16 THE SHADOW OF THE WORLD’S FUTURE 
Thus unquestionably no inconsiderable portion of 
human effort goes into the development of “luxury”; 
and not unfrequently this portion could have gone 
into the development of a larger amount of food and 
into the maintenance of more offspring. 
Man has also greatly lengthened his life by better 
national and individual hygiene. This affects his 
economic power and efficiency, and perhaps also his 
possible reproductive efficiency. 
As soon as the existing facts of man’s increase in 
numbers are viewed in their proper perspective in the 
picture of man’s earth-life, the significance of them 
for man’s future becomes, as above said, vividly 
apparent. The problems of that future loom large 
and seem gravely impressive, and this question of 
the future is not a mere academic one, nor is it one of 
small practical moment. Already it is influencing the 
national policy of peoples who are governed or in- 
fuenced by a class capable of being affected by looking 
into the future, and considering its probabilities. 
There are already a number of territories so peopled 
that they can no longer provide directly, by existing 
methods, the food-supplies needed by their inhabitants. 
They have become, as things are, dependent upon 
resources obtained from other territories through the 
exchange of their commodities not directly supporting 
life, for those which do. They are thus immediately 
affected by the developments, and by their attitude to 
them, of the people of such other territories, and by 
their productions. In this connection it is to be 
observed that, with the world’s growing population, 
food-production difficulties are already coming into 
evidence. Migration questions are also arising, and 
the significance of racial, linguistic, social and economic 
differences is already impressing itself upon thought- 
ful citizens. Even as regards language manifest diffi- 
culties are arising in the modern world. For instance,