One hundred years ago
AMONG the little-noticed but most important facts in the history of the world is the enormous recent increase in the number of white men in it. . . . Nor is there much reason to believe that the process will soon be checked, for the white men are urged forward by an irresistible spur over which they have no control. The increase of the yellow race, which must once have been so incred- ibly fast, has stopped, and that of the dark races of India, which for a century has been amazing, is being checked by recurrent famines; but that of the white peoples goes on so fast that the trans- port of a huge army every year across the Atlantic makes no impression on their numbers, and at their present rate of increase they will in 1984 be a thousand millions, or much more than half of then existing mankind. The Chinese have recently shown some re- sisting power; the English have apparently — it may prove only apparently — halted, indecisive, in their march up the Valley of the Nile; but the general movement sweeps ever for- ward.
Spectator, 4 July 1885
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