Essays in War-Time: Further Studies in the Task of Social Hygiene

The relation of birth control to morality is, however, by no means a question which concerns women alone. It equally concerns men. Here we have to recognise, not only that the exercise of control over procreation enables a man to form a union of faithful devotion with the woman of his choice at an earlier age than would otherwise be possible, but it further enables him, throughout the whole of married life, to continue such relationship under circumstances which might otherwise render them injurious or else undesirable to his wife. That the influence thus exerted by preventive methods would suffice to abolish prostitution it would be foolish to maintain, for prostitution has other grounds of support. But even within the sphere of merely prostitutional relationships the use of contraceptives, and the precautions and cleanliness they involve, have an influence of their own in diminishing the risks of venereal disease, and while the interests of those who engage in prostitution are by some persons regarded as negligible, we must always remember that venereal disease spreads far beyond the patrons of prostitution and is a perpetual menace to others who may become altogether innocent victims. So that any influence which tends to diminish venereal disease increases the well-being of the whole community.

Apart from the relationship to morality, although the two are intimately combined, we are thus led to the relationship of birth control to eugenics, or to the sound breeding of the race. Here we touch the highest ground, and are concerned with our best hopes for the future of the world. For there can be no doubt that birth control is not only a precious but an indispensable instrument in moulding the coming man to the measure of our developing ideals. Without it we are powerless in the face of the awful evils which flow from random and reckless reproduction. With it we possess a power so great that some persons have professed to see in it a menace to the propagation of the race, amusing themselves with the idea that if people possess the means to prevent the conception of children they will never have children at all. It is not necessary to discuss such a grotesque notion seriously. The desire for children is far too deeply implanted in mankind and womankind alike ever to be rooted out. If there are to-day many parents whose lives are rendered wretched by large families and the miseries of excessive child-bearing, there are an equal number whose lives are wretched because they have no children at all, and who snatch eagerly at any straw which offers the smallest promise of relief to this craving. Certainly there are people who desire marriage, but—some for very sound and estimable reasons and others for reasons which may less well bear examination—do not desire any children at all. So far as these are concerned, contraceptive methods, far from being a social evil, are a social blessing. For nothing is so certain as that it is an unmixed evil for a community to possess unwilling, undesirable, or incompetent parents. Birth control would be an unmixed blessing if it merely enabled us to exclude such persons from the ranks of parenthood. We desire no parents who are not both competent and willing parents. Only such parents are fit to father and to mother a future race worthy to rule the world.

It is sometimes said that the control of conception, since it is frequently carried out immediately on marriage, will tend to delay parenthood until an unduly late age. Birth control has, however, no necessary result of this kind, and might even act in the reverse direction. A chief cause of delay in marriage is the prospect of the burden and expense of an unrestricted flow of children into the family, and in Great Britain, since 1911, with the extension of the use of contraceptives, there has been a slight but regular increase not only in the general marriage rate but in the proportion of early marriages, although the general mean age at marriage has increased. The ability to control the number of children not only enables marriage to take place at an early age but also makes it possible for the couple to have at least one child soon after marriage. The total number of children are thus spaced out, instead of following in rapid succession.

It is only of recent years that the eugenic importance of a considerable interval between births has been fully recognised, as regards not only the mother—this has long been realised—but also the children. The very high mortality of large families has long been known, and their association with degenerate conditions and with criminality. The children of small families in Toronto, Canada, are taller than those of larger families, as is also the case in Oakland, California, where the average size of the family is smaller than in Toronto.83 Of recent years, moreover, evidence has been obtained that families in which the children are separated from each other by intervals of more than two years are both mentally and physically superior to those in which the interval is shorter. Thus Ewart found in a northern English manufacturing town that children born at an interval of less than two years after the birth of the previous child remain notably defective, even at the age of six, both as regards intelligence and physical development. When compared with children born at a longer interval and with first-born children, they are, on the average, three inches shorter and three pounds lighter than first-born children.84 Such observations need to be repeated in various countries, but if confirmed it is obvious that they represent a fact of the most vital significance.

