—in these words some one has summed up the life-work of Napoleon. "J'ai cent mille hommes de rente," "My income is a hundred thousand men," said Napoleon. But to a terrible degree he lived beyond his income.
French writers have been very frank in the discussion of national deficiencies and mistakes. They have wished to conceal nothing from France and therefore nothing from the world. Their admissions have been exaggerated by unfriendly critics. It has been claimed that modern France, with the other Latin nations, is a "decadent state," that she has passed her prime and is now in the weakness and sterility of old age, her place as the dominating force on the continent of Europe having been yielded to a younger and more aggressive power. If its strong strains are not wholly extirpated, peace and security will renew its youth. Decrepitude in a nation is due not to age, but to the operations of war, as we have several times insisted, followed by the loss of its best strains of blood and their replacement by recruiting from immigrants of the weaker races. Though France has suffered grievously from war, as a nation she has lost little from immigration and not much from emigration.
Certain features of French life have been indicated as evidences of injury from reversal of selection. The birthrate of France, already low, has been steadily falling. This is apparently a result of the survival of the cautious, for Napoleon's dashing grenadiers could hardly be imagined to limit their families for prudential reasons of economy. Indeed, the French in Canada, not affected by war, are notoriously fecund. Another evidence of the survival of the cautious is found in the relative lack of business enterprise in France. The gold hoarded in her stockings has been used mainly for international loans, rarely for business development, foreign loans yielding a higher interest with less personal responsibility. And the absence of factory towns emphasizes the fall in the birthrate, as in civilized nations a high rate of increase occurs mainly in industrial centers.
Edmond Demolins in a clever book asks: "In what constitutes the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon?" He finds his answer in the false standards in French life, in defects of training and of civic and personal ideals. The desire for seats in a government bureau and for similar safe places of routine and without initiative has been termed in Italy "Impiegomania," the "craze for sitting down." The eagerness to secure such positions is said to be a besetting sin of the youth of both Italy and France. But the fault may be due to over-centraliza-
