RACE DECADENCE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1144, 3 June 1911, Page 6

RACE DECADENCE.

NEW ZEALAND INDICTED.

A WIDESPREAD VICE CONDEMNED.

STERILE MARRIAGES,

(By TrrcoDonE Eoosrveet, in the New

York "Outlook.")

'An Australian writer, Mr. Beale, has written a work on "Racial Decay," not good i.u form, but in substance I believe better worth the study of every sincere patriot, not merely in Australia, Great Britain, and Canada, but in .tho United States of America, than any other book that has been written for yeaj-s. It sets forth in detail, and illustrates by chart certain facts which have long been familiar to students and thinkers who care to face the truth, and whoso ■studies and thought arc not superficial. But, unfortunately, tho facts set forth, though of fundamental importance to tho whole people, are so unpleasant that case-loving persons 'who do not care for anything that causes them disquiet refuse to look them in tho face; and tho great bulk of good people are in ignorance of them, or at least wholly fail to appreciate their far-reaching significance. .

' Mr. Bealo deals with the startling decline of tho birth-rate in Great Britain, the Australian .States, and France, this 'decline being duo to the capital sin, the cardinal sin, against the race and against civilisation—wilful sterility in marriage. Ho only touches on tho United States incidentally; but every studont of the subject knows that the United States shares with the other English-speaking countries tho melancholy and discreditable position of coming next to the people of France, among great civilised countries, in that rapid decline of the birth-rate which inevitably signalises racial decay, and which, if unchecked, means racial death. Mr. Bealc shows that tho decline of the birth-rate in France bccauso of wilful sterility in marriage began fifty or sixty years ago, and has continued to such a point that the French race in Franco for tho last decade has been actually decreasing in numbers, the population of France being kept practically level only by the higher birth-rate among immigrants, chiefly Italians and Germans. Among the English-speaking peoples there has long been much complacent pointing at France as a nation that no longer held its own among tho peoples of the earth. As a matter of fact, the English-speak-ing peoples havo now all entered on the same course which France has followed, until year by year she has become less and less able to rank as tho equal of Germany. Moreover, the decline in tho birth-rato among the Eng-lish-speaking peoples has proceeded at an even moro rapid rate than in Franco itself. A Sad Business. One of tho strangest and saddest things in tho whole sad business is that tho decline has'been most marked in tho vory places where one-would expect to seo the abounding vigour of the race most strikingly displayed. In Australia and New Zealand there is' no warrant whatever in economic conditions for a limitation of the birth-rate, and tho course of ovents in these great new countries demonstrates beyond possibility of refutation that tho decline in tho birth-rate is not duo, to economic forces, and has no relation whatsoever to hard conditions of living. New Zealand is as large as Great Britain, and as fertile. Its population is between one-thirtieth and one-fortieth of that of Great Britain. It is composed of the sons and grandsons of the most enterprising and adventurous people in the Old Country, and the New Zealand people have realised to an extraordinary degree tho institutional and industrial ambitions of democracy everywhere; yet the rate of natural increase in New Zealand is actually.lower than in Great Britain, and has tendod steadily to decrease. Tito Australians are sparsely scattered over tho fringe of tho great island continent. It is ,a continent which could support without the slightest difficulty ten fold, the" present population, and at tho same time raise tho general standard of well-being. Yet its sparse population tends to concentrate in great cities of disproportionate sizo compared to tho country population, just exactly as is the case in England and tho United States, and in so many of the countries of Europe; and it increases so slowly that, even if the present rate wero maintained, tho population would not double.itself in the next century; while, if the, rato of decrease of tho last decade continues, tho population will have become stationary by the middle of the century. If this is so, then the meii who rally to the battle-cry of "A "White Australia" have indeed ground for anxiety as they think of the teeming myriads steadily increasing north of them in Asia. ,In private lifo no man can permanently hold land of which ho makes no use, and in tho life of nations'it is'absolutely certain that in tho end no race can hold a tcrri-.t-ory save on condition of developing and populating it. . The Problem Acute. Tho same causes that are at work in Australia and New Zealand aro at work in just as acute a form among the English-speaking pcoplo of Canada, and in a less acute form, but in a form constantly growing more acute, in Great Britain. Moreover, they aro at work hero iu tho United States no less actively, and their effects aro only partially obscured by the enormous immigration hither. Men have striven to tako comfort to themselves by saying that all civilised races are having the same experience. It is not so. There are some of the smaller States of Europe which havo already begun to show similar decadence; but the people of Germany havo as yet hardly begun to show it. The great cities, Berlin and Hamburg, for instance, do not show it substantially as it is shown in New York, Chicago, and London ; and if this tendency is not checked, Germany, in its turn, will begin to travel the same road which Franco has long travelled, and which tho English-speaking peoples aro now travelling. It was the warfare of tho cradle more than anything else which during the nineteenth century gave Germany its preponderant and dominating position in Europe. In this warfare Germany now shows signs of yielding to the Slavonic peoples, for the Slavonic races have been hitherto totally unaffected by the movement. . . . Again, to quiet their uneasy consciences, cheap and shallow men and women, when 'confronted, with theso facts, answer that "quality is better than quantity," and that decreaso of numbers will mean increaso in individual prosperity. It is false. When quantity falls off, .thanks to wilful sterility, tho quality will go down too. During the half-century in which Franco has remained stationary, whilo Germany has nearly doubled in population, tho averago of individual prosperity has grown much faster in Germany than in France; and social and industrial unrest and discontent havo grown faster in Franco than in Germany. No Children to Educate. I am well aware of.the cxtromo difficulty in getting any serious attention paid to this matter, although it is tho most vital of all matters. Too often tho average man treats it as a subject for jocularity—often for brutal and vulgar jocularity; while the men and I the wonion who like to. think of them-

