Every conflict in these social fields is between a lesser good and a greater good, between a best and a good which, by opposing the best, becomes the bad in that particular connection; between individual interest and the welfare of a group, between class interest and a wider common weal, or between a chauvinistic nationalism and a just and humane internationalism. It is quite as important that the ordinary citizen should be equipped with the tools and the materials for intelligent reflection and action in regard to matters of international conduct and misconduct as that he should be equipped to think intelligently and fairly in regard to the principles and facts of conduct between fellow-citizens or business associates or neighbors or members of his own family. "Social justice" can not be realized apart from international justice, nor international justice apart from social justice within the nation. As the world becomes more and more unified, economically, industrially and by interchange of methods of organization and thinking, it will become more and more impossible to settle large issues of national policy without regard to the international issues involved therein. Behind every issue now in regard to international rights and obligations, political sovereignty, trade arrangements, national autonomy and national expansion, there is a moral issue which is usually obscured by a tangle of legal and diplomatic verbiage or hidden by the devious ways of international finance or by the fuming vapors of a narrow and exclusive nationalism. The German invasion of Belgium, for example, involved a plain moral issue which the German government and its professorial henchmen have sought to cover up, but have egregiously failed to do.

If law and administration within the nation must be controlled by moral principles, it is equally true that trade arrangements and all diplomatic and treaty relations between nations must be similarly controlled, as indeed the laws on international copyright, extradition, protection of the persons of nationals, navigation and postal matters are now controlled. There can not be one standard of equitable dealing between citizens of the same state and an entirely different standard, or no standard at all, between states. The present war exemplifies, upon a more stupendous scale than any previous international conflict, the enormous folly and cost of educating the citizens of a state in their duties towards one another, as members one of another, and at the same time denying or ignoring the existence of any parallel international obligations or common membership and participation in the life of humanity. The war is a tragically

stupid catastrophe, precipitated primarily because German intelligence ceased to operate beyond the German boundary.

We could dispense in our schools with a good deal of the abstruse mathematics and grammatical technique now taught. But, at our peril and at peril to humankind, we dispense with the moral stimulation and enlightenment of literature and with the instruction and warnings of social and political history, when these are effectively taught. We can no longer afford to neglect the teaching of social ethics and civics in the setting of world-civics and world-politics. If national and international politics are not to be devil's games, they must become fields for the application of the common man's instructed moral insight. A democratic state can not safely leave instruction in civic ethics to the homes and the churches.

Furthermore, if we are to get an efficient training of our coming citizenry in the ethics of civic and social relationships viewed as a part of the totality of humane world-relationships, we must have a national control of education to national and international ends. Our state-systems of education are not sufficiently centralized. There is too little control over the standards of teaching and the contents of the curricula. The appointment of teachers is too much subject to local politics and local parsimony. The states should control standards and curricula more effectively. They should have a check upon salaries and appointments. But, in this matter, the cure might be worse than the disease if state superintendencies and boards are not entirely removed from the vicissitudes of state politics.

The nation, through its department of education, should control the standards of teaching and the minimal contents of the curricula. We have heard much lately in regard to the "New Nationalism" and the "New Americanism," but little as to what these catchwords mean. I would have the new nationalism and the new Americanism include, as paramount features, intellectual and moral preparedness for the maintenance of a peace founded upon international justice, through effective national control of the educational instruments for training in the principles of citizenship and world citizenship.

We shall never secure a high educational efficiency in this country until the states compel a higher economic and scholastic minimum for the teacher-until by state action the economic, professional and social status of the teacher is considerably improved, and thus abler and more vigorous personalities are induced to make teaching their vocation. And we can not be sure that this purpose will be speedily consummated, unless the

national government has the power to enforce it on the several states. Local autonomy unregulated too often becomes chaos and sometimes remains chaos.

