DEPOPULATION OF FRANCE.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 200, 21 September 1916, Page 5

DEPOPULATION OF FRANCE.

A question far more pregnant with possible disastrous consequences than any that economis or war conferences may discuss is occupying the mind of French thinkers just now. One of these, M. Paul Benazet. member of I’lndre, £s using might (and strength to drive the point home to his fellow-countrymen. This concerns no less the fact that, at its past rate of peace time depopulation, there will not remain a single French man or woman in France in a hundred years from date, for the race will have become extinct. “Why bother about the economic and military welfare of France, if nobody will be left to profit thereby?’’ seems to be the question that should set the authorities thinking hard, and yet little enough is done to solve the problem. With the exception of a few like M. Paul Benazet and Professor Lotullc, of the 'Academy of Medicine, the majority of Frenchmen seem quite content to sit and see their beloved country bing gradually swallow'd up by the Central Empires, so* far as population .is concerned. True, the problem has been tackled from time to time, but. it has been so quickly set down as iusolvable. The time has come, however, when French statesmen must face the ordeal. M. Benazet suggests a bonus of 500 francs for the mother of every first two children born, 1000 francs for the third, and 2000 francs for the fourth, and every infant after that number would mean 1000 francs, all these sums being payable when the child has reached its first year. To keep her place among nations, France must ask her mothers to supply her with four children apiece for the next twenty-five years. Here is the most difficult puzzle that has ever faced a State, ami it is well for France that someone is at last waking up to the possibilities of a future disaster far greater in its consequences than the present war.