[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—We of the Labour
Party and the advanced section of the Liberal Party are often accused of stirring up class bitter- ness. I have never read anything more calculated to produce such an effect than Dean Inge's article in your last issue on " The Population Question." The cool assumptionthat the rich are necessarily the desirable is likely to arouse passionate resentment among those who have overcome the obstacles of poverty sufficiently to be interested enough in serious things to read the Spectator because it gives the most intelligent presentation of " the other side." The existence of " undesir- ables" in our slums is, unhappily, an indisputable fact. What Dean Inge forgets is, that the so-called aristocracy of the land has an increasing number of "undesirables " in its ranks. I chal- lenge Dean Inge to disprove that the " undesirables " every- where are, directly or indirectly, the product of the iniquitoth, social system of which he is such a staunch defender. Dean Inge would find some useful hints on the limitation of popula- tion in the opening pages of Dickens's Christmas Carol:- " If they would rather die," said Scrooge, " they had better do it and decrease the surplus population." It is much easier to starve the poor than to prevent them from propa- gating their like. But let Dean Inge and those who swallow his comfortable gospel beware, lest in the'process of starvation the worm turn and the slaughter begin at the other end. The poor have such deplorable manners nowadays. They will persist in oelieving that they have as much right to live as their betters. As a Christian, I pray they may never follow the example of Russia and the century-old example of France. The British masses are good-humoured and long-suffering, but a few hundred articles like Dean Inge's broadcasted among them might loose passions which would not be easily tied up aga in.—I am, Sir, &e., REGD. A. S3IITIL 5 Edward Street, Burton-on-Trent.
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