: Stand Up Ye Dead by Maclean Norman - Great Britain Social conditions 20th century

@FreeBooksWed 07 Jun, 2023

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down

ld, when the teaching of race-limitation came their way, added this also to their monopoly. Having assimilated it, they kept it to themselves. This was the last fine fruit of their selfishness! But, now, the opposition has weakened in a world of greater enlightenment, and the Malthusian League is determined to resist that selfishness which would keep the good things of this world as the preserve of certain classes. Therefore it starts its new campaign in South London. 'We know that the want of restriction among the poorest grade is enormously due to ignorance,' says its secretary. 'It is clear, therefore, that if such knowledge is available to them it will conduce to more restriction in those quarters than at present.' Having achieved what it did not intend--having silenced the voices of children in Park Lane and Belgravia--the Malthusian League is now determined to achieve what it intended--silence the voices of children in Lambeth and Poplar!

When the arguments on which the Malthusian League base their propaganda are considered, they are at once revealed to be the fruit of false reasoning and of ignorance. Neo-Malthusianism is based on the principle that poverty, disease, and premature death can only be eliminated by restricting the increase of the population. As disease and premature death are largely due to poverty, the problem is how to eliminate poverty. It is, however, manifest to any one who considers the sources of the world's food supply that these sources could provide food for a population many times greater than that at present inhabiting this planet. The vast territories of the British Empire are at present only occupied along their fringes. The most fertile regions--the vast spaces of Africa watered by noble rivers--cry out for the spade and the plough. Canada is doubling its wheat supply every few years. Counties at home, lying derelict, are waiting for intensive cultivation. The remedy for poverty is a right distribution of the world's food, and a right direction of the energies of men towards the production of food. When life is directed to its primary object, the production of food, then the greater the wealth of life the greater will be the food supply. The true wealth of a nation is therefore its life.

But the Neo-Malthusians are incapable of regarding life with anything but a jaundiced eye. If anywhere life should be desired it should surely be in Australia, where a population only equal to that of Scotland inhabit a continent. But even there the Neo-Malthusians will have nothing but restriction. The birthrate in Australia has descended to 10 per thousand, but the Neo-Malthusians regard that with satisfaction. 'What I am absolutely certain of is that no country can, from year to year, increase the amount which it produces by enough to hold all the people that can be born, and Australia apparently has just got to the point; its birthrate has just descended to 10 per thousand, but there has been a correlation between the birthrate and deathrate.... I do admit that, at the present moment, it has just got to the point of balance.' The hollowness of an argument such as that is apparent when it is remembered that the wheat crop of Canada in 1915 was more than 50 per cent. higher than that of 1911. Canada in five years increased its food supply by half; it is impossible in five years for the birthrate to increase the population by half. Canada has done even more, for since 1901 it has increased its wheat supply by 125 per cent., and its population is only two per square mile. Yet in the vast empty territories of Australia and Canada the Neo-Malthusian would spread his propaganda!

What is manifest is that if teaching such as that of the Neo-Malthusians be the ideal adopted by the people of this Empire and the Dominions beyond the sea, then the Empire is doomed. Australia has laid it down as an unalterable policy that the continent shall be a white-man country. How can that policy hold in Australia with a birthrate of 10 and in New Zealand with a birthrate of 9 per thousand? The abounding birthrate of Japan and China demands an outlet. If the men of British race succumb to race-weariness and adhere to the policy of racial suicide, they must give place to those that are not yet weary of life. It will be impossible for any race in the future to hold territories which they cannot occupy, and lands which they cannot replenish or cultivate. And, yet, in the region of empty spaces, the Neo-Malthusian regards racial limitation with satisfaction. 'When the birthrate stood at that level in Ontario, was that a desirable level for Ontario ... being a young country with plenty of room for expansion?' was one of the questions addressed to the secretary of the Malthusian League. 'I am quite decided Ontario should at present have only that birthrate,' was the answer. Surely human folly has seldom transcended this.

