Essay No. 25
National Decay, or National Vitality ?
THE COST IN HUMAN LIFE OF LACK OF DISCIPLINE
BY
Fleet-Engineer Quick, R.N., Retired.
TEN years ago an eminent American engineer visited the leading factories and ironworks of England and Scotland and expressed the utmost surprise at the lethargy and bloated condition of the workmen. He briefly summed up the situation thus : "If our American men did no more work than your men we should have to shut up half the factories in the States, for we could not get any foreign orders. Your men drink twice as much as our men, and do only about half the work." The average annual consumption of alcohol per head in the United States for the three years 1895-6-7 was 1.13 gallons, against 2.12 gallons per head in the United Kingdom. Later figures show an average in 1906 of 2.1 gallons of alcohol per head per annum for England; 1.6 gallons for Ireland, and only 1.4 gallons per head for Scotland.
Now, for the 30-year period, 1840-70, there can be no doubt that the British workman stood foremost
* Reprinted from The Maidenhead Advertiser.
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of all the working classes in the world both for quality and quantity of work produced. Can it be truthfully said that he does so to-day ? If he does not, what are the causes of his altered position ? In the first place, it cannot be denied that most foreign workmen have improved in a very marvellous manner, both in skill, in physical health and strength, and in general energy, in consequence of the compulsory military training they have received since the Franco-German War of 1870.
In 1898 Great Britain's share of the commerce of the world was I71/4 per cent. less than it was in 1882, but Germany's share was 93/4 per cent. greater in 1898 than it was in 1882, and later figures show that foreign shipping work is increasing more rapidly than British.* Thus in 1904, British shipping enter¬ing and clearing our ports was 64.3 per cent. of the whole, but in 1907 our proportion had fallen to 61 per cent., while the proportion of foreign shipping had increased from 35.7 to 39 per cent. Thus, whilst Germany is advancing, we are slipping backwards. In 1897 it was officially reported that "One of the reasons of the growth of the trade in Germany is to be found in the enlarged average output of the workmen." The average output of iron ore per workman in Germany has risen in ten years from
* On April 4 last, Reuter's correspondent wrote concerning the shipping at Hong Kong in 1907 : " In British river steamers there is a decreased tonnage of 212,137 tons. . . . In foreign ocean vessels an increase of 334 ships of 627,380 tons is shown."
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264 tons to 368, or 40 per cent.; and that of pig iron has risen from 164 tons to 227 tons, or 38 per cent. The manufactured iron made has similarly increased. The increase in the output of American workmen is still larger. There is not any compulsory military training for the American workmen, but all the child¬ren, boys and girls, are taught patriotism in schools, to march and salute their flag, and physical exercises. Nearly all American young men belong to rifle corps, and nearly all are good rifle shots, i.e. they have some skill with the rifle. Russian workmen are also largely increasing their output, and are rapidly be-coming very intelligent, as a result principally of the habits of order and discipline they acquire when going through their military service. Professor Virchow, the eminent scientist, has stated in one of his papers that the British working classes give most of their energies to excessive sexual indulgence and excessive drinking. That statement must be approxi¬mately accurate, or it must be an awful slander. Unfortunately, those people who have lived abroad with foreign workpeople as well as with the British working classes at home confirm Virchow's state¬ment, although they may not state their views quite so plainly, while some make an additional charge against the British by saying that the balance of their energies is devoted to betting, or to some other form of gambling. The worry of gambling pro¬duces sleeplessness, diminishes virility, and causes
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the production of neurotic, feeble, and criminal off¬spring.
One thing is very certain—that the average Britons of the present day have not the physical strength and endurance of some of the foreign races, although we have always considered ourselves superior to all other nations in these respects. As to the strength and endurance of some of the foreign races, we may mention the extraordinary march of the Russians to Mery ; the quick marches of the Italian and French troops, heavily accoutred ; that the Indian bearers in Natal made " Five journeys to Frere, the men three times carrying the wounded the whole distance of 25 miles in a single day " ; "whilst a regular Hindustanee carrier, with a weight of 8o lb. hung on his shoulders, runs over too miles in 24 hours " (these men eat rice with a little butter only—no meat or alcohol). Mr. B. C. Henry states that three Chinese coolies carried him 23 miles in five hours and then returned to get breakfast, making a journey of 46 miles without food. On another occa¬sion two men carried him 35 miles, and were return¬ing by boat when it ran aground, and they were 27 hours without food, and then they offered to carry him 15 miles farther.