Thus when we calmly survey, in however summary a manner, the great field of life affected by the establishment of voluntary human control over the production of the race, we can see no cause for anything but hope. It is satisfactory that it should be so, for there can be no doubt that we are here facing a great and permanent fact in civilised life. With every rise in civilisation, indeed with all evolutionary progress whatever, there is what seems to be an automatic fall in the birth-rate. That fall is always normally accompanied by a fall in the death-rate, so that a low birth-rate frequently means a high rate of natural increase, since most of the children born survive.85 Thus in the civilised world of to-day, notwithstanding the low birth-rate which prevails as compared with earlier times, the rate of increase in the population is still, as Leroy-Beaulieu points out, appalling, nearly half a million a year in Great Britain, over half a million in Austro-Hungary, and three-quarters of a million in Germany. When we examine this excess of births in detail we find among them a large proportion of undesired and undesirable children. There are two opposed alternative methods working to diminish this proportion: the method of preventing conception, with which we have here been concerned, and the method of preventing live birth by producing abortion. There can be no doubt about the enormous extension of this latter practice in all civilised countries, even although some of the estimates of its frequency in the United States, where it seems especially to flourish, may be extravagant. The burden of excessive children on the overworked underfed mothers of the working classes becomes at last so intolerable that anything seems better than another child. "I'd rather swallow the druggist's shop and the man in it than have another kid," as, Miss Elderton reports, a woman in Yorkshire said.86

Now there has of late years arisen a movement, especially among German women, for bringing abortion into honour 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. It may be admitted that women have an abstract right to abortion and that in exceptional cases that right should be exerted. Yet there can be very little doubt to most people that abortion is a wasteful, injurious, and almost degrading method of dealing with the birth-rate, a feeble apology for recklessness and improvidence. A society in which abortion flourishes cannot be regarded as a healthy society. Therefore, a community which takes upon itself to encourage abortion is incurring a heavy responsibility. I am referring more especially to the United States, where this condition of things is most marked. For, there cannot be any doubt about it, just as all those who work for birth control are diminishing the frequency of abortion, so every attempt to discourage birth control promotes abortion. We have to approach this problem calmly, in the light of Nature and reason. We have each of us to decide on which side we shall range ourselves. For it is a vital social problem concerning which we cannot afford to be indifferent.

There is here no desire to exaggerate the importance of birth control. It is not a royal road to the millennium, and, as I have already pointed out, like all other measures which the course of progress forces us to adopt, it has its disadvantages. Yet at the present moment its real and vital significance is acutely brought home to us.

Flinders Petrie, discussing those great migrations due to the unrestricted expansion of barbarous races which have devastated Europe from the dawn of history, remarks: "We deal lightly and coldly with the abstract facts, but they represent the most terrible tragedies of all humanity—the wreck of the whole system of civilisation, protracted starvation, wholesale massacre. Can it be avoided? That is the question, before all others, to the statesman who looks beyond the present time."87 Since Petrie wrote, only ten years ago, we have had occasion to realise that the vast expansions which he described are not confined to the remote past, but are at work and producing the same awful results, even at the very present hour. The great and only legitimate apology which has been put forward for the aggressive attitude of Germany in the present war has been that it was the inevitable expansive outcome of the abnormally high birth-rate of Germany in recent times; as Dr. Dernburg, not long ago, put it: "The expansion of the German nation has been so extraordinary during the last twenty-five years that the conditions existing before the war had become insupportable." In other words, there was no outlet but a devastating war. So we are called upon to repeat, with fresh emphasis, Petrie's question: Can it be avoided? All humanity, all civilisation, call upon us to take up our stand on this vital question of birth control. In so doing we shall each of us be contributing, however humbly, to

"one far-off divine event,To which the whole creation moves."

1

O'Dalton, Letters of Sidonius, Vol. II., p. 149.

2

P. Chalmers Mitchell, Evolution and the War, 1915.

3

On the advantages of war in primitive society, see W. MacDougal's Social Psychology, Ch. XI.

4

It is doubtless a task beset by difficulties, some of which are set forth, in no hostile spirit, by Lord Cromer, "Thinking Internationally," Nineteenth Century, July, 1916; but the statement of most of these difficulties is enough to suggest the solution.

5

D.S. Jordan, War and the Breed, 1915; also articles on "War and Manhood" in the Eugenics Review, July, 1910, and on "The Eugenics of War" in the same Review for Oct., 1913.

6

J. Arthur Thomson, "Eugenics and War," Eugenics Review, April, 1915. Major Leonard Darwin (Journal Royal Statistical Society, March, 1916) sets forth a similar view.

7

It is true that in the Gourdon cavern, in the Pyrenees, representing a very late and highly developed stage of Magdalenian culture, there are indications that human brains were eaten (Zaborowski, L'Homme Préhistorique, p. 86). It is surmised that they were the brains of enemies killed in battle, but this remains a surmise.

8

Zaborowski, L'Homme Préhistorique, pp. 121, 139; Lapouge, Les Sélections Sociales, p. 209.

9

Revue d'Anthropologie, 1876, pp. 608 and 655.

