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ON INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL COMPARISONS 47
Other illustrations may be given of an underlying
confusion of thought in these matters, which occasion-
ally comes to the surface. I have seen, for instance,
at home an attempt made to show that the English
Empire is more aggressive than that of Russia, because
in a given period it had annexed a larger area and a
larger population than Russia had done, the truth being
that the area annexed by either country in the period
in question was largely desert, so that it hardly counted
one Vti-Y or the other, and that the populations annexed
were of most various quality. The point of real ag-
~ressiveness or not was studiously overlooked in this
lOgenious statistical comparison. Constantly at home,
also, there are continual discussions on the balance of
power, in which the numbers of the populations and
the armies they can put in the field are simply counted;
whereas the whole question turns largely upon the
quality of the respective populations and the state of
their warlike preparations, and not so much upon mere
numbers. The question of quality of population arises
in a different way in those political questions which
are settled by numbers at the ballot-box in democratic
communities, and I am not sure but that some of the
underlying assumptions of politics are based on the
refusal to recognize the essential differences of different
peoples, as, for instance, in the concession at home to
the people of Ireland of an equality and, really, far
more than an equality, of voting power and representa-
tion in the Imperial Parliament. whereas, in some
qualities. such as wealth, they cannot be regarded as
equal, although they may be equal, or superior, in other
qualities. Commonplace. therefore. as it seems, to say
that. when we see columns of comparative figures of
population, we must not assume the units to be alike.
the applications of the doctrine are not really common-
place. We are all subject to the influence of un-
expressed and underlying assumptions, and I have
only given a few out of many possible illustrations
of the dangers that may arise in using these very