childhood's end

Too tired to write tonight (well, this morning, now). So instead I'll share an image saved from the Spectator (UK) a couple of years ago.

Perhaps I won't be alone in finding it both poignant and haunting.

(Click for larger)

To put the matter directly: Europe, and especially western Europe, is in the midst of a crisis of civilizational morale. The most dramatic manifestation of that crisis is not to be found in Europe’s fondness for governmental bureaucracy or its devotion to fiscally shaky health care schemes and pension plans, in Europe’s lagging economic productivity or in the appeasement mentality that some European leaders display toward Islamist terrorism. No, the most dramatic manifestation of Europe’s crisis of civilizational morale is the brute fact that Europe is depopulating itself.

Europe’s below-replacement-level birthrates have created situations that would have been unimaginable when the institutions of European integration were formed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. By the middle of this century, if present fertility patterns continue, 60 percent of the Italian people will have no personal experience of a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, or a cousin; Germany will lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany; and Spain’s population will decline by almost one-quarter. Europe is depopulating itself at a rate unseen since the Black Death of the fourteenth century.

The quote above—from this recent article at AEI—explains some of the symbolism in the image.

Try here for a good introduction to the rest.