In every nation of militaristic tendencies we find the reactionaries
demanding a higher and still higher birth rate. Their plea is, first,
that great armies are needed to defend the country from its possible
enemies; second, that a huge population is required to assure the
country its proper place among the powers of the world. At bottom the
two pleas are the same.
As soon as the country becomes overpopulated, these reactionaries
proclaim loudly its moral right to expand. They point to the huge
population, which in the name of patriotism they have previously
demanded should be brought into being. Again pleading patriotism, they
declare that it is the moral right of the nation to take by force such
room as it needs. Then comes war--usually against some nation supposed
to be less well prepared than the aggressor.
Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts, and politicians
violently denounce the politicians of other countries. There is a long
beating of tom-toms by the press and all other agencies for
influencing public opinion. Facts are distorted and lies invented
until the common people cannot get at the truth. Yet, when the war is
over, if not before, we always find that "a place in the sun," "a path
to the sea," "a route to India" or something of the sort is at the
bottom of the trouble. These are merely other names for expansion.
The "need of expansion" is only another name for overpopulation. One
supreme example is sufficient to drive home this truth. That the Great
War, from the horror of which we are just beginning to emerge, had its
source in overpopulation is too evident to be denied by any serious
student of current history.
For the past one hundred years most of the nations of Europe have been
piling up terrific debts to humanity by the encouragement of unlimited
numbers. The rulers of these nations and their militarists have
constantly called upon the people to breed, breed, breed! Large
populations meant more people to produce wealth, more people to pay
taxes, more trade for the merchants, more soldiers to protect the
wealth. But more people also meant need of greater food supplies, an
urgent and natural need for expansion.
As shown by C.V. Drysdale's famous "War Map of Europe," the great
conflict began among the high birth rate countries--Germany, with its
rate of 31.7, Austria-Hungary with 33.7 and 36.7, respectively, Russia
with 45.4, Serbia with 38.6. Italy with her 38.7 came in, as the world
is now well informed through the publication of secret treaties by the
Soviet government of Russia, upon the promise of territory held by
Austria. England, owing to her small home area, is cramped with her
comparatively low birth rate of 26.3. France, among the belligerents,
is conspicuous for her low birth rate of 19.9, but stood in the way of
expansion of high birth rate Germany. Nearly all of the persistently
neutral countries--Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland
have low birth rates, the average being a little over 26.
Owing to the part Germany played in the war, a survey of her birth
statistics is decidedly illuminating. The increase in the German birth
rate up to 1876 was great. Though it began to decline then, the
decline was not sufficient to offset the tremendous increase of the
previous years. There were more millions to produce children, so while
the average number of births per thousand was somewhat smaller, the
net increase in population was still huge. From 41,000,000 in 1871,
the year the Empire was founded, the German population grew to
approximately 67,000,000 in 1918. Meanwhile her food supply increased
only a very small per cent. In 1910, Russia had a birth rate even
higher than Germany's had ever been--a little less than 48 per
thousand. When czarist Russia wanted an outlet to the Mediterranean by
way of Constantinople, she was thinking of her increasing population.
Germany was thinking of her increasing population when she spoke as
with one voice of a "place in the sun."
"For some decades," said the Royal Prussian Journal, in an article
quoted by the Malthusian (London) of April 15, 1911, "the great growth
of German population has been almost entirely forced into the towns,
since of the four millions of increase in five years, only a few can
find places in agriculture, as most properties are too small to permit
of letting off a portion. And as regards the larger farms, the
tendency of modern, cheaper machine methods is rather to produce a
saving of the more costly manual labor."
"For some time past Germany has no longer been in the position of
feeding her own population, and large quantities of food as
raw-materials have to be imported, for which exports have to be exchanged.
It is doubtful whether even this can for long keep pace with the
present rate of increase of population."
There were other utterances which just as frankly acknowledged that,
having produced surplus population, Germany proposed to procure by
means of war the expansion necessary to care for it. Adelyne More, in
"Uncontrolled Breeding," a study of the birth rate in its relation to
war, quoted the Berliner Post: "Can a great and rapidly growing nation
like Germany always renounce all claims to further development or to
the expansion of its political power? The final settlement with France
and England, the expansion of our colonial possessions, in order to
create new German homes for the overflow of our population--these are
problems which must be faced in the near future." This was published
in 1913.
