The Human Drift | Page 5

learned too much. War is repugnant to his common sense. He
conceives it to be wrong, to be absurd, and to be very expensive. For
the damage wrought and the results accomplished, it is not worth the
price. Just as in the disputes of individuals the arbitration of a civil

court instead of a blood feud is more practical, so, man decides, is
arbitration more practical in the disputes of nations.
War is passing, disease is being conquered, and man's food-getting
efficiency is increasing. It is because of these factors that there are a
billion and three quarters of people alive to-day instead of a billion, or
three-quarters of a billion. And it is because of these factors that the
world's population will very soon be two billions and climbing rapidly
toward three billions. The lifetime of the generation is increasing
steadily. Men live longer these days. Life is not so precarious. The
newborn infant has a greater chance for survival than at any time in the
past. Surgery and sanitation reduce the fatalities that accompany the
mischances of life and the ravages of disease. Men and women, with
deficiencies and weaknesses that in the past would have effected their
rapid extinction, live to-day and father and mother a numerous progeny.
And high as the food-getting efficiency may soar, population is bound
to soar after it. "The abysmal fecundity" of life has not altered. Given
the food, and life will increase. A small percentage of the billion and
three-quarters that live to-day may hush the clamour of life to be born,
but it is only a small percentage. In this particular, the life in the
man-animal is very like the life in the other animals.
And still another change is coming in human affairs. Though
politicians gnash their teeth and cry anathema, and man, whose
superficial book-learning is vitiated by crystallised prejudice, assures
us that civilisation will go to smash, the trend of society, to-day, the
world over, is toward socialism. The old individualism is passing. The
state interferes more and more in affairs that hitherto have been
considered sacredly private. And socialism, when the last word is said,
is merely a new economic and political system whereby more men can
get food to eat. In short, socialism is an improved food-getting
efficiency.
Furthermore, not only will socialism get food more easily and in
greater quantity, but it will achieve a more equitable distribution of that
food. Socialism promises, for a time, to give all men, women, and
children all they want to eat, and to enable them to eat all they want as

often as they want. Subsistence will be pushed back, temporarily, an
exceedingly long way. In consequence, the flood of life will rise like a
tidal wave. There will be more marriages and more children born. The
enforced sterility that obtains to-day for many millions, will no longer
obtain. Nor will the fecund millions in the slums and labour-ghettos,
who to-day die of all the ills due to chronic underfeeding and
overcrowding, and who die with their fecundity largely unrealised, die
in that future day when the increased food-getting efficiency of
socialism will give them all they want to eat.
It is undeniable that population will increase prodigiously-just as it has
increased prodigiously during the last few centuries, following upon the
increase in food-getting efficiency. The magnitude of population in that
future day is well nigh unthinkable. But there is only so much land and
water on the surface of the earth. Man, despite his marvellous
accomplishments, will never be able to increase the diameter of the
planet. The old days of virgin continents will be gone. The habitable
planet, from ice-cap to ice-cap, will be inhabited. And in the matter of
food-getting, as in everything else, man is only finite. Undreamed-of
efficiencies in food-getting may be achieved, but, soon or late, man will
find himself face to face with Malthus' grim law. Not only will
population catch up with subsistence, but it will press against
subsistence, and the pressure will be pitiless and savage. Somewhere in
the future is a date when man will face, consciously, the bitter fact that
there is not food enough for all of him to eat.
When this day comes, what then? Will there be a recrudescence of old
obsolete war? In a saturated population life is always cheap, as it is
cheap in China, in India, to-day. Will new human drifts take place,
questing for room, carving earth-space out of crowded life. Will the
Sword again sing:
"Follow, O follow, then, Heroes, my harvesters! Where the tall grain is
ripe Thrust in your sickles! Stripped and adust In a stubble of empire
Scything and binding The full sheaves of sovereignty."
Even if, as of old, man should wander hungrily, sword in hand,