The Humanity of War.—About the time of the sinking of the Lusitania, our official notes on this and other subjects in the negotiations with Germany teemed with appeals to humanity. No such view was accepted by England. In the British note of March 13, 1915, Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, told the President: “There can be no universal rule based on considerations of morality and humanity.”
Illiteracy.
Illiteracy.—As a related element of interest in the study of the war from a cultural as well as a military angle the illiteracy of some of the contesting and neutral nations bears strongly on the question:
| France | 14.1% |
| Belgium | 12.7% |
| Greece | 57.2% |
| Italy | 37.0% |
| Portugal | 68.9% |
| Roumania | 60.6% |
| Russia | 69.0% |
| Serbia | 78.9% |
| United Kingdom | 1.0% |
| Austria-Hungary | 18.7% |
| Germany | 0.05% |
| Denmark | 0.0?% |
| Netherlands | 0.08% |
| Prussia | 0.02% |
| Switzerland | 0.03% |
| Sweden | 0.0?% |
United States, 7.7% population over 10 years. Of this, the native white population of native parents furnished 3.7% of the illiterates; the native white of foreign or mixed parentage, 1.1%. The negroes are down with 30.4% illiteracy, less than that of Italy or Greece and several other European States engaged in the task of making the world safe for democracy. Even our Indian population (45.3%) shows less illiteracy than Greece, Serbia or Roumania. The illiteracy of our white foreign-born population is recorded at 12.7%.
Immigration.
Immigration.—How much does the United States owe to immigration, as regards the growth of population? Frederick Knapp, worked out a table covering the period from 1790 to 1860, the beginning of the Civil War, intended to show what the normal white population at the close of each decade would have been as a result of only the surplus of births over deaths of 1.38 percent each year, compared with the result as established by the official census figures.
|
“Natural” Growth |
Census Figures | |
|---|---|---|
| 1790 | 3,231,930 | —— |
| 1800 | 3,706,674 | 4,412,896 |
| 1810 | 4,251,143 | 6,048,450 |
| [1820] | 4,875,600 | 8,100,056 |
| 1830 | 5,591,775 | 10,796,077 |
| 1840 | 6,413,161 | 14,582,008 |
| 1850 | 7,355,422 | 19,987,563 |
| 1860 | 8,435,882 | 27,489,662 |
The natural increase of the white population in 160 years would have been only 5,203,952, whereas it was 24,257,732, an increase of 19,053,780 over the natural growth. Statistics show that in 1790 an American family averaged 5.8; in 1900 but 4.6. During the earlier period each family averaged 2.8 children, in 1900 but 1.53, a decline of nearly 50 per cent.