FATE OF A NATION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 2, 4 January 1943, Page 2

FATE OF A NATION

RURAL BIRTH-RATE ECONOMIST'S WARNING TO AMERICAN YOUTH. Dr. O. E. Baker, Professor of Economic Geograph at the University of Maryland, U.S.A., declared in a convention address recently that in 25 years America would face an accelerating decline in population so serious that unless it became a major purpose of national policy to maintain the family unit as an institution for the transmission of race, wealth, and culture it would make liule difference wno won this war. He told the opening meeting of the annual National Catholic Rural Lite Conference that tne burden of maintaining the country’s birth-rate was on the rural population. “But millions of farm boys and girls | have migrated to the cities in the last lew years, resulting in a sharp decrease in the rate of rural reproduction," he said. “In 1920 10 adults on the farm were raising 17 children, while 10 adults in the city were raising 10 children. In 1940 10 adults on the farm were raising between 13 and 14 children, and 10 adults in the city were raising only seven children.” Asserting that the ’number of old people was increasing steadily, Dr. Baker predicted that within 25 years the number of deaths would prooably balance the decreasing number- of births, and gradually this condition would merge into a steadily declining population. Because of what he described as the drift now towards dependency on the State for the transmission of culture and wealth, Dr. Baker held it likely that the State eventually would subsidise parenthood to compensate for the declining population. “Ten per cent, of the families of the nation, if provided with a little more capital in the form of fertiliser, agricultural machinery, good seed, and other materials, could provide an adequate diet and ample clothing for the remaining 90 per cent.,” he declared. “But if this 90 per cent, has as low a birth-rate as chracterises the urban people now, there will be a serious decline in population associated with profound economic and social consequences.”

Dr. Baker emphasised the stake the church had in rural areas, stating that the failure of the family to function adequately was due to a lack of religion and the domination oi materialistic concepts of success. The meeting included discussions of the role of youth on the farm and the teaching of religion in rural areas.

cises by going over the whole programme again, so as to make quite certain that everybody had “benefited sufficiently.” There were many arguments in the officers’ corps of the old Ist Prussian Cavalry Division as to which was worse:

(1) The extended manoeuvres and the ceaseless driving of the commander, or

(2) His high-sounding addresses which he invariably gave to the tired troops after such excessive fatigues These speeches were apparently a kind of cloak by which he sought to excuse his immoderate personal demands. He spoke to them about the “honour of being soldiers and not civilians,” about “the glorious culmination of a real man’s life: the death in the field as a fighting soldier.” Bock’s rise became steeper, but he never lost his habits. When he was corps commander and later army group commanding general, everybody under him was made to feel he could not be satisfied. He continued to drive his men almost to breaking point. Rudeness On Social Occasions *On such social occasions as von Bock had to observe he was curt to the point of rudeness. Opera performances are, according to von Bock, nonsense.

He nearly got himself into trouble when he attended a State performance given by Emmy Sonnemann the night before she became the official Mrs. Generalfeldmarshall Hermann Goering. During that performance the future Emmy Goering played the part of Queen Louise of Prussia, who, after 1807. had to lead with Napoleon for the restoration of defeated Prussia.

Emmy weighs round about 14 stone, and von Bock remarked loudly from his box in the State Theatre: "Doesn’t she look like the battalion cook of the 2nd battalion of the 4th? I think he was two hundredweight.”

I remember one day when we were on manoeuvres in Pomerania, a district where peasants are reputed to live on potatoes. I was present when von Bock rebuked my superior officer for some inefficiency and declared, ignoring the fact that there was a junior officer within hearing: “Some oeople have either water or straw in their heads. Yours seems to be made out of potatoes.” As the leader of the Army of Occupation for Czechoslovakia von Bock entered Friedland in the Sudetan district. at the head of his divisions.

A boy of about 10 accompanied him, dressed in a sailor's suit, sitting upright in his father’s big Mercedes. Asked by one journalist who that was von Bock replied: "This is my son. who takes this opportunity to see at an early age the beauty and exhilaration of soldiering."