The Blood of the Nation 



is a complex force, which makes for 

 temperance if at all, at a fearful cost 

 of life which without alcoholic temp- 

 tation would be well worth saving. We 

 cannot easily, with Mr. Reid, regard 

 alcohol as an instrument of race-purifi- 

 cation, nor believe that the growth of 

 abstinence and prohibition only pre- 

 pares the race for a future deeper 

 plunge into dissipation. If France, 

 through wine, has grown temperate, 

 she has grown tame. " New Mira- 

 beaus," Carlyle tells us, " one hears not 

 of ; the wild kindred has gone out with 

 this, its greatest." This fact, whatever 

 the cause, is typical of great, strong, 

 turbulent men who led the wild lif e of 

 Mirabeau because they knew nothing 

 better. * 



The concentration of the energies of 

 France in the one great city of Paris 

 is again a potent agency in the impov- 

 erishment of the blood of the rural 



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