DESTINY OF RACE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 30, 19 May 1947, Page 4

DESTINY OF RACE

IN HANDS OF MOTHERS The decadence of - nations is threatening many lands. France, with its declining birthrate, has already become a second-class Power. Ancient history teaches the same lesson. The decay of Greece and Rome was not primarily due, to a falling-off in the prowess of the Phalanx and the Legion, but to increasing luxury, lessened exertion, lessened contact with the open air,, a growing cost in the standard of living, and an increasing selfishness, which expressed itself in a disinclination for the ties of marriage and parenthood. Normal home life „ was shirked, and decadence and sterility led to the fall. Speaking, of Greece, Professor Seeley remarked that there arose, a general repugnance to marriage, and a reluctance to rear large families, caused by an extravagantly high standard of comfort. In Rome, he showed that a siimlar principle of decay, asserted itself. The Roman of Imperial times came to prefer celibacy to marriage, and thus was ushered in a period of sterility or barrenness in human beings—the harvest was bad. We hear much nowadays about national defence, ' but we must not put our whole trust in the “reeking tube and iron shard.” The safety of nations is not a question of the gun alone, but also of the man behind the gun, and he is mainly the resultant of the grit and self sacrifice of his mother. If we lack noble mothers we lack the first element of racial success and national greatness.—Extract from an address delivered by Dr. Truby King in 1909.