Just as frank was the recognition of the true cause of international
conflicts by a number of British authorities.
In "Uncontrolled Breeding," the author quotes the British National
Commission's report on The Declining Birth Rate: "The pressure of
population in any country brings, as a chief historic consequence,
overflows and migrations not only for peaceful settlement, but for
conquest and for the subjugation and exploitation of weaker peoples.
This always remains a chief cause of international disputes."
The militaristic claim for Germany's right to new territory was simply
a claim to the right of life and food for the German babies--the same
right that a chick claims to burst its shell. If there had not been
other millions of people claiming the same right, there would have
been no war. But there were other millions.
The German rulers and leaders pointed out the fact that expansion
meant more business for German merchants, more work for German workmen
at better wages, and more opportunities for Germans abroad. They also
pointed out that lack of expansion meant crowding and crushing at
home, hard times, heavy burdens, lack of opportunity for Germans, and
what not. In this way, they gave the people of the Empire a startling
and true picture of what would happen from overcrowding. Once they
realized the facts, the majority of Germans naturally welcomed the
so-called war of defense.
The argument was sound. Once the German mothers had submitted to the
plea for overbreeding, it was inevitable that imperialistic Germany
should make war. Once the battalions of unwanted babies came into
existence--babies whom the mothers did not want but which they bore as
a "patriotic duty"--it was too late to avoid international conflict.
The great crime of imperialistic Germany was its high birth rate.
It has always been so. Behind all war has been the pressure of
population. "Historians," says Huxley, "point to the greed and
ambition of rulers, the reckless turbulence of the ruled, to the
debasing effects of wealth and luxury, and to the devastating wars
which have formed a great part of the occupation of mankind, as the
causes of the decay of states and the foundering of old civilizations,
and thereby point their story with a moral. But beneath all this
superficial turmoil lay the deep-seated impulse given by unlimited
multiplication."
Robert Thomas Malthus, formulator of the doctrine which bears his
name, pointed out, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the
relation of overpopulation to war. He showed that mankind tends to
increase faster than the food supply. He demonstrated that were it not
for the more common diseases, for plague, famine, floods and wars,
human beings would crowd each other to such an extent that the misery
would be even greater than it now is. These he described as "natural
checks," pointing out that as long as no other checks are employed,
such disasters are unavoidable. If we do not exercise sufficient
judgment to regulate the birth rate, we encounter disease, starvation
and war.
Both Darwin and John Stuart Mill recognized, by inference at least,
the fact that so-called "natural checks"--and among them war--will
operate if some sort of limitation is not employed. In his _Origin of
Species_, Darwin says: "There is no exception to the rule that every
organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, if not destroyed,
that the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair."
Elsewhere he observes that we do not permit helpless human beings to
die off, but we create philanthropies and charities, build asylums and
hospitals and keep the medical profession busy preserving those who
could not otherwise survive. John Stuart Mill, supporting the views of
Malthus, speaks to exactly the same effect in regard to the
multiplying power of organic beings, among them humanity. In other
words, let countries become overpopulated and war is inevitable. It
follows as daylight follows the sunrise.
When Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant were on trial in England
in 1877 for publishing information concerning contraceptives, Mrs.
Besant put the case bluntly to the court and the jury:
"I have no doubt that if natural checks were allowed to operate right
through the human as they do in the animal world, a better result
would follow. Among the brutes, the weaker are driven to the wall, the
diseased fall out in the race of life. The old brutes, when feeble or
sickly, are killed. If men insisted that those who were sickly should
be allowed to die without help of medicine or science, if those who
are weak were put upon one side and crushed, if those who were old and
useless were killed, if those who were not capable of providing food
for themselves were allowed to starve, if all this were done, the
struggle for existence among men would be as real as it is among
brutes and would doubtless result in the production of a higher race
of men.
"But are you willing to do that or to allow it to be done?"
We are not willing to let it be done. Mother hearts cling to children,
no matter how diseased, misshapen and miserable. Sons and daughters
hold fast to parents, no matter how helpless. We do not allow the weak
to depart; neither do we cease to bring more weak and helpless beings
into the world. Among the dire results is war, which kills off, not
the weak and the helpless, but the strong and the fit.
