No scheme is too wild
for the supposed benefit of the country in a fierce coming fight for
commercial supremacy, as well as with due regard to the requirements in
cannon fodder of another Great War twenty years hence.
It may be well, however, to pause before we listen to these Quixotic
plans.[1] We may then find reason to think, not only that any attempt
to arrest the falling birth-rate is scarcely likely to be effective in
view of the fact that it affects not one country only but all the
countries that count, but that even if it could be successful it would
be mischievous. Whatever the results of the War may be, one result
is fairly certain and that is that, under the most favourable
circumstances, every country will emerge laden with misery and debt;
whatever prosperity may follow, living will be expensive for a long
time to come and the incomes of all classes heavily burdened. A Bounty
on Babies would hardly make up for these difficulties. The happy
family, under the conditions that seem to be immediately ahead of us,
is likely to be the small family. The large family--as indeed has been
the case in the past--is likely to be visited by disease and death.
But there is more to be said than this. We must dismiss altogether the
statement so often made that a falling birth-rate means "an old and
dying community." The Germans have for years been making this remark
contemptuously regarding the French. But to-day they have to recognise
a vitality in the French which they had not expected, while in recent
years, also, their own birth-rate has been falling more rapidly than
that of France.
Pages:
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196