Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



479 



killing the race with kindness. 



Is Our Pmt.ANTHROPY Practically Misanthropv? 

 A CHALLENGE to our social and political " pro- 

 gress," fitted to make the most ardent reformers 

 pause and think, is contributed to the Hibhert 

 Journal for October by W. C. D. and Catherine 

 Whetham. They write on decadence and civilisation. 

 Nature works out her scheme of advance by the 

 methods of heredity, man by means of adapting his 

 environment. The work done by heredity is work 

 done once for all. It is an actual gain of capital. 

 The other method involves a constant expenditure of 

 income. If we so adajtt our environment as to ensure 

 that more of the failures of civilisation reach maturity 

 and parenthood, and fewer competent persons are 

 brought into existence to support them, we are 

 engaged in a policy of over-spending leading to 

 l)ankruptcy. 



EDUCATION ACTS AND DECLINING BIRTH-RATE. 



The writers then call attention to a singular 

 coincidence : — 



Tlic years iS/oand 1S71 were remarkable for ihe assumption 

 on the part of the community of Ihe responsibility for the 

 literary training — and ultimately, as it has proved, for the 

 p.irtial maintenance— of the children of the poorer, less com- 

 petent, pos-sibly less fortunate, sections of the nation. The 

 year 1875 marks the beginning of the decline of the birth-rate 

 among all the able, more intellectual, and more prosperous 

 classes, on whom Ihe chief burden, financial and administrative, 

 of this environmental improvement fell. The decline has now 

 reached a point at whi«h it becomes clear that at least one-half 

 of the children, who would prove the most effective and most 

 valuable citizens and the best worth educating, are annually 

 withheld from ns. 



THE MORE DRINK, THE LESS DRUNKENNESS? 



Again, drunkenness, once a besetting sin in the 

 n.ations around the Mediterranean .Sea, has been 

 eliminated becau.se the abundance of wine throughout 

 long ages has enabled the victims of the drink curse 

 most frequently to eliminate themselves before the 

 period of reproduction. So the upper classes in 

 Rngland, who have had abundance of alcohol in 

 palatable forms, have become sober. Hence a nation 

 of mixed ancestry where strict prohibition was en- 

 forced for many generations would possibly have to 

 be considered as a nation of potential drunkards. So 

 in regard to tubercular disease. Immunity in the 

 past has been secured largely by the removal of the 

 most susceptible subjects before the period of parent- 

 hood and child-bearing. Hence " it is conceivable 

 that a wilderness of sanatoria may serve as easily to 

 increase tubercular disease in the future as to diiiiinish 

 it in the present. There is no certainty that it will 

 solve the problem, and it may intensify it for our 

 descendants." 



"the woman's MOVEMENT "—AWAY FROM MOTHER- 

 HOOD. 



On the progress of feminism, the writers have yet 

 more stern words to say : — 



There can be no doubt that woman's essential function on 

 this globe is motherhood. Statistics show that, allowing for 

 those who will not grow up, those who will not marry, and 

 those who, though married, will have no children, four children 

 to every fertile marriage is the very least that will maint.iin the 

 numbers of the race unaltered, while, if the race is to improve, 

 considerably more'must be born and reared in the abler families. 



We do not, be it remembered, absorb the feeble-minded and 

 incompetent into these race-destroying occupations. We leave 

 them to propagate their species at will, providing maternity 

 wards and skilled attendance for the purpose. .-Vmong the 

 women at the older universities in England, the record is pro- 

 foundly unsatisfactory, and American sociologists are alarmed 

 at a similar sur\'ey in their own country. Tliere is a marriage- 

 rate of less than 25 per cent., and a birth rate that is mo?i 

 disquieting, when we consider the intellectual capacity and high 

 moral tone of the women aftected thereby. 



"the PLAGUE OF EMPTY CRADLES." 



As women claimed equal rights in Sparta, the 

 plague of empty cradles fell upon it, and in two 

 generations the Spartan nation had ceased to exist. 

 " A hundred years of better government, brought 

 about by the use of the women for political affairs, 

 may have cost the nation its very existence." Both 

 in Athens and in Rome, the dearth of children in 

 the patrician and upper classes was recognised as a 

 national danger. The long centuries of barbarism 

 and the squalor and the turmoil of dark ages were 

 the price to be paid of failure to solve the problem. 



THE SOURCE OF THE HALF-CASTE PROP.LEM. 



Then, too, we suffer from a constant drain of men 

 to tropical dependencies, where we refuse to allow 

 our daughters to go. So we lose some of our most 

 valuable young men, and are left with an increasing 

 number of superfluous women. A further bye- 

 product is the large half-caste population : — 



It is probable that the demand for the equalisation of the 

 political, .social, and industrial stains of men 'and women in 

 England, and the difficulties of the English with the half-caste 

 populations in the various parts of our Empire, owe their 

 origin to one and the same cause. 



So the writers conclude : — 



Tlicre is probably no way in which the capital of the human 

 r.Tce is more directly attacked and eaten into than by Ihe 

 habitual employment of women in the task of improving 

 environment without regard to the more direct and pressing 

 claims of heredity. 



The writers go on to put the somewhat ludicrous 

 inquiry, " How much of the money spent on Old .Age 

 Pensions has been saved partly by the suppression of 

 the children who should have been there to bear the 

 burden?" and to indulge in the extraordinary state- 

 ment that in spite of improved economic conditions 

 " there is no diminution of pauperism." 



A wKi 1 F.K in La Kr,ue of October r says that at 

 the Paris Theatre Fran<;ais^ there have been, between 

 the years 1680 and 1900, 20,290 representations of 

 Moliere's works. The piece played oftencst was 

 " Tartufe" with 2,058 performances, then came " Le 

 Maladc Itiiaginaire" and " I,'.\vare." 