Compare the stockbrokers' walk to Brighton with these facts, and the stockbrokers' results do not show very grandly. The German Military Attaché in Japan reported in 1902 that he saw Japanese troops
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march 8o miles in one day, each with a load of 7o lb.—(See "Royal United Service Institution Journal.")
The miners of Chili and Bolivia are strong and healthy, magnificently muscular, and have handsome figures, but they drink very sparingly of all liquids —principally water, with a little weak coffee or cocoa. The same is true also of the Mexicans and natives of Guatemala, whose principal food consists of "fritolies" and "tortillas," a kind of pancake made from maize flour.
By special training we may produce a few athletes who can compete with foreign athletes, but the strength of the millions of average men is the point to be considered. No one can pretend that our average country-bred or town-bred men can equal the performances of the men above referred to. We are paying the penalty for our excessive use of tea, sugar, fancy foods, and fancy drinks, such as mineral waters, to say nothing of the most debilitating of all drinks—English gin. The bloated condition of many of our people at the present time is undoubtedly due to the excessive drinking of sugar-brewed beer, which is now so generally in favour. Certainly, in the interests of our race, present and future, all brewers should be prohibited by heavy penalties from using anything but pure malt and hops in the pro¬duction of beer, whether the public prefer beer made from chemicals and drugs or not.
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The fall of our birth-rate and our physical and moral deterioration may, by ill-informed people, be ascribed to poverty and overcrowding, but the writer had experience of the slums of London fifty years ago, as well as recently, and also of slums in European, Asiatic, and American cities, and he is reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the vicious habits of the British people have brought about this decay of vitality rather than the unavoid¬ably bad physical conditions under which they have lived. Nine-tenths of the physical evils arising from overcrowding in both town and country would be avoided if the people would but keep their windows open both day and night. At the beginning of this new century it would be well for us all if we could clear our minds of cant and face the truth, acknow¬ledging that we have been indeed "miserable sinners," devoid alike of common sense and a just appreciation of our own vital interests and the mar¬vellous prosperity we have enjoyed during the past fifty years. Peace and prosperity have brought us all, the highest and lowest in the land, into a habit of self-indulgence and luxury, which has been and is most fatal to our vitality and manliness as a race. That war and famine are not without some compen¬sations is proved by the fact stated by Dr. Newsholme (page 128, "Vital Statistics"), that during the siege of Paris, 1870-7I, "while the general mortality was doubled, that of infants is said to/ have been reduced
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by about forty per cent., owing to mothers being obliged to suckle their infants." "The same increase of adult and diminution of infant mortality was seen, during the Lancashire cotton famine, when mothers were not at work in the mills." Again, while the poor Irish people produce 479 children for every hun¬dred marriages, of which only to per cent. die under one year of age, we, wealthy and luxurious English people, produce only 361 children for every hundred marriages, of whom over 16 per cent. die under one year of age. In wealthy, prosperous Glasgow, in November, 1900, the children under five years of age died at the rate of 48 per cent. per annum, 562 child¬ren under five dying in four weeks.
Since 1875 the Cult of Comfort at any Cost has been preached practically by hosts of well-meaning people, who have been ignorant of the teachings of past history, ignorant of the progress, aspirations, and capabilities of foreign nations, utterly ignorant of anthropological science, and totally devoid of fore¬sight.
Popular writers and sweet-voiced speakers have
proclaimed the rights of everybody to ease, comfort, sport, music, literature, art, and amusements of
every kind, without counting the high price which
the inflexible laws of Nature invariably demand from those nations which indulge in effeminate luxuries,
and which neglect the stern calls of duty. Duty and discipline, devotion to God, to the family, to the
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King and State, have been all alike ignored by these apostles of ease and comfort.
These popular prophets have disregarded the teachings of Heraclitus, the philosopher of Ephesus, who 2,40o years ago proclaimed the great truth that the most important matter in life is not what we were, nor what we are, but what we are becoming.
Here are some of the bitter fruits of the Creed of Comfort as preached by the so-called "Friends of the People " :
(I) In 1876 our average birth-rate was 36.5 per ',ow. To-day it is 26 per i,000, or a fall of over 28 per cent. in thirty-three years. This form of moral and physical dry-rot has seized hold not only on the British race in Great Britain, but on those of the same race who live in the other parts of our gigantic Empire, and so their birth-rate has fallen heavily, and is still falling rapidly. This also is the case of those of the Ango-Saxon race who are now citizens of the United States.
