perpetuity of his race through the rearing of children as to defend it in time of war or to pay taxes for the maintenance of government. Any and all measures which shall contribute toward an awakening of the people to the importance of this national duty are worthy of encouragement and of adoption. The solution of the problem is not dependent upon external measures and remedies; it is to be found almost entirely in the moral sentiments and social customs of the people themselves. Zola did not exaggerate when he said: "France will never be depopulated unless she wishes to be." The late Emile Levasseur once remarked that it was "truly humiliating to think of a nation of thirty-eight million souls, which by its age, its industry and commerce is one of the wealthiest of the globe and which by its intellectual activity, its arts and its sciences is one of the most capable of enlightening the world and which under republican government has during the last quarter of a century recovered in the European concert the place of a great power, is a nation which, according to the statistics is destined to disappear." Mr. Roosevelt's warning at the Sorbonne in 1907 that "neither luxury, nor material progress, nor the accumulation of wealth, nor the seductions of literature and of art, should take the place of those fundamental virtues the greatest of which is that which assures the future of the race" made a deep impression at the time it was delivered and has not been entirely without result. It is no exaggeration to say that at no time in the past have so many thoughtful Frenchmen been aroused to a realization of the consequences that must inevitably result from the continued decline of the population. This is fully attested by the organization of societies to increase the population, by the formation of parliamentary groups with the same end in view, by the appointment of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary commissions to study the question and to search for the remedies, by legislative and administrative measures of various kinds and by the discussions and publications of scientific bodies and of economists, sociologists and publicists. No one can read the extensive literature to which the discussion of the problem has given rise without feeling that the question is now regarded as a serious and pressing one and that the nation proposes to grapple with it as such.
