Part 3

It is clear, however, that all arguments relating to the individual are limited in their appeal to those in whose minds the conception of morality is somehow related to that of individual harmony and happiness and to the ideal of the general good. To those for whom the word ‘morality’ has an ulterior meaning, unconnected with the affairs of this world and relevant, solely, to the destiny of the individual soul――I refer, here to those who enlist the ‘Will of God’ of which they are the self-constituted interpreters, on their side――no argument can be of any avail. Since the subject is thus removed from the sphere of practical controversy, no further discussion is possible, and the only thing to hope is that with the passage of time such persons will become less numerous.

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Consideration of the arguments bearing upon the individual, it is submitted, points to the desirability of (1) the Ministry of Health giving the subject recognition and sanction, and (2) limiting the publicity that now attaches to it.

(_b_) _The Race._ Turning now from the individual to the race, we enter on a more difficult part of the subject. Adhering to our original conception of the question we find that the solution (if it is to be accepted as such) of the quantitative difficulty, and of the qualitative problem described as ‘economic’ in nature, are one and the same. The remedy for that aspect of the qualitative problem distinguished as ‘dysgenic’ is different and must be considered separately.

The quantitative difficulty reduces itself to this. Admitting the greater fertility to-day of those whose occupations are manual, or who have no occupation at all (in other words, of the less select type) and admitting that _at the present moment_ the country is overpopulated, how are we to be certain that we are not within sight of more prosperous times when unemployment will disappear? And how are we to feel assured that the dissemination of knowledge of Birth Control will not, in the long run, lead to a disastrous decline in the birth rate, producing an irretrievable diminution in our numbers?

The practical difficulty is here to prophesy what will be the optimum population (i.e., that at which average return of labour per individual would be greatest) for a given country fourteen years ahead――at the time, that is, when the children born to-day would enter the labour market. And here we are in the realm of almost pure guesswork, and probably no economist could be found who would venture upon more than a tentative speculation. What the optimum is at the moment remains even a disputed question. There is reason to suppose that unemployment returns are not necessarily a trustworthy guide to the figure. A consensus of opinion however exists (including that of Mr. Baldwin) that _at the moment_ our numbers are above their optimum, though expectations vary almost infinitely as to what the optimum will be in a few years. Those who hope for a boom in trade are satisfied with the present condition. Others who do not anticipate such an event, would more willingly see an alteration brought about. In the absence of any definite knowledge, the best we can do is not to try to look too far ahead but to consider the solution of our problems as we find them to-day. _At the moment_ the indisputable facts of the problem in this country are that we are over-populated, that contraception is practised too much by the upper and middle classes――perhaps even by the skilled working classes――and not enough by the improvident unskilled masses at the bottom of the social edifice.

The outstanding question is whether, as a result of a reduction of our numbers to a point somewhere in the neighbourhood of the economic optimum for this country――by which reduction the existing burden of taxation, an increasing element of which is now devoted to charity and relief, will be correspondingly diminished――our upper and middle classes would be enabled to produce more children, and to continue to produce enough to maintain our numbers in the neighbourhood of their optimum.

The answer to this question depends on a further question. To what extent is the relative sterility of the professional and skilled working classes attributable to the heavy taxation now imposed on them, and to the rise in the cost of living due to the war, and to what extent is it the result of a preference shown by many people for a more or less luxurious life, with few or no children, to a simpler life with several children? In other words, to what extent is it attributable to an economic factor and to what extent to motives of selfishness?

To what extent does that quality of self-interest play a part which prompts a woman to refuse to breastfeed her baby because she is afraid of the effects thereof upon her figure, which causes her to abstain from having children because she dislikes the discomfort and deformity preliminary to, and the actual pains of, childbirth, or which makes her value amusements and expensive forms of pleasure and recreation more highly than the experience of maternity? To what extent is the relative infertility of the upper and middle classes accounted for by the kind of egotism which induces the husband to go in for entertaining, for a motor, and a house with several servants, and generally to live in comparative affluence rather than do without his superfluities and bring up a family of children? This attitude nowadays certainly plays a part. Dissatisfaction with the elementary pleasures of life, the craving after artificial stimuli and new sensations, have always been, and probably will always remain, the surest way to decadence in a race, and as such should be combated. It is more in the interest of the race that the professional and artisan classes should produce plenty of good children than that the families of the very poor should be restricted. The argument is sometimes advanced by complacent and wealthy individuals that the working classes should be encouraged to reproduce freely in order to keep up the country’s numbers. The dirty work is thrown, so to speak, on the shoulders of those least qualified to discharge it. It must appeal to the sense of justice of everyone that if the maintenance of numbers of the race is to be conceived as a burden (which of course it should not), the burden should be borne equally by all classes.

