NATURAL DEATH, PUBLIC HEALTH 243 



born, than was formerly the case. It is furthermore 

 plain that if nothing happens to the birth-rate there must 

 eventually be as many persons living upon the habitable 

 parts of the globe as can possibly be supported with 

 food and the other necessities of life. Malthus, whom 

 every one discusses but few take the trouble to read, 

 pointed out many years ago that the problem of popu- 

 lation transcends, in its direct importance to the welfare 

 of human beings and forms of social organization, all 

 other problems. Lately we have had a demonstration on 

 a ghastly gigantic scale of the truth of Malthus' conten- 

 tion. For, in last analysis, it cannot be doubted that one 

 important underlying cause of the great war, through 

 which we have just passed, was the ever-growing pres- 

 sure of population upon subsistence. 



Any system or form of activity which tends, by how- 

 ever slight an amount, to keep more people alive at a given 

 instant of time than would otherwise remain alive, adds 

 to the difficulty of the problem of population. We have 

 just seen that this is precisely what our public-health 

 activities aim to do, and in which they succeed in a not 

 inconsiderable degree. But someone will say at once 

 that, while it is true that the death-rate is falling more 

 or less generally, still the birth-rate is falling concomi- 

 tantly, so we need not worry about the population prob- 

 lem. It is evident that if we regard the population 

 problem in terms of world-area, rather than that of any 

 particular country, its degree of immediacy depends upon 

 the ratio of births to deaths in any given time unit. If 

 we examine, as I have recently done, these death-birth 

 ratios for different countries, we find that they give us 

 little hope of any solution of the problem of population 



