22

comprise a high percentage wnose college careers evince physical vigor, push, energy, originality, and at least a fair degree of intellectuality.

The age at which men marry is closely correlated with the number of their children. Among the married men of our three Yale classes this age varies systematically from not quite twenty-seven years among the men who have six or more children up to thirty-three among those who remain childless. This difference of six years is symptomatic of the fact that men who are physically, mentally, and morally sound are not only more eager to marry than are the opposite types, but are more attractive to women, and more likely to be well established in their life-work, and hence able to support children, at a reasonably early age.

The most significant and perfect of our comparisons is based on success in life as determined by the opinions of five or more classmates. On an average, the unmarried men are the least successful; those who are married but have no chil

the most successful group have children, and only forty per cent of the least successful. A similar, but even greater decline, relatively speaking, is apparent in the fact that among the most successful men about forty per cent have at least three children, but among the least successful only ten or fifteen per cent have.

Still another way of representing the same thing is by means of the average number of children per father, or per man. The most successful tenth have, or have had, an average of over three children per father, the least successful only 2.2. But when we take the children per graduate, and include, not only the fathers, but the unmarried men and those who are married but childless, the contrast is much greater. Among the most successful tenth of these Yale graduates of a generation or so ago the average number of children per graduate is 2.4; among the least successful tenth, only about 0.8. The intermediate groups are distributed between the two extremes at almost regular intervals.

well. The man with one child succeeds somewhat better, and so on until the most successful group comprises those with six or more children. The differences among the fathers having three or more children are slight though systematic, but below that the differences are pronounced. Of course, some of the best men in every class fall in each group from the unmarried to those who have six children, but on an average there are many more unsuccessful men among the unmarried and childless than among those who have a number of children. The idea that successful people have few children finds no support whatever among Yale graduates.

I

N order to be sure of our ground, let us divide our Yale graduates into ten equal groups according to their degree of success in life. On the whole, the most successful tenth graduate younger than the others, but the difference between the two extremes averages only about half a year. The age at marriage shows the same kind of difference, the range being from thirty years among the most successful to thirty-two among the least successful. Even more marked is the relation between success, on the one hand, and marriage and children, on the other. Among the most successful tenth no less than ninety-five per cent are married, while the percentage gradually declines to only sixty-six among the least successful. The percentage who have children falls off in the same way, but even more rapidly, for eighty per cent of

unique in their correlation of large families and success in life.

At our suggestion, Dr. J. C. Phillips, of Harvard, conducted a similar inquiry in respect to nineteen hundred Harvard graduates, with results exactly like ours. His most successful group, comprising less than seven per cent of three classes, reports an average of 2.19 children per graduate, compared with 2.42 for the highest tenth of the Yale graduates. His lowest seven per cent has an average of .80 of a child per graduate, compared with .85 for the least successsful tenth of the Yale graduates. At Harvard, as at Yale, the results for single classes and for separate occupations are the same as for the whole group of graduates.

No matter whether we study lawyers, business men, bankers, professors, ministers, writers, engineers, or any other group, the most successful are the most likely to marry, to have children, and to have a considerable number of children. The evidence is so overwhelming and so unanimous that it presumably applies, not only to all college graduates, but to every group which is socially

The Outlook for

families and the lower classes large families. We have overlooked the equally important, but less conspicuous fact that within any given level of society the reverse is true the successful people tend not only to come from the large families, but to have relatively large families themselves.

Why should this be the case? Are not many of the finest people unmarried or childless? Certainly; but that has nothing to do with the matter.

The point of the problem lies in the percentage of the best men who fall in each of our groups. The unmarried men, for example, undoubtedly include plenty of very fine individuals, but they also include a large percentage who are unsuccessful or deficient physically, mentally, socially, or morally. Young women do not want to marry such men. Still others might have been much more successful if they had had wives and children to stir them up, encourage them, and hold them to harder work and finer ideals. The same sort of reasoning applies to those who are married but have no children. In this group childlessness is often due to physiological causes for which the individual is in no sense responsible. That is the misfortune of many very high-minded and successful people. But with these fine types must be put a large number who have no children because of their own self-indulgence, selfishness, or other defects in character.