10

In France it is almost unknown except as preached by the Syndicalist philosopher, Georges Sorel, who insists, quite in the German manner, on the purifying and invigorating effects of "a great foreign war," although, very unlike the German professors, he holds that "a great extension of proletarian violence" will do just as well as war.

11

The recent expressions of the same doctrine in Germany are far too numerous to deal with. I may, however, refer to Professor Fritz Wilke's Ist der Krieg sittlich berechtigt? (1915) as being the work of a theologian and Biblical scholar of Vienna who has written a book on the politics of Isaiah and discussed the germs of historical veridity in the history of Abraham. "A world-history without war," he declares, "would be a history of materialism and degeneration"; and again: "The solution is not 'Weapons down!' but 'Weapons up!' With pure hands and calm conscience let us grasp the sword." He dwells, of course, on the supposed purifying and ennobling effects of war and insists that, in spite of its horrors, and when necessary, "War is a divine institution and a work of love." The leaders of the world's peace movement are, thank God! not Germans, but merely English and Americans, and he sums up, with Moltke, that war is a part of the moral order of the world.

12

William James, Popular Science Monthly, Oct., 1910.

13

We still often fall into the fallacy of over-estimating the advantages of military training—with its fine air of set-up manliness and restrained yet vitalised discipline—because we are mostly compelled to compare such training with the lack of training fostered by that tame, dull sedentary routine of which there is far too much in our present phase of civilisation. The remedy lies in stimulating the heroic and strenuous sides of civilisation rather than in letting loose the ravages of war. As Nietzsche long since pointed out (Human, All-too-Human, section 442), the vaunted national armies of modern times are merely a method of squandering the most highly civilised men, whose delicately organised brains have been slowly produced through long generations; "in our day greater and higher tasks are assigned to men than patria and honor, and the rough old Roman patriotism has become dishonourable, at the best behind the times."

14

The Border of Scotland and England was in ancient times, it has been said, "a very Paradise for murderers and robbers." The war-like spirit was there very keen and deeds of daring were not too scrupulously effected, for the culprit knew that nothing was easier and safer than to become an outlaw on the other side of the Border. Yet these were the conditions that eventually made the Border one of the great British centres of genius (the Welsh Border was another) and the home of a peculiarly capable and vigorous race.

15

In so far as it may have been so, that seems merely due to its great length, to the fact that the absence of commissariat arrangements involved a more thorough method of pillage, and to epidemics.

16

Treitschke, History of Germany (English translation by E. and C. Paul), Vol. I., p. 87.

17

Von der Goltz, The Nation in Arms, pp. 14 et seq. This attitude was a final echo of the ancient Truce of God. That institution, which was first definitely formulated in the early eleventh century in Roussillon and was soon confirmed by the Pope in agreement with nobles and barons, was extended to the whole of Christendom before the end of the century. It ordained peace for several days a week and on many festivals, and it guaranteed the rights and liberties of all those following peaceful avocations, at the same time protecting crops, live-stock, and farm implements.

18

It is interesting to observe how St. Augustine, who was as familiar with classic as with Christian life and thought, perpetually dwells on the boundless misery of war and the supreme desirability of peace as a point at which pagan and Christian are at one; "Nihil gratius soleat audiri, nihil desiderabilius concupisci, nihil postremo possit melius inveniri … Sicut nemo est qui gaudere nolit, ita nemo est qui pacem habere nolit" (City of God, Bk. XIX., Chs. 11-12).

19

Contemporary Review, 1878.

20

It has been argued (as by Filippi Carli, La Ricchezza e la Guerra, 1916) that the Germans are especially unable to understand that the prosperity of other countries is beneficial to them, whether or not under German control, and that they differ from the English and French in believing that economic conquests should involve political conquests.

21

Ralph Thicknesse, A Year's Journey Through France and Spain, 1777, p. 298.

22

The last twelve words quoted are by Miss Ethel Elderton in an otherwise sober memoir (Report on the English Birth-rate, 1914, p. 237) which shows that the birth control movement has begun, just where we should expect it to begin, among the better instructed classes.

23

J.L. Myres, "The Causes of Rise and Fall in the Population of the Ancient World," Eugenics Review, April, 1915.

24

Roscher, Grundlagen der Nationalkonomie, 23rd ed., 1900, Bk. VI.

25

G. Lowes Dickinson, The Civilisation of India, China, and Japan, 1914, p. 47.

26

Treitschke in his History (Bk. I., Ch. III.) has well described "the elemental hatred which foreign injury pours into the veins of our good-natured people, for ever pursued by the question: 'Art thou yet on thy feet, Germania? Is the day of thy revenge at hand!'"

27

Rudolf Goldscheid, Deutschlands Grösste Gefahr, Institut Orell Füssli, Zürich, 1916.