(2) The physical evils that would befall women who wilfully decreased the birth-rate were pointed out in some medical journals in 1885. The Reports of the Registrar-General show that the deaths of females from diseases peculiar to women and from diabetes have trebled since 1870; while the deaths from diseases of the circulation, such as heart disease, have increased rapidly, and now outnumber the deaths due to pulmonary consumption.
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(3) We have succeeded in stamping out some diseases and in largely reducing the death-rate due to zymotic and other purely physical causes, such as typhus, small-pox, and their congeners, but the amount of ill-health and disease arising from what may be termed moral causes has very largely in-creased. Nervous diseases, insanity and suicide have advanced by leaps and bounds since 1876.
(4) The reduction of the birth-rate has certainly not increased the health, happiness and endurance of the women of England and Wales, for the deaths at child-birth (not due to puerperal fever) have largely increased.
The Registrar-General's Reports show also that the death-rate of infants by premature birth has very largely increased since 1876, while the mortality of infants from congenital defects has increased over one hundred per cent. since 1875. Thus, thanks to the Cult of Comfort at any Cost, we have continu¬ously to increase the number of Homes for Cripples, Homes for the Paralysed, for Epileptics, and for the Feeble-minded, and our Asylums for the Insane ; whilst numberless families have to support invalid or "peculiar" members who are utterly incapable of useful or profitable occupation, and are thus a terrible burden on the resources of the parents, and a still more terrible injury to the young and healthy members of the family.
(5) In the early years of the last century there
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were 1,070 boys born to every 1,000 girls. In recent years the proportion has fallen to 1,032 boys to every i,000 girls, and the Registrar-General's Report states : "The proportion of boys to girls born in England and Wales is smaller than in any other European country. . . . The proportion has been gradually but steadily diminishing for many years past."
At the census in 1901 there were over one million and seventy thousand more females than males in England and Wales alone. Thus we have far fewer able-bodied men of the working and fight¬ing age in proportion to our population than any other European Power. And with the large excess of females in this land the position of women must, to a large extent, become degraded, whatever amount of political power they may obtain.
(6) The growth of an effeminate sentimentality, which, shutting its eyes in great measure to the ex-perience of mankind, considers physical discomfort and pain to be the greatest evils of life, forgetting how far more fatal to the happiness of men and women are the moral evils. This school of thought, blind to the teachings of Nature and of Revelation, would, in its dealings with mankind, eliminate from the world all coercion and punishment, regardless of the warnings of history, which show that it is only through discipline and suffering that the finest qualities of men and women are developed, and that
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nations have attained to the greatest heights of eminence and of power.
Such is the deadly price the British people have to pay for their "Cult of Comfort at any Cost."
The only salvation must come from ourselves—from the men and women, the boys and girls of every class. God has given us every opportunity. He has done everything possible for us. It is for us now, before it is too late, to make a wise use of the glorious and magnificent opportunities He has so freely bestowed upon us. We must abandon the pursuit of the soft, sweet, silly-sportive and sickly-sentimental, and give our lives to duty, discipline, and devotion to God, to our family, King and country.
The primeval law of God, " Increase and multi¬ply," must be obeyed by all healthy men and women, or the British race must die out.
All our young men and maidens must be taught that marriage must be their great aim in life; and to achieve that honourably and happily they must from their earliest years be taught the duty and dignity of hard work, and of saving every penny possible for establishing a home free from debt. The habit of saving should be formed at an early age, and the honour and glory of being independent of help, even in time of trouble, should be inculcated. The culti¬vation of health, wealth and honour is THE WAY OF HAPPINESS-AND THE WAY OF LIFE.
The better the people perform their duties in this
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life, the better they serve God and conform to His will.
The Cult of Charity is but little less deadly than the Cult of Comfort. For the indiscriminating and almost boundless charity of our people has produced hordes of professional beggars in all ranks of life. Many clever people have elevated the crime of beg¬ging into a science, while others have practised it as an artistic occupation. In not a few cases chapels and churches encourage young children to beg, until begging becomes second nature to them; and having begged for others in their youth, they feel no shame in after life to beg for luxuries for themselves. Thus, "Briton and Beggar" are becoming synonymous terms, and very few of either sex, however good their income may be, ever save one quarter of the sums that foreigners would save under similar conditions. The females spend all they get in dress and gadding about, while our benighted young men "blue every stiver " they can get hold of in sports.