The writer, who has had occasion to witness the results of over-multiplication among the very poor, feels that it is only in fairness to them that they should be equipped with every possible means of improving their lot. At present one of the most important of such means is the creation of facilities by the Ministry of Health for the giving of information to those mothers who need it about how they may limit their families and space their children. The immediate social results of such a measure would unquestionably be good. The remote results are more open to doubt. And it is this doubt which renders it of the utmost importance to add that every form of pressure and persuasion be brought to bear on the other classes, to make them realize that it is morally incumbent on them, in the interests of the country and of the race, to have as many children as they can possibly afford, even at the expense of the minor luxuries of life.

Up till now no such pressure has been exerted, and most people regard it as a matter of moral indifference, whether, when married, they have children or not. The problem as to whether the general public, once it has been educated to realize the national importance of the question of having children, would act upon it and thereby avert the threat of a dwindling population is again one of great difficulty. Admittedly, the example set us by France is not encouraging. What is the likelihood of our following in her footsteps? It is a delicate and important question. The writer is of the opinion that our national character differs from that of the French in a way that would make us more responsive to such an appeal for children than the French have shown themselves to be. But again we are in the realm of conjecture, and each person is entitled to his opinion.

The fact remains, however, that as long as the advertisement now given to Birth Control is permitted to continue, its practice will become yearly more prevalent. Its spread will certainly not be limited by an attitude of official negativism towards it while the propaganda is allowed to continue unchecked.

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There remains the other process above distinguished as ‘dysgenic,’ the effect of which upon the quality of the race is probably as detrimental as the one just considered, namely, the nurture and perpetuation of the morally and physically unfit. This tendency can only possibly be met by some form of Eugenic legislation. The existing opposition to anything of the sort in this country probably springs from a deep-seated dislike of bureaucratic interference in people’s private lives, and is associated with a failure to realize the harmful consequences of the existing order. It is of interest, however, to observe that in America, where, in practice if not in theory, individual liberty is valued less highly than in this country, various enactments have been passed with a definitely Eugenic object. Thus in the State of Nebraska marriage is forbidden to anyone afflicted with venereal disease, and all applications for marriage licenses have to be accompanied by affidavits of freedom from such disease. Nobody acquainted with the nature of the infant mortality produced by congenital syphilis can fail to approve of this measure.

In 1895 the State of Connecticut forbade the marriage of epileptics and feeble-minded persons, under penalty of three years’ imprisonment. Everyone possessing knowledge of the Neurological Out-patients’ Department of any large hospital must realize the existing prevalence of epilepsy and appreciate how this hereditary disease may incapacitate and stultify its victims. Montana provides for the sterilizing of idiots, epileptics, feeble-minded and insane persons, which measure must again commend itself to those aware of how prolific such types can be if left unwatched. In males, sterilization can be effected by a very minor operation, the use of X-rays for this purpose being a procedure with regard to which there is still medical controversy.

The principle might even be extended to individuals who, by a record of crime or misdemeanour, prove themselves to belong to a type which the nation does not want perpetuated. The sterilization of the male leaves quite undisturbed his sexual function, though it destroys his power of reproduction. The infringement which it therefore involves of the liberty of the individual is far less than that made by the State when it takes it upon itself to hang a man. Yet the social benefit arising from the two measures cannot be compared. Though it is difficult at this stage to define the details of Eugenic legislation it seems likely that the physical and moral standard of the race could broadly be raised by such a qualitative Birth Control.

The number of emigrants which we are in a position to send to the Dominions each year is limited by difficulties of transport, and could never amount to more than a fraction of our present unemployment figure. There is further the important consideration that the Dominions themselves do not relish the idea of our regarding them as dumping grounds for our superfluous undesirables. The type of emigrant they want is a courageous, hardworking, physically healthy type, capable of initiative, of withstanding hardships without grumbling, and of making a good citizen. Such do not tend to become unemployed here, though, under very adverse circumstances, they often may. A decrease of our population need not therefore be opposed to our Imperial interests if, in the process, we raise the standard of the race and improve our national stock.

