IV

Mr. Shaw's fame had not yet been established when there burst on our literary consciousness the distinctly original and explosive force of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's genius. Mr. Kipling had been profoundly affected by the work of Bret Harte, whose indebtedness to Dickens I have elsewhere described; and he very early displayed qualities that are to be found in both, and perhaps nowhere else in so high a degree. The avidity to seize on the salient characteristic of a man, while depicting his exterior, his tricks of manner, ways of speech, and general bearing, so that they seem to be, as indeed they are, part, not merely of himself, but of his habits of thought and life; the capacity to detect the pathos and the strength that lie hidden beneath rough, even repellent appearances; the ability suddenly to surprise one by unsuspected pathos and humor; in short, the ability to interest one in the average common man the clerk, the ship's officer, the artisan, the native teacher, or the British Tommy; all these were the gifts that Dickens made his own. Nor does the quality of Mr. Kipling's work lack that sardonic insight into character, that distrust of windy pretentiousness, or that power to inspire us with a real veneration and esteem for the man who matters, which were traits characteristic of Dickens. I am not sure that Dickens and Mr. Kipling were so opposed in their outlook on life as so many people would rashly suggest. The Perils of Certain English Prisoners might have been written by Mr. Kipling himself in his less strident moments. At all events, it expresses very forcibly the view with which he has familiarized us in later years; the view that the British people were the chosen race, so far as the government and ordering of the

backward races of the earth are concerned, and that they have inherent in them a capacity for steadiness, fidelity and sound judgment, which is their warrant for dominion. Again, some of Mr. Kipling's other work — A Pleasant Sunday Afternoon, for instance is reminiscent of Dickens to an extraordinary extent; and both men had supremely the gift of exciting in us quite naturally a sense of awe and horror. That Dickens would have shrunk from many of Mr. Kipling's confessions of faith I do not deny. Dissimilarities there are between them, no doubt. But the immense force with which Mr. Kipling threw the 'nineties back on to realities, crowding his canvases with much the same wealth of characters drawn from the well of life, rough, virile, in the main English,- the genius and energy with which he thrust on us the reality, and his guise of the reality of the ordinary, mundane life we live; of its solemnity and its romance; these things were not only of the spirit of Dickens, but they led this generation enevitably back to the master again.

V

-

But the greatest asset from a literary revival that the Dickens renaissance can boast has been not a novelist, but a critic and essayist one of the most brilliant, perhaps, that English literature ever produced. It was by his articles and appreciations of Dickens, nearly seventeen years ago, that G. K. Chesterton first achieved fame; and if he had written nothing since he would have earned, not merely our sincere admiration, but our gratitude. It is not merely that his analyses of Dickens's genius have been marked by that inspiring sprightliness, that élan, that torrential eloquence, that wonderful epigrammatic force peculiarly his own. They had a power above and beyond

all that, they showed us, not only Dickens, but two great factors about him that stood in the most urgent need of emphasis, though nobody had troubled about them. First G. K. Chesterton made us realize what we had forgotten during the period of the decline

that the people still read Dickens. The common man, and the average workaday woman, bought Dickens's novels as of yore, and as of yore read them feverishly, unmindful of the sniff of the superior person, unmindful of the neglect of the critics. Mr. G. K. Chesterton made us realize this, for he showed us how supremely true the common person was; he showed us how Dickens stood for his rights, his dignity, his freedom. And he showed, and shows us still, the danger of that freedom, and the real limitation to the Dickens revival. We have got past Wilde and the Decadents; we have got past the snobs, who sneered at artists like Hardy because they wrote of peasants. Class-consciousness, and the idea that the realities of life are to be kept out of literature, these have disappeared with Southey, as the aristo

The Dickensian

cratic type of author vanished with Byron.

The figure that really confronts the Dickensian to-day is Shelley (who typified benevolent autocracy which he called freedom), not the less dangerous because he was as muddle-headed as a thinker as he was supreme as a poet; who never believed, for all his love of mankind, in humanity, but who shrank from it all his life, holding, in so far as he had a political credo, that the working classes were to be governed from above and made as much like himself as possible, as like, that is, to a vegetarian, an ascetic, a humanitarian, a fastidiously hygienic person, and a puritan of puritans.

