LOSS OF LIFE IN WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1499, 20 January 1916, Page 2

LOSS OF LIFE IN WAR.

The loss of life in war and the national and social aspect of the lowered birthrate were discussed recently by the members ot the Royal Sanitary Institute in London. Dr Louis C. Parkes, who introduced the subject, said the birth rates of nearly all the European nations had been steadily decreasing during the past thirty years. He estimated the total destruction of life in Europe in two years of war at nearly twenty million persons ; but in past ages of the world’s history evolution of higher types in animal and vegetable life had resulted from cataclysmic changes, and great destruction by plague, pestilence and famine had led to an advance in civilisation. So it was possible that Armageddon might be of ultimate benefit to humanity. The figures for England and Wales for the past forty years showed that on the whole the birth-rate had been falling faster than the deathrate, and the mean rate of increase, except for the first few years of the present century, showed a downward tendency. There was foundation for the belief that the lowering of the birth rate had been specially marked among the upper, the middle, and the superior working classes. After the war a Government Commission should be appointed to make exhaustive inquiry into the whole question with a view to taking measures of social and economic amelioration. With a happy combination of circumstances the country should start a new life, and the replenishment of .its young life on a sufficiently ample scale might be anticipated. In the course of the discussion which followed, Sir John Cockburn urged that there should be more inducements to raise the birth-rate, not only by granting bonuses for maternity, but by a reduction of the income-tax for each child born.