The Blood of the Nation 



who says that "Charity creates the 

 misery she tries to relieve ; she can 

 never relieve half the misery she cre- 

 ates." 



There is to-day in Aosta, in Northern 

 Italy, an asylum for the care and 

 culture of idiots. The cretin and the 

 goitre are assembled there, and the 

 marriage of those who cannot take 

 care of themselves ensures the preserva- 

 tion of their strains of unfitness. By 

 caring devotedly for those who in the 

 stress of life could not live alone for a 

 week, and by caring for their children, 

 generation after generation, the good 

 people of Aosta have produced a new 

 breed of men, who cannot even feed 

 themselves. These are incompetent 

 through selection of degradation, while 

 the " Man of the Hoe " is primitively 

 ineffective. 



The growth of the goitre in the val- 

 leys of Savoy, Piedmont, and Valais, is 



34 



