hissed that they had difficulty going on. The
speakers who were against the... idea soon felt that their audience
was against them.... Why was there such small attendance at the regular
Socialistic meetings, while the meetings of this character were packed
to suffocation? It did not apparently penetrate the leaders' heads
that the reason was a simple one. Those meetings were evidently of
no interest to them, while those which dealt with the limitation of
offspring were of personal, vital, present interest.... What particularly
amused me--and pained me--in the anti-limitationists was the ease and
equanimity with which they advised the poor women to keep on bearing
children. The woman herself was not taken into consideration, as if she
was not a human being, but a machine. What are her sufferings, her labor
pains, her inability to read, to attend meetings, to have a taste of
life? What does she amount to? The proletariat needs fighters. Go on,
females, and breed like animals. Maybe of the thousands you bear a few
will become party members...."

The militant organization of the Marxian Socialists suggests that their
campaign must assume the tactics of militarism of the familiar type. As
represented by militaristic governments, militarism like Socialism has
always encouraged the proletariat to increase and multiply. Imperial
Germany was the outstanding and awful example of this attitude. Before
the war the fall in the birth-rate was viewed by the Junker party
with the gravest misgivings. Bernhardi and the protagonists of
DEUTSCHLAND-UBER-ALLES condemned it in the strongest terms. The Marxians
unconsciously repeat the words of the government representative, Krohne,
who, in a debate on the subject in the Prussian Diet, February 1916,
asserted: "Unfortunately this view has gained followers amongst the
German women.... These women, in refusing to rear strong and able
children to continue the race, drag into the dust that which is the
highest end of women--motherhood. It is to be hoped that the willingness
to bear sacrifices will lead to a change for the better.... We need
an increase in human beings to guard against the attacks of envious
neighbors as well as to fulfil our cultural mission. Our whole economic
development depends on increase of our people." Today we are fully aware
of how imperial Germany fulfilled that cultural mission of hers; nor
can we overlook the fact that the countries with a smaller birth-rate
survived