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ON INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL COMPARISONS 45
facts must also be adapted to the discussion of par-
ticular questions, such as the relation of area to con-
ditions of health, and the like. To say, for instance,
iliat Belgium has so many inhabitants to the square
mile, and France so many fewer, does not mean any-
thing, because the size of the communities compared is
entirely different, and in point of fact there may be areas
included in France more thickly peopled than Belgium.
I t is the same in the comparison of a European country
with the United States. The conditions are entirely
different; while not a few of the comparisons so readily
made would be upset by the consideration that one-
third of the area of the United States, excluding Alaska,
is desert, and is, properly speaking, not inhabitable at
all. A similar remark would also apply to the countries
of Australasia treated as a unit. The facts are all useful
enough for reference; that is not disputed; but the
moment they come to be discussed, the nature of the
quantities must be studied, and strict attention given
to the point of the comparison attempted.
Connected with this last is another question of the
same kind. What is the area which really supports a
given population? If people on a given spot are able
to carry on industries which enable them to buy from
the rest of the world what they want, are they sup-
ported by that area, or are they not? In a sense they
are supported, for they live by the industries which
they carryon there. In another sense-they are not,
because they are not self-contained. Foreign trade is
the breath of their life. But this description is applic-
able not merely to countries like the United Kingdom,
which manufacture largely, and carry goods largely for
all the world: it is equally applicable to a country like
the United States, which exports food, raw cotton, and
other raw materials, wherewith to buy the things of
which it stands in need i or to countries like Austral-
asia, which export wool, the precious metals and other
metals, to an extent without example in history.
All these considerations are so obvious that I have