A Birth-Rate Inquiry
The House of Commons debate on the birth-rate at the end of last week was not entirely without result, since it occasioned the announcement by Mr. Ernest Brown that the Government will institute " an inquiry on the broadest basis into the whole question." That is very good news, even though neither the form of the inquiry nor its precise terms of reference have yet been settled. The long apathy of Governments on this matter, reflecting, it would seem, an at least equal apathy among the heads of the Civil Service, has been very difficult to understand. The subject is one of which it does not take long to grasp at least the outlines ; and no one who has done so but must feel that here more than at any other point the whole future of our nation, our Empire and our civilisation faces a threat as yet entirely unsurmounted. Nothing very new emerged in the Parliamentary debate ; the best general statement of the case being made by Miss Eleanor Rathbone, while Sir Edward Grigg made a very good special point, when he blamed the Ministry of Health for allowing maternity and child welfare premises to be diverted by local authorities to war purposes and closed to maternity and child welfare. That the problem is a complicated one and has cultural, moral, and psychological, as well as economic aspects, is no reason for not going ahead on remedies which, though partial, can be shown to be effective in their own sphere. Much can be done which need not wait pending inquiry.
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