Our Declining Population Education authorities are fully alive to the
fact that in the near future there trill be a big drop in the number of children attending schools, and this is taken into account in their provision of teachers and school accommodation. But another and equally practical aspect of the population question to which Professor Carr-Saunders has called attention is more conunonly overlooked. In 1940 the total population of the country will begin to decline, even if there is no increase in emigration and no further decrease in the size of families—and such a decrease is probable. Yet regional planners, he points out, are visualizing a continuous growth of population, and corporations have been known to supply water for population that will never exist. The problem, considered from this point of view, is not, of course, the same for all localities. At present there is a steady southward drift of population, and unless there is some big change in tendency the number of inhabitants of Greater London will continue to increase long after the number in the north has begun to diminish.
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