Chapter II: The Fires of Moloch

“_There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets._”

Every three months with unfailing regularity small paragraphs appear in the daily papers headed “RECORD LOW BIRTH-RATE.” Some figures follow, and then occurs the sentence--unhappily a stereotyped one in our day--“_This is the lowest rate recorded in any quarter since civil registration began._”

Now and again a blue-book upon the subject of the birth-rate is dissected by a journalist and the result appears in his newspaper as a series of startling figures. The story of England’s decadence is set out in the plainest language for every one to read.

At rarer intervals still, some prominent clergyman or sociologist writes or lectures in order to call attention to what is going on, and thus to bring home the spiritual and economic dangers of our racial suicide.

A few people read or listen and are convinced. A good many other people are too utterly ignorant of either the Philosophy of Christianity or the Science of Sociology to understand in the least what the point of view of the protesters is. According to their temperament, they smile quietly and dismiss the subject, or bellow their disgust at such a subject being mentioned at all.

“He who far off beholds another dancing,
And all the time
Hears not the music that he dances to,
Thinks him a madman.”

A party which has the fools at its back is always in the majority, and discussion is stifled, alarm is lulled by the anodyne of indifference and the great number of honest folk who call themselves both Patriots and Christians have no time to spare from fighting and squabbling for money--in order that the dishonest men may not get it all.

Half-a-dozen problems of extreme national importance confront every thinking English man and woman in 1907. The air is thick with their stir and movement, and so great is the noise and reverberation of them that true “royalty” of “_inward_ happiness” seems a thing impossible and past by in these troubled times. Be that as it may, it is quite certain that one of the most real and pressing of these problems is that summed up in the stock phrase “Record Low Birth-rate.”

We hear a great deal about the doings of a class of people who are referred to as “The Smart Set,” and it is actually said that its influence is having a serious effect upon the national character. I do not believe it for a moment. It seems a folly to suppose that a handful of champagne corks floating on a cess-pool has any far-reaching influence upon the English home. I mention that small section of society constituted by the idle and luxurious rich, because, whatever their vices are, they are being used as whipping-boy for enormous numbers of people whose lives are equally guilty with theirs in at least one regard--in the matter of which I am writing now.

I propose in this essay to discuss the question of the decline in the birth-rate from the Christian and Catholic standpoint. There is only one perfect philosophy, and all other half-true philosophies in the light of which we might consider such a momentous matter as this, lead only to the conclusion that expediency is the highest good. Without the incentive of the Christian Faith and without the light of the Incarnation one may sit in a corner and think till “all’s blue in cloud cuckoo land.” Christianity can alone be reconciled with Economics, theory and practice celebrating always the marriage of the King’s son, the wedding of Heaven and Earth, the spiritual and the material. Plato knew that it was impossible to raise the Greek state to the level of his philosophic principles, and Aristotle frankly abandons the attempt to connect ethics and politics with the highest conclusions of his creed. We are in the same position to-day if we ignore the supreme truth which is our possession and which was not vouchsafed to the great Greek thinkers.

* * * * *

There is one cause and one cause only of the decline in the birth-rate and the beginning of the country’s spiritual and material suicide.

The way of Nature is for every species to increase nearly to its possible maximum of numbers. This is a proved law, and nothing but the limitation of families by artificial means, or infanticide, can check its operation.

The truth is exactly as Dr. Barry put it nearly two years ago, “It stands confessed that the great, proud, English race, famous as a people for manly virtues, once the very Stoics of Christian Europe decline more and more to be fathers and mothers, will not be worried with children, and--cannot be spoken of in decent language.”

It is a truth of history that when a nation begins to refuse the responsibility of providing for posterity it begins to decline.

The doctrines of Malthus in his great _Essay on the Principles of Population_, are no longer believed in by the Christian philosopher. Malthus was perfectly sound upon the ethical problem, and the “Neo-Malthusians,” of whom I shall presently speak, have no right whatever to use his name upon their banners. Malthus, so the modern socialistic thinker, such as Mr. H. G. Wells avers, “demonstrated for all time that a State whose population continues to increase in obedience to unchecked instinct can progress only from bad to worse. From the point of view of human comfort and happiness the increase of population that occurs at each advance in human security is the greatest