We hear much of men and women's rights, but little of men and women's duties.
We have the terrible problems of poverty, crime, prostitution, and unemployment always before us. Tramps and vagrants are continuously increasing in numbers, and we go gaily on manufacturing these classes—all from our zeal for humanity. Our laws, made in the name of Christianity and humanity, occasionally torture and ruin the innocent and help-
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less, while they feed, clothe, and splendidly lodge the culprit. Let me explain :
There are often cases of theft by employees brought before the magistrates, who, as a rule, ad¬minister the law most mercifully. I make no com¬plaint of the administration of the law, but I accuse the gross ignorance of our humanitarians who make such cruelly destructive laws. There are thousands of cases of the insane inhumanity of our laws every year where the innocent and helpless are tortured. I have known of them for many years, and have expected that some of our great, good, and wise men would remedy the matter.
Recently, men in fair employment have been proved guilty of robbery, and have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment. In the last case the man, who had been in regular employment for a year, had a wife and four children. Now, I ask, what will become of the latter, not only during the imprison¬ment of the bread-winner, but what will become of the whole of them in the coming years ? Criminals must be punished. Pardon for crime is an unpardon¬able sin. There are more men, women, and children in these islands ruined by being pardoned for their offences than from any other cause; and the prose¬cutors in the recent cases are not to be blamed. But the law is to be blamed.
I do not write in a hurry. I have seen cor-
poral punishment inflicted on Englishmen and on
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foreigners also. I have read and heard hundreds of arguments against corporal punishment. We have no corporal punishment for ordinary criminals in this sentiment-ridden land. But between 30,000 and 40,000 habitual vagrants are ever on our roads, and these are principally created by our system of im¬prisonment, instead of flogging, for crime. These are ulcers which destroy our national vitality, and they are continuously increasing in number. (See Report of Committee on Vagrancy. Cd. 2,852.)
I do not wish to send the humanitarians—the lovers of criminals—into hysterics, so I will say as briefly as possible that, in my opinion, the law should be altered so that first offenders should be allowed the option of taking a flogging in lieu of imprisonment in certain cases, so that, in the case of a married man, the wife and family shall suffer as little as possible.
"Comes the moment to decide,
•
Then it is the brave man chooses,
And the coward stands aside." - LOWELL.
Our men and boys are brave enough to risk limb, if not life, at football, boxing, wrestling, etc., and I am sure that any man in decent health would prefer a sound flogging than to be detained in jail for a month or more, while his wife and children are starv¬ing, begging, stealing, or doing things even worse than these,
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The first object of punishment should be as a deterrent ; its second object should be as a corrective —that is, as a moral tonic to strengthen the will to do that which is right. Punishment should not be inflicted as a revenge for injuries received. But these are mere platitudes. Plainly and straightforwardly, I believe in the sanctifying power of the whip.
The brave Briton—any brave man—would rather suffer in his own skin than that his wife and children should starve. Personally, I do not consider it de¬grading to flog or to be flogged. The degradation lies in deserving punishment.
We have no time to lose if the British race is to be saved. We must "wake up " to the stern fact that we live in a world governed by unchanging, inflexible, and relentless laws, wherein there is NO MERCY for folly, weakness, or mistakes due to good intentions founded on ignorance.
We must earn life, or we shall certainly receive punishment.
There is no middle course.
There is no escape.
We have had many warnings during the last fifty years.
We have no excuse.
We cannot plead ignorance.
"That servant, which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes."
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These are the words of Christ.
Ancient and modern history and the teachings of science show conclusively that it is not wealth that causes disaster, but the squandering of wealth and health in luxury and folly which brings destitution, disease, dishonour, and death to nations as well as to individuals.
Next to health, wealth is the greatest material blessing that can be conferred on man, provided he has wisdom to use it rightly.
A more bright and brilliant future than has ever dawned on any nation will be the lot of our British
race in this century if we will but exercise a little
common sense and "Turn away from the wicked-ness we have committed, and do that which is lawful and right." The past is dead and gone. The future is in our own hands. But we have not a day to lose. If we will, we may take advantage of our oppor¬tunities immediately, and, casting off our errors,
sentimentalism, weakness, cant, softness, indolence, extravagance and greed for luxuries, rise to a virtu¬ous, vigorous and more virile life, economising our health and wealth, and securing a noble future for our Empire and our race!
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