THE UNBORN MILLIONS
By DR. NORMAN MACLEAN
So far from there being too large a population already, the fact is that it is far too small for our safety or for the security of the British Empire. No doubt in London or -Glasgow the population looks overwhelming, but in the Home Counties there are wide empty spaces, and in Scotland whole counties are being steadily de- populated. The neo-Malthusian argues that the growth of population outstrips the food-supply. This also is a fallacy. Science has in- creased the soil's fertility many fold. Max Nordau demonstrated that if the soil of Europe were intensively cultivated, as in China, it could support r,000,000,000 inhabitants instead of some 400,000,000. There are large areas of Britain crying out for an increased popula- tion. In this beautiful island of Skye, where I now write, there were 30,000 a hundred years ago: today there are fewer than ro,000. And there is sufficient water-power, running waste, to support roo,000. All over the most attractive parts of Britain it is the same: desolation broods over lovely glens and ruined homesteads. And the advocates of a lower birthrate declare that Britain is full.
It is when the Empire is considered as a whole that the need of an increasing birthrate bicomes imperative. A fourth of the world's surface is British, but we now refuse to people it. When I was in Canada I asked a legislator what population the Dominion could support ; " 120,000,000," he replied. And there are only r r,000,000 or so, though Canada is bigger than the United States. In Melbourne I asked the same question, and I was told that Australia, if developed, could support 50,000,000 instead of the 7,000,000 it now possesses. Australia's peril is now the fewness of its inhabitants. Instead of the 3,000,000 white inhabitants in South Africa there is room for 20,000,000. Kenya and Rhodesia are well-nigh empty.
When this war is won, the first problem that must be solved is that of the empty spaces. A nation that controls vast territories and refuses to fulfil its duty to people them cannot hope to retain its place in the world. It is population that settles the fate of empires. When France restricted her birthrate until every fifth family was childless, and her population sank to half that of Germany, she was doomed. That was why she abdicated as an Imperial Power. The stupendous victory of Hitler at Munich was based not on armaments but on biology. The empty cradles of France wrought her ruin. For us, too, the same ruin inevitably waits if we follow further in her footsteps.
A normal birthrate appears still more essential when we consider that it alone secures the good quality of the race. Heredity is the greatest of forces that mould mankind, and a very brief examination of the facts reveals that the later and not the early children inherit the finest qualities. When families are limited to two or three, racial impoverishment ensues. We can best realise this when we recall some of the world's leaders who never would have been born today. Sir Walter Scott was the ninth child in his family, Arkwright the thirteenth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge the tenth, Darwin the fifth. How different the history of England if two brothers had not been born—John Wesley, who raised multitudes from the dead, was the fifteenth child, and Charles Wesley, who gave wings to the prophet's words, the eighteenth child, of their parents. Without Alfred Tenny- son, Wellington, Nelson, Gladstone and James Watt we would have been poor indeed. If the hot-gospellers of racial suicide had appeared a generation sooner, Lord Randolph Churchill would never have been born, and in 594o there would have been no Winston Churchill to rally the forces of liberty over all the world. The grim and terrible desiccation which befalls the race that restricts its birthrate has been set forth before our eyes in the greatest tragedy of history since Rome fell. In his Truth of the Tragedy of France, Elie J. Bois explains it in one sentence : " The men were no longer there, men of the stature of Poincare, Briand, Clemenceau, who had both
experience and authority, breeding as well as blood." And they were not there because the policy of the empty cradle makes heredity powerless to pass on the great qualities of mankind. It wasn't the panzer engines or the dive-bombers that brought France low as the dust: France perished in her cradles. " Our families are dwindling away," cried Jules Simon; " our country is dwindling with them ; our race is doomed. But, to be sure, we shall be able to afford a luxurious burial." An awed world now awaits the resur- rection that comes through sacrifice.
What is the remedy for the fell disease which now threatens us? France, again, suggests the way of salvation. If the French brought their race low in France, in Canada they have multiplied exceedingly and now bid fair, in a generation, to be a majority in the Dominion. There were only about 5o,000 French in Canada when, on the Heights of Abraham, the British won ascendancy. Today there are nearly 5,000,000 French in Canada, and Quebec has replaced Paris as the capital of the most civilised race in the world. What is it that has worked this most significant contrast: a nation perishing in France and prospering exceedingly in Canada? The answer is that the French Canadian escaped the goddess of reason, and was saved from the extinction of the lights of heaven which M. Viviani so rapturously proclaimed. In Canada the French kept their religion, and their i ecord is the inevitable harvest of their cleaving to their God.
That is conclusive proof that the malady which now threatens us is of the soul. A nation that no longer believes in life will not believe in any future but dust and ashes. This is a world of wonder and mystery, and we know so little. But this we do know, that life is not_of us, but of God, and that each new life is an outgoing of the all-creative energy. To shut the door against a child is shutting it against God. And that, in all ages, has spelt doom for empires and nations. The Madonna with the Child in her arms has for nineteen centuries proclaimed to the world that which is greatest in life—motherhood. We must go back to Bethlehem if we are to live. Every mother in Israel thought of herself as the possible mother of the Messiah. Every young wife in Britain should think that she is the possible mother of the child who may revitalise and save humanity. That is the one way of escape from the doom of France. It is a grim thought that every child to whom birth is denied might be a St. Francis, a Tennyson or a Stephenson. The road back to the manger in Bethlehem is the only road to safety.
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