SIR,—It would be difficult to find a letter more replete
with fallacies than that of your correspondent, Mrs. Tarr, in last week's issue.
The assumption that present-day conditions must be permanent and that the present war is sure to be followed by another in zo years' time is obviously fallacious. The Napoleonic wars were followed by too years without another great war ; how does Mrs. Tarr know that history will not repeat itself in this respect? In any case refusal to have children would infallibly bring about the very conditions which Mrs. Tarr wishes to avoid. Our population would decrease by leaps and bounds and we should fall easy victims to a country which already has a much larger population and a much higher birth-rate. Hence invasion and subjugation would inevitably follow. War is made much less probable by a large population than by a small one, especially in the case of a country with a vast empty empire which, if we do not fill it up ourselves, will be filled up by foreigners. In the very peaceful 'nineties no young people refrained from marriage for fear that their sons should be killed in war. Yet we know that, in many cases, this did happen in the war of 1914-18. Similarly we are now living in a state of almost universal war, but it is quite possible that the children born now may spend their lives in a period of profound peace. The mistake is to suppose that the state of the world is static, whereas change is the rule of life.—Yours faithfully, junior Carlton Club, Pall Mall, S.W. F. F. PRicicErr.
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