To-day we turn to Dickens for laughter, for relaxation, for amusement. It is my hope that some of us will turn to him for real inspiration. If we do not seek it there, then we shall forfeit again that confidence in the common man, and in the common sense of man, that will lead us by the hand of Mrs. Pardiggle to a worse dilemma of pretentious futility than any from which he has yet saved us.

VOL. 15-NO. 764

THE WAR AND THE POPULA

TION OF GERMANY

THE Copenhagen Society for the investigation of the social effects of the war issued its first report in March. This dealt with Germany, and is based on statistics of the population movement in the German Empire to the end of 1915, in the Kingdom of Saxony birth statistics to the end of 1917, and in towns of over 15,000 inhabitants to October, 1918, as well as on statements in the German press. The concluding chapter of the report sums up the effects of the war on the population as follows:

1. The German people suffered by diminution in births and increase of mortality a total loss of approximately 5,600,000 souls. Consequently, there is a downward movement in the development of the population figures. The number of inhabitants has sunk from 67,800,000 to about 65,100,000; of these 33,900,000 are females and only 31,200,000 males.

2. Of the total losses approximately 3,500,000 were caused by the diminution in births, and about 2,100,000 by the increase of mortality.

3. The proportion of the age and number of the sexes has been completely altered. To every thousand persons of the male sex there are now 1086 instead of 1024 females. In the age class of from 20 to 50 years the proportion, instead of being 1000 to 1005, is now 1000 to 1155, and in the class from 20 to 30 years of age, which is particularly important from the marriage point of view, the proportion is far more unfavorable. The youngest in this class, those born between May, 1915, and July, 1919, are one third to one half behind the normal peace figures.

4. The increase of mortality has, in consequence of the great numbers (about 1,800,000) killed in the war, chiefly affected the strongest and most effective members

of the male class. The number of men of military age has sunk from about 14,000,000 to 12,200,000, that is to say, by 13 per cent. Then again, hundreds and thousands of the survivors are more or less severely incapacitated. In this way the best labor of the German nation has to a large extent been ruined.

5. The civil population has also suffered severely from malnutrition and overwork. The poorer sections of the town population have suffered the worst. Of those who have survived the first year of their life, 700,000 persons more have died than would have been the case under normal conditions.

6. Demobilization lasted two or three months; after its conclusion large bodies of troops remained under arms. There were over 800,000 German soldiers at the end of February, 1919, prisoners of war, and it cannot yet be known when they will be released. Births, in this transition period, will, therefore, be still more diminished.

7. The great loss among men of marriageable age will make itself felt after the complete restoration of peace conditions and the return of the prisoners. About 1,800,000 men fell during the war. If the losses of the civil population are taken into account, and the fact that many thousands of soldiers will return in enfeebled health, the loss of marriageable men may clearly be estimated at 2,500,000. It is likely, therefore, that the birth rate will remain for some time after the war 20 per cent lower than the peace figures. The number of marriages will sink the precedent of previous wars is no guide, for this last war differs from all others.

8. The health conditions of the population have deteriorated immensely through want of food and over-work. The poorer hard-working sections of the people have suffered the most. Tuberculosis has made terrible progress it has increased by over 50 per cent and the mortality among the entire population after the war will for some time be much higher than it was in the last peace year. This result is only too probable since it will be some time before food conditions become normal again.

9. It must also not be forgotten that the German people are faced with economic difficulties dearness, want of raw material, unemployment, shortage of transport facilities which affect greatly the population problem, for the more difficult the economic conditions, the more expensive will be the upbringing of children, and the greater the wish to limit the families artificially.

The entire results of the war as regards population movement cannot, therefore, be grasped in their entire significance. To the loss, once and for all, of more than 5,500,000 persons must be added a long period of sinking birth rate and of rising mortality. There is no illusion on these points in the circle of German economists. The German Society for Population Questions, which was founded during the war, and which comprises numerous politicians and men of science, held a meeting in October, 1915. The President, speaking about the effects of the war on the birth rate, said that there could be little prospect of an increase in birth rate after the war. The disabled men would not care to take on themselves the responsibilities of a family, and the increased power of a woman to earn money would deter her from matrimony. Various other societies came to the same conclusion, showing conclusively that, if the war lasted long, children and fathers would both be lacking, as the losses affected those who belonged to the marriageable class first and foremost. This unparalleled loss of man-power places the German people face to face with social-political problems of the most difficult nature. Nothing can be done by small schemes. The only means of improving the situation is a carefully-planned policy based on the broadest principles. The politician and economist and the physician must work together toward one object.

