That was to be expected; a very high
birth-rate seems fatally to involve a very high death-rate. But a very
low birth-rate (as we see in the cases of France and Ireland) is not
invariably associated with a very low death-rate, though it is never
associated with a high death-rate. This seems to indicate that those
qualities in a highly civilised nation which restrain the production of
offspring do not always or at once produce the eugenic racial qualities
possessed by hardier peoples living under simpler conditions. But with
these reservations it is not difficult to combine the two lists in a
fairly concordant order of descending rank. Most readers will agree,
that taking the European populations in bulk, without regard to the
production of genius (for men of genius are always a very minute
fraction of a nation), the European populations which they are
accustomed to regard as standing at the head in the general diffusion
of character, intelligence, education, and well-being, are all included
in the first twelve or thirteen nations, which are the same in both
lists though they do not follow the same order. These peoples, as
peoples--that is, without regard to their size, their political
importance, or their production of genius--represent the highest level
of democratic civilisation in Europe.
It is scarcely necessary to add that various countries outside Europe
equal or excel them; the death-rate of the United States, so far as
statistics show, is the same as that of Sweden; that of Ontario, still
better, is the same as Denmark; while the death-rate of the Australian
Commonwealth, with a medium birth-rate, is lower than that of any
European country, and New Zealand holds the world's championship in
this field with the lowest death-rate of all.
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