IRELAND AND ILLEGITIMACY.

New Zealand Tablet, 17 August 1911, Page 1579

IRELAND AND ILLEGITIMACY.

TO THE EDITOR. v . Sir, — week, or two back in dealing with the Birth problem,’ Dr. Izard, of Wellington, asserted that the illegitimate rate is lower in Australia than in any country in the world excepting only the Netherlands and Switzerland; this statement I knew to be incorrect, but unfortunately I had not available the -evidence to refute it. I have since obtained the following data from Chambers’ Enclycopcedia showing the illegitimate rate per hundred of all births recorded in the countries here enumerated: Holland, 2.54; Ireland, 2.6; England and Wales, 4.0; New Zealand' 4.3; Switzerland, 4.4; Italy, 5.5; Australian Commonwealth, 5.67; Scotland, 6.2; Belgium, 7.07; German Empire, 8.7; France, 8.9, and so on up to 13.65 in Austria and Hungary. From these figures it will be seen that with an inappreciable difference Ireland and Holland share the position of highest honor. According to other authorities, Greece, Servia,' Russia, Canada, and the United States are all much below Australia, so much for Dr, Izard’s accuracy of statement. My only reason for referring to it is due to the fact that he has followed the usual practice of disregarding Ireland’s claim to fair treatment. I suppose it is because her most trivial offences and lightest faults have— some sinister process— magnified with malicious ingenuity into appalling crimes by the Tory press, and been proclaimed throughout the world in large capital letters by the subservient Press Association, that so many people find it so easy to believe that nothing but evil can or does exist in Ireland. It seems inconceivable that Chambers’ Encyclopedia should allow itself to be swayed by racial prejudice and animosity; that it is so is proved by the carping spirit in which it seeks to disparage Ireland’s extraordinary low rate of illegitimacy. In quoting, it endorses the opinion of a writer (George Moore) who, with the morals of a libertine, laments ‘the strange and awful chastity of the Irish people that has killed all joy amongst them.’ This is not fair comment or just and reasonable criticism, it is malignity degraded unto unmitigated filth. Surely no country that tolerates such iniquity as this suggests will escape the doom that fell on Sodom and Gomorrah for their gross immorality.. No such fate can befall the nation in which the purity of their lives is the most sacred heritage of the people. This is the sure foundation on which our country rests; the safeguard of the honor and glory of Old Ireland.—l am, etc.,

New Ireland.

P.S.— may interest your readers to be informed that. the illegitimate rate in Ulster is 3.4 per cent., or five times greater than in Connaught, where it is only 0.7.—N.1. J