GERMANS DYING OUT.

Taihape Daily Times, 24 August 1918, Page 7

GERMANS DYING OUT.

The official records of life conditions in enemy countries show that in the twelve principal cHies of the Central Empires the loss of population vwmg to tne deaths of civilians exceeding the births has now reached something like 66,000 a year. Four years ago—that " is, in the spring which preceded the outbreak of war—the natural rate of increase in the population of those twelve cities was 18,000 a year ; about the same rate as the natural increase of population in London,

The decline in new child population is common to all belligerent countries. In the 96 great towns of Britain it is now 50,000 a year below the numbers for 1914, and looks like declining further. But there is a wide difference between the life conditions in Britain and of those in the Central Empires. Statistics can be used, we are often told, to prove, anything, but those who -■care to examine the official figures can draw safe and sound deductions which throw a flood of light upon the population question. If, as is the fact, the births here are now 50,000 a year below those for 1.914, there are 10,000 fewer deaths of babies under one year. The proportion of children dying before they reach this age is lower now than it was in 1914, and tending to go lower, slowly, it is true, but surely. ' The work for the preservation of infant life is beginning to tell. .That is an encouraging fact, which should induce us never to slacken effort until we have reduced infantile mortality to j the lowest possible denominator. I

Our enemies before the war realised what population meant to their national life and aspirations; they began the war because they were satisfied that their numerical strength would give them victory. They are finding that numbers alone do not bring victory. While they have been flinging away men with reckless prodigality, the civilians of the towns are dying faster than the newly-born can replace them.

It is not hard to understand that this means that scarcity of nourishing

foodstuffs is undermining resistance to disease, and that there is a big de-

cline in the physical standard of the peoples of the Central Empires. Happily, in spite of the fact that we depend for a very large proportion of our food on overseas supplies, and are subject to persistent attacks upon them by enemy submarines, we are not suffering from a shortage of food; The nation's health was never better than it is now. The increase of births over deaths in the principal cities and towns is at the rate of more than 40,000 a year. It is not Germany who is bringing England to her knees by a process of starvation. It is Germany slowly dying from the very thing she boasted would be our fate at her hands.

Von Tirpitz and his countrymen nave dug a pit and have fallen into it themselves.