The larger the number of children from the higher social levels, the more certain we can be that both husband and wife are physically strong and nervously sound. That in itself is a great help to success. Moreover, parents whose equable, dependable temperaments help them to succeed in the world are also able to get along well with one another and with their children. They are much more likely to avoid the divorce court and to desire four to six children than are people who are irritable and erratic. Altruism likewise helps people to succeed in life, and also favors large families. Thus many qualities which promote success in life also promote large families.

NE intensely practical result of all this is that because of our present system of freedom as to whether we will marry, combined with birth control, the upper classes are being sorted, sifted, and improved with extraordinary rapidity.

Another is that we must completely abandon the modern idea that it is "the thing" to have small families. Amig the upper classes, provided we deal in averages, the people who have families

September 7, 1927

of three or more children almost immeasurably excel the others in practically every kind of real success. Moreover, the children born in the large families reap inestimable advantages.

Thus the available evidence seems strongly to indicate the desirability that

people with a fine inheritance physically, mentally, and morally should have an average of four to six children, not only for the sake of society, but for the sake of the children. Such tends to be actually the case, in spite of the common. supposition to the contrary. But this

23

tendency needs to be strengthened in order that children of the right type may

be so numerous that their kind will not only be preserved, but will increase in relative numbers, thus giving the world a larger and larger proportion of highsouled leaders.

A

T a recent meeting of the Executive Committee in Paris the International Olympic Committee voted to permit the members of the national teams taking part in the Olympic soccer or Association football tournament to receive compensation for the salary lost during the time they participate. That this money is to be paid to their employers instead of directly into the hands of the players themselves fails to remove the suspicion of professionalism which results from the decision. If soccer players are entitled to compensation, are not the runners, swimmers, cyclists, gymnasts, and other Olympic athletes entitled to similar consideration? In Europe it is felt that the amateur character of the Games is endangered. Sport circles are perturbed."

To understand completely the deep interest of the European countries in the Olympic Games one must first be aware of the feelings of close national rivalry which exist. Dual meets of an international character are frequent occurrences in Europe, and arouse all the enthusiasm of intercollegiate contests in the university communities of the United States. An analogy is to be found by imagining each of the forty-eight States in America to be separated by national borders rather than by State lines, and each having its own language and customs. Athletic rivalry under such circumstances becomes more intense because of the close geographical proximity yet distinctly separate nationality of the groups. In Europe the Olympic Games, bringing together many countries, is the sum of such national rivalries.

Since their inception the modern Games have been restricted to amateur athletes. It was Baron Pierre de Coubertin, that noble sportsman of France, who first conceived of organizing an amateur meeting of many nations in athletic rivalry every four years. He was inspired by his personal admiration of the English public school system and the English ideals of sport, and he determined to impart those ideals to France and the rest of the world. The

By DAVID F. DAVIS

first renewal of the Grecian Games took place in 1896-in Athens, appropriately, where young Hellenic manhood had been accustomed to gather in ancient times. At the fourth celebration of the Games, in London in 1908, the Baron was able to see the representatives of twenty different nations compete in twenty different forms of sport. At the most recent celebration-the eighth Olympic Games, in Paris in 1924-he saw fortyfive nations contribute a total of competitors three times as large as that in 1908. Nearly two thousand amateur athletes took part in the track and field events alone.

In Europe it is felt that much depends upon whether the International Olympic Committee rescinds its decision in regard to the soccer players; if allowed to stand, it is feared that the Games may become merely a professional world championship. The Olympic Committee, so its defenders say, was forced to take such a decision in order to save the Dutch Olympic Committee, as the organizer of the contests that are to be held in Amsterdam next year, from suffering a financial loss.

