[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] 'SIR,—In his courageous article
Dr. Inge seems to yield to opponents of Birth Control the important point that deliberate interference with the Birth Rate because of the necessity of establishing an optimum is an innovation. Professor Carr Saunders has, however, in his Population, under the chapter, " Regulation of Numbers," collected the evidence which shows that among nearly all primitive peoples steps are taken .both to attain quality and control quantity. (1) There is a deliberate selection of fathers, the young generally not being allowed to take their wives until they themselves have shown that they can support them. (2) Numbers are controlled by abstention, abortion and infanticide. " The number of children to be preserved " being " a matter . . . in which the wishes of the community in general have to be taken into account." None of the tribes studied seem anything but considerate to their children, but they realize with a sense of reality from which we shrink how much more hardly nature deals when she is left to intervene. Few races that have discovered abortion seem to continue to practise infanticide. -There can be no doubt that were better methods known, Labortion. and not only among ' savages," would be abandoned.
The important point, however, is that where there is a keen social sense there population is controlled for the sake of the community. We have now come the full cycle to a social condition where, as the Dean says, we all have to take a share in keeping each other and therefore all ought to have a voice in saying how many can be kept.
It was, I think, Dr. Rivers who remarked that the Board School educated men of England know less cleanly and clearly about the central problem of life than many primitive races.—I
Sir, &c., GERALD HEARD.
The Crest House, St. George's Hill, IVeybridge.
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