GERMANY'S POPULATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 226, 30 January 1911, Page 8

GERMANY'S POPULATION.

" POSERS " OF THE CENSUS PAPERS. Millions of Germans were spending an f'vciiiiig to wants tlio end of > T ovembtr trying to penetrate tin; mysteries of the intricate forms which were collected in every village, hamlet, and city of the Empire for the purposes of the quinquennial national census. When the returns arc all in, (iermany expects to find its population has grown to (1,1,000,000 souls. There were (i 1,720,520 at the end of 1907, and the annual increase of 880,000 maintained up to that time is believed to have been more than kept up. - There, arc some of the terrifying questions with which the census authorities have confounded tlie Kaiser's subjects:— If you do not know the date of your birth, how many years old are you?. What is your main occupation in life? Was your mother tongue German, Dutch, (Friesian, Danish, Wallonian, Polish, Massurian, Cassnhian, Wendish, Czech or Lithuanian?

If you are not German, do you. command the German language? What rank have you attained in the army and navy? Are you blind in both eyes, deaf, dumb, insane, or weak-minded?

Are you subject to epileptic fits? If your children are less than a year old, how are they fed—on the mother's breast, by wet nurse, or by bottle? German economists cherish ambitious hopes with regard to the Fatherland's future population. One authority, llerr Huebbc-'Schleidcn, prophecies that the Germans will number 1.30,000,001) in 1080. The Ferneh economist, M. Leroy Beaulieu, has estimated that the German population at the end of the present century will reach 200,000,000. Professor von Schmoller, the celebrated pan-German political economist of the University of Urrlin, peers into the future as far as the year 2T3.">, when he has a vision of a population of 208,000.000. ''At any .rate," writes the professor in jhis "Trade and World-Power." an increase of 100,000,000 to 150,000.000 in | the German population during the present century is neither perilous nor undesirable, it should, it will, and it must .come -a we wish it to remain a great | and powerful nation. It cannot comfortably he taken care of in the old ! Fatherland alone. We must have fruitful colonies abroad which can absorb the ' surplus."