FRANCS AND DEPOPULATEN

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1633, 27 December 1912, Page 4

FRANCS AND DEPOPULATEN

LIFE BLOOD' OF NATION' EBBING. The signature of M. Fallicres, President of France, was on' November 5 affixed, to a decree setting up a far-reaching extraParliamentary Commission on Depopulation, the results of the study of which should prove of the utmost importance, not only to France, \but to. sociologists' in many other lands. For the Commission has as its task the examination of nothing less than "all questions, social and fiscal, relating to depopulation in France," and the duty of fiudiiig-or at any rate seeking—a remedy for this pressing national need.

Representatives of all classes will be included, in the personnel of the Commission—members of Parliament, heads of departments, lawyers, political economists, doctors, expert publicists who have concerned themselves with social, military, legal, or scientific aspects- of the problem of depopulation. ' The.Commission will attack the question along a fivefold line. First a sub-commission will concern it6elf with matters such as the. facilitating of naturalisation,- the simplifying of the forms which in Franco precede and accompany the marriage ceremony, and the giving of special privileges to fathers of families engHged in the various public services. ' This sub-com-mission will also study the. question of infanticide, ■ A second sub-commission will consider how tho growing depopulation has reacted on the military readiness of Franco to face a great emergency. A third, will devise ways and means to combat social causes which react on the mortality question—the ignorance of mothers and. the prejudicial effects of expectant mothers following more or less exacting daily, occupations. It will also consider the whole question Of the best steps which the State should take in tho general interest of its newly born. A fourth subcommission, will have as its duty the study of tho measures whicn should be .taken to aid the parents of large families 'in their increasingly.. severe struggle, This' Commission will go into such matters as tho giving of bounties m the case of cverv child born after a stated number, the" reduction of the scalo of taxes in the case of largo households, etc. As for the fifth sub-commission, which will be composed of tho committees of the four others, its duties will be to coj ordinate tho results of the work-of. these in a report which it will present. This report will summarise the broad lines along which action might be taken, classifying in different categories, according to their importance, the recommendations the four other committees have made. The report will also set forth estimates of the probable cost of the measures which it advises, suggest how this cost should be met, over how many financial years it ehould be spread, etc. When the fifth sub-commission has drawn up its balance-sheet it 'will submit it to the en< tire Commission for its sanction. . "Such." says M. Klotz, the Finance Minister, in 'the report he made to 11, Fallieres, requesting the Presidential signature to the Commission, 'seems to ma the best method of undertaking the examination of tho means of combating an evil, national, pressing, and immediate; an evil which ought henceforth to be m the forefront of those matters which occupy the attention of the Government and the nation."