We shall never ensure that the coming citizenry is decently instructed in the elementary moral principles of citizenship and receives adequate enlightenment upon the ethics of social, national and international relationships, until the national department of education has power and authority to prescribe a minimal program of instruction in civics and social and international ethics, based upon a more broadly and humanistically conceived program in history and literature-in short the nation must effectively require that in every nook and corner of this broad land the boy and the girl are brought to exercise their intelligences upon, and apply their consciences to, the fundamental issues of social and political ethics in their national and international bearings, no less than upon matters of private personal relationships. Can anything be more important in a nation in which public opinion makes policies, or should make them, and in which if public opinion does not shape policies they are shaped by ringsters and grafters or by cliques and thirdrate pothouse politicians? In an autocracy the people are relieved of moral responsibilities for public policies by the imperial keeper of their consciences. "Theirs not to ask the reason why, Theirs but to do or die." In a democracy there is no keeper of the public conscience. If the people do not jointly and severally keep their own political consciences there is none. And conscience is not kept by lack of training and exercise. It dies if it is not used. Is there any subject of more paramount and urgent concern to a democracy than instruction, training and reflection in public ethics. If it is worth while for the state to educate future mechanics and tradesmen, farmers and professionals, surely it is ten times more worth while to educate future citizens to be citizens. Nay more, it is suicidal for the public agencies to take care of all the specialized educational interests and neglect the basic general interest in a nation that, by hyopthesis, is made up, not of mechanical puppets pulled by autocratic strings, but of intelligent freemen able to conduct their own affairs.

RACE SUICIDE IN THE UNITED STATES

TH

By Dr. WARREN S. THOMPSON

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

HERE are many people who think that race suicide means there is little or no natural increase (annual excess of births over deaths) in our population. Well-informed students of our population questions, however, have never used the term in this sense. They have never feared that our population was not growing rapidly enough by natural increase to hold its own with that of other countries. Professor Ross originally used the term-race suicide-to characterize what he believed to be a movement in the growth of our population leading to the extinction of the older native stock and its replacement with the newer immigrant stocks-the Slavic, the Latin and the Hebrew. According to this view our vital population questions are not questions of mere numbers but rather questions of quality.

Are the people of the older stock-those of Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic descent-gradually dying out and are they being replaced by the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe? If this is the case what are the effects upon our civilization going to be? These are the questions of vital concern to Americans. Those who believe that the older stock is dying out are quite likely to believe that with it are going the ideals and aspirations which have made America distinctive among the nations of the world. They feel that these new peoples with different racial traits, with different national histories and with different cultures are certain to make an America, not only different from but inferior to, what it would be if left in the possession of the older stock.

THE EVIDENCE OF RACE SUICIDE

Most of the evidence of race suicide comes from investigations made in New England. In Boston it was found that the old American stock has a natural increase of only about one per thousand per annum. As the report points out this is probably too low a rate of increase to represent the condition of the old native stock in other parts of the state but yet it shows that this stock is increasing very slowly. The rate of natural increase for the whole state is about ten per thousand per annum.

There is no room for doubt, therefore, that the newer stock is rapidly becoming a larger proportion of the entire population.

Another investigation giving much the same results was made by the Immigration Commission. It was found that in Rhode Island the native white women of native parentage who had been married from ten to twenty years had borne an average of 2.5 children, while the white women of foreign parentage had borne an average of 4.5 children. Thus the women of newer immigrant stock bore almost twice as many children as the women of native stock.

Experience and observation also confirm the more exact investigations. Those familiar with conditions in New England have borne almost universal testimony to the effect that the families of the older native people are smaller than those of the newer immigrant peoples.

There seems to be but one conclusion that has been drawn from such facts, viz., that the newer immigrants and their descendants are steadily becoming a larger proportion of the whole population. Without waiting to see whether other investigations in other parts of the nation would give similar results most people who have discussed this question have assumed that there is a general movement of this nature in our population. The result is that there has been a great hue and cry raised against race suicide. Before we join in this outcry, however, and indiscriminately urge people to raise larger families as some have already done, we should examine the facts more carefully.

There is very good reason to believe that the movement of population in New England is not typical of all parts of the United States. In the first place, New England has a larger urban and industrial population than any other section of the country. If, therefore, there is any difference in the rates of natural increase in the urban and rural populations they would not show in their true proportions in a study of the movement of population in New England. Besides most of the investigations and observations already referred to have been made in the cities. In the second place, the very fact that New England has a very large proportion of immigrants may have a direct effect upon the rate of natural increase of the native population. General Walker pointed out long ago that immigration was, in part, at least, a substitution of incoming peoples for those who would have been born to native parents had the immigrants not come. In the third place, the number of children born to native and foreign mothers is not a good measure of