Birth Control | Page 7

William Gull.
"Causes affecting health and shortening life may be inappreciable in the
individual, but sufficiently obvious when their effect is multiplied a
thousandfold. If the conditions of society render us liable to many
diseases, they in return enable us to establish the general laws of life
and health, a knowledge of which soon becomes a distributive blessing.
The cure of individual diseases, whilst we leave open the dark
fountains from which they spring, is to labour like Sisyphus, and have
our work continually returning upon our hands. And, again, there are
diseases over which, directly, we have little or no control, as if
Providence had set them as signs to direct us to wider fields of inquiry
and exertion. Even partial success is often denied, lest we should rest
satisfied with it, and forget the truer and better means of prevention."
[9]
Medical and sanitary science have made great progress in the conquest
of enteric fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, and whooping cough.
The mortality from bronchitis and from pulmonary tuberculosis has
also been reduced, but nevertheless tuberculosis still claims more
victims in the prime of life than any other malady. It is a disease of
civilisation and is intimately associated with economic conditions. The
history of tuberculosis has yet to be written. On the other hand, deaths
from certain other diseases are actually increasing, as witness the
following figures from the Reports of the Registrar-General for
England and Wales:
Disease. Number of Number of deaths in Deaths in 1898. 1919.

Diseases of the heart and circulatory system 50,492 69,637 Cancer
25,196 42,144 Pneumonia 35,462 38,949 Influenza 10,405 44,801
In view of these figures it is folly to suppose that the final conquest of
disease is imminent.
(b) War
War, foreign or civil, is another sword hanging over civilisations,
whereby the fruits of a long period of growth may be destroyed in a
few years. After the Thirty Years War the recovery of Germany
occupied a century and a half. During the fourteen years of the Taiping
rebellion in China whole provinces were devastated and millions upon
millions of people were killed or died. In spite of the Great War during
the past decade, there are some who would delude themselves and
others into the vain belief that, without a radical change in international
relations and a determined effort to neutralise its causes, there will be
no more war; but unless the nations learn through Christianity that
justice is higher than self-interest the following brilliant passage by
Devas is as true to-day as when it was written in 1901:
"True that the spread of humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism made
many people think, towards the end of the nineteenth century, that
bloodshed was at an end. But their hopes were dreams: the visible
growth of national rivalry and gigantic armaments can only issue in
desperate struggles; while not a few among the nations are troubled
with the growth of internal dissensions and accumulations of social
hatred that point to bloody catastrophes in the future; and the
tremendous means of destruction that modern science puts in our hands
offer frightful possibilities of slaughter, murderous anarchical outrages,
and rivers of blood shed in pitiless repression." [10]
Malthusians may inveigh against wars waged to achieve the expansion
of a nation, but so long as international rivalry disregards the moral law
their words will neither stop war nor prevent a Malthusian country
from falling an easy prey to a stronger people. On the contrary, a low
birthrate, by reducing the potential force available for defence, is
actually an incentive to a declaration of war from an envious neighbour,

because it means that he will not hesitate so long when attempting to
count the cost beforehand. In 1850 the population of France and
Germany numbered practically the same, 35,500,000; in 1913 that of
France was 39,600,000, that of Germany 67,000,000. [11] The bearing
of these facts on the Great War is obvious. In 1919 the new Germany,
including Silesia, had a population of just over 60,000,000; whereas, in
1921, France, including Alsace-Lorraine, had a population of
39,200,000. Thus, despite her victory in the war, the population of
France is less to-day than it was seven years ago.
Section 10. MORAL CATASTROPHES
In view of past history only an ostrich with its head in the sand can
profess to believe that there will be no calamities in the future to reduce
the population of the earth. And apart from cataclysms of disease or of
war, empires have perished by moral catastrophe. A disbelief in God
results in selfishness, and in various moral catastrophes. In the terse
phrase of Mr. Bernard Shaw, "Voluptuaries prosper and perish." [12]
For example, during the second century B.C. the disease of rationalism,
[13] spread over Greece, and a rapid depopulation of the country began.