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 life 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 



40 