selves as leaders of light and learning, and to earn their reputations cheaply, turn away from the subject as unpleasant, and busy themselves about what in comparison aro unimportant futilities. \et the importance of all other subjects depends absolutely upon treating this subject as of far moro importance. As a nation wo prido ourselves upon taking great thought about education. But it, is useless to waste time on education if there arc not going to bo enough children to educate. To spend thought and money in elaborate plans for the bringing up and cultivation of a young man amounts to nothing if we havo also arranged that lie shall commit suicide shortly after he gets of a.ge; and so it is idle to take thought about tho nation's future if tho men and women of this' generation are to leave behind them only a dwindling /remnant to inherit this future. .Surely it ought to bo obvious that no material prosperity and mental cultivation, that none oven of the minor and subsidiary virtues, will count for anything in tho life of an individual if he puts an end to that life; and surely it ought to be obvious thai this is just as true.of a raco as of an individual; and yet there are any number of people, including men who delight to stylo themselves apostles of culture and adherents of schools of advanced economic thought, who will not see this perfectly plain and obvious, truth. If men and women do not marry; and if thoro aro not sufficient children to a marriage, the race will in a short time vanish— surely anyone can see this. If there aro no children to a marriage, the raco vanishes with tho generation itself; and if thero aro only one or two children to a marriage, tho vanishing of the. race is only put off for a short time. Sterile marriages inclndo those where thoro aro but one or two children, just as they include those where there aro no children; wilful sterility is as much a crimo against tho race in the caso of the one-child or two-child marriage' as in the case of the marriage where there aro no children. From tho standpoint of the race' the average threechild marriage must probably also be treated as a _ sterile marriago; for the one extra child does not, on the averago, cover the cases of death, tho caseswhere for proper and legitimate reasons tho man or woman does not marry, and tho cases where married pcoplo through no fault of their own fail to have children. Tho raco cannot go ahead, it will not keep its numbers even, unless the aycrago man and women who aro married , and who are capable of having children havo a family of four children. Those, and these only, are the men and women with whom the whole future of the nation, the whole future of civilisation, rests. I know very well every form of cheap sophistry which can be used in answer to this statement, I know well how certain it is- that this statement will be twisted out of shape, and how some men, who for their own purpose choore to pretend to misunderstand it, will cause it to bo misunderstood by some good men and women who have not thought deeply. But it is a statement which not only must be made, but upon which all tnio lovers of their country and lovers of mankind should insist with their whole hearts. -A Cardinal Sin. , Many wilfully sterile people actually rogard themselves as good citizens, and even icok down on what they stigmatise as ''vice." But in reality wilful sterility inevitably produces and accentuates every liideous form of vice. ; Nor is this all. It is itself worse, more debasing, more destructive, than. ordinary vico. Every decent citizen must abhor vice; I rank celibate profligacy as not oiie whit better than polygamy; yet, after all, such vice may be compatible with a nation's continuing to live; and while thero is life, even a life marred by wrong practices, thero is chaiico of reform. But the cardinal sin of wilful sterility, in marriage means death; and for tho dead there is no reform.

Is it possible to change the. heart of a people, to mako them abandon a vico like this ? The author of tho book before me believes not. Ho believes that when men and women abandon thoughts of duty, and caro only for ease and gross material pleasures, no appeal can be made to them which will make them reform. I am not prepared to take this

I am suro that when

men and women come to their senses and are able to separate tho things that aro essential from the things that are non-essential in life, they will go back to the understanding that there is no form of happiness <m the earth, no form of success of any kind, that in any way approaches tho happiness of the husband' and tho wife who aro married lovers and tho .father and mother of plenty of healthy children. No other form of success—political, literary, artistic, commercial —in any way approaches the kind of success open to most men and most women, tho success of tho. man in making a homo and of tho woman in keeping it, the success of both in dwelling therein with mutual love, respect, and forbearance, and in bringing up the children who bless and make holy the home.

