i9o6.] JORDAN— THE HUMAN HARVEST. 65 



and wastes them." '' This sublime and terrible phrase," says another 

 writer, " sums up Spanish history." 



In 1630, according to Captain Calkins, the Augustinian friar, 

 La Puente, thus summed up the fate of Spain: 



"Against the credit for redeemed souls, I set the cost of armadas 

 and the sacrifice of soldiers and friars sent to the Philippines. And 

 this I count the chief loss : for mines give silver and forests give 

 timber, but only Spain gives Spaniards, and she may give so many 

 that she may be left desolate and constrained to bring up strangers' 

 children instead of her own." 



Another of the noblest of Roman provinces was Gallia, the 

 favored land, in which the best of the Romans, the Franks and the 

 Northmen have mingled their blood to produce a nation of men, 

 hopefully leaders in the arts of peace, fatally leaders also in the arts 

 of war. 



To-day w^e are told by Frenchmen that France is a decadent 

 nation. This is a confession of judgment, not an accusation of 

 hostile rivals. It does not mean that the slums of Paris are de- 

 structive of human life. That we know elsewhere. Each great city 

 has its great burdens, and these fall hard on those at the bottom 

 of the layers of society. There is degradation in all great cities, 

 but the great cities are not the whole of France. It is claimed that 

 the decadence is deep-seated, not individual. It is said that the birth- 

 rate is steadily falling, that the average stature of men is lower by 

 two inches at least than it was a century ago, that the physical force 

 is less among the peasants at their homes. Legoyt tells us that '' it 

 will take long periods of peace and plenty before France can recover 

 the tall statures mowed down in the wars of the republic and the first 

 empire." What is the cause of all this? Intemperance, vice, mis- 

 directed education, bureaucracy^ and the rush toward ready made 

 careers ? These may be symptoms. They are not causes. Demo- 

 lins asks in that clever volume of his : " In what constitutes the supe- 

 riority of the Anglo-Saxon ?" Before we answer this, let us inquire 

 in what constitutes the inferiority of the Latin races? If we admit 

 this inferiority exists in any degree, and if we answer it in any 

 degree, we find in the background the causes of the fall of Greece, 

 the fall of Rome, the fall of Spain. We find the spirit of domina- 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, XLV, 182E, PRINTED JUNE 25, I906. 



