RACE SUICIDE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17239, 21 April 1930, Page 13

RACE SUICIDE

BANEFUL EFFECTS PRIEST’S STRONG ATTACK SYDNEY, April 17. Passion Sunday was observed yesterday morning at St. Mary’s Cathedral, when Digit Mass was celebrated by Father Edmund O’Donnell. A course of Lenten sermons was concluded by Father B. McGrade, a missionary of the Sacred Heart, who made a strong attack on race suicide. “The baneful effects of this evil were stressed by Dr. (5. 11. Abbott, president of the Australian Medical Congress held in Sydney last SepUmitier,” Father Melt ratio said. “All medical men know that much damage is done by the practices adopted. Tho empty cradle is a menace to any nation. It spells empty homes, and empty spaces, which are invitation to hungry hordes to fill. Rome at tho lime of Caesar Augustus prided itself, as tho world does to-day, on the high attainment of its civilisation. Rut by the practice of self-inflicted extinction it opened its gates miles wide to the hordes of 'barbarians which swept down from the north. There is such a tiling as history repeating itself. “It was announced in a. London paper some time ago that the subject of birth control would not be introduced again into its programmes by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Sir Robert Blair, chief education officer in London, said he was providing for 1.000,000 fewer children in the primary classes than he did in 1911. The fall is going on in England at the rate of ICO.OOO children a year in each age group. By 1932 there will be 2,000,000 fewer workers in England. The English birth rate declined during the past 45 years at the rate of 17 per thousand. in Australia during the same period the decline was 15 per thousand. At the present lpw rate of natural increase it will take Australia nearly 50 years before her population is doubled, and .113 years before she will have 20.000,000 people. Poverty and hard times are the excuses alleged for not doing their duty in this respect. Judging from statistics this is not so. The- less wealthier are more faithful to their duty than the richer classes. Among the agricultural, pastoral, and mining classes a contribution is found of nearly 25 per cent, to the birth rate, among the industrial classes 43 per cent., the professional and social classes not 5 per cent., which goes to show that, those who can afford to do their duty are not doing it. It is no unusual thing that when the birth rate falls the insane rate goes up. To the man and woman who prefer luxuries, pleasures, and society functions to duty, who prefer motor cars, yachts, lovely homes, and furs to beautiful children, there will come a time when the gaiety of early married life will become stalp, when pleasures and the hectic rush of amusements will pall, when the luxurious home will be empty, when the malerna! instinct will crave for half love,"