No partnership of happiness can ever be such unless_ it is also a partnership of work; and in this lifo it is rare indeed that success and happiness como savo as the result of willingness to run risk and to face danger as well as work. But woo to tho small souls who shrink from facing the gTeat adventuro! Shame to those who choose to lead their lives in a round of cheap self-indulgcnco and vapid excitement! They shall end in tho gray_ twilight which has known neither victory nor defeat, and which thereforo means tho worst of all possible kinds of defeat, the defeat that comes to those who have not dared to try to win tho battle.' In tho partnership of man and .woman the woman risks most, and. for that reason we should hold in peculiar abhorrenco the man who fails to realise this and to bo gentlo and tender and loyal in his dealings with her. The birth pangs mako all men the debtors of all women; and thoso men have indeed touched the lowest abyss of brutality and depravity who do not recognise something holy in the names of wife and mother. No man, not even the soldier who does his duty, stands quite on the level with tho wife and mother who has done her duty. ... The Soldier Who Runs Away. Tho extent of my reverence, for and belief in a woman who does her duty measures also the depth of my contempt for the woman who shirks her duty. The man who either is responsible for, or acquiesces in, sterility in marriago is even more contemptible than tho woman; but ho is the only person moro contemptible. Exactly as tho measure of our regard for the soldier who does his full duty in battle is the measuro of our scorn for tho coward who flees, so tho measuro of our respect for tho truo wife and mother is the measuro of our scorn and contemptuous abhorrenco for tho wifo who refuses to bo a mother.

There, arc plenty of good men and good women whom Providence for inscrutable reasons has denied the greatest of all happiness, tlio happiness of having children. For these wo feel tho same profound and respectful sympathy that wo feel for tho honest, hardworking man in civil life who moots with unmerited misfortune, and for tho soldier who is killed in battle, or who is prevented from going to war by some crippling accident which puts an end to all his ambitions, all his dreams of valorous achievement. Moreover, there are men and women who, for adequate reason, must remain unmarried. I do not speak of tlioso; it is no fault of theirs, and no virtue of ours, that wo and they have not changed positions. I speak only, bo it remembered, of tlioso who refuse to marry bemuse of cold selfishness or vapid love of ease or for other unworthy motive, and of those

who in marriage arc guilty of wilful sterility. ...

I hope I shall not bo misunderstood, unless wilfully. 1 no mora mean that a man and a woman are good citizens merely because they have children than I 1110,101 that a man is a good soldier merely because he can fight. In each ease the possession of one essential quality does not atone for tho lack of other qualities which arc only less essential. Criminals should not have children. Shiftless and worthless people should not marry and have families which they are unable, to bring up properly. Such marriages are a curse to tho community. Hut this is only tho negative side of the matter; and the positive is always more important than the negative. In our civilisation to-day the great danger is that there will be failure to have enough children of tho marriages that ought to t.nko place. What we most need is insisting upon the duty of decent people to have enough children, and the sternest condemnation of the practices commonly resorted to in order to secure sterility. Unless the average man marries and has children, then, whatever tho nation, its average man is a poor citizen, and tho nation is doomed. But of coutsc I do not for a moment mean that sterility i.s the only vico or fertility the only virtue. A great many qualities are necessary to make a man or a woman a good citizen, just as a great many qualities are necessary to mako a man a good soldier; and when I point out the fact that one quality is absolutely essential, I do not mean that it is allsufficient. •, National Appeal Needed. We need plenty of books like that of Mr. Beale, the Australian writer, which is before me. One of the things ho points out to which heed paid is tho profound and lasting damago unwittingly done by Malthus, and, to a less extent, by John Stuart Mill. As we study the far-reaching harm due in some degree to the teachings of these men of high intellect and worthy purpose, we. should feel chastened and humbled, and should realiso very keenly how often the -wisdom of the wisest turns out to bo folly. Our appeal must be not only to the intellect and the reason; it must be to tho heart and conscience. In this great fundamental matter, vital to the life of tho whole nation, our appeal must be to the plain people, to tho average man and the average woman ; and fundamentally it must bo an appeal to character, an earnest prayer that in tho souls of all of us the sense of duty may grow and not dwindlo, and may be guided by wisdom and inspired by courage. Wo honour tho good man and tho good Ivoma.ll who do their duty; and, above all others, wo honour the wifo and mother, for she is the high priestess-of the race, who bears in her strong and tender arms tho burden of the destinies of mankind.