Birth control and the state

by C. P. Blacker

It is to the interests of each belligerent to place the whole blame for a war upon its enemies and completely to exculpate itself. Thus in the late war both sides were convinced that they were fighting for Righteousness, Liberty, Justice, Law and Order, Civilization, etc., against enemies inspired by cruelty, subtlety, insatiable greed, jealousy and lust for world-power. When, however, we contemplate the war after a lapse of several years through an aftermath of much suffering and disillusionment, we realize that it was the product of historical causes and racial antipathies and of certain social and economic phenomena rather than of any unequal partition of moral qualities.

Before the war, Great Britain was the most powerful nation in the world and was naturally jealous of any other nation that coveted, or aspired to usurp, her enviable status.

Russia found herself in a condition of acute social instability, momentarily threatened by the event which in 1917 cast her beyond the pale of western civilization. To Russia the war came as a happening which could dissipate the revolutionary ferments, mobilize her refractory workers into the army, and, through the tremendous appeal of a national crusade, sidetrack the forces of anarchy in precisely the way that those forces were sidetracked in Ireland in 1914. Had the war been won quickly—as there were grounds for hoping when it began—the Czar would probably still be on the throne of an enlarged and yet more powerful Russia.

By the events of the last hundred years Germany had been elevated from a position of relative unimportance to that of the most highly organized and perfectly industrialized power in the world. In achieving this promotion she had earned the venomous hatred, born of her humiliation, of France, and the slowly growing, disquieting suspicion of Great Britain.

Conscious of her growing industrial strength, becoming restive within the frontiers which confined her swelling population, aware of the hostility of her neighbours, and never allowed to forget that her kingdom had been built upon the sword, the youthful soul of Germany found, in her Emperor, a fitting symbol for her aspirations. He was the creation of her mood, and together with the party of which he was the mouthpiece led her to her downfall.

It would not be a fair statement to assert that population pressure in Germany was the cause of the war. It was unquestionably a part-cause and a predisposing cause, as it was of migration in prehistoric times and of most wars since. But it was here complicated by other factors both inside and outside Germany.

The universal desire to avert a similar catastrophe in the future has materialized in the League of Nations. It is hoped that through its agency many precipitating causes of war will be eliminated. By it provocation will be made more difficult and commitment more perilous. But the essential predisposing cause, that of over-multiplication, remains unassailed. Like some dull-witted monster it is left to wax in strength and malignancy within its fetters, till at last, no longer to be denied, it will break all bounds, turn, and rend the world. From the late war no lesson as to the importance of population control has been learnt. Will another war be necessary to teach us this lesson?

Earlier in the book reference was made to the possibility of a war between Japan and either America or ourselves. Though this contingency is being thought out in detail by the naval authorities of all three countries, care is taken in diplomatic circles to assert that such practical measures as the equipment of Singapore imply no unfriendly or suspicious attitude toward Japan. Few people, however, are deceived by these utterances. The mutual fear and distrust is growing and will probably continue to grow. There is little doubt, that, if this war comes about, its essential cause, the increase of Japanese in excess of the power of maintenance of their country, will be obscured by that outburst of vilification of the enemy and glorification of self which is now demanded by popular sentiment in the conduct of wars. Yet this cause will remain here incomparably the most important of the predisposing causes. After such a war will there remain any vestige of civilization to profit from the hard-won lesson?

The principal aim of Soviet Russia to-day is the spread of her communistic principles throughout the world. The chief obstacles to this are the firmly entrenched and powerful capitalism of the United States, and the more diffused and essentially more vulnerable capitalistic organisations of the British Empire. These last the Russians are doing their best to undermine now. A second world war would give them a long-coveted opportunity. Realizing that prolonged wars and the social unrest that follows them are the soil from which revolutions most readily spring, Russia would probably associate herself with Japan. The secret treaty between the two countries whose aspirations and political ideals have otherwise little in common, gives a premonition of this. By the time a war comes it is possible that the exploitation of China by Japan will be more complete, and the effects of anti-foreign propaganda, carried on by Russia, more far-reaching. The increase of anti-British feeling in India, also stimulated by Russia, will co-operate to unify Asia and European Russia in a solid block, determined to shake off the yoke of the Western Powers and of America.

Such a war could never be conclusive, however prolonged. The vast length of the fighting front, the colossal numbers of active belligerents, and the enhanced destructiveness of war would probably lead, after initial successes, to a collapse of the organized fighting forces of the West. The seeds of revolution in Europe, by then more deeply sown, would germinate, and the present social order would come to an end. The continent would then embark upon a new phase of its history, with the first chapter steeped in the bloodshed of revolution, and founded upon the ruins of our industrial civilization. The centre of civilization might then shift to the southern hemisphere where to-day there is less to destroy.