But the Neo-Malthusian has another argument to support his delusions. It is that the lowering of the birthrate leads to the lowering of the deathrate, and thus that there is no decrease in the population. It was on this ground that the secretary of the Malthusian League justified the restriction of births even in Ontario. 'When Ontario did increase its birthrate, its deathrate increased; it gained no increase of population thereby, so I am absolutely definite in that case.' But the Superintendent of Statistics, Dr. Stevenson, promptly pricked that bubble. The alleged increase of the deathrate in Ontario was due to a miscalculation. The increase in 1911 of the population was underestimated. The population in Ontario increased in 1911 to 2,523,000; the birthrate went up from 21.10 to 24.7, and the deathrate came down 14.0 to 12.6. So far from the increased birthrate in Ontario producing an increased deathrate, it brought with it a diminished deathrate. At the touch of reality the edifice of the Neo-Malthusian crumbles into sand. He is not deficient in patriotism; for he says so. 'We probably should get more colonising and more efficient colonisers if we had a smaller birthrate,' declared the secretary of the Malthusian League. Empty cradles are going to populate the Empire! There is surely no limit to the faculty of human self-deception.

Though the arguments of the Neo-Malthusians be fallacious, and the basis of their teaching illusionary, yet they have gained the allegiance of a vast portion of the population of the Empire. A birthrate lowered by half in some cities, and by a third over the whole of the nation, testifies to the withering blight which has passed over the race. In a little while Britain will be as France--its population stationary. We have yet a little way to go ere we have reduced the birthrate to the level of Australia, 10 per thousand; but we are on the way to it. When that day draws near there will be no more emigrants available for the territories that we hold; and the door of Australia must open to the yellow races. A race that chooses death can no longer shape or mould the issues of life.

Births per 1000 married males aged under 55 years, Social Class including retired.

The race is now being carried on mainly by the poorest classes of the population. But, when the Neo-Malthusians have carried out to the full that campaign on which they have now entered; when the faith in life which the poor have not yet lost, shall at last be undermined; when it will be true of Poplar as of Belgravia, and of the Canongate as of the West End, that having a family is no longer a British ideal--what then is to become of the race and the Empire? What we must realise is that this process of racial destruction will steadily go on working down the social scale until the race is doomed--unless the conscience of the race be roused and the forces of degeneration routed. Nobody has studied the whole problem with more thoroughness than Dr. J. W. Ballantyne of Edinburgh. 'If this voluntary restriction has begun in one group of society,' says Dr. Ballantyne, 'it has not expended itself yet upon the other groups ... it is working its way, one might almost say, as a leaven, it has not yet reached the larger groups of people, and therefore I expect the fall in the birthrate to go on.' In the present miasma which has fallen on the race, when women have become 'less scrupulous,' and doctors advise with greater and greater frequency the restriction of birth, Dr. Ballantyne can only summon us to 'bring up the reserves and strengthen the recruits.' Life has ceased to be desired; its continuance is no longer 'convenient.' It is inevitable that, unless a change comes in the spirit of our day, the process of decay will go steadily on.

It is a repulsive picture this which grows before our eyes; but there are blacker shades still--so black that one can only indicate them and pass on. So far we have only considered the restricted birthrate as the result of the teaching of Neo-Malthusianism; but there is a further restriction which even the Neo-Malthusian condemns--the destruction of the unborn life.

The best way to indicate this, the blackest of all the signs of moral decay, is to quote here and there from the Report.

The Lord Bishop of Southwark did not hesitate to declare that the destruction of unborn life in South London 'betrays instincts which are worse than the savage.'

Of the mass of evidence regarding this terrible aspect of the national life, these quotations must suffice. The public conscience has, in this last generation, become so deadened on the part of masses of the people that life is no longer sacred. 'It is always a great comfort to me,' says Dr. Amand Routh, 'that it is criminal as well as wrong--that one can show that the law considers it to be murder.' To escape from inconvenience, to secure freedom from responsibility, to attain untrammelled devotion to pleasure--the weapon of murder is freely used. One of the witnesses, Mrs. Burgwin, told the Commission an experience. 'When I went to Moscow,' says Mrs. Burgwin, 'I went to see the great Foundling Hospital ... and I felt very ashamed when I came away, because I said to a Russian doctor there, "You know this is very serious; you have got a couple of thousand illegitimate children, and by bringing them into a place like this you are only encouraging illegitimacy!" And he said to me, "Well, Mrs. Burgwin, is not that better than what you do in England? There, even your married people murder the children."'

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

Login to post a comment!