What shall be done? We have our choice of one of three policies. We
may abandon our science and leave the weak and diseased to die, or
kill them, as the brutes do. Or we may go on overpopulating the earth
and have our famines and our wars while the earth exists. Or we can
accept the third, sane, sensible, moral and practicable plan of birth
control. We can refuse to bring weak, the helpless and the unwanted
children into the world. We can refuse to overcrowd families, nations
and the earth. There are these ways to meet the situation, and only
these three ways.
The world will never abandon its preventive and curative science; it
may be expected to elevate and extend it beyond our present
imagination. The efforts to do away with famine and the opposition to
war are growing by leaps and bounds. Upon these efforts are largely
based our modern social revolutions.
There remains only the third expedient--birth control, the real cure
for war. This fact was called to the attention of the Peace Conference
in Paris, in 1919, by the Malthusian League, which adopted the
following resolution at its annual general meeting in London in June
of that year:
"The Malthusian League desires to point out that the proposed scheme
for the League of Nations has neglected to take account of the
important questions of _the pressure of population_, which _causes the
great international economic competition_ and rivalry, and of the
_increase of population_, which is put forward as a justification for
_claiming increase of territory_. It, therefore, wishes to put on
record its belief that the League of Nations will only be able to
fulfill its aim _when it adds a clause_ to the following effect:
"'That each Nation desiring to enter into the League of Nations shall
pledge itself _so to restrict its birth rate_ that its people shall be
able to live in comfort _in their own dominions without need_ for
territorial expansion, and that it shall recognize that _increase of
population shall not justify_ a demand either for increase of
territory or for the compulsion of other Nations to admit its
emigrants; so that when all Nations in the League have shown their
ability to live on their own resources without international rivalry,
they will be in a position to fuse into an international federation,
and territorial boundaries will then have little significance.'"
As a matter of course, the Peace Conference paid no attention to the
resolution, for, as pointed out by Frank A. Vanderlip, the American
financier, that conference not only ignored the economic factors of
the world situation, but seemed unaware that Europe had produced more
people than its fields could feed. So the resolution amounted to so
much propaganda and nothing more.
This remedy can be applied only by woman and she will apply it. She
must and will see past the call of pretended patriotism and of glory
of empire and perceive what is true and what is false in these things.
She will discover what base uses the militarist and the exploiter make
of the idealism of peoples. Under the clamor of the press, permeating
the ravings of the jingoes, she will hear the voice of Napoleon, the
archtype of the militarists of all nations, calling for "fodder for
cannon."
"Woman is given to us that she may bear children," said he. "Woman is
our property, we are not hers, because she produces children for
us--we do not yield any to her. She is, therefore, our possession as the
fruit tree is that of the gardener."
That is what the imperialist is _thinking_ when he speaks of the glory
of the empire and the prestige of the nation. Every country has its
appeal--its shibboleth--ready for the lips of the imperialist. German
rulers pointed to the comfort of the workers, to old-age pensions,
maternal benefits and minimum wage regulations, and other material
benefits, when they wished to inspire soldiers for the Fatherland.
England's strongest argument, perhaps, was a certain phase of liberty
which she guarantees her subjects, and the protection afforded them
wherever they may go. France and the United States, too, have their
appeals to the idealism of democracy--appeals which the politicians of
both countries know well how to use, though the peoples of both lands
are beginning to awake to the fact that their countries have been
living on the glories of their revolutions and traditions, rather than
the substance of freedom. Behind the boast of old-age pensions,
material benefits and wage regulations, behind the bombast concerning
liberty in this country and tyranny in that, behind all the slogans
and shibboleths coined out of the ideals of the peoples for the uses
of imperialism, woman must and will see the iron hand of that same
imperialism, condemning women to breed and men to die for the will of
the rulers.
Upon woman the burden and the horrors of war are heaviest. Her heart
is the hardest wrung when the husband or the son comes home to be
buried or to live a shattered wreck. Upon her devolve the extra tasks
of filling out the ranks of workers in the war industries, in addition
to caring for the children and replenishing the war-diminished
population. Hers is the crushing weight and the sickening of soul. And
it is out of her womb that those things proceed. When she sees what
lies behind the glory and the horror, the boasting and the burden, and
gets the vision, the human perspective, she will end war. She will
kill war by the simple process of starving it to death. For she will
refuse longer to produce the human food upon which the monster feeds.