A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
"WHO drives fat oxen shouldhimself be fat." It does not necessarily follow apparently that who drives his subordinates into matrimony need himself be married. Not in Germany at any rate ; in Italy the Dictator is father of five. (I note, by the way, with some interest, that while Herr Hitler's biography in Who's Who is in English, and occupies five lines, Signor Mussolini's is in Italian throughout and occupies thirty-two.) Marriage is now to be all-but compulsory in the German civil service—that is to say it is to be the key to all positions on the establishment—and there are to be further financial inducements to the pro- creation of large families. The causes of the special measures the two dictatorship countries are taking to increase the population—while at the same time they are both complaining that their populations have no room to live—have never been quite clear. One purpose is no doubt to forestall an actual diminution, another presumably is to provide men for the army (though female, not male, births are needed if fertility is to be maintained), while if German culture is assumed to be superior to any other there is, of course, a case for benefiting the world by bestowing on it as many Germans as possible. But with alll, that, the contradiction between the demand_ for population and the demand for more room to live in remains.
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