When these results are considered, there comes a feeling of amazement that a nation should suffer such plagues to afflict its vitality without putting forth every effort to stamp them out. The nation which has become thus afflicted by its own vices must have sunk to a depth which may well fill the observer with consternation. And the remedies which are proposed will only deliver the people from the consequences of their acts—they will not cure the disease itself. The only salvation lies in the ideal of the pure heart once more shining forth before the eyes of man. The law of God decrees that sin be punished; and deliverance for humanity from punishment can only come by conformity to the law of God. But this is not how we now regard it. We have set ourselves to combat the social disease not because vice is hateful but that in the future vice may become safe. When we shall have attained our end the shadows shall have gathered in deeper blackness. The few remaining stars shall be blotted out.
VI
Such, in bold outline, are the forces which threaten the continuance and the well-being of the race. On the altar of degeneration England and Wales offered up in the year 1914 over 600,000 children.[[6]] Who can compute the laughter and joyousness, the happiness and the riches thus consumed at the shrine of our self-indulgence? And every sign points to this vast sacrifice of life increasing with the years. For we are emancipated; and we smile at any restraint emanating from—God! Science has delivered us from that. We know it now—the voice of law is only the echo of outworn superstitions. And science, which has broken the chain of restraint, and which has provided the means for gratifying desire without incurring responsibility, has blessed us also with the high-explosive shell. This great deliverer—science—has put into our hands the power of pruning life at both ends. If the world is to find salvation through the absence of life—then, salvation is at the gate. In other days it gave our fathers a shudder to read of the moral depravity of Home ere the scourge of God fell on it. The old Romans can, alas! cause us to shudder no longer. We have improved upon them. Science has helped us greatly, and with its aid we can sound depths of depravity the Roman never reached. The triumphs of science have in our hands become instruments of an immorality which would have made even heathen Rome shudder. And as yet we are only at the top of the declivity. The momentum of our descent is gathering force with the years.
It may be asserted that this view is alarmist, and that, however bad our state, we are better than Germany. No thought of an enemy from without need, therefore, mar our satisfaction in our swift declension into the morass of vice. That comparison may be granted: we are better than Germany, though Germany has not yet sacrificed her children in such hecatombs as we have done. But what we have to consider is not the birthrate in relation to that of Germany but in relation to the extent of the earth surface which owns our sway. The end of the war will find Germany confined within narrow borders with all her colonies gone. The Germany of to-morrow will have no room for racial expansion. But we own the fourth of the world's surface. That vast territory calls to us for men. And if we individually choose our own selfish ease, and sacrifice the generations to come, we shall have failed in our imperial calling. We may win an empire on the battlefield; we will inevitably lose it in the silent nursery.
Not in relation to this or that earthly factor has this question to be considered. It is in relation to the Moral Order of the universe that we must face it. The unseen Power that reigns is a Moral Power. Somewhere in this universe, Righteousness is throned. Whatever race in the past surrendered to evil and made degeneracy its god—upon that race the judgment of the consuming sword fell. Though the judgment often tarried, it always fell. As one considers the moral condition to which we have come, the worse condition to which we are hastening, the destruction which befell those of old in whose footsteps we are now treading, the dust accumulated on buried cities and vanished races who made their pleasure their god, and the flaming of the sword wherewith God removed in all ages the cankerous growth from the body of humanity,—the question leaps forth: How can we escape the righteous judgment of God? Will there be found a place of repentance for us who have sacrificed the child of flesh and blood to the calf of gold[[7]] and have surrendered ourselves to the sensuous delights of worshipping at our chosen idol's shrine? Unless the nation finds the place of repentance, it needs no prophet to foretell the end. For we have been living for more than a generation a life 'such as God has never suffered man to lead on earth long, which He has always crushed out by calamity or revolution.' And the startling fact is this—that when the judgment of God befell, it was on men unconscious that they were being judged. They came to the Great White Throne and never discerned it; they reached the end and never knew it to be the end. Thus they perished—Babylon and Rome alike. And we are as they. The judgment-seat is visible in the heavens, but our eyes never turn to it; amid the crash of the world's civilisation we hear no voice calling to repentance.
[[1]] The Declining Birthrate, p. 90.
[[3]] Report of Royal Commission on V. D., p. 23.
[[4]] Ibid., p. 55.
[[5]] The Nineteenth Century and After, April 1916.