apart to have this effect. It is true that only a too sanguine optimism can see the immediate abolition of war, but it is equally beyond dispute that there are now powerful forces at work in the direction of universal peace.
Still another optimistic factor of the present is the crusade against alcohol. This is a determined and persistent opposition and in the end will eliminate its use. Hitherto the opposition has been largely sentimental and has been directed not so much against alcohol as against drunkenness. Recent studies in the psychology and physiology of alcohol lead us to believe that it is a race poison. It is the most deadly form of the downward or recalcitrant action of matter. So far back as history goes it has acted as-one of the most serious impeding forces to the upward progress of the human spirit. It is in spite of alcohol that progress has continued from century to century. It is impossible to estimate the damage it has done to the human race. Its elimination will be a far more difficult problem than the abolition of war. The psychological cause of the universal desire for alcohol lies deeper than has been supposed, and it is only when this cause is understood that successful headway will be made against it. But it is undoubtedly true that alcohol will have to go. The emergence of woman into political and social affairs will add new vigor to the opposition to it and psychological, physiological and sociological studies will solve the problem of method.
But, now, it may be said, while these optimistic views of life and society are most cheering and suggestive, still they are in a certain way superficial and particularly so as regards the economic outlook for the future. There are deep-lying causes at work, it may be said, which look towards human degeneracy rather than towards human uplift. Our present prosperity is due very largely, for one thing, to the fact that there have been ever to the westward rich unoccupied lands to relieve the congestion of our population and react as an invigorating influence upon our eastern civilizations. These lands are now nearly all occupied, and henceforth, remembering Malthus's doctrine of the increase of population and the law of diminishing returns in agriculture, we may look for trouble. In the United States, it may be said, our present flamboyant prosperity is due to the fact that we are reveling in the wasteful use of a by no means inexhaustible supply of bituminous and anthracite coal, petroleum, natural gas, timber and soil fertility. The end of all these rich supplies can not be far away. If we could perchance find a substitute for our coal and timber, yet there is no way of supplying the combined nitrogen necessary to renew our soil when the present sources are exhausted. Again, in other directions, it is said, the social forces put into operation by man are Lilliputian and a single convulsion of nature may overthrow them all. Take, for instance, our war against contagious diseases. When we have eliminated them, we have destroyed nature's social scavengers and she will take a