Trouble had developed when the International Association Football Federation declared for non-participation at Amsterdam unless the International Olympic Committee recognized the right of the players to compensation for lost salary. Ordinarily it is left to the Federation of each sport to determine what constitutes an amateur athlete, but such a proposal as the soccer authorities made was hardly acceptable. More trouble developed between the International Olympic Committee and the International Lawn Tennis Federation, and the Dutch Olympic heads faced the prospect of organizing a programme that would have neither soccer nor tennis. The receipts from these two sports form no inconsiderable part of the total, and Holland began to lose much of its optimism. A deficit appeared to be a certainty unless something could be done; it was under these conditions that the International Olympic Committee capit

ulated to the soccer authorities, and attempted to save its face by making the reservation which has been mentionedthat no money should pass directly into the hands of the players. However, Count Baillet-Latour, the President, and his fellow-members of the Executive Committee failed to observe the elements of consistency. At the same meeting in which the soccer players gained the privilege of recompense without having their amateur status endangered it was voted to notify the tennis authorities that former professionals who had been requalified as amateurs by their national association could not be admitted to the Olympic tennis tournament.

Few people have a quarrel with the professional in sport as such, but many harbor an understandable dislike for those who assume the guise of the amateur but who accept the rewards of the professional. Therein lies the so-called problem of amateurism, and it has kept pace with the growing complexity of our system of sports and games, national and international.

When the British team of professional golfers journeys to Worcester to dispute the Ryder Cup matches, it is received with much of the enthusiasm that is paid Bobby Jones, the great American amateur, when he reaches England on the way to St. Andrews. When Suzanne Lenglen appears in the United States on a professional tennis tour, she is accorded all the courtesy and admiration that is offered to Tilden when he walks onto the courts at St. Cloud or at Wimbledon. The professional-unlike the prophet-is not without honor in his own land or in the lands he may chance to visit as long as his identity is clear. The amateur is recognized as one who participates for the sake of the pleasure afforded rather than for pecuniary gain. For the amateur,, sport is a recreation and not a business; and he devotes to it a portion of his leisure time, and not his working hours. Probably as long as athletic competitions and games continue to be regarded as pleasurable forms of recreation there will exist this distinction

24

between the amateur and the professional. Inability to distinguish is at the root of the problem of amateurism.

The Outlook for

tallized a world-wide amateur definition which will cover every sport. In striving toward this ideal, Count Baillet-Latour could have no better example to follow than that set by the man he succeeded to the presidency of the Olympic organization-Baron Pierre de Coubertin,

The most encouraging aspect of the Olympic situation as it now stands is that faith has not been lost in the ability of the Games to rise above the taint of professionalism which seems to threaten. What do our readers think of this

Paris, France.

E

VEN more than two years ago at the first Conference the problem of China engaged chief attention. The magnitude of the issue about China is by this time pretty well perceived by the nations. Four hundred millions on the march. Time still counts little in China, but it counts more than it used to. New and varied forces are impinging upon the arousing National consciousness. Hundreds of able students being educated in the politics, the science and economics of America, and returning to be leaders in their native land; others trained in the Japanese military colleges-Chiang Kai-shek, the recently deposed general of the Nationalist forces, is one of these; Russia's deliberate and subtle influence upon Chinese students and labor leaders and her propagandist zeal with the multitude; the mass-education movement spreading among the illiterate population; the industrialization of the country arousing the workers to discussion and organization and a fighting spirit against the low economic standards of the past; the mounting cost of living unbalanced by corresponding rise in the earning capacity of the Chinese people; a new desire to live a life as far above the hunger line as possible; the old educational system of training a man how to live among his fellow-men giving place to a system of training a man how to make his living; all issuing into a struggle for the unification of China, for an authoritative government efficient and honest as Chinese Governments have never been, and based upon the will of the Chinese people.

come suddenly aware that foreign peoples have taken away from them territory and sovereign rights, and they are bent on regaining them as quickly as possible. It may still be a long time, but four hundred millions are on the march, have turned their backs upon their past, are now wandering in the wilderness, but are on the way to the Promised Land.

And foreign governments are scurrying to adjust themselves to the new order.

Germany and Russia no longer have special privileges in China. The Allies drove Germany out, and the Chinese drove Russia out. Russia as a Government is back again by the door of subtle penetration, but on the outward basis of equality. Japan and Britain are profoundly concerned about the new order. Japan has many hundreds of thousands of people in Manchuria and precious rights there, and is in sore need of more land area for her population; furthermore, if China is given back her full right of tariff autonomy, and the import rates should be ruthlessly raised by China on certain commodities, it might mean starvation and upheaval for industrial Japan, which so depends upon China for an expanding market. Britain has already seen the handwriting on the wall. Force, concessions, the power of finance-she no longer relies on them. She is ready for new policies at once; and new treaties, as soon as they can be authoritatively written.

