though even in Australia the opposition is futile. One can understand such hostility in a land which has universal conscription, and neighbours with a superior army; though I have elsewhere pointed out the sensible and natural way to settle this difficulty. But it is quite irrational in such a city as London. Five-sixths of us, it has been demonstrated, do not attend church or take our code of life meekly from the clergy, as our fathers did; our labour-market is, in every division, enormously overcrowded; and our army is not affected by the dwindling birth-rate. Why, in these circumstances, should the women of England be asked to undergo the pain and sickness and weariness of a yearly birth, and wear out their lives in the rearing of a large family? Men have, as a rule, too little appreciation of the terrible burden they lay on their wives, but their own interest at least ought to weigh with them. Why be constrained to find the resources for rearing and educating a large family when a smaller family will give better chances to the children and conduce to the happiness of the home?
To these questions the only answer is an irrational outpouring of antique rhetoric. It is mere “lust” to have commerce without children: it is “selfish” to wish to live in greater comfort by restricting the family: it is “unnatural.” The man who would lessen the suffering of his companion in life, and obtain greater advantages and more loving care for his children by restricting their number, may smile at the futility of this kind of rhetoric. But it is