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What will be the bearings of such enlightened Birth Control upon the future? It will affect the Individual directly in his immediate relation to his family, and it will influence him indirectly through its effect upon the community as well as through the international relationships of the country to which he belongs. The international implications will be considered first, since they are the most far-reaching.

The most obvious of these is the connexion between unrestricted increase of population and wars. To what extent was the late war due to this cause, and to what extent has the world learnt from it the necessity of regulating such increase?

The causes of the late war were complex and are not yet wholly understood. A fact however stands out clearly now that we contemplate it in retrospect and now that changes in international feelings have forced upon us a consideration of the point of view of our late enemies. It is that the causes now recognized are essentially different from what those causes were represented to be in the war propaganda of the various belligerents.

It is to the interests of each belligerent to place the whole blame for a war upon its enemies and completely to exculpate itself. Thus in the late war both sides were convinced that they were fighting for Righteousness, Liberty, Justice, Law and Order, Civilization, etc., against enemies inspired by cruelty, subtlety, insatiable greed, jealousy and lust for world-power. When, however, we contemplate the war after a lapse of several years through an aftermath of much suffering and disillusionment, we realize that it was the product of historical causes and racial antipathies and of certain social and economic phenomena rather than of any unequal partition of moral qualities.

Before the war, Great Britain was the most powerful nation in the world and was naturally jealous of any other nation that coveted, or aspired to usurp, her enviable status.

Russia found herself in a condition of acute social instability, momentarily threatened by the event which in 1917 cast her beyond the pale of western civilization. To Russia the war came as a happening which could dissipate the revolutionary ferments, mobilize her refractory workers into the army, and, through the tremendous appeal of a national crusade, sidetrack the forces of anarchy in precisely the way that those forces were sidetracked in Ireland in 1914. Had the war been won quickly――as there were grounds for hoping when it began――the Czar would probably still be on the throne of an enlarged and yet more powerful Russia.

By the events of the last hundred years Germany had been elevated from a position of relative unimportance to that of the most highly organized and perfectly industrialized power in the world. In achieving this promotion she had earned the venomous hatred, born of her humiliation, of France, and the slowly growing, disquieting suspicion of Great Britain.

Conscious of her growing industrial strength, becoming restive within the frontiers which confined her swelling population, aware of the hostility of her neighbours, and never allowed to forget that her kingdom had been built upon the sword, the youthful soul of Germany found, in her Emperor, a fitting symbol for her aspirations. He was the creation of her mood, and together with the party of which he was the mouthpiece led her to her downfall.

It would not be a fair statement to assert that population pressure in Germany was the cause of the war. It was unquestionably a part-cause and a predisposing cause, as it was of migration in prehistoric times and of most wars since. But it was here complicated by other factors both inside and outside Germany.

The universal desire to avert a similar catastrophe in the future has materialized in the League of Nations. It is hoped that through its agency many precipitating causes of war will be eliminated. By it provocation will be made more difficult and commitment more perilous. But the essential predisposing cause, that of over-multiplication, remains unassailed. Like some dull-witted monster it is left to wax in strength and malignancy within its fetters, till at last, no longer to be denied, it will break all bounds, turn, and rend the world. From the late war no lesson as to the importance of population control has been learnt. Will another war be necessary to teach us this lesson?

Earlier in the book reference was made to the possibility of a war between Japan and either America or ourselves. Though this contingency is being thought out in detail by the naval authorities of all three countries, care is taken in diplomatic circles to assert that such practical measures as the equipment of Singapore imply no unfriendly or suspicious attitude toward Japan. Few people, however, are deceived by these utterances. The mutual fear and distrust is growing and will probably continue to grow. There is little doubt, that, if this war comes about, its essential cause, the increase of Japanese in excess of the power of maintenance of their country, will be obscured by that outburst of vilification of the enemy and glorification of self which is now demanded by popular sentiment in the conduct of wars. Yet this cause will remain here incomparably the most important of the predisposing causes. After such a war will there remain any vestige of civilization to profit from the hard-won lesson?

