THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1923. ENEMIES OF FRANCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18766, 20 January 1923, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1923. ENEMIES OF FRANCE.

In the popular imagination oftheFreflch the arch-enemy of their country is the Germany which rushed headlong to Paris in 1870 and aimed at a repetition of the /humiliation, in 1914. The of military Germany has been broken and she must needs now rely on success iu the industrial field if she is to regain her supremacy among Continental nations. But France has not only an enemy, no longer so formidable. as she was, without her gates. She has an insidious enemy within. In her low birth-rate France is faced with one of''the most serious problems of her national life. She is fighting against it desperately, yet with method and commonsense. The Alliance National© is engaged in proving to her that in the great population race she is steadily falling behind the neighbour nations, and that while she is becoming weaker and weaker those neighbours are becoming stronger and stronger. Striking figures can be produced to illustrate the decadence of France in the asset of manhood. In comparison with Germany the discrepancy is alirming. For instance, between 1891 and 1901 the population of Franc© increased by only 630,000 while that of Germany increased by over 7,000,000. There can be one end only of such a race, and the race never goes to the weak. In the Contemporary Review, Edith Sellers describes the elaborate attempts that are being made in France to encourage parents to populate the country. “In no other country,” she writes, “is the burden entailed by children made quite so light as in France.” For the mother and afterwards for the child grants of money are made, and very special efforts are exerted by the State to nurture the child in a manner which will ultimately transform it into a strong and useful citizen. Every Frenchman who has more than three children has the right to claim an annual allowance toward the cost of maintaining those that come after the third ; and this cannot bo denied him unless there is proof that he can maintain ihem properly without it. Widowers, widows, and deserted wives may claim it if they have more than one child. These allowances are paid for the children until they are thirt n, —until they are sixteen, indeed, if they are learning a craft at a Technical School, or as apprentices. A measure which was very recently introduced in the Chamber of Deputies, providing for the seizure of nine-tenths of the possessions of persons dying childless and giving them to parents with more than three children, regardless of their financial position, furnishes another proof of the intensity of feeling that exists on the birth-rate problem in France. This measure also includes provision for the forfeiture of two-thirds of «the possessions of those having only one child and of the forfeiture of one-third where two children constitute the family. Whatever may be thought of these methods, they are evidence that genuine alarm prevails, and if they fail to provide a remedy other solutions may be devised. The French are an imaginative as well as an intensely patriotic people, and where material inducement fails an appeal to sentiment may succeed. A single illustration of the potency of this influence is given in the article from which we have already quoted. Two years ago the Alliance Nationale published a leaflet containing a little picture, in which France was depicted iw a laurelcrowned woman standing with two coffins on one side of her, and a cradle on the other. The moral of the picture is that France is filling coffins too fast and cradles too slowly. This little pic-

ture—“poor rough thing though it be”— is said to be “doing a notable work in Franco, a work which Church and State combined have for years been trying in vain to do.” The writer in the Contemporary Review adds a piquant note with reference to a gathering at which most of those present expressed confidence concerning the future. There was one, a woman, who had doubts. “You seem to forget,” she cried bitterly, “that for every baby born in France, half-a-dozen babies are born in Germany.” The article ih the Contemporary is concluded, however, in a confident vein. “The falling birth-rate,” it is asserted, “is still the veriest Banquo at many a feast in France to-day, even though the battle against it is already half won.”