The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1923. THE POPULATION PROBLEM.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18084, 21 September 1923, Page 6

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1923. THE POPULATION PROBLEM.

Malthus having left this world nearly ninety years ago, we cau only imagine with what surprise that great showroom of tlie horrors of over-population would read the booklet recently issued by Paul Saury of the University of Paris, and reviewed in the American journals. Professor Haury sounds anew the old alarm against the low French birth rate, lie gives warning against the very opposite of what Malthas feared. He points out that France very nearly strikes a balance between births and deaths each year. This state of. things . has gone on for a generation or more. The birth statistics (showing a gradual decline) at their appearance in each succeeding year have called forth expressions of alarm from the newspapers and from learned and patriotic men. This alarm has its reasons no less striking than that regarding overpopulation in some countries of higher birth rate. The question is whether those reasons operate still, as they did a while ago. A stationary population enables the French nation to escape the social discontent that conies of overcrowding within; but it leaves the nation in fear of pressure from more crowded countries. It gives the nation a chance to maintain a oomfortable standard of living. It removes from the French mind all temptation to make war for territory to expand in ; but it lowers the nation’s rank among the world’s growing peoples, as reckoned in number. The alarm in France develops from a feeling that the loss in each case counts for more than the gain. An interesting contribution to this discussion was made by Sir W. H. Beveridge, Director of the London School of Economics in an address before' the British Association (reported in this morning’s cables) who declared that Britain is not over-populated. Moreover, he contends that unemployment and over-population, are two distinct problems. He said Germany, with its limits compressed, shipping lost, and other disabilities, arising out of the war, did not suffer from unemployment, yet Britain, with expanded territories and the world open to her, had unprecedented unemployment. The remedy for Britain was to recreate the world as a vast cooperative commonwealth of trade. The view that Britain is not suffering from over-population will be strenuously contested. It is nevertheless generally _ agreed that while over-population produces social disorder and widespread unrest, a nation with a diminishing population is a temptation to new invasion. This is particularly the case with the French Republic. There are, too, nations whose excess of births has lately troubled Europe. The German and Russian peoples, for example, run a risk of finding that their numbers go on increasing after the prosperity that warranted the increase has fled. An excess of births over deaths in the present state,,of world affairs can hardly strengthen a nation whore reduced prosperity no. longer supplies a comfortable sui - e living for even the existing numbers. (Jnprosporous countries with excessive birth rates run the risk of decline in their manner and standards of living. People may have to live more crowded, eat poorer food, wear less clothes, work longer and learn less. India, at the extreme of over-population and low standards, supports three hundred millions and has been ruled for centuries by small forces of armed outsiders. Numbers—their own numbers —have wiped out the Hindus as a nation. Excess of numbers- beyond the point of efficiency can hardly render European nations more formidable. The solution of the problem, as far as Britain is concerned, is not difficult. The white population of the British Empire should he redistributed throughout her' spacious territory. Since there are fewer white in f,ho British Empire than in Germany. a commonsense distribution “'through the vast Empire should bring no likelihood of an excess of births of people of British race undermining the prosperity of the old and new nations or lowering the standard of living desired by our free and enlightened democracies.