The principal aim of Soviet Russia to-day is the spread of her communistic principles throughout the world. The chief obstacles to this are the firmly entrenched and powerful capitalism of the United States, and the more diffused and essentially more vulnerable capitalistic organisations of the British Empire. These last the Russians are doing their best to undermine now. A second world war would give them a long-coveted opportunity. Realizing that prolonged wars and the social unrest that follows them are the soil from which revolutions most readily spring, Russia would probably associate herself with Japan. The secret treaty between the two countries whose aspirations and political ideals have otherwise little in common, gives a premonition of this. By the time a war comes it is possible that the exploitation of China by Japan will be more complete, and the effects of anti-foreign propaganda, carried on by Russia, more far-reaching. The increase of anti-British feeling in India, also stimulated by Russia, will co-operate to unify Asia and European Russia in a solid block, determined to shake off the yoke of the Western Powers and of America.

Such a war could never be conclusive, however prolonged. The vast length of the fighting front, the colossal numbers of active belligerents, and the enhanced destructiveness of war would probably lead, after initial successes, to a collapse of the organized fighting forces of the West. The seeds of revolution in Europe, by then more deeply sown, would germinate, and the present social order would come to an end. The continent would then embark upon a new phase of its history, with the first chapter steeped in the bloodshed of revolution, and founded upon the ruins of our industrial civilization. The centre of civilization might then shift to the southern hemisphere where to-day there is less to destroy.

The fact remains that if the price that humanity will have to pay for learning to regulate its over-multiplication is to be a second world war――the much talked of war, this time, between East and West――it is doubtful if there will be left a civilization capable of learning the lesson. It seems worth while, therefore, to try to put the principle into effect before we are taught its necessity in such a way. To this there are at present two obstacles, namely the nature of certain religions and the criterion of national evaluation that is still prevalent.

The first obstacle rests in the fact that two powerful religions have not adapted themselves to the changes of human relationships imposed by the unification through science of the human race. These religions remain with their eyes fixed either on the next world or on the exclusive welfare of the tribe.

By the Catholic Church a mode of behaviour is imposed calculated to achieve salvation in the next world irrespective of its effects on this one. Omitting from consideration, as probably unjust, the motive of wishing to increase the number of its adherents, with which the Roman Catholic Church has been charged by reason of its attitude towards Birth Control, there remains a motive arising from a theory of a relation between salvation in the next world and certain modes of behaviour in this. Contraception is condemned because it is held to incur damnation. It is not condemned because it leads to social injustice, to wars, to human suffering. The point is that it is still condemned in spite of its leading away from these things. It is therefore devoutly to be hoped that in the event of the population of any Catholic country at any time in the future expanding to proportions that threaten the peace of the world, the Pope will see his way to modify the Church’s attitude in the matter before it is too late. Failure to do so would result in the depressing spectacle of the leader of the religion of ‘Peace and Goodwill’ among men deliberately refusing to take a step to avert war.

The second type of religion is represented in Japan and is tribal in the sense that it is avowedly concerned with the glorification of the Japanese, irrespective of the consequences to the world that this may involve. In its object of elevating Japan to the status of a first class power the cult of revived Shinto has succeeded admirably and has proved itself, in several wars, to be a splendid fighting creed. The present increase of the population of Japan by 700,000 a year is wholly in accordance with its precepts. Again we may devoutly hope that it will not overreach itself and plunge Japan, as well as the rest of us, into a world war after which we would probably cease to exist as civilized countries. It is, of course, obvious that a modification of Japanese policy where Birth Control is concerned would be welcomed with inexpressible relief by the rest of the world.

The militancy of Mohammedanism will probably have little effect on the future of the world, because Mohammedan countries are at present poorly organized for extensive modern war. The Church of England is more concerned with the social and international implications of religion than any other, and the above remarks have little relevance to it.

If, therefore, the cataclysm above contemplated is to be averted the first necessity would seem to be a revision of the standards of existing religions, in consideration of the unification of the human race, so as to accord with a formula of something of this sort: That is good and morally right which will promote the general happiness and goodwill of humanity, and the harmony of the world. It is clear that action leading to the limitation of over-multiplication would in this sense be good and in accordance with religion.

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The second obstacle to the realization of a control of population is the standard by which the merit of a nation is now generally appraised, and to which most nations aspire. This merit is largely estimated in terms of power of offence and defence. This is a bad criterion and should be altered for a better one which will now be considered.