America's power in China is mainly the power of missions and education. We have relatively little trade, although at this point, in taking advantage with

other countries of foreign-made tariffs and foreign-controlled courts in China, we have to an extent profited by China's structural weakness and governmental submission to foreign influence. We are a bit like the little boy who was going by an orchard with some other boys. The other boys proposed to steal the farmer's apples, and the first little boy said, "Oh, no!" The rest of the little boys stole the apples and eventually caught up with the first little boy farther down the road and offered him an apple, which he accepted and placidly munched!

But nevertheless China knows that the heart of the American people has been with her through the years and is with her now, and altogether the best record in China for square dealing and true friendship has been made by America.

And the Chinese are not blameless. As a people they have had great private integrity but little public integrity. Their attitude toward their own Government hitherto has been one of despoiling it and grafting upon it. It is no wonder that their Government has been weak and pusillanimous in the presence of the advanced nations of the earth; and concessions in international settlements and court and tariff control by foreigners all had their rootage originally in the needs of the moment if China were to do business and profit by relations with the advancing peoples of the earth.

My personal impression from the Honolulu Conference is that by far the best lead for American public opinion to follow is the support of the right wing of the Nationalist movement. Anything that this country, its Government or its people, can now or later reasonably do

!

September 7, 1927

to strengthen that group towards a final triumph will be most helpful to China, to America, and to the world. I do not mean interference. That would do more harm than good. I mean strategically directed sympathy. I take it that there no doubt that China is going to break away from foreign interference; the whole country, as well as all factions, are a unit on that. The simple question is whether China is going to be American or Russian. The real right wing Nationalists seem to be imbued with the 1 best American ideals. They appear to be Lincoln men to the core.

Pressure of Population in Japan TH

HE Japanese representatives at the Conference brought word that the Japanese people still feel keenly about the manner of their exclusion from America by the Congress of the United States, but they have no wish to emphasize further at this time the issue between two friendly nations. They admit fully the sovereign right of every nation to determine who shall live within its boundaries, and they declare that they would never think of going to war over such an issue. But it was possible still to detect a wistful desire that friendly America might find a formula consonant with the dignity and equality of races. In other words, they believe that Root and Roosevelt understood the psychology of international courtesy as they understand it; they believe that Lodge had no appreciation of it. There is a faithful missionary whom I know in a city in a far western Japanese province, eight hours by rail from a white face. She is widely known in that community. for her distinctive service to Japanese young men and women. When the blow of discriminating indignity, as Japan views it, fell on that nation in 1924, the newspapers of this provincial city refused even to comment upon it because, as it was learned afterwards, they felt that it might injure the feelings of this American woman, who had done so much for their sons and daughters, if hostile comment were made upon the new American Immigration Law. It is difficult for our hard-boiled politicians and diplomats to appreciate that there is a nation in the world with so sensitive a psychology of courtesy.

A vital problem in Japan to-day is the pressure of population upon the means. of subsistence. Where is their necessarily mounting food supply to come. from, and how by their own industry will they pay for it? They have a diffiBut rôle to play with China. They need

I

STILL believe that America can do more good outside the League of Nations than inside. Britain runs the League of Nations and runs it pretty well, but, standing outside as we do, Britain is not likely to go far in the major matters of the world without our moral support and the prospect of our financial and economic backing. She indicates it in her about-face with China when we refused to follow with the second identic note about Nanking not long ago, but if we were inside the League, and our armed forces and financial resources were morally pledged to the League, I am not so sure that our influence would be as great as it now is.

