FRANCE'S POPULATION NEEDS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3582, 18 September 1920, Page 3

FRANCE'S POPULATION NEEDS.

ABOLITION OF MARRIAGE PROPOSED. A tcrriuio iviutuy tor depopulation in jt ranee is suggested by Dr. x'aul Oarnot, in “rails Medical.no points out tit tv 1/ Inc jd toil on race wni be swept out of existence within twenty years unless French women maKe what he cams a “superhuman eiion of maternity there are now in France 2,00U,00U unmarried' women capable of becoming mothers, but for whom it will be impossible to iiud owing to the slaughter of men during the war; there are in all

Europe • now .1.5,000,000 ;nor,j women .him. men.

D,r. Carnot rejects both the solutions that have been offered: (1). To marry French women to foreigners; (2) to permit polygamy for a certain period, his reason against the latter being that men under cxis.ing circum stances find it difficult enough to support one wife, let alone several.

What Dr. Carnot suggests is the abolition of marriage in favour of the matriarchal family supported by the S ate, in which there would be no husband, but which would consist of mothers and children only. The supreme law of a race, he argues, is not to perish, and socially speaking, every woman ought to become, a mother./ Motherhood, he argues, should be an honourable and. highly recompensed career, and she should bo well paid by the State for every child she contributes to it. And he adds that all those who have failed to fulfil their duties to the State l in the matter of bearing children should be compelled to leave their money to support the children of those who have. As wild 'bo seen from this brief abstract, Dr. Carno't, leaves out of his consideration the sacredness of marriage and the repugnance of all decent women to lowering themselves to the , status of beasts. However materalistic the men of France may have become, French women still cling tenaciously to the old ideals of wifehood and motherhood. •