24 LEONARD DARWIN 



exertions will have been well spent. You will have made known to each 

 other many persons previously bound together by a common interest, and 

 you will have brought the Eugenic ideal clearly before the minds of many 

 thousands of your fellow countrymen, by whom it had been previously only 

 but dimly realised. My firm conviction is that if wide-spread Eugenic 

 reforms are not adopted during the next hundred years or so, our Western 

 Civilization is inevitably destined to such a slow and gradual decay as that 

 which has been experienced in the past by every great ancient civilization. 

 The size and the importance of the United States throws on you a special 

 responsibility in your endeavours to safeguard the future of our race. 

 Those who are attending your Congress will be aiding in this endeavour, 

 and though you will gain no thanks from your own generation, posterity will, 

 I believe, learn to realise the great debt it owes to all the workers in this 

 field. 