The Reconstruction Supplement

FUTURE OF THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

BY PHILODEMOS

WOULD it be fair to the men who, on the stricken fields of Flanders and of France, have gloriously upheld the cause of freedom and peace were they to come back to an England disturbed by the old industrial disputes? No sensible man would answer that question in the affirmative.

Nevertheless, there are not wanting signs that despite promises of reformation and effort for the better, disputation may, amid the dust and heat of conflict, again be slued round on to well-worn lines. Desired by none with the exception, possibly, of the that state of agitator by profession things is apprehended by all. To assist in avoiding it is the least service every honest and public-spirited man at this juncture owes his country, and the service is, rightly considered, but a pendant of that nobly rendered in the field; the least tribute due to our forever memorable dead.

Can the contingency be avoided? of this article is to prove The purpose that it can.

Largely the question is one of temperament, and on both sides. Much depends upon the spirit in which on both sides it is approached. In turn the spirit in which the question is approached turns upon knowledge.

There are two attitudes which in the past have equally darkened counsel. One is the belief that the relations between capital and labor as they have so far existed are fixed and final; at any rate, in broad outline. The other that the change in those relations which the times demand must be swift and sweeping; in a word catastrophic. It will not be denied that these attitudes, coming into conflict, have in the past

fomented industrial disputes, and when disputes have been fomented, embittered them. To demonstrate that each extreme embodies a misconception means, therefore, as a first step the removal of a widespread irritant. Our British habit has been to regard politics as in practice the art of give-andtake, but in economics it has hitherto been not less our habit to set out from propositions laid down a priori, and to wrangle over them, with all the fanaticism of mediæval schoolmen. It is a strange contrast, and a very peculiar phenomenon to be presented by a practical people.

Is there any reason in the nature of things why this should be so?

Rather more than a hundred years ago the whole face of the industrial world, and the entire problem of communications alike by sea and land, was changed by the discovery of steam power. That discovery not only gave an enormously enhanced value to our deposits of iron and coal; it placed at our disposal as a community a substitute, and an increasingly efficient substitute, for purely manual labor, which was both thirty times as cheap as such labor reckoned upon the lowest subsistence level, and capable of indefinite multiplication. There was, that is to say, no limit to the supply of this substitute save the demand for it and the ability to apply it. There was no assignable limit to the wealth and the creation of abundance that might not flow from it. In all its long past history the human race had never been presented with such a gift.

But when that gift was revealed to the world by the genius of its discoverer, what, socially, was the state of the world? The masses of the population of Europe were but barely emerging from centuries of serfdom. Some, indeed, were still serfs. In the mass they exhibited the inherited

habits, usages, and opinions stamped upon them by that condition. In the mass they were ignorant. In the mass they were accustomed to dependence. In the mass they looked upon penury as their natural lot. So much on the one side. On the other were what we now call the employing class. They were influenced, perhaps unconsciously, by the spectacle and tradition of feudal relationships. Their economic ideas were few, and for the most part unsound. Adam Smith was still but a professor at the provincial — then very provincial - University of Glasgow a voice crying in the wilderness. Most of all they believed in the economy of low wages. With but rare exceptions they were only enterprising in a narrow sense. Yet they had a high idea of their rights. Though the

Law of Supply and Demand,' when enunciated, was accepted as a truism, the magistrates in Quarter Sessions assembled were by statute empowered to fix the rates of rural laborers' wages, and the 'Law of Supply and Demand,' notwithstanding, did habitually so fix them, and generally at such a rate, in order, as they believed, to safeguard rent, that the Poor Law had to come to the laborer's rescue. The poverty of the rural laborer was not natural, or due to any iron law' of economy; it was parliamentary and artificial. The iron law of economics was not iron enough. And as it had been made a crime for the rural laborer to combine in order to escape these trammels, and throw himself upon the iron law, so also it was made a crime for the town workman to do likewise. Of course, that was logic, though bad logic.

But with all its imperfections the employing class, for there was no other for the purpose, was the class, little as the fact was perceived at the time, upon which was thrown the task of evolving the organization of in