Private Sex Advice to Women: For Young Wives and those who Expect to be Married

by Robert B. Armitage

But even in the more progressive countries Birth Control has not been established without a struggle, which has frequently ended in a hypocritical compromise, its principles being publicly ignored or denied and its practice privately accepted. For, at the great and vitally important point in human progress which Birth-Control represents, we see really the conflict of two moralities. The morality of the ancient world is here confronted by the morality of the new world.

The old morality, knowing nothing of science and the process of Nature as worked out in the evolution of life, contented itself with assuming as a basis the early chapters of Genesis in which the children of Noah are represented as entering an empty earth which it is their business to populate diligently. So it came about that for this morality, still innocent of eugenics, recklessness was almost a virtue. Children were held to be given by God; if they died or were afflicted by congenital disease, it was the dispensation of God, and, whatever imprudence the parents might commit, the pathetic faith still ruled that "God will provide."

But in the new morality it is realized that in these matters Divine action can only be made manifest in human action, that is to say through the operation of our own enlightened reason and resolved will. Prudence, foresight, self-restraint—virtues which old morality looked down upon with benevolent contempt—assume a position of first importance. In the eyes of the new morality the ideal woman is no longer the meek drudge condemned to endless and often ineffectual child-bearing, but the free and instructed woman, able to look before and after, trained in a sense of responsibility alike to herself and to the race, and determined to have no children but the best.

Such were the two moralities which came into conflict during the nineteenth century. They are irreconcilable and each firmly rooted, one in ancient religion and tradition, the other in progressive science and reason. Nothing was possible in such a clash of opposing ideas but a feeble and confused compromise such as we find still prevailing in various countries of Old Europe. This is not a satisfactory solution, however inevitable, and is especially unsatisfactory by the consequent obscurantism which placed difficulties in the way of spreading a knowledge of the methods of Birth Control among the masses of the population. For the result has been that while the more enlightened and educated have exercised a control over the size of their families, the poorer and more ignorant—those who should have been offered every facility and encouragement to follow in the same path—have been left, through a conspiracy of silence, to carry on helplessly the bad customs of their forefathers. This social neglect has had the result that the superior family stocks have been tampered by the recklessness of the inferior stocks.

In America, we find the two moralities in active conflict today. Until recently America has meekly accepted at the hand of Old Europe the traditional prescription. On the surface, the ancient morality had been complacently, almost unquestionably, accepted in America, even to the extent of tacitly permitting the existence of a vast extension of abortion, under the surface of society— a criminal practice which ever flourishes where Birth Control is neglected.

But today, a new movement is perceptible in America. It would seem that, almost in a flash, America has awakened to the true significance of the issue. With that direct vision of hers, that swift practicality of action, and above all, that sense of the democratic nature of all social progress, we see her resolutely beginning to face this great problem. In her vigorous tongue she is demanding "What is all this secrecy about, anyway? Let us turn on the Light!" And the best authorities agree that America's answer to the demand will be of the greatest importance, and of immense significance to the whole world.

In concluding this portion of our discussion, I ask my readers to consider the following quotations from writers who have touched upon the question of the stimulation of the birth-rate by the State, for the purpose of military policy. These quotations speak for themselves, and need but little comment.

The first authority, a German, whose name has escaped me for the moment, laments the falling birth-rate in his country, and urges his own nation to stimulate it by offering bounties; he says: "Woe to us if we follow the example of the wicked and degenerate people of other nations. Our nation needs men. We have to populate the earth, and to carry the blessings of our Kultur all over the world. In executing that high mission we cannot have too much human material in defending ourselves against the aggression of other nations who are jealous of us and our achievements and progress. Let us promote parentage by law; let us repress by law every influence which may encourage a falling birth-rate; otherwise there is nothing left us but speedy national disaster, complete and irremediable."

Havelock Ellis, an Englishman, says: "In Germany for years past it has been difficult to take up a serious periodical without finding some anxiously statistical article about the falling birth-rate, and some wild recommendations for its arrest. For it is the militaristic German who of all Europeans is most worried by this fall; indeed Germans often even refuse to recognize it. Thus today we find Professor Gruber declaring that if the population of the German Empire continues to grow at the rate of the first five years of the present century, it will have reached 250,000,000 at the end of the century. By such a vast increase in population, the Professor complacently concludes, 'Germany will be rendered invulnerable.' But Gruber's estimate is entirely fallacious. German births have fallen, roughly speaking, about 1 per 1,000 of the population, every year since the beginning of the century, and it would be equally reasonable to estimate that if they continue to fall at the present rate (which we cannot, of course, anticipate) births will altogether have ceased in Germany before the end of the century. The German birth-rate reached its climax forty years ago (1871-1880) with 40.7 per 1,000; in 1906 it was 34 per 1,000; in 1909 it was 31 per 1,000; in 1912 it was 28 per 1,000; in an almost measurable period of time, in all probability before the end of the century, it will have reached the same low level as that of France, when there will be but little difference between the 'invulnerability' of France and of Germany, a consummation which, for the world's sake, is far more devoutly to be wished than that anticipated by Gruber."

Writers of Teutonic sympathies have asserted that the aggressive attitude of Germany at the beginning of the Great War was to be legitimately explained and apologized for on the ground that the War was the inevitable expansive outcome of the abnormally high birth-rate of Germany in recent times. Dr. Dernburg, the German statesman, said not very long ago: "The expansion of the German nation has been so extraordinary during the past twenty-five years that the conditions existing before the war had become insupportable." Another writer has said: "Of later years there has arisen a movement among German women for bringing abortion into honor and repute, so that it may be carried out openly and with the aid of the best physicians. This movement has been supported by lawyers and social reformers of high position."