_Question_--It is your general experience, my lord, that there is among the working-cla.s.ses, so far as you can judge, a larger amount of abortion than the use of anti-conceptions?

_Answer_.--That is what I should say.

_Dr. Scharlieb_.--They say that there are five abortions to every one live birth.

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The Lord Bishop of Southwark did not hesitate to declare that the destruction of unborn life in South London 'betrays instincts which are worse than the savage.'

_Witness_--Sir THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., LL.D., B.Sc., of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

_Witness_.--The waste of infant life was enormous owing to the expectant mother miscarrying.... For twopence a woman might purchase sufficient ... to cause her to miscarry, while she at the same time might imperil her own life....

_Witness_--Dr. AMAND ROUTH, M.D.

_Witness_.--My main contention was in regard to the enormous antenatal mortality.... The number of abortions is about four times as great as the still-birth.... a.s.suming that the still-births are 3 per cent., and the abortions 12 per cent., the two together are 15 per cent.

Of the ma.s.s of evidence regarding this terrible aspect of the national life, these quotations must suffice. The public conscience has, in this last generation, become so deadened on the part of ma.s.ses of the {43} people that life is no longer sacred. 'It is always a great comfort to me,' says Dr. Amand Routh, 'that it is criminal as well as wrong--that one can show that the law considers it to be murder.' To escape from inconvenience, to secure freedom from responsibility, to attain untrammelled devotion to pleasure--the weapon of murder is freely used. One of the witnesses, Mrs. Burgwin, told the Commission an experience. 'When I went to Moscow,' says Mrs. Burgwin, 'I went to see the great Foundling Hospital ... and I felt very ashamed when I came away, because I said to a Russian doctor there, "You know this is very serious; you have got a couple of thousand illegitimate children, and by bringing them into a place like this you are only encouraging illegitimacy!" And he said to me, "Well, Mrs. Burgwin, is not that better than what you do in England? There, even your married people murder the children."'

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V

There is another cause of the falling birthrate which I will only indicate. However necessary it may be to look facts in the face, there are facts so ugly that they do not bear even contemplation. One great cause of the fall in the birthrate is the social disease. One or two quotations must suffice.

'I hold,' says Dr. Ballantyne, 'that in a given family, if syphilis enters it, it is the most deadly thing for the future of that family.'

'Have you any idea about the proportion of antenatal deaths which are due to syphilis?' 'Of course, one's idea is,' answered Dr. Amand Routh, 'that it is an enormous proportion--perhaps one-fourth....'

'Dr. Willey was of opinion that probably 32.8 per cent. of the total still-births were due to syphilis.'

'I would hold the view that it is a considerable proportion,' says Dr.

Ballantyne, {45} 'founding upon Fournier's evidence in France, where he speaks broadly of families being swept out of existence before birth by syphilis.'

'We have been recently told that there are 500,000 fresh cases of syphilis yearly in this country and three times that number of cases of gonorrhea.'

It is the opinion of Sir William Osler that of all the killing diseases syphilis comes third or fourth.[3] 'While we have been unable,' says the Commission on the subject, 'to arrive at any positive figures, the evidence we have received leads us to the conclusion that the number of persons who have been infected with syphilis, acquired or congenital, cannot fall below 10 per cent. of the whole population in the large cities, and the percentage affected with gonorrhea must greatly exceed this proportion.' Regarding all that, one can only re-echo the words of Sir Thomas Barlow: 'I think it is terrible.'[4]

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It is only when the after-effects of these diseases are considered that the full measure of the peril which they create is realised. They not only lead to an enormous loss of child life, but they also undermine the health of those on whom they have fastened their fangs, transmitting the misery even to the third generation. The evidence shows that more than half the cases of blindness among children are the result of these diseases in the parents. Out of 1100 children in the London County Council Blind Schools at least 55.6 per cent. were clearly attributable to this cause. In adult life this evil is responsible for diseases which often manifest themselves after many years, such as general paralysis, affections of the brain and spinal cord, and epilepsy. It is because the people have been left in ignorance as to the terrible consequences not only to themselves but to their children, that the welfare and happiness of life are thus sacrificed to sin.

'It is one of the few diseases which {47} are hereditary,' writes Sir Malcolm Morris, 'and in the hereditary form its effects are even more disastrous than in the acquired variety.... Many of its innocent victims die in the first few months of life from meningitis, hydrocephalus, convulsions, and other affections; if they survive they are liable to recrudescences of the disease up to the twentieth year or even later. Growth is checked, vitality depressed, intelligence stunted; hideous deformities may be produced, sight and hearing may be destroyed, and the central nervous system may be involved, with results similar to those which supervene in adults. What a story of mutilation and ma.s.sacre of the innocents!'[5]

When these results are considered, there comes a feeling of amazement that a nation should suffer such plagues to afflict its vitality without putting forth every effort to stamp them out. The nation which has become thus afflicted by its own vices must have sunk to a depth which {48} may well fill the observer with consternation. And the remedies which are proposed will only deliver the people from the consequences of their acts--they will not cure the disease itself. The only salvation lies in the ideal of the pure heart once more shining forth before the eyes of man. The law of G.o.d decrees that sin be punished; and deliverance for humanity from punishment can only come by conformity to the law of G.o.d. But this is not how we now regard it.

We have set ourselves to combat the social disease not because vice is hateful but that in the future vice may become safe. When we shall have attained our end the shadows shall have gathered in deeper blackness. The few remaining stars shall be blotted out.

