SHORTER NOTICES.
MANKIND AT THE CROSSROADS. By Edward M. East (Charles Scribner's Sons. 163. not.)
If man is to believe his advisers he is always at the cross roads ; recently the diverging ways have been said to lead to " liberty " and " bolshevism," here they take us to a crowded, poverty-stricken world and to a limited population enjoying a high standard of life. Professor East is a Malthusian. His creed does not even yet make the natural appeal in the United States that it makes in Lancashire but is spreading. He argues here that the world draws near over-population, that Europe and Asia are already too full, and that if the present rate of increase goes on the world will be overcrowded by the year 2000. It is not a yellow or a black peril that he fears but a white one, for according to his calculations the whites will soon outnumber all the coloured races combined, owing to their unfortunate but only recently acquired habit of more than quadrupling themselves every. century. It is arguable that Professor East does not allow enough for the recent diminution in the rate of increase going on and even being accelerated, and that he takes too little account of other food supplies than wheat. But the figures he gives bear out many, if not quite all, of his contentions, and his argument is always interesting even if it does not make our flesh creep. His criticism of those who regard increase of population as necessarily good, regardless of the conditions of life endured by that popula- tion; is fully justified, though to an English reader he seems to be flogging a dead horse. But some of his passages are more questionable. To call Dean Inge one of the " exceptional few " " who have investigated matters thoroughly ' is to turn the Dean's gift for intelligent journalism into a claim to statistical and biological knowledge that it will hardly bear. That " science has given the world a conception of death full of nobility and beauty " is nonsense which the Dean would be the first to reprove, for in this respect science comes a long way behind religion. Professor East would be a more impressive writer if he pitched the claims of science a little lower, avoided a rather elephantine flippancy, and were less ready to throw out casual judgments on politics. philosophy and history not necessary to his theme and showing little evidence of knowledge on these specialized subjects.
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