ITALY’S CAMPAIGN FOR MORE BABIES

Evening Star, Issue 22721, 7 August 1937, Page 29

ITALY’S CAMPAIGN FOR MORE BABIES

HOW SIGNOR MUSSOLINI IS DIRECTING POPULATION INCREASE No Italian advertisement of, a flat to let could possibly insert any “No Children ” clause (says a writer in the ‘ Sunday Chronicle ’). No newspaper dire accept such an advertisement; and eyfcfl if the newspaper could he, somehow .dodged and ah advertisement could lie privately typed, then public .opinion would break the windows of that flat, and when public opinion had finished, then the law would begin. There would be no ingenious argument by learned counsel; either, and) there would be no nominal fines. The owner bf the flat who teriised children would just go to prison. Any advertisement or even indirect advocacy of birth, control is a penal offence in Italy. Ip. Italy the mother desires to te iibffc'ed' as milch ks possible; the stranger iff . the street, will raise his hat to the woman, about to become a mother; and she will climb proudly into th.e, bus or .trarii while , the Other passengers, respectfully wait for her. Audi If they did not Wait, then the policeman would make them. The mother-tb-V>b the queen, in that country. Italy tvhfffe babies, arid she makes it as easy as possible for the women to have them. The law can, indeed, go. further. And does. Let an Italian woman anywhere in Europe be about to have a baby and she can present herself to her nearest consul and her far© will be found to the Italian frontier. Let the little stranger he horn an Italian citizen, and a future soldier or mother of soldiers. Approve or disapprove as you like, but there the fact is. On the frontier, too, they will make it easy for the mother-to-be. So at Leghorn there is a special clinic for Italian women coming home from French Corsica. Let the baby be born on Italian soil and not in France. There are plenty of other ways of encouraging birth. The young mother-to-be in an Italian factory does not get dismissed when her condition is noticed. Instead she gets a holiday on full pay, and the factory is bound to give it. That’s law. But there is public opinion as well, and so the factory companies will offer prizes for maternity and will have baby shows and so forth. And just as in Britain popular papers will run all kinds of competitions for football results and the like, so Italian newspapers offer their prizes for the family', or factory, or district with the highest birth rate. And there will be bitter rivalries in the Baby Stakes be tween, say, Naples and Milan. The reader may hate the thing oj may laugh at it, but very certainly s country can do something about the baby business! In Italy public opinion has been deliberately inspired to treat motherhood as heroic. Then' hot 'billy 'doles iribdeHi Mussojiniland., demand more biibics, but it also 'calls fpr ,better babies, . and its Of; infant WeTfirfb ift perfih]fe the world’s finest.. .. . _ u There, is the whole poWter add purse of the State behind the bhby. ‘For instance, ..they have State , railways and the mother and baby iriay. find 'themselves, if h&Jf&t'ary, brought . tip for .Nothing ft;om the far end. of, the country 'ahd, planted down in Romo for specialist treatment. There is a whole new suburb of the capital given up to infant welfare hospitals and clinics. Haying all the places together makes it easier for the doctor to do his W ( 6tk. ~ And. .whht tthpat.... the mother’s convenience. She’ll live in that Suburb in a ■Special hO'Spice. They even riifi State restaurants where the peasant Woman from the remote country can get her Ideal food ©Specially booked Tor her. Who pays for it, all ?, Everybody. The State contributes hundreds of thousands bf -pdimdfe tailed r fr6m the and the local authorities contribute more thousands. Go to a cinema and pky, say, sixpence. Your seat may be \sjd, plus a idl for the baby; and the Infant Welfare td will bb marked on your ticket Besides that, the New Italy reaps in hundreds of thousands more from voluntary contributions; she’s made the business fashionable, and every factory and every workshop will have its contribution box for baby. The business, of course, is " inspired ” from the top.