"RACE SUICIDE" IN FRANCE

Otago Witness, Issue 3334, 6 February 1918, Page 52

"RACE SUICIDE" IN FRANCE

For half a year (says the New York Tribune) the French Academy of Medicine has been deliberating upon a report drawn up by Professor Charles Richet on behalf of a special committee appointed to inquire into the problem of depopulation in France. No decision has v aa yet been announced, but it is thought probable that in one form or another the Academy will recommend endowment of motherhood by the State. For Professor Richet is disinclined to accept some of the more popular explanations of the falling birth-rate. Ho is doubtful even of the common belief that the extraordinary deolino in France 'is in any considerable measure due to the inheritance laws providing for the division of property, for whereas the fall of the birth-rate has been particulary remarkable only in the last 4-0 years, the law- to which it is so often attributed has been in force for more than a century. Moreover, it is observed hi classes that have no property to bequeath, and are therefore not subject to the law in question. As to the supposition that the waning influence of the Church is an important factor, Professor Richet points out that though among the Bretons the birth-rate is relatively high, yet it is very low in other communities no less religious. Nor does he believe that much importance can be attached to the migration from country to town, the truth being that in some districts the urban birth-rate is actually higher than the rural. On one point he agrees with the great majority of observers—namely, that in France, as elsewhere, the decline is attributable in the main to voluntary and deliberate birth control, dictated, perhaps, by more exacting standards of social comfort and a growing disinclination among women to devote the best part of their lives to rearing children. A desire to take a larger share in activities formerly monopolised by men is doubtless an important consideration, but Professor Richet believes that the expense involved in rearing children is the most important of all, the cost of a child up to the ago of 15 averaging, according to his estimate, about one-sixth of the father's annual earnings It is for this reason that he believes the State must sooner or later pay those who undertake to prov.He for the perpetuation of the race. „