BIRTH CONTROL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 544, 30 May 1933, Page 7

BIRTH CONTROL

A.

Beeson.)

GERMAHY-S EXAMPLE DANGEROUS INCREASE OF THE UNFIT. MISDIREGTIED PHILANTHROPY. PART V.

CBv

The rise and fall or the perpetual changes that take place in the populations of the world is a branch in the science of political economy that has been closely studied for sevenal eenturies. * It abounds" in paradox; its teachings are deep and at last have. been taken into accpunt |>y at least •ofie great na.fiqn tti'at 'has resolved to determine by law the quality and quaritity of -its coming' gerierations. The Nazi Governm'ent of* Germany aims at purity of race; it will place the birth-rate under seientific coritrol; it will sanction as parents only the fit and strong. The sterilisation of criminals and defectives follows as a (CQro'Hary. TWe'iearn strange truths in this absorbing study; and one truth is that Nature neve.r hestitates to pass sentence of death upon those who transgress her laws. Nature condemns to death a million as readily and _ as pitilessly as she condemns the individual. When the Roman Empire was hastening to its fall, when discipline had relaxed, the baths in decay and the laws of health universally disregarded, Nature released the Black Plague. Gibbon describes the awful yisitation in the 43rd chapter of) his great classic. He says it "depopulated the world." For 52 years in the sixth century the ;pestilence. ravagaed Asia, Africa and Europe, leaving many of the largest cities without an inhabitant. The Black Death of 134850 is( believed to have destroyed not less than a quarter of the population of Europe. The Tai-Ping Rebellion in the middle of the last century is said to have cost 125,000,000 lives. The most populous provinces of China were laid waste; massacre, famine and plague accounting for the frightful mortality. The World War furnishes statistics that stagger the imagination, for from all causes not less thaii 20 millions of people perished. We have cited but a few of the major checks on population, of which history bears such frequent witness. Yet economists who at one; time described depopulation as a social scourge now contend that the saturation point has not only been reached, but exceeded, and that civilisation, through a surplus of mankind, has plunged into the danger zone. Here a pa.radox presents itself. Among the "intelligentia" or upper strata of society the birth-rate began to fall at the beginning of the present century. Twenty years ago the^ contagion (we do not use this term in an invidious sense) spread to the middle classes of Europe and the net results has been a falling off in the birth'-rafe among the prudent, thrifty and the intelligent of no less thax? 35 per cent. withii^ the last three decades. The higher classes refram from large families through fear of lowering their condition in life. The example is being followed by multitudes of others who see the wisdom of the motive. The elimination of the wise and prudent" from the charge of overpopulating the world leaves the final and by far the largest class to be considered. What is termed the "inversion oi the birth-rate," that the unfit are multiplying at an exoessive rate and leaving the fit and healthy-minded far behind, is a solemnising fact. This means- that the ranks of the ne^t generation will contain a dangerously largs proportion of types that are undesirable biologically, ethically and socially. The 300,000 mentally deficient women "breeding freely day by day in every city and in every country" mentioned by Jiistice _ McCardie in'our last article increa.se in what is known as "geometrical ratio," that is to say, the 300,000 of the present generation will increase to 600,000 or more in the next. No one need be reminded that fertifity is greatest among the least desirable members of the community. Insanity, epilepsy, alcoholism, for example, ahd the subnormal intelligence concomitant _ to defects, once given a start in a family, are hard to eradicate. They persist through successive generations. The Nazi Government is determined to check the evil at its .source. Herbert Sp'encer, in his Principles of Biology, published in 1865, said that "now more" than ever before people are doing all they. can to further the survival of the unfittest.' If this dictum was true then it is a hundred times more so now. Science and organisation have checked fhe ravages of famine and pestilence. Myriads live to-day who 100 years ago would have had little chance. Medical science enables many who, left to nature, would die too ea.rly to marry and bear children. This is a serious obstacle to race improvement. The social conscience or misdirected philantropic agencies care for the diseased in mind and body; and if any" thing encourge the physically and mentally weak t0 propagate. It is a commonplace 'among sociologists that the criminal and insane reproduce their- kind at twice the rate of the normal-minded. Legislation has completely failed to grasp the fundamenttal laws that bind together the social fabric. Society should be th'e secular counterpart to the ideal church pprtrayed by the Apostle Paul in the word ' a building fitly framed together that groweth intp a holy temple . . . not having , spot or wrinkl'e, or> any such thing, but that should be holy and without blehiish." 1 ; ■■■!: "• (To be continued.)