RACE DETERIORATION

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3470, 24 May 1934, Page 6

RACE DETERIORATION

NEED FOR SOUND STOCK. A DOCTOR'S SPEECH. An address which was described by the Mayor (Mr. D. G. Sullivan, M.P.) as "very bold and very challenging," was delivered at the annual meeting at Christchurch of the Sunlight League by Dr. F. Montgomery Spencer, of Wellington, who stressed the need for definite action to arrest the deterioration of the British race. Dr. Spencer said that there were more than 700 inmates of mental hospitals in New Zealand, and some of the patients were given their freedom after they had undergone treatment for a time. The present position was that the birth-rate was lowest among the upper classes and highest among the lower classes. They had to face the position. What was the remedy to stop racial deterioration, he asked. All persons of sound stock should be encouraged to have children, and persons of unsound stock should be discouraged, but with persons in the lowest strata other measures would have to be employed. The question of either segregation or sterilisation in the case of the unfit might be argued to be cruelty, but in reality it was kindness.