Nevertheless I am constantly coming upon evidence of the good that the League of Nations is doing throughout the world. West and south of Hawaii, in the South Seas, are great groups of islands the Micronesian, the Polynesian, and the Melanesian. With the eye of the League of Nations upon them, important Governments have supervision of these island groups under what are called mandatory powers. For example, called mandatory powers. For example, the Japanese supervise in Micronesia, the Australians in New Guinea and Papua, the New Zealanders in western Samoa. The South Seas peoples seem to be of different qualitative gradations of human stock, the Melanesians being reckoned more primitive and less susceptible to high development than the Polynesians. The Maoris of New Zealand are Polynesians; so are our

25

wards, the Hawaiians. The Polynesians have a sunny, care-free nature, and are capable of advanced intellectual development.

Civilized musical man has made out of their strains of melody some of the most beautiful songs of the world, as witness "The King Serenade," and the haunting "Aloha," "Old Plantation," and "The Song of the Islands."

When the whites found these South Sea Islanders, they were making their own clothes from bark; their chief industry was the taking of fish, which they dived for and snared in the coral reef waters. They had root crops, and their storehouses were of no use save for one year. As they had no need for permanent storehouses, they had no conception. of wealth accumulated for the long future. They were warlike, particularly the Maoris. They kept up their physique by the martial dance. The Maoris, for example, lived on hills in order to be on the watch for their foes, and their natural sanitation and health were protected thereby. The earlier inroads of the

white trader and the missionary were not an unmixed good. The trader brought whisky and venereal disease and gunpowder. The missionary of the middle period, not the great pioneers, taught the natives to be ashamed of their past, and from the beginning preached the end of intertribal wars. With the close of armed conflict, the tribesmen moved down from the hills into the low, swampy ground, and, not understanding the principles of sanitation and hygiene, they were decimated by typhoid and measles. They began to buy cheap prints for their clothing and canned food at the stores. Their initiative was gone, their spirit was broken. Some peoples have faded out, others have adapted themselves to new conditions and are now increasing in population under far better management

economic, social, and religious. Choking Western civilization down the throats of the natives of the South Seas is giving way to a development and a culture based more truly upon a study of the psychology, the native institutions, the anthropology, of these primitive peoples.

Particularly is it true that the new mandatory powers under the League of Nations no longer look upon the inhabitants as goods and chattels. The first thought is now of the people rather than of economic exploitation of the resources. The mandatory governments must account every year to the League of Nations, which has no direct authority to enforce its will, but in such matters controls the public opinion of the world.

He Sees His Dentist, Often

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See your dentist every six months. Start using Forhan's for the Gums, morning and night. Teach your children this good habit. Get a tube, today... All druggists, 35c and 60c.

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Scientific Facts

About Diet

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This book is for those who wish to keep physi-
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Important to Subscribers

When you notify The Outlook of a change in your address, both the old and the new address should be given. Kindly write, if possible, two weeks before the change is to take effect.

The Outlook for

THE MYSTERY AT LOVERS' CAVE. By Anthony Berkeley. Simon & Schuster, New York. $2.

This novel, with a not too clever title, heads our list this week, and takes precedence over some books by more celebrated writers-some books which most critics would find more "significant," and far more important. It is one of that great flood of detective novels (this one comes from England) which is perpetually swelling the stream. It begins with a murder, and it makes the common mistake of letting the murdered person (both of the murdered persons) be so worthless as to leave no regrets behind. Why do the novelists spoil our interest in the detection of a crime by this frequent blunder?

This has the usual newspaper man, and the Scotland Yard (but not the usual Scotland Yard) detective. It has humor, and is not pretentious. Its merits are that it is constantly entertaining, and its tamest pages are in the middle, and not at the end. The climax is legitimate surprise. In fact, its solution is one which we have often wished to see employed. Only once, and in a novel by A. E. W. Mason, has a novelist had so much originality. In some respects the thing is even better managed than by Mr. Mason. "The Mystery at Lovers' Cave" is cordially recommended for a long railroad journey or for two evenings' enjoyment.

MEANWHILE. By H. G. Wells. The George H. Doran Company, New York. $2.

This is classified as a novel merely beIt cause the author says it is a novel. would be almost as correct to label it "Sociology" and add "and pretty dull at that." Mr. Wells's book of last year, "William Clissold," was long and discursive-an autobiographical treatise of a man and his opinions. It wandered all around "Robin Hood's barn. But it had the great merit of being readable.

ones.