28

One may remark that up to the outbreak of war fifty per cent. of the import trade of Russia has been with Germany. To suppose that that immense volume of trade can suddenly be transferred after the war from a neighbouring country which has intelligently and systematically adapted itself to its requirements to a remote country which has never shown the slightest aptitude to meet those requirements argues a simplicity of mind which in itself may be charming, but when translated into practical affairs it is stupendous folly.

29

Sir Valentine Chirol remarks of Bismarck, in an Oxford Pamphlet on "Germany and the Fear of Russia":—"Friendship with Russia was one of the cardinal principles of his foreign policy, and one thing he always relied upon to make Russia amenable to German influence was that she should never succeed in healing the Polish sore."

30

In making these observations on the Russians and the Prussians, I do not, of course, overlook the fact that all nations, like individuals,

"Compound for sins they are inclined toBy damning those they have no mind to,"

and the English treatment of the conscientious objector in the Great War has been just as odious as Russian treatment of the Finns or Prussian treatment of war prisoners, and even more foolish, since it strikes at our own most cherished principles.

31

There is, indeed, another school which would like to shut off all foreign countries by a tariff wall and make the British Empire mutually self-supporting, on the economic basis adopted by those three old ladies in decayed circumstances who subsisted by taking tea in one another's houses.

32

Even if partially successful, as has lately been pointed out, the greater the financial depression of Germany the greater would be the advantage to Russia of doing business with Germany.

33

It may be proper to point out that I by no means wish to imply that democracy is necessarily the ultimate and most desirable form of political society, but merely that it is a necessary stage for those peoples that have not yet reached it. Even Treitschke in his famous History, while idealising the Prussian State, always assumes that movement towards democracy is beneficial progress. For the larger question of the comparative merits of the different forms of political society, see an admirable little book by C. Delisle Burns, Political Ideals (1915). And see also the searching study, Political Parties (English translation, 1915), by Robert Michels, who, while accepting democracy as the highest political form, argues that practically it always works out as oligarchy.

34

Professor D.S. Jordan has quoted the letter of a German officer to a friend in Roumania (published in the Bucharest Adverul, 21 Aug., 1915): "How difficult it was to convince our Emperor that the moment had arrived for letting loose the war, otherwise Pacifism, Internationalism, Anti-Militarism, and so many other noxious weeds would have infected our stupid people. That would have been the end of our dazzling nobility. We have everything to gain by the war, and all the chimeras and stupidities of democracy will be chased from the world for an infinite time."

35

"Let us be patient," a Japanese is reported to have said lately, "until Europe has completed her hara-kiri."

36

"Würdelose Weiber," Die Neue Generation, Aug.-Sept., 1914.

37

Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fifth ed., 1914, p. 21.

38

The conception of sexuality as dependent on the combined operation of various internal ductless glands, and not on the sexual glands proper alone, has been especially worked out by Professor W. Blair Bell, The Sex Complex, 1916.

39

H.H. Laughlin, The Legal, Legislative, and Administrative Aspects of Sterilisation, Eugenics Record Office Bulletin, No. 1, OB, 1914.

40

I have discussed these already in a chapter of my book, The Task of Social Hygiene.

41

See, for instance, Blair Bell's The Sex Complex, 1916, though the deductions drawn in this book must not always be accepted without qualifications.

42

G. Fritsch, Die Eingeborene Süd-Afrikas, 1892, p. 79.

43

1 D.R. Malcolm Keir, "Women in Industry," Popular Science Monthly, October, 1913.

44

See, for many of the chief of these, Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 5th Edition, 1914.

45

W.P. Pycraft, The Courtship of Animal, p. 9.

46

The nature of prostitution and of the White Slave Traffic and their relation to each other may clearly be studied in such valuable first-hand investigations of the subject as The Social Evil: With Special Reference to Conditions Existing in the City of New York, 2nd edition, edited by E.R.A. Seligman, Putnam's, 1912; Commercialised Prostitution in New York City, by G.J. Kneeland, New York Century Co., 1913; Prostitution in Europe, by Abraham Flexner, New York Century Co., 1914; The Social Evil in Chicago, by the Vice-Commission of Chicago, 1911. As regards prostitution in England and its causes I should like to call attention to an admirable little book, Downward Paths, published by Bell & Sons, 1916. The literature of the subject is, however, extensive, and a useful bibliography will be found in the first-named volume.

47

This is especially true of many regions in America, both North and South, where a hideous mixture of disparate nationalities furnishes conditions peculiarly favourable to the "White Slave Traffic," when prosperity increases. See, for instance, the well-informed and temperately written book by Miss Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, 1912.