The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1915. NATIONAL SUICIDE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 120, 22 January 1915, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1915. NATIONAL SUICIDE.

(With which is incorporated The Tai hapo Post Wttimarinn News.)

Germany seizes every possible opportunity to contemptuously and deliberately refer to its neighbour, France,, as a decadent people. The opprobious epithet is over at their pens’ point when discussing the French in connection with the present struggle. Germany may be right, and is, but it is not dignified to intempel ately use such inane and childish invective, to say the least of it, and although the fact is supported by overwhelmingly statistical evidence, the German people have testimony of quite equal value that despite the decadency of France as a nation, its soldiers are hardy and brave, free from any taint of the national malady. Prior to the war the steady drift in Franco towards depopulation was a I heme for discussion in all civilised countries, .and some three or four years ago it was stated in responsible journal's that France would be a dead nation by the twentysecond century; two hundred years from the present time they will have committed national suicide. Of course, there is no doubt at all that the French are fastrushing on to national death, for if they continue the rate they are now going, the French stock will have lost a fifth of its numbers before the expiration of the present century, and will absolutely have vanished from Europe by the end of the twenty-second century. The French people are tightening the cords about the national neck; the breath of life is becoming feebler, and may soon end in silence. Germany need only have waited for just another two centuries then, as far as the French are concerned, she could have walked into a depopulated country. This grim struggle with an old enemy for just sheer existence may prove the turning point; may bring about the salvation of the nation; may force Frenchmen to note with reality the causes of their decline at a lime, when it is not yet too late for recovery. In the birth rale of France we find the deadly woundfrom which the country suffers. It has been declining for a emilury, and it has became so accentuated and accelerated in the last twenty years as to place national decease within measurable distance. As indicating the fall in the birthrao we may quote from statistics compiled in the Gratis!i--; cal Department of the French Government. In the first thirty years of the nineteenth century France recorded over thirty births per thousand of population.; from .1835 to 1860 the birthrate 1 oscillated between tbirtv and 1

nig out the. depopulating years of the Frauco-Prussian War, and the years succeeding, which suffered thereby, we find, that from 1876 to .1900 the birthrate was on the decline and ranged from twentysix to twenty-two per thousand. In 1900 it had sunk to twenty-one, and by more recent statistics it is less than twenty per thousand of its people. The foundation of the trouble is no mystery to the French people. WJmt has brought Franco to this is operating to reduce the British nation to a similar condition. We are more Ilian averagely a strong, hardy, ! ealthy people; so are our neighbours across the Channel; therefore it is not in the want of stamina we must seek for the cause- of the depopulation of France, or of :Im t of any other civilised country, It is rather in the habits and unnatural customs of a considerable section of the people. The birthrate is not keeping pace with the deathrate; the reasons for this are too well-known by the people themselves, and yet no effort of any kind is put forth lo the rescue. The causes are few and should he easily remediable, if the will and determination for improvement is earnest. In all British Dominions the love of ease and pleasure, and the shirking of natural duties to the nation which only can save any people from national suicide, must be moderated, and every encouragement given lo live healthy, natural lives. In New Zealand, thanks to Lady Plunket, we have onr Plunket nurses, our maternity homes and other helps and encouragements, and with all our birthrate is nothing we can boast of. The danger is real and unless our neighbours are prepared lo reconstruct their borne, life on more, reasonable, rational, physiological lines, the dry-rot that has set in must continue its deadly course; but every sensible person will hope that the scourge resulting from the stupendous struggle now being waged will cause the French people to more correctly realise and gage their position, so that this process of solf-strange-lation may cease.