"She had cut down enormous wastes of human energy and, for the first time in the history of the world, had established an economic minimum below which men and families were not permitted to sink.
"The cost of this was large; for insurance, colonies for tramps and vagabonds, employment agencies, and the like; but Germany made it pay in the creation of a nation built of loyal and efficient people. Both their loyalty and their efficiency have been proved and reproved in the course of the present struggle. They had accomplished marvels, they were ready for amazing sacrifices.
"Now, one of the principal reasons why Germany was able to do these things, although, she probably ignored it and possibly would deny it, is to be found in the free-trade policy of England.
"At any time during the past twenty years England could have checked German progress effectively by the establishment of a protective tariff system designed to encourage her own colonies and other nations with whom she had long been on friendly and influential terms, to the utmost development of exclusive trade privileges designed to shut out Germany. Except for the long-established English policy of commercial freedom Germany could not have accomplished for herself what she has.
"Germany has been growing rapidly. Her birth rate has been high, but of late it has been falling, and when the war began there were indications that she soon would approach the low ratio of population increase already characteristic of France, of New England and the Middle West in the United States, and lately of England. But Germany's population was still a growing one and, in a sense, a restive one.
"The Malthusian theory has not worked out in the civilized world as Malthus supposed it would, for the application of science to manufacturing, agriculture, &c., has prevented increasing populations from pressing upon the means of subsistence; but in all parts of the Western World the standards of living have been raised, the ambitions of the average man and woman have expanded. They have lived better than their parents lived, and they have wished their children to live better still.
"However, we can place no limit upon the probable expansion of human desires, and it is true that a population unchecked by the intelligent action of the human will tends to increase at a rate more rapid than that at which it is possible to raise the actual plane of human living.