Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/163

faced by those who have most vehemently raised that cry. Translated into more definite and precise terms this cry means, and is intended to mean: “We want more births.” That is what it definitely means, and sometimes in the minds of those who make this demand it seems also to imply nothing more. Yet it implies a great number of other things. It implies certain strain and probable ill-health on the mothers, it implies distress and disorder in the family, it implies, even if the additional child survives, a more acute industrial struggle, and it further involves in this case, by the stimulus it gives to over-population, the perpetual menace of militarism and war. What, however, even at the outset, more births most distinctly and most unquestionably imply is more deaths. It is nowadays so well known that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a high death-rate—the exceptions are too few to need attention—that it is unnecessary to adduce further evidence. It is only the intoxicated enthusiasts of the “Race-Suicide” cry who are able to overlook a fact of which they can hardly be ignorant. The model which they hold up for the public’s inspiration has on the obverse “More Births!” But on the reverse it bears “More Deaths!” It would be helpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts’ own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round and slightly vary the