WAR AND POPULATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1873, 5 September 1918, Page 4

WAR AND POPULATION.

The British Brigadier-General, Sir Bernard Mallei, gave some remarkable figures as to the effects of the war on population, at a meeting of the Royal Institute of Public Health on June 12th. Dealing with the decline in births occasioned by the war, he said that in England and Whiles the births registered in 1913 numbered 881,890. In 1915 they fell to 814,014, and in 1910 to 785,520. The slightness of the fall from the previous year was undoubtedly due to the boom in marriages in 1915, when the number of marriages celebrated reached the record figure of 360,885., In 1917 the effects of this boom were rapidly passing away, and the births registered fell to 008,346, the lowest reached since 1858. Up to the present: wo had lost in England and Wales 050,000 potential lives on the standard of 1913. Had the births continued at the same level as in 1913, there would have been 3' million births recorded up to the end of the present year, but there would probably be only, 2.850,000. “Serious as is the loss, there is reason lo believe,” added Sir Bernard, “that we have suffered less than the other belligerents. We may assume that Germany has lost in potential lives th* equivalent of 4.5 per cent, of it* total pre-war population; Austria over 5 pur cent., and Hungary 7 per cent. By the fall in births which it lias occasioned, the war lias cos) the belligerent countries of Europe not less than 121 millions of potential lives.