The 

 Human 

 Harvest 



[68] 



of alcohol was unknown and total absti- 

 nence was undreamed of, it was the strong, 

 the boisterous, the energetic, the apostle of 

 " the strenuous life," who carried all these 

 things to excess. The wassail bowl, the 

 bumper of ale, the flagon of wine, — all 

 these were the attribute of the strong. We 

 cannot say that those who sank in alcohol- 

 ism thereby illustrated the survival of the 

 fittest. Who can say that, as the Latin races 

 became temperate,they did not also become 

 docile and weak ? In other words, consider- 

 ing the influence of alcohol alone, un- 

 checked by an educated conscience, we 

 must admit that it is the strong and vigor- 

 ous, not the weak and perverted, that are 

 destroyed by it. At the best, we can only 

 say that alcoholic selection is a complex 

 force which makes for temperance — if at 

 all, at a fearful cost of life which, without 

 alcoholic temptation, would be well worth 

 saving. We cannot easily, with Mr. Reid, 

 regard alcohol as an instrument of race- 

 purification, nor believe that the growth of 

 abstinence and prohibition only prepares 

 the race for a future deeper plunge into dis- 



