring great men or underrating their influence, is, or should be, the record of the past life of mankind, of progress and decadence, the rise and fall of Empires and civilisations, and their mutual reactions; if it be the record of the intermittent ascent of man, “sagging but pertinacious”; if this record be subject to the law of causation, and therefore susceptible, in theory, at least, of explanation as well as description; if its factors are at work to-day and will shape the destiny of all the to-morrows; if it be neither phantasmagoria nor panorama nor pageant nor procession but process, in short, an organic drama,—then, indeed, it is more than worthy of all the study and thought of all who ever study or ever think. Especially must it appeal to us, who boast a tradition greater than the world has ever yet seen, and kinship with men who represent the utmost of which the human spirit has yet shown itself capable,—to us who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but to whom the names of all our Imperial predecessors, from Babylon to Spain, serve as a perpetual memento mori. Our special question here is whether there are inherent and necessary reasons why our predecessors' fate must sooner or later be ours. Must races die?—or, if we are sceptical about races and more especially about the so-called Anglo-Saxon race, must civilisations, states, or nations die? What comment does modern biology, or the theory of organic evolution, make upon the familiar words of Byron in his address to the ocean?—