Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, MAY 9, 1927 BRITAIN’S SURPLUS POPULATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 9 May 1927, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, MAY 9, 1927 BRITAIN’S SURPLUS POPULATION

AT the meeting of the Women’s National Liberal Federation, hold in London last week, when there were present 1100 delegates, there was passed by an overfh aiming majority “a resolution in favour of scientific, bi.rlh-control as providing a means of increasing the efficiency of the nation,” and the conference is reported as having “decided that birth-control information should be made available at the Ministry for Health centres.”

It- would be interesting to read the speeches made in favour of these resolutions, because of the bearing which such speeches must have ort the opinions of the speakers, but it is evident from tbo cablc-d report of the meeting that the object of the resolutions, passed, was to decrease the birth-rate throughout- the country, and especially of the profligate and medically unfit. The density of the population of th# United Kingdom is estimated to be a little over 375 people to the square mile. It must be conceded that the country is over-populated, and that the congestion is increasing. The average annual birth-rate is about 21 per thousand people, and the average annual death-rate is about 14 per thousand people, so that the annual oxcoss of-births over deaths averages annually 7 per thousand people, and it is that increase of 7 per thousand, it would seem, that the members of the Women's National Liberal Federation of (treat, Britain wish to eliminate. Seven per thousand does not seem at

first, sight ,to be a. very serious normal increase, but, when it is remembered that there are in Great Britain upwards of 40,000 of such thousands, it becomes evident, that 'the excess of births over deaths amounts to something like 300,000 annually. So it would appear that the Women's National Federation aims at decreasing the birth-rate annually by the amount mentioned.

Fortunately it.lie Women’s National Liberal Federation represents but. a limited and, wc would suppose, a very narrow section of the population. There is nothing to indicate that the great bulk of the normal and healthy-minded women of Britain desire to introduce so retrograde and degenerate a method for solving the problem of Britain’s overpopulation. True, an extraordinary English prelate and a no less extraordinary English judge have advocated the obnoxious expedient voiced by the Women’s National Liberal Federation, but so far there has been no indication that, the robust, and healthy-minded people of Britain have any tendency to advocate or practice wholesale birth-control. Italy is n'country whose congestion is nearly as great- as Britain’s, and Tier ,b'irth-rato' even ’greater; but. we do'not' .'find Mussolini . exercising his despotic 'pmyers by enforcing birth-control. On the contrary, the great. Fascist leader glories in the fertility of Ihe people he governs, and regards the increasing population of Italy as a sign of the race’s vitality and a source of strength. Italy possesses no suitable colonies to which Her surplus .population can emigrate; her citizens’are debarred almost completely from entering the United States; some 300,000 of her people have emigrated to the south of France, but in spito of conditions so restrictive and unsatisfactory Mussolini looks to the future with, confidence that, a natural and satisfactory solution of Italy’s problem of over-population will Be found.

Tho natural and best solution is of course emigration. The spacious and sparsely-populated regions of the British Empire require more people to make them productive and safe against invasion. The natural increase of Britain’s population is the Empire’s strength. What is needed is not the discouraging of Britain’s birth-rate, but the distribution of her surplus population throughout the Empire. The answer to the pernicious recommendations of the W 7 omen’s National Liberal Federation is the propounding of a comprehensive. attractive, and workable scheme of emigration. If the money, spent annually on the pauperising and devitalising’ dole, were spent on a practical and statesmanlike system of emigration, whereby the waste places of the Empire could he populated, the Women’s National Liberation would he silenced, and their dangerous expedients would be effectually frustrated. W 7 e do not lose sight of tho fact that an adequate scheme of British emigration presents many difficulties not only in Britain hut in her Dominions and Colonies, hut in the light of the splendid history of British refuse to believe those difficulties to be insuperable. It is for the British Government to act, after full consultation and agreement with the Governments of the Dominions and the Colonial Office, and if is for the British Government to propound the financial scheme which shall enable the plan of emigration to he carried out. But for the Mol her Country to 1 adopt «the policy of despair, propounded by the Women’s National Liberal Federation, is both revolting and unnecessary.