France's Family Code France's persistent anxiety with regard to her
declining birth-rate has now given rise to a "Family Code" which is expected to be promulgated next week. Its main purposes are to stimulate child-bearing and to encourage a return to the land, which may also have some effect on the birth-rate— since this tends to fall in urban conditions. Even from the point of view of her own internal stability France's anxiety is easily intelligible; since 1935 the death-rate has exceeded the birth-rate. It is even more easily understood since, this year, the population of the Greater Reich has risen to 86,000,000 as compared with France's 42,000,000. The Code provides for family allowances for all Frenchmen with a capital bonus for the first child, marriage allowances, with special advantages for all who contract to stay on the land for a period of years, and taxes on bachelors and childless couples, which will provide Lr,000,000 of the £4,000,000 which the allowances will cost. These measures extend the system of family allowances which has already existed for some years in France ; if Great Britain is wise she will imitate them, if possible on an even greater scale. Midler France nor Great Britain can expect to reverse long-term trends in population at the cost of a mere £4,000 000.
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