[23] In an essay on "Eugenics, Birth Control, and Socialism" in Population and Birth-Control: A Symposium, edited by Eden and Cedar Paul.
[24] This is here and there beginning to be recognised. Thus, not long ago, the Hereford War Pensions Committee resolved not to issue a maternal grant for children born during a prolonged period of treatment allowance. Such a measure of course fails to meet the situation, for it is obvious that, when born, the children must be cared for. But it shows a glimmering recognition of the facts, and the people capable of such a recognition will, in time, come to see that the right way of meeting the situation is, not to neglect the children, but to prevent their conception. Mothers' Clinics for instruction in such prevention are now being established in England, through the advocacy of Mrs. Margaret Sanger and the actual initiative of Dr. Marie Stopes.
Thus it is essential that the eugenist, dealing with the hereditary factor of life, and the social reformer or socialist, dealing with the environmental factor, should supplement each other's work. Neither can attain his end without the other's help, for the eugenist alone cannot overcome the environmental factor, even perhaps increases it if he is an individualist in the narrow sense, and the socialist alone cannot overcome the bad hereditary factor, and will even increase it if he is no more than a socialist. The more socialist our State becomes the more essential becomes at the same time the adoption of eugenic practices as a working part of the State. "Socialism and eugenics must go hand in hand."
Perrycoste from his own point of view has independently reached the same conclusions. He is not, indeed, concerned with any "Socialist" community of the future but with the dangerous results which must inevitably follow the already established methods of social reform in our modern civilised States unless they are speedily checked by effective action based on eugenic knowledge. "If," he observes, "the community is to shoulder half or three-quarters of the burden of sustaining those degenerates who, through no fault of their own, are congenitally incompetent to maintain themselves in decent comfort, and is to render the life-pilgrimage of these unfortunates tolerable instead of a dreary nightmare, if it is to assume paternal charge of all the tens or hundreds of thousands of children whose parents cannot or will not provide adequately for them and is to guarantee to all such children as much education as they are capable of receiving, and a really fair start in life: then in sheer self-preservation the community must insist on, and rigidly enforce, its absolute claim to secure that no degeneracy or inheritable congenital defects shall persist beyond the present generation of degenerates, and that the community of fifty or seventy years hence shall have no incubus of mentally, or morally, or even physically, degenerate members—none but a few occasional sporadic morbid 'sports' from the normal, which it, in turn, may effectively prevent from handing on their like." Unless the problem is squarely faced, Perrycoste concludes, national deterioration must increase and a permanently successful collectivist society is inherently impossible.
We are not now concerned with the details of any policy of eugenics and of birth-control, which I couple together because although a random birth-control by no means involves much, if any, eugenic progress, it is not easy under modern conditions to conceive any practical or effective policy of eugenics except through the instrumentation of birth-control. We here take it for granted that in this field the slow progress of scientific knowledge must be our guide. Premature legislation, rash and uninstructed action, will not lead to progress but are more likely to delay it. Yet even with imperfect knowledge, it is already of the first importance to evoke interest in the great issue here at stake and to do all that we can to arouse the individual conscience of every man and woman to his or her personal responsibility in this matter. That is here all taken for granted.
It seems necessary to consider the political aspect of eugenics because that aspect is frequently invoked, and a man's attitude towards this question is frequently determined beforehand by what he considers that Individualism or Socialism demands. We see that when the question is driven home our political attitude makes no difference. It is only a shallow Individualism, it is only a still more shallow Socialism, which imagines that under modern social conditions the fundamental racial questions can be left to answer themselves.
III
Many years before the Great War, in all the most civilised countries of the World, there were those who raised the cry of "Race-Suicide!" In America this cry was more especially popularised by the powerful voice of Theodore Roosevelt, but in European countries there were similar voices raised in tones of virtuous indignation to denounce the same crime. Since the war other voices have been raised in even more high-pitched and feverish tones, but now they are less weighty and responsible voices, since to those who realise that at present there is not food enough to keep the population of the world from starvation it seems hardly compatible with sanity to advocate an increased rate of human production.
Now, though it is easy to do so, we must not belittle this cry of "Race-Suicide!" It is not usually accompanied by definite argument, but it assumes that birth-control is the method of such suicide, and that the first and most immediately dangerous result is that one's own nation, whichever that may be, is placed in a position of alarming military inferiority to other nations, as a step towards the final extinction. It is useless to deny that it really is a serious matter if there is danger of the speedy disappearance of the human race from the earth by its own voluntary and deliberate action, and that within a measurable period of time—for if it were an immeasurable period there would be no occasion for any acute anxiety—the last man will perish from the world. This is what "Race-Suicide" means, and we must face the fact squarely.
It can scarcely be said, however, that the meaning of "Race-Suicide" has actually been squarely faced by those who have most vehemently raised that cry. Translated into more definite and precise terms this cry means, and is intended to mean: "We want more births." That is what it definitely means, and sometimes in the minds of those who make this demand it seems also to imply nothing more. Yet it implies a great number of other things. It implies certain strain and probable ill-health on the mothers, it implies distress and disorder in the family, it implies, even if the additional child survives, a more acute industrial struggle, and it further involves in this case, by the stimulus it gives to over-population, the perpetual menace of militarism and war. What, however, even at the outset, more births most distinctly and most unquestionably imply is more deaths. It is nowadays so well known that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a high death-rate—the exceptions are too few to need attention—that it is unnecessary to adduce further evidence. It is only the intoxicated enthusiasts of the "Race-Suicide" cry who are able to overlook a fact of which they can hardly be ignorant. The model which they hold up for the public's inspiration has on the obverse "More Births!" But on the reverse it bears "More Deaths!" It would be helpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts' own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round and slightly vary the monotony of their propaganda by changing its form and crying out for "More Deaths!" "It is a hard thing," said Johnny Dunn, "for a man that has a house full of children to be left to the mercy of Almighty God."