POPULATION TREND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 44, 21 February 1940, Page 9

POPULATION TREND.

EFFECT OF DECLINE. DANGERS OF RACE SUICIDE. The dangers of "race suicide" were outlined by Dr. Halliday Sutherland in a lecture "to a large audience in the Town Hall last night, presided over by Mr. R. McVeagh. The lecturer made pointed reference to Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. From the history of dead nations it appeared that race suicide was the immediate, but not the ultimate, cause of national decline, said Dr. Sutherland. One of the greatest delusions of to-day was th<» ..ssumption that present Western civilisation was progressing and going on from strength to strength.

After quoting scientific and statistical evidence in support of his principles. the" lecturer said that if the present trend'in Britain continued, the population in 1954 would be less than to-day by 5,000,000. The economic and political consequences of the change were so terrible that public men were unwilling to tackle the question. Unless a vast awakening of the national consciousness occurred, Britain's power among the nations was certain to decline.

Figures were quoted by Dr. Sutherland to show that the same tendency was at work in New Zealand. Unless the tide turned the young British nations could not hope to hold their territory against conquest or peaceful penetration. He commended the German system of in-terest-free marriage loans, which in a few years had raised the natural increase rate by 40 per cent, and the French plan for financing family allowances from the.wages fund of industry. Above all, he said, it was necessary that the vast and complex forces governing human reproduction should no longer be sabotaged bv artificial practises.