A ' Race Suicide' Fallacy

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 51, 21 December 1905, Page 22

A ' Race Suicide ' Fallacy

A mischievous book published some time ago in New Zealand defended the crime known as « race suicide ' by the fallacious contention that it is better to have one or two children carefully nurtured than to have ,a quiver-fuH of little arrows dragged up anyhow. The 1 Southern Messenger ' easily disposes of such an attempt to palliate sin and crime. • This plausible theory,' says our American contemporary, ' does not commend itself to experienced educators, who know that? the worst type of children is usually found in a small family. Said the rector of a Catholic college in England recently : " I always fear when I hear of an only, child coming to St. Bede's, because I know it has been treated softly and had all its own way. Give me the boy who has had his head punched by his bigger bro-

ther ; who has had threepence a week spending money, and perhaps not that ; who has had to give up his bed for his sick brother and sleep on the couch ; who Jhas lived on plain food ; who is not afraid of a little/ tooth or stomach ache ; whose sisters have taught him to be polite, and pointed out his coarseness, and who has a kind and noble heart and soul. That boy will become a man, but the boy from a small family has not had these glorious things to fight, against.'