GERMAN BIRTHRATE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1548, 9 May 1916, Page 4

GERMAN BIRTHRATE.

In a general study of conditions in Germany during the war, a writer in the Petrograd Vyestnik Evropy—the Herald of Europe —gives the following interesting account, of the effect of the war on the birth-rate of Germany : —lf we do not count foreigners and defectives, there were in Germany on January Ist, 1915, including the army and fleet, 16,500,000 men and ’ 17,000,000 women between the ages of 17 and 60. The diversion to the army of an immense number of men naturally lowered the marriage-rate. In Berlin in April, 1915, there were celebrated only 1,747 marriages, as against 2,996 in April, 1914. In the last four months of 1914 5,835 couples wore manned in Berlin, as against 8,265 in the same months of

the preceding year. The same thing happened throughout the whole Empire. The excess of births over deaths in 1912 for the whole of Germany amounted to 12.7 per 1000 inhabitants ; the births amounted to 29.1 and the deaths to 16.4 per 1000. Parallel with the decrease in the death-rate-in Germany during the last 15 years, the birth-rate has decreased even more rapidly. In Prussia, for example, in the years from 1901 to 1913 the death-rate for each 1000 population fell from 21.7 to 15.8, while the birth-rate fell from 37.4 to 29. The excess of births over deaths thus fell from ]5.7 to 13.2. Thus the growth of the population began to slacken even before the war. Since the beginning of the war the diminution of

the birth-rate by two-thirds, •as a, consequence of the transfer to the army of two-thirds of the marriageable men, would in itself mean an absolute diminution of about 1,000,000 of the population in two years. To this must be added another 1,500,000 —those who during the two years' were killed or died of their wounds, according to the average of the first half-year. This would mean a diminution of the population of Germany during two years of war to an extent that would require the normal increase of five years to niake good. But in the years following the war the birth-rate will be diminished by at least one-sixth if we take into account the number of men killed and incapacitated. Russia, on the other hand, during these same seven years will increase by 80,000,000, and German scientists compute that within a. generation 300,000,000 Russians will face 90,000,000 Germans.