THE BIRTH RATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 201, 26 August 1930, Page 6

THE BIRTH RATE.

AN, OVERCROWDED WORLD,

(To the Editor.)

To proclaim that a high birth rate does not profit a nation, indeed that it may milita" against its prosperity, requires a certain shamolcssness. To cry out against the fall of our birth rate and to demand propaannda for the encouragement of births places' ou» at once in the position of a good spirited citizen. Bnt goodness is a mo l quality and moral qualities occasionally under go divorce from the intellect. A number V people are agitating in favour of a hiVh birth rate; clerics in the name of morals; Imperial ists in the name, of'colonial expansion; soldier" in the name of man-power; and various poonl in the name of nothing in particular bJ Professor E. M. East, a distinguished bioWkt ("Nature," September 23, 1920), has estimated that the present rate of increase in the pomi lation of the world will in the lives o*' our grandchildren lead to a struggle for existence more terrible than imagination can conceive So eminent a sexologist as Ilavelock Elp s ' also says in "The Individual and the Race""Everywhere a small number of men are being enabled to replace a large number of men. Not to avoid looking ahead, we'may say that of every twelve millions of ourpopulation ten millions will be unwanted." Both these predictions are of profound interest to a person who has any intelligent care for the problems of human life and thought. " S. GLADING.