Not a single Pan-Angle is willing to reduce his race numbers. He wishes his children to live and to have children in turn. Not a single Pan-Angle is willing to reduce his standard of living. He wishes for himself more leisure, more nourishing and cleaner food, greater safety in all his employments. He wishes to see no poverty and no discomfort. He is busy passing laws in all his legislatures to-day in his efforts to attain all this.
What the Pan-Angle has, he got by taking land {45} and making the best use he knew of it. For years the British Isles alone of the Pan-Angle nations sent out migrants. For years the British Isles alone was the manufacturing country, the others growing food for themselves and for export. The United States is now sending out migrants; it is likewise sending out less and less food. Pownall foresaw that "when the field of agriculture shall be filled up . . . the moment that the progress of civilisation, carried thus on its natural course, is ripe for it, the branch of manufactures will take its shoot and will grow and increase with an astonishing exuberancy."[45-1] The same future doubtless faces the other five of us. New lands are less easy of acquisition in these days. We have recently enlarged our holdings in the neighbourhood of the two poles, but the opportunities even there grow fewer. Lands are becoming more thickly populated and better defended. But beyond that, we have developed certain scruples that our forefathers in their takings did not know. Only a need equal to theirs will perhaps impel us to similar exercise of force. That need will not come until our standard of living is threatened. Colonizing apart, there is left to us trade; and trade apart, we still have our present lands to develop to their highest point. This problem of development is now receiving our best attention. We support costly bureaus and experiment stations to discover and teach us the means of so intensively cultivating that we may get the highest possible yield from our land. We shall not relax these efforts.
But as we utilize our lands and increase our {46} trade, other civilizations will be desiring to raise the standards of living among their increasing populations. They will need more land. They will covet some of our little-used pieces, Northern Canada or Northern Australia, lands we mean to develop ourselves. No Pan-Angle is minded to part with them. Our rivals, as they grow, will need more trade in order to keep more factories busy to buy more food. They may covet our markets, so that rice and tea and rubber from our present possessions may come to them. If at any time we lose land or trade, by so much must part of our numbers suffer, must be less well housed, and less well nourished, less well cared for if sick. No Pan-Angle sees his way to closing up his factories or to putting himself in a position where he and his children can build no more. More babies mean a demand for more food, and we hope to give them more advantages of every sort. The only way to retain our lands and our trade is to be strong enough to protect them. There is no cheaper nor more effective strength than in co-operation.
[22-1] Whitaker's Almanack, London, 1913, p. 484: 454,527 British and Irish emigrants left the British Isles in 1911. Of these 80,770 went to Australasia; 30,767 to South Africa; 184,860 to Britannic North America; and 121,814 to the United States.
[22-2] A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, pp. 123-124: "In sixty years (1815-1876) eight and a half million people had emigrated from Great Britain. Of these only three million settled in the Colonies. The rest went to the United States. . . ."
[23-1] Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, Les Etats-Unis au Vingtième Siecle, Paris, 1904, pp. 25-26.
[23-2] F. H. Giddings, Democracy and Empire, New York, 1900, pp. 296-297.
[24-1] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 723: "Last year the United States received immigrants from other countries equal to three-quarters of one per cent. of the total population. The influx to Canada was between six and seven per cent. of the total population."
[27-1] Boston (Massachusetts) Transcript, November 19, 1913: "Chicago, Nov. 19—Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address, which was delivered fifty years ago to-day, was read to-day to the one million pupils in the public schools of Illinois. Pupils above the sixth grade had memorized the address and recited it at the hour at which President Lincoln began his speech. To-night the speech will be repeated in nearly every night school and social centre in the State."
[27-2] Britannica Year Book, London, 1913, p. 703.