The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 1911. RACE SUICIDE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 317, 2 June 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 1911. RACE SUICIDE.

When Mr. Roosevelt, ex-President of the United States, refuses to indulge in "masterly platitudes," he hits social evils very hard. In a recently written article, the mighty hunter and photographer deals at great length with race decay, basing his remarks on material obtained and carefully used by an Australian writer, Mr. Beale. Mr. Roosevelt endeavors to show that the cardinal sin, the sin against humanity, and the sin that must ultimately wipe out the nations indulging in it, is wilful sterility in marriage. Of greatest interest to us is his assertion that the decreasing birth-rate has nothing to do with economic conditions, because the evil that is apparent in France, the United States, and elsewhere is even more apparent in Australia and New Zealand. He shows that the birth-rate in New Zealand is lower than the birth-rate in Britain, although the apparent conditions are more favorable to a large child, crop among a young, vigorous, healthy and prosperous people than among people not so blessed. Australia, Canada, the United States, Great Britain and New Zealand are therefore condemned as being abandoned to a type of immorality compared with which other types are mere benedictions. It is sought to prove that the general population of many great countries are wilfully sterile. If this is absolutely true, it follows that these nations in time will unquestionably become, incapable of reproduction. The natural law is inevitable in its working. If it is true, as Mr. Roosevelt asserts, that in fifty years the unaided population of Australia will become stationary, it is also true—supposing wilful sterility obtains during that period—that it will not have the power to increase if it would. As there is no evidence that natural functions are restrained in Eastern countries, the inevitable conclusion is that in the future the races that do not induce sterility will lead the world, not only phiysically, but mentally and scientifically. The evolutionist might argue that nature intended

the white man "who lmd had his day" to give place to the more natural living and therefore increasing virile, colored man. We may be convinced of the evil in our midst, but there is no adequate means of fighting it. The public conscience is much more likely to be roused over a trifling matter than about a matter vital to the existence of humanity. The most scientific enquirers into the matter of race decay are in the dark. They have few means of proving their contentions. The absurd theory of which many are so fond, that the stress of living induces wilful sterility is quite unworthy. The birth-rate has always been phenomenal after periods of national stress and waves of riot and bloodshed. In periods of national stress a larger majority of infants have survived than during a period of plenty, apathy or stagnation. The nation Hiat has'not struggled has not anything worth hav ing. Everybody will recognise that it is impossible to preach people into becoming fathers and mothers, even if they are able. Even if you cdAvincc the wilfully sterile that the- race to which they belong must inevitably die, you still have to convince them that the future of the race concerns them. Pew folic give any thought to fifty years hence.' It is not yet proved that sterility amoHg the nations named is selfinduced, and in most cases it may merely be a matter of evolution or a cynical vagary of nature, which she may amend in the future. You can't order people to have children by Act of Parliament, and you can't insist that normal people shall have a given number of children. Mighty means are necessary to awaken the conscience of the people of the nations, but the means have not yet •been discovered. This fact, however, stares Christendom in the face. The white people of the earth are declining, or, at least, a smaller .proportion than formerly are being born. The colored people of the 'world vastly outnumber the whites, and there is no check in the birth-rate. A natural function among the colored races is not a horror as it has become to three-fourths of the whites, and, therefore, the vitality of the dark man and woman is not sapped. Atrophy of physical function is.merely a prelude to atrophy of mental power. The race that is not physically fit cannot lead. This is just as inevitable as the rising of the ean or the making of the tide. The hope of civilised man rests on the superstructure of his physical affections. There is no evidence in any land where the white man predominates or is master that the paternal instinct is dead. There is no evidence anywhere that white women desire to be childless. It is still a woman's ambition "to be the joyful mother of children," and it is still the heaviest trial married folks can have to be childless. But the point for the ■ people is that restriction must inevitably produce absolute sterility in the course of time. Whether the gradual wiping out of the white race concerns the folk of'the moment, no one can say. If there is a general .belief that "the future ,can take care of itself,," no means that scientists, philanthropists or preachers take can have any effect in checking race suicide. Atrophy follows ; misuse, and death follows atrophy;