THE UNBORN MILLIONS
Snt,—I was grateful to Dr. Norman Maclean for his article on " The Unborn Millions." Since each of the correspondents in your issue of July 9th writes more or less in criticism of this thesis, I would like to express appreciation of his warning. No doubt there are differing opinions as to how a healthy rate of birth should be encouraged and maintained.
The fundamental fact which brooks no denial is, that children are the only indispensable heritage to any nation. It is astonishing how intel- lectualism, particularly of the feminine variety, fails to realise this.
Woman must share with man an anxiety to replant the cut-down forest with young saplings. The Sahara Desert is a desert because its past inhabitants refrained from doing this.
If the female of the species, as a result of her so-called emancipation,
begins sneeringly and selfishly to calculate whether or no she will make her own contribution to the progress of her race, if she begins to argue
about " hardship " and " agony . of childbirth," only two prospects con- front us—the extinction of the race or the ruthless denial by man of the freedom which some women believe their intellectual prowess has gained for them. Rather let them use their mental enlightenment to approach the difficulties of pregnancy in a healthy, natural spirit of acceptance (vide Dr. Read Dick) and many of its anticipatory terrors - will vanish.
Latent in all races is the primitive instinct for survival. An interesting example of this is portrayed in Steinbeck's Grapes, of Wrath. The signi- ficance of its closing chapters calls for reflection. They powerfully describe a scene between a mother of epic courage, a young lactating daughter and a man dying of starvation. Through flood and horror the tribe had fought their way, sustained by the unselfish spirit of devotion toward the survival of their kind. This spirit has shone like a lamp through the past history of all hard-driven, hard-living pioneering peoples. When culture and easy learning dismisses the importance of this aspect of man's response to the phenomena of his being, the end of the race approaches.
One is amazed by the speech of some modern women who describe mothers as breeding machines, and in their view, on a level with the animals in that relation. It is a dangerous moment indeed when woman is so lacking in vision and wisdom. Actually, that is precisely what we are—human animals of a truly remarkable design, created by the Divine Mind, but our animal mechanism harbours a spirit, the mysterious power of which even the scientist now admits he is unable to assay.
I felt immense scorn for Rose Macaulay's satirical reference to the Madonna and Child (one child, she writes in brackets). I am not a Catholic, but as I understand it, the Madonna symbolises for them the Mother of Man and the Child the Spirit of Christ. If we prefer ro narrow the interpretation, then Christ had brothers and sisters. Maly
was the mother of a family, and the relationship between Christ and His Mother Mary has been described to us as one of wise, normal, tender
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