NATIONAL SUICIDE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 11 March 1930, Page 7

NATIONAL SUICIDE

(To the Editor) (i Sir.—Probably your correspondents “H.F.” and “Victorian,” who have stepped lroin the Obstetrics Fund to their population hobby horses, have mixed the birth rate with the rate of infant mortality. The infant mortality rate may well he the proudest boast of this fine little country, and only the sleepiest of Rip Van Winkles would find fault with the birth rate. As the child of the sixteenth of a typical Victorian family of seventeen, I am only too obvious and uncomfortable an example of the lack of vitality which results from the hobby of your correspondents. While there are a few childless women who might he better as mothers there are still far too many who are mothers for the second, fourth or eighth time before they have recovered from previous confinements. The example of France is before us. These hobbyists used to tell us that, because her population was falling, France was hopelessly degenerate and could no longer put a useful army in the field. The war showed that the brainy Frenchman had been after quality instead of quantity. Two well-nourished, well-taught children of vigorous mothers, with good prospects, are worth more than ten half-fed, half-taught olive branches of a broken-down mother, with no hope of a start in life from a father who has exhausted himself in providing for his family before they are adolescent. Small families, not too close together, of physically fit and happy mothers and of fathers not overburdened with family expenses are what New Zealand wants. And above all she doesn't want any children of the cocktail-drinking, motormad women who bulk so largely with “Victorian” but who are really more numerous in novels and the comic papers than in real life.—l am, etc., ANOTHER VICTORIAN. Tasman, Bth March.