VI

Such, in bold outline, are the forces which threaten the continuance and the well-being of the race. On the altar of degeneration England and Wales offered {49} up in the year 1914 over 600,000 children.[6]

Who can compute the laughter and joyousness, the happiness and the riches thus consumed at the shrine of our self-indulgence? And every sign points to this vast sacrifice of life increasing with the years.

For we are emanc.i.p.ated; and we smile at any restraint emanating from--G.o.d! Science has delivered us from that. We know it now--the voice of law is only the echo of outworn superst.i.tions. And science, which has broken the chain of restraint, and which has provided the means for gratifying desire without incurring responsibility, has blessed us also with the high-explosive sh.e.l.l. This great deliverer--science--has put into our hands the power of pruning life at both ends. If the world is to find salvation through the absence of life--then, salvation is at the gate. In other days it gave {50} our fathers a shudder to read of the moral depravity of Home ere the scourge of G.o.d fell on it. The old Romans can, alas! cause us to shudder no longer. We have improved upon them. Science has helped us greatly, and with its aid we can sound depths of depravity the Roman never reached. The triumphs of science have in our hands become instruments of an immorality which would have made even heathen Rome shudder. And as yet we are only at the top of the declivity. The momentum of our descent is gathering force with the years.

It may be a.s.serted that this view is alarmist, and that, however bad our state, we are better than Germany. No thought of an enemy from without need, therefore, mar our satisfaction in our swift declension into the mora.s.s of vice. That comparison may be granted: we are better than Germany, though Germany has not yet sacrificed her children in such hecatombs as we have done. But what we have to consider is not the birthrate in {51} relation to that of Germany but in relation to the extent of the earth surface which owns our sway. The end of the war will find Germany confined within narrow borders with all her colonies gone. The Germany of to-morrow will have no room for racial expansion. But we own the fourth of the world's surface. That vast territory calls to us for men. And if we individually choose our own selfish ease, and sacrifice the generations to come, we shall have failed in our imperial calling. We may win an empire on the battlefield; we will inevitably lose it in the silent nursery.

Not in relation to this or that earthly factor has this question to be considered. It is in relation to the Moral Order of the universe that we must face it. The unseen Power that reigns is a Moral Power.

Somewhere in this universe, Righteousness is throned. Whatever race in the past surrendered to evil and made degeneracy its G.o.d--upon that race the judgment of the consuming sword fell. Though the {52} judgment often tarried, it always fell. As one considers the moral condition to which we have come, the worse condition to which we are hastening, the destruction which befell those of old in whose footsteps we are now treading, the dust acc.u.mulated on buried cities and vanished races who made their pleasure their G.o.d, and the flaming of the sword wherewith G.o.d removed in all ages the cankerous growth from the body of humanity,--the question leaps forth: How can we escape the righteous judgment of G.o.d? Will there be found a place of repentance for us who have sacrificed the child of flesh and blood to the calf of gold[7] and have surrendered ourselves to the sensuous delights of worshipping at our chosen idol's shrine? Unless the nation finds the place of repentance, it needs no prophet to foretell the end. For we have been living for more than a generation a life 'such as G.o.d has never suffered man to lead on earth long, which He has always {53} crushed out by calamity or revolution.' And the startling fact is this--that when the judgment of G.o.d befell, it was on men unconscious that they were being judged. They came to the Great White Throne and never discerned it; they reached the end and never knew it to be the end.

Thus they perished--Babylon and Rome alike. And we are as they. The judgment-seat is visible in the heavens, but our eyes never turn to it; amid the crash of the world's civilisation we hear no voice calling to repentance.

[1] _The Declining Birthrate_, p. 90.

[2] P. 125.

[3] _Report of Royal Commission on V. D._, p. 23.

[4] _Ibid._, p. 55.

[5] _The Nineteenth Century and After_, April 1916.

[6] _The Declining Birthrate_, p. 248:--

Deaths in antenatal period . . . . . . . . . 138,249 Fewer births owing to reduced birthrate . . 467,837 ------- Total loss for 1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . 606,086

[7] See pp. 85-88.

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CHAPTER III

THE EMPTY COUNTRYSIDE

In the past the decay of civilisation has been heralded by the decay of the country-side. When the cities had sucked the life of the plains and valleys dry, then came the end. It was thus with Israel. Out of the villages and farms nestling in valleys the people were driven into cities by the rapacity of men eager to be rich. This was the burden that weighed on the prophets, 'Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no room.' When in the country places there was no room for the common folk, then national decay ensued in Israel. It was so also in Rome. The day came when one magnate owned the 'territories of whole tribes' and left them 'to be trampled under foot by herds or ravaged by wild beasts,' or garrisoned them 'with slave {55} prisons or citizens held in bondage,' and Rome sucked dry the rural life of Italy and of the lands washed by the Mediterranean. Therewith paralysis seized the greatest of the world-empires. In every age overgrown cities have proved themselves the graveyards of civilisation. And the primary cause of the evils which now threaten us is that we have made the countryside waste.

Counties and parishes have been depleted of life that cities might grow more and more. It has been calculated that nine out of ten families in England have migrated to the city in the last three generations. In and around Glasgow half of the population of Scotland is concentrated.

Three-fourths of the whole population of Scotland has been ma.s.sed in the industrial belt of country that lies between the Forth and Clyde estuaries, and which includes Edinburgh and Glasgow and the towns round which are centred the iron and coal industries. We have driven our manhood and womanhood out of the sunshine {56} and the clean air and the silent s.p.a.ces into the foetid, sunless closes of monstrous cities.

There the clanging of machinery leaves no place where the soul can be still. And upon us has fallen the woe declared against those who devastate the quiet places, adding field to field, until there is no room for the poor.

I