Letters to the Editor
tin view of the length of many of the letters which we receive, we would remind correspondents that we often cannot give space for long letters and that short ones are gaierally read with more attention. The lingth which we consider most suitable is about that of one of our paragraphs on " Neivs of the Week."—Ed. SPecevToR.]
BIRTH CONTROL
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sm,— The question of birth control has been lately- brought into even more than its customary prominence by certain utterances of a distinguished Judge of the High Court of Justice. It is a question which needs to be answered in a spirit both of civic and of Christian duty. The Eugenics Society has long advocated sterilization as a means of pre- venting the birth of children whose parents cannot be expected to beget a healthy offspring. The Bishops of the Anglican Communion at the last Lambeth Conference spoke with a rather uncertain voice, not only because they are divided among themselves upon the moral right or wrong of birth control, but because, where they admit the possible right of such control, they snake it dependent upon motive, and no human being can be an absolute judge of another's motive. The Catholic Union of Great Britain has through its President, Lord Fitzalan, lately issued a definite pronouncement against all preventive measures of an eugenic character. It seems necessary, therefore, to ask (1) Does .the Catholic Union hold that any citizen, however gravely afflicted he may be in body or mind, is entitled to procreate as many children as he likes ? (2) Is it the duty of the State to feed, clothe, teach and generally care for those children, if their parents, owing to bodily or mental affliction, are wholly unable to provide for them ? (3) How does the Catholic Union propose to limit, if at all, the procreation of degenerate children ? There can be no doubt that society is confronted by an extremely difficult problem, all the more so, as healthy parents living in easy circumstances do not beget children at anything like the same rate as parents who are diseased or afflicted. The story of the Jukes family, familiar as it is to all students of Eugenics, reveals how great an injury was done te. the State by the unfettered procreative energy of one vagabond who was born, I think, in New York, in 1720.
I hope I shall not be understood as trying to lay down an uncompromising law. As a Christian, I naturally bold that self-restraint rather than birth-control accords with the Divine will. Yet it is impossible to disregard the consequences of leaving the procreative instinct of feeble-bodied or feeble- minded persons without any effective control.—I am, Sir, &e., The Deanery, Durham.
J. E. C. WELLDON.
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