[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Dean Inge is credited
by some—mostly Socialists suspect—with holding the opinion that the hardships of the poor should be maintained or even increased in order-that those who are not successful in the race of life may be elimin- ated by natural selection. Those, however, who read him with care will understand that when he says anything that may appear to bear that interpretation, he is speaking in the same vein as that other famous Dean of an earlier century who ironically proposed a plan for making use of unwanted Irish babies.
Dean Inge is, of course, as well aware as any Socialist can be that no degree of destructive natural selection which civilized society would tolerate would be sufficient to stem the torrent of inferior children, and that if we trusted to hardship and disease to do the work we should soon find it out, and should have to throw civilization overboard and introduce wild beasts, anthropophagi or euthanasia to supple- ment them. That is no doubt why the Dean so persistently urges our attention to the search for more intelligent methods.
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