This book, "Meanwhile," is much briefer -one short volume, instead of two long In it there is a little about a house party of some English folk in Italy. Mostly, however, it is a pamphlet to allow Mr. Wells to tell his opinions about the general strike in England, and especially to sing his Winston against hymns of hate Churchill and Prime Minister Baldwin. Some parts of it are devoted to the price of coal, and look almost like a statistical table. To sell it as fiction comes close to a violation of the pure food law and the regulations about honest labels.

Charles

BLUE VOYAGE. By Conrad Aiken. Scribner's Sons, New York. $2.50. This strange book is one of the legacies of James Joyce's "Ulysses" and is written under the influence of that ponderous farrago, which has so impressed many writers. It is the record of a man's voyage across the Atlantic on an ocean steamer, his love affairs en route, and his impressions and conversations with other passengers. Only those skilled in the method of Joyce will be able to determine which are conversations, which are thoughts, which are thoughts and conversations, which about thoughts about thoughts. All of the oldfashioned guide-posts, such as "said he" or "Miss Fitch replied," are omitted. The oldfashioned reader of novels will put it down as 65 per cent lunacy; the more modern and (self-styled) sophisticated reader will find much to delight, fascinate, and perplex him. Undoubtedly it is often interesting; undoubtedly it is sometimes a bore; un

are

doubtedly (except in the eyes of the very old-fashioned) the method occasionally justifies itself-just as cubism, in painting, does for certain subjects. Emancipated as the author tries to be, he is under the same old restrictions and has to conform to many of the same old rules of his grandfathers. The climax is that of "Don Juan." Like many other ultra-modern productions, it occasionally flirts with indecency, and seems to out-Cabell Cabell and out-Vechten Van Vechten in getting unprintable things into print. If Mr. Aiken prides himself upon this, however, he must make hay He will probably be beaten at the game inside of six months. THE MURDER AT CROME HOUSE. By G. D. H. and Margaret Cole. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.

now.

It is a little hard to work up interest about a murder which is a year old when the novel begins. When, moreover, there has already been a trial and an acquittal. When, in addition, the murdered man is a rascal who should have been murdered. The authors of "The Murder at Crome House" do their best against all these selfimposed handicaps. In the end, as it seems to us, they fall short of success.

DEATH OF A YOUNG MAN. By W. L. River. Simon & Schuster, New York. $2. "What's the 'Death of a Young Man' about?" said the girl.

"Oh, it's too wonderful!" said the other girl. "It's the diary, or impressions, of a young man who has only got a year to live. All about his thoughts, you know. So modern! It's wonderful!"

"Is there any story to it? Any plot?" said the old man.

"No, no. How reactionary you are! Just Modern novels don't have plots. What he thought thoughts, you know. about Spinoza and Neet-she and about love and life. So much more modern, you know."

"I see," said the old man. less trouble to write."

"And so much

WOLF SONG. By Harvey Fergusson. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. $2.

Primitive and brutal were the "mountain men" of our Southwest eighty years ago. In what is now New Mexico a restless Tennessee lad, Sam Lash, grew into manhood among trappers, hunters, Indians, and Spanish-Americans. He was as wild as the worst; orgies of feasting, drinking, women, and fighting followed months spent in killing American beaver-every well-to-do

then wore a real beaver hat. If the readers expect to find Sam and his fellows talking with genteel reticence, they will get a severe shock. Morally these chaps are naked and unashamed. Sam's life had one gorgeous romance, but his Spanish maiden, stolen away Lochinvar style, gets Sam into the toils of matrimony, church, and ranch. It seems almost a pity! The tale has passion and is as vivid as a scarlet hibiscus. WITCH WOOD. By John Buchan.

Houghton

Mifflin Company, Boston. $2.50. John Buchan is one of the best tellers of tales among the modern Scottish writers. "Witch Wood" is no exception. When we find a young Scottish minister, in the days of Montrose and Charles I, faced with sacrifices to Satan, and worse, among his own flock and with his leading elder as bell-wether of the devilish clan, we get the nucleus of a situation bound to breed tragedy. The evil is ancient, and the worship centers around a Roman altar to the evil gods, which has stood in the dark "Witch