POPULATION PROBLEMS 219 



successful families was surely due to a moral fibre 

 already present ; it was not engendered by the struggle. 

 Moreover, while big families of the right sort are admir- 

 able when the parents are sufficient for these things, 

 one doubts if almost anything can be put against the 

 misery and hopelessness to which many good women 

 have been reduced by too rapid succession of births. 

 There is considerable impiety in the saying that whenever 

 the Lord sends a mouth, he will send the food to fill it. 

 In an open-minded and wise article on the Birth- 

 rate in a recent number of the Edinburgh Review, the 

 Dean of St. Paul's points out firmly that the " Com- 

 stock " legislation in America against the sale and use 

 of preventives " has done unmixed harm " by terribly 

 increasing the recourse to abortion. Dean Inge's 

 personal opinion is that high-minded married persons 

 should avoid preventives as a last resource in the failure 

 of self-restraint. But one must not expect the super- 

 natural from ordinary mankind. Even great restraint 

 and great conjugal temperance may soon be followed 

 by too many babies. But one agrees at one's best with 

 the Dean, that whatever injures the feeling of honour 

 with which St. Paul bids us regard these intimacies of 

 life, whatever tends to profane or degrade wedded love, 

 is so far an evil. But this is emphatically a matter in 

 which every man and woman must judge for themselves, 

 and must refrain from judging others. In Holland 

 authorised nurses give instruction to working-women 

 and the society behind them has State authority and 

 support. 



