THE CENSUS IN FRANCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15350, 13 January 1912, Page 9

THE CENSUS IN FRANCE.

The latest census returns show the population of France to 1.,> thirty-nine and ahalf million*:. which represents :m increase, wo .in- Mil. of s.jfi,CflQ durini; the last live years. In view of tho melancholy pto;<iuvtioauon „f M. i /M . OV . HlMlllil'll, tll.lt Oil till' h.ISIS „f |„, r ~,.^,,',1 decay France will cense u> ~xist as a nation by the end of tly iwoiiiy.*vcoiid century, or in less than two hmuirml years, there may possibly lv seme slieju jubilation in the Itqnihlic over this tqmill (jaiii now recorded, hut tlio world in general will continue to regard the rivnch population as at the lust practioallv M,;tiouary. As a manor of fact, tin- addition to her population which Trance has secured durinc the past live years, unlo** it rati in any way lv regarded as markmA Uru of the tide, is lint another poof ttf her jierilon.s plight. l.eeaiise France is the particularly unfortunate example of old-world sterility in this matter of population, it is not imintcrcstii;;; to compare hor progress—or lack of progress - with that of a now-world country such at; Australia. The latest censi:-. that of last year, gave the Commonwealth close upon four and ahalf million inhabitants, and the increase in the ten years since ICOI was 631.& H. Thus we see that over a quinquennial period Franco, with hor thirty-nine million people, lias added to her imputation about the fame ntimber of persons as Australia, with akwt oneninth of that number of inhabitants, did. Her deplorably low birth-rate, exceptional even in tho.se days when n decreasing

birth-rate is a complaint common to most countries, in, of course, the fonrec of tho trouble in the case of France, lietween HXM and 1907 the number of births showed an average annual decrease of over ten thousand. In 1909 the birth-rato throughout the Republic was only 19.6 per 100 D inhabitants, as compared with over SO during a considerable portion of the earlier half of Inst century. In England and Wales tho births per 1000 inhabitants numbered 25.6 in 1903, while in New Zealand for the following year they were 26.17 per 1000, which is somewhere close to the average for the Commonwealth. France's powerful and assertive neighlwur, Germany, is in a fortunato position as to growing population, the number of births throughout her dominions being 52 per 1000 in 1908. Even this represents a decrease from 35.6 in 1900. Hut with France the problem of an inadequate birth-rate has assumed a gravity which threatens the worst prospects lor the future which .-1 proud and powerful nation can contemplate. "When we come to the birth-rate of France," says the writer we have already mentioned, Professor l/croy-lleaulieu, "here we find the hurt, the deadly hurt, from which our country suffers. The birth-rate in France has heen declining for n century. This decline has become so accelerated (luring the past ten or (ifl-een years that, as I feel Ixnind to n-poat, we stand confronted by an impending suicide of the nation." It is just pcwible. though very unlikely, that the in test census 5n France mriy afford mine ground for hope that the tide of depopulation mav yet, before it is too late, Ik> more than temporarily or spasmodically arrested.