THE ABOLITION OF THE BABY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3446, 10 February 1912, Page 10

THE ABOLITION OF THE BABY.

FRANCE ONLY LEADS THE WAY. THE CIVILISED WORLD IN PURSUIT. It lias begun to be realised that me coffin is gaining on the cradle almost all over the civilised world. Nearly everywhere in European-speaking countries less and less babies are being born ; the birth-rate, in fact, is shrinking so fast that the doctors are not able to make the death-rate shrink proportionately. It is the condition of France that has drawn people's eyes to a state of things which is spreading throughout Europe, America, and Australia anyway, and perhops throughout the whore world'. A couple of years ago the French birth-rate fell to the level of its deathrate; that is, as many people died every year as were born; the population ol France stood still. Since then things have grown even worse-; the number ol Frenchmen has begun actually to .diminish. At the present rate the time is in sight when France will be no more a nation. Malthusians, who put “quality” before quantity, may then solace themselves with the idea that the diminishing remnants are more highly.developed; the childless superman might moralise on that as ho dug his own grave.

(FRANCE ALAR MED

Frenchmen became alarmed; a commission was appointed to find out the extent and causes of this decline. The commission included 75 of the greatest names in France. Rut, halfway through it ceased its work suddenly; there seems to have boon an attempt to hush the whole thing up. Mr. 0. C. Beale, who was then preparing for his text book on the subject “Racial Decay,” had the greatest difficulty in getting, sight of the commission’s reports. Their conclusions were disheartening enough. Attempts were made to awaken France to her danger. Newspapers were taking the matter up. For instance, the Paris “Matin,’’ of October, 1909. printed under the headline, -‘Depopulation. Our National Scourge,” a .photograph of seven German soldiers in uniform; and in the middle of the group the father and mother of the seven, the father also in uniform. “A German family,” the “Matin” remarked with pathos-—“AH soldiers!” That photograph must hare wakened many memories of Alsace and Sedan. ENGLAND WAKING UP.

Rut it is easy to show that France has only led along a way which even England and her colonies seem to be following. Mr. Reale’s book makes this clear by diagram. From the period 1876-80. he shows how the lines standing for the populations of both England and France dip steadily down-hill, the only difference being that England’s line was higher at the start, and is higher even yet. But. on present indications England seems to be catching up to France. Englishmen have, however, been to some extent waking up to the fact that to them also less and less children- are being born. In November last an influentially-attended conference on public- morals and race degeneration was held in Westminster Abbey. The following motion, moved by the chairman, the Bishop of Durham, was unanimously carried : ••That this conference desires to draw the attention of the Church, Parliament. the press, and the public to the facts and tendencies of the national life, as indicated by the falling birthrate, the continuous and widespread sacrifice of infancy and childhood, the multiplication of mental and moral degenerates. the lowered standard of parenthood, and the disintegration of the home and family life.”

LAPDOG OR BABY? The two roots of th<? evil, said Sir Victor Horsley at this conference, were the women of the smart set, who cherished a lapdog instead of a baby, and the woman of the slums, who found a ufuge in the public house from th > evnt of her eir ironment. The effect' of dirty literature were also discussed, and of the conspiracy of silence into which many parents enter towards tlc'ir children on matters of life and n-th. A month before this conference the Bishop ,of London spoke out strongly against the gigantic evil that, it is now almost everywhere admitted, causes the birth decline. “There is no wealth lut life.” the Bishop quoted from Buskin, and he added figures to show how Hie stream of new life is thinning over Britain. The Lambeth Conference, he reminded, had spoken on the matter with no uncertain voice, and, for himself, lie could only repeat, what lie luid said six years ago: "It is as completely proved as anything can be that the cause of all this is the deliberate prevention of conception. ... It is all part of the miserable gospel of comfort which is the curse of the present day,” lie continued ; and, after honoring Roman Catholicism for its attack upon this evil, he summoned against it all the forces of the Church.

LOWEST RECORD KETCH NS. The father racial decline proceeds the faster it seems to go. Striking instances of that are the Erench and British population or, rather, depopulation —figures for 1911. They nave caused something like a sensation. They show that for the first sir months of the year there were in France 14,000 fewer birtlis and 26,000 more deaths than during the corresponding period of 1910, and a net diminution m the French population of 18.270. If it were not for Brittany, where the decadence has not so much spread, the condition of 'France would be worse still. But with England, too, aftairs arc bad enough; the English returns for the third quarter of 1911 show an astonishing decline. For the three months ending September 30, in 1908, 1909, and 1910, the excess of births over deaths was about the same —from 123,000 to 124,000. But for the corresponding quarter of 1911 the figures sank to 81,000. A decrease for these three thing to take notice of. The births registered in this quarter were in the proportion of 24.4 annually per thousand of the population ; they were, that is, 2.9 ]>er thousand below the mean birth rate in the preceding third quarter. • These returns are the lowest on record for the same period since the establishment of civil registration. IN THE COLONIES.

Of course, however, wise doctors may grow, thov can only postpone the age of death. *" The birthrate may decline until no more babies are born, but you can’t make people live for ever. oO that the Fact that in England and still more in Australia, we have a low death rate cannot avail us much. A little book (“The Declining Birth Rato ), by A. Newsliolme, M.D., M.H.C.S., gives a comparison of rates of natural mcreaso in a number of countries, including some Australian States, between t ..oi and 1905, as compared with them rate of increase between 1881 and ISI -i. The comparison is rather alarming. The greatest decline is in the case of South Australia, wlicoe rate oi natural increase was only 13.7 in the second ]ieriod, as against 23. S in the first. In the same time it is shown that New South "Wales has sunk from 20.0 to 15.5,

and Queensland front 17:3‘t0 16.3. while the German Empire has increased from 11.7 to 14.4. England and Wales have sunk from 14.1 to 12.1, and Scotland from 13.-7 to 12. Another table in -w.e same book gives a comparison between a number of countries’ birth rates in 1881 and in 1901, 'making allowance for the age distribution, and, proportion of married and unmarried women in the the populations compared. Taking the 1881 birth rate for the countries in the table as 100, the corrected birth rates would work out at 103 for Ireland (the highest on the* list), ( J|9 for Austria, 91 for Italy, 90 fog Prussia, and 87 for the whole German Empire, 86 for France* 86 for Scotland, 82 for England and Wales, 81 for New Zealand, 76 for Victoria, and 63 for New South Wales! This table, v.f course, i-s useful only to show how the birth-rate in these countries has fallen (or, in, the case of Ireland, risen); it does not show the positions at which these countries stand now. “Corrected” data cannot be obtained for the years after 1901. Rut it does show the trend of things. CAUSE AND REMEDY. And the cause? What the Bishop of London said liars been repeated in other words by many inquirers. The decline in the birth-rate is caused, not by immorality in the more ordinary sense of the word, but by “the limitation of child-bearing among married women.” The study of friendly society “lying-in benefits” has been often quoted in evidence of this, but there are so many evidences. Just as an instance, the Philadelphia Record quotes a Baltimore clergyman, who said that of 272 couplers whom he married, 128 remained without issue, 85 had one child each, 51 had! two children, five had three, two had four, and one had six.

Can racial decay he stopped, once it begins ? Or is all Europe to become Russian, and the rest of the work! to be spread over with brown and black and yellow? Many say there can he only one answer to that question. But after all, certain evils mav mark only particular stages in a nation's history, and, at the worst-, there is always the chance that the selfish, the race-mur-derers may he eliminated, bred out.— ‘•Sydney Daily Telegraph.”