GERMANY'S BIRTH-RATE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22933, 11 January 1938, Page 8

GERMANY'S BIRTH-RATE

Anxiety about his country's birthrate is manifested by the head of Germany's Health Department. He declares that, in spite of State assistance, the birth-rate is short by 11 per cent of the figure needed to maintain the population; and he adds particulars showing that, but for a partial improvement since 1933, when the deficiency was 30 per cent, the German people would have been faced with the prospect of extinction in ten generations. That fate, according to his declaration, has been only postponed, not averted. No doubt the Nazi Government will intensify the economic means it has introduced in an effort to stem the decline, but this official statement of fact proves that the obstacles to success are considerable. One exists in the failure «f the present regime to inspire confidence in Germany's future. Prominent Nazis have maintained that there is a close relation between confidence and the willingness to produce children. The thesis is not novel; almost selfevident, it has been generally enunciated in other countries. On the basis of reasoning it supplies, there is justification for saying that the 11 per cent deficiency is an indication, if not the measure, of the Nazi Government's lack of success in its attempts to persuade the German people that all is well with Germany under its control. Another sidelight on Germany's current politics is provided by this announcement of the adverse balance in vital statistics. Pressure of population, actual and prospective, has been advanced by Nazi spokesmen as an argument for demanding ' colonies. The validity of such an argument depends on the existence of this pressure. Where it does not exist, the argument has no application. Italy and Japan can use it with some show of reason, but not Germany, which has neither a high degree of density of population nor a likelihood of experiencing it—until the marked deficiency-in the birth-rate is overcome.