120 THE SHADOW OF THE WORLD’S FUTURE 
of the problems pressing upon the British nation for 
solution, reveals, either directly or incidentally, what 
the world situation is. It discloses also how enor- 
mous the work to be done is if, with an ignorant and 
selfish humanity, ill-consequences are to be minimised. 
Humanity has both to be instructed and governed. 
Naturally enough the situation appears to be well- 
nigh hopeless, not because it is essentially insoluble, 
not because it is beyond the reach of the intelligent, 
but because humanity is mentally and morally what 
it is at the present time. Nevertheless, the World’ 
Future calls for consideration by all who are not 
wholly wrapped in the garment of utter indifference, 
for the auspices are not favourable, and the population- 
pressures, so rapidly developing, are inescapable. 
When one thinks of the periods which have been 
necessary for the development of all the highly civilised 
peoples among mankind, and of the crude stages only 
now reached by the backward peoples, it would seem 
that no possible effort during the remaining three- 
fourths of the present century can materially alter the 
conditions existing, at any rate for the greater portion 
of the human race. The complexity of modern life 
with the more advanced nations, the range and 
excellence of their comforts, the elaboration of their 
methods, of their customs and their enjoyments, the 
luxury and ostentation of their appointments, the 
enormous expenditures of money, or its equivalent in 
labour, of those who control the social and political 
world, all imply an accentuation of the elements of 
human nature which constitute the main promptings 
of modern Man. It is these things that make the 
future difficult. 
When one knows something of the world’s surface 
and of its peoples, and finds it possible for a country 
like Switzerland to carry a population of 247 to the 
square mile, while a country like the United States of