shall not reach Utopia; and since the Utopia of every person who possesses one is unique that perhaps need not be regretted. We shall not even, within any measurable period of time, reach a sanely free and human life fit to satisfy quite moderate aspirations. The wise birth-controller will not (like the deliciously absurd suffragette of old-time) imagine that birth-control for all means a New Heaven and a New Earth, but will, rather, appreciate the delightful irony of the Biblical legend which represented a world with only four people in it, yet one of them a murderer. Still, it may be pointed out, that was a state of things much better than we can show now. The world would count itself happier if, during the Great War, only twenty-five per cent of the population of belligerent lands had been murderers, virtually or in fact. There is something to be gained, and that something is well worth while.
Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent.[1] To many of our Undesirables it may seem mere sentiment to trouble about the ravishing of the
- ↑ Professor E. M. East, a distinguished biologist and lately President of the American Society of Naturalists (Nature, 23 Sept., 1920), has estimated that, for all the fall in the birthrate, the present rate of increase in the population of the world, chiefly of whites, who are increasing most rapidly, will, in the lives of our grandchildren, lead to a struggle for existence more terrible than imagination can conceive.
