DEAN INGE ON THE POPULATION QUESTION.
11[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—It is not for me to intervene between the Dean of St. Paul's and his critics, but as a fellow-member of the Eugenics Education Society, I should like to say a word on the notable letters signed by Mr. Fysan and "Homo Sapiens " in your last issue. Certainly the comments by the latter on the moral aspect of the birth control question cannot be evaded by eugenists. If they hope for success in a propaganda directed (as it is) to the physical and moral improvement of the race, they must enlist on their side the intellect and conscience of a people still, it should be remembered, at heart puritanical (if also not a little hypocritical) as regards sex matters, and must dissociate themselves from the obvious appeal to the baser instincts of human nature, the strength of which they appear too often to underrate or ignore.
Many people have probably, like myself, been influenced in joining the society by the conviction that if the race is to escape degeneracy and decay something must be done to arrest the undue and disproportionate multiplication of the unfit, and by the hope that the accumulation and diffusion of scientific information on questions of population and heredity may in time came to influence not only the action of individuals, but also, what is perhaps more important, the action of lawgivers in this matter. I would not shrink from any measures which would really promote this object ; but a wholesale approval of birth control methods, as usually advocated, is a different matter. I entirely agree with' Mr. Fyson that the theory of an excess of population in the world, more especially in the white races, is untenable, however faulty the distribution may be. If therefore we believe in our civilization we must desire life, and abundance of it, to keep that civilization going, and repudiate as the worst of evils any tendency to stagnation and ultimate extinction. For those who take this view (which is not for the moment fashionable in eugenic circles) the signifi- cant question is whether birth control is compatible with a normal increase of pOpulation or not. In its application in some modern societies it has proved actually dysgenic in effect, but there is happily no reason to assume that such experiences are conclusive on this point, one of the most important to which eugenists have to address themselves. For whether we like it or not, birth control has come to stay ; and all that can be done is to endeavour by investigation and teaching to guide it in right directions.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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