A recent reference by Mr. Harold Nicolson in Parliament to
the health of the population in Germany, who are popularly supposed to be undernourished, prompted me to look up some comparative figures. I found that the mortality of infants under one year of age has . dropped steadily in both countries, but is to per cent. higher in Germany. The mortality from all forms of tuberculosis, a disease due mainly to overcrowding and in part to nutrition, has also declined in both countries but is consistently higher in England and Wales, and the " expectation of life " in 1933-5 was about four years higher in Germany for both sexes than in 1924-6 —a slightly greater increase than in England and Wales during the same period. The illegitimate child has a better chance of life in Germany than in England perhaps because, in Germany, the birth certificate in common use follows the maxim of the Roman Church—infamiae omnis vitetur occasio—and makes no reference to the marital status of the parents—a reform for which Scotsmen have to thank a private member, Sir J. Train, but which tarries in England and Wales. Of illegitimate children in this country (about 6 per cent. of all births) only half are first births, the remaindev are second, third or fourth children of parents who, it mai", be surmised, have been denied the legal formalities os marriage by the fact that wilful desertion has not hitherto been a legal ground for divorce and that a woman who is married before a registrar or a priest, having been married, and deserted, perhaps ten or even twenty years earlier, is indicted for " the felony of bigamy," if her first husband is found to be living, even at the uttermost ends of the earth. This law has no parallel in Europe and I have never heard any socially-minded Bishop protest against it.
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