THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION. By Harold Cox. New York : 



G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50. 

 THE POPULATION PROBLEM. By A. M. Carr-Saunders. New 



York: Oxford University Press. $7.00. 



As to the first of these books we have only to say that in our 

 opinion it is nothing short of lamentable that such a work, even 

 by a person occupying so prominent a position as the Editor of 

 The Edinburgh Review, should have been published in the United 

 States by a respectable firm. From start to finish it is nothing 

 but a purely materialistic plea for contraceptive measures, and the 

 two following passages will afford some idea of what its morality 

 and theology are. "It is a far less evil that a hundred women 

 should indulge in irregular intercourse free from the fear of con- 

 ception than that one illegitimate child should be born." (P. 

 166.) "The very story of the virgin birth of Christ itself implies 

 that there is something immoral in the ordinary method of con- 

 ception." (P. 213.) The present Archbishop of New York and 

 Monsignor Brown, of Southwark, England, strong supporters of 

 morality, are the chief objects of the writer's abuse. They may 

 be proud of it. The author of the second book only once alludes 

 to this particular matter and that in a note where he expresses 

 his agreement with the Laodicean policy of Dr. Inge, the well- 

 known Dean of St. Paul's, which amounts to this: "If you cannot 

 be continent, I suppose you must be contraceptive, but you ought 

 to be ashamed of yourself." Video meliora proboque it is not a 

 very high level of morality but better than the carnality, naked 

 and unashamed, of Mr. Cox. 



Without doubt this second work is the most important con- 

 tribution to the question of population which has appeared for 

 many years. It is scientific, erudite, well documented, and cannot 

 be neglected by biologists, sociologists, or politicians, nor should 

 any library fail to possess so valuable a work of reference. In- 

 cidentally it may be mentioned that it demolishes the foundation 

 stone of Mr. Cox's argument, by showing that England never yet 

 has been over-populated and further that, as Leroy Beaulieu 

 points out, "if the degree of skill in production now found in 

 Western Europe was extended throughout the world, the popula- 

 tion economically desirable" note, please, not merely possible, 

 but desirable "would be from two to three times the population 

 of the world." So much for the bed-rock argument of those who 

 urge that civilization can only be saved by Malthusian methods. 



One would like to ask one question of these persons, most of 

 whom claim an enormous antiquity for the human race, and it is 

 [this : Granted that there are less checks on the increase of popula- 



