THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FALLING BIRTH-RATE

the rural population possesses. More alert, more vivacious, more intelligent, even more urbane in the finer sense, as the urban population becomes,—not perhaps at first, but in the end,—it inevitably loses its stamina, its reserves of vital energy. Dr. Cantlie very properly defines a Londoner as a person whose grandparents all belonged to London—and he could not find any. Dr. Harry Campbell has found a few who could claim London grandparents; they were poor specimens of humanity.⁴⁸ Even on the intellectual side there are no great Londoners. It is well known that a number of eminent men have been born in London; but, in the course of a somewhat elaborate study of the origins of British men of genius, I have not been able to find that any were genuinely Londoners by descent.⁴⁹ An urban life saps that calm and stolid strength which is necessary for all great effort and stress, physical or intellectual. The finest body of men in London, as a class, are the London police, and Charles Booth states that only 17 per cent of the London police are born in London, a smaller proportion than any other class of the London population except the army and navy. As Mr. N.C. Macnamara has pointed out, it is found that London men do not possess the necessary nervous stability and self-possession for police work; they are too excitable and nervous, lacking the equanimity, courage, and self-reliance of the rural men. Just in the same way, in Spain, the bull-fighters, a body of men admirable for their graceful strength, their modesty, courage, and skill, nearly always come from country districts, although it is in the towns that the enthusiasm for bull-fighting is centred. Therefore, it would appear that until urban conditions of life are greatly improved, the more largely urban a population becomes, the more is its standard of vital and physical efficiency likely to be lowered. This became clearly visible during the South African War; it was found at Manchester (as stated by Dr. T.P. Smith and confirmed by Dr. Clayton) that among 11,000 young men who volunteered for enlistment, scarcely more than 10 per cent could pass the surgeon's examination, although the standard