early in sight and the spectre of the Last Man rising before him. For
there is no doubt about it, Australia and New Zealand contain a population
which is gradually reaching the highest point yet known of democratic
organisation and general social well-being, and the birth-rate has been
falling with terrific speed. Sixty-years ago in the Australian
Commonwealth it was nearly 44, only forty years ago in New Zealand it was
42. Now it is only about 26 in both lands. Yet the survival-rate, the
actual growth of the population, is not so very much less with this low
birth-rate than it was with the high birth-rate. For the death-rate has
also fallen in both lands to about 10 (in New Zealand to 9) which is lower
than any other country in the world. The result is that Australia and New
Zealand, where (so it is claimed) preventives of conception are hawked
from door to door, instead of being awful examples of "Race-Suicide,"
actually present the highest rate of race-increase in the world (only
excepting Canada, where it is less firmly and less healthily based),
nearly twice that of Great Britain and able at the present rate to double
itself every 44 years. So much for "Race-Suicide."

The outcry about "Race-Suicide" is so far away from the real facts of life
that it is not easy to take it seriously, however solemn one's natural
temperament may be. We are concerned with people who arrogantly claim to
direct the moral affairs of the world, even in the most intimately private
matters, and who are yet ignorant of the most elementary facts of the
world, unable to think, not even able to count! We can only greet them
with a smile. But this question has, nevertheless, a genuinely serious
aspect, and I should be sorry even to touch on the question of
birth-control in relation to "Race-Suicide" without making that serious
aspect clear.

"Race-Suicide," we know, has no existence. Not only is the race as a whole
increasing in number, especially its White branches, but even among the
separate national groups there is not even one civilised people anywhere
in the world that is decreasing in number. On the contrary they are all,
even France, increasing at a more or less rapid rate. In England and
Wales, for example, where the birth-rate has steadily fallen during the
last forty years from 36 to 23 (I disregard the abnormal rates of
War-time) the population is still increasing, and even if the present
falls in birth-rate and death-rate continue,