218 THE CONTEOL OF LIFE 



numbers will keep it from being still more terrible than 

 now in its wastage of human life. 



Havelock Ellis is a notable champion of the view 

 that " the chief cause of the superiority of a highly 

 civilised state over lower stages of civilisation is pre- 

 cisely a greater degree of forethought and self-control 

 in marriage and child-bearing." Birth-control is not 

 * race-suicide ' but race-saving. " The expanding nation 

 has always been a menace to the world and to itself. 

 The arrest of the falling birth-rate would be the arrest of 

 all civilisation and all humanity." 



By What Means ? 



Many wise men in recent years have said that they 

 are not so much afraid of the decline of the birth-rate 

 as of the methods by which it is effected. In old times 

 infanticide was practised without reproach. In a 

 graveyard at Gela, in Sicily, with a total of 570 burials, 

 there are 233 of exposed infants. Plato and Aristotle 

 countenanced abortion, and this lingers in many English 

 towns by the use of lead preparations now being sup- 

 pressed. Now, these solutions are surely much more 

 deplorable than modern preventives or contraceptives, 

 which keep a new life from beginning. 



In a recent article (Nation, Oct. 2, 1915) Dean Fre- 

 mantle says that rather than artificial restriction he 

 would see continued the struggles of parents of large 

 families, from which he says, " a large part of the 

 moral greatness of our people has resulted." But the 

 achievement of many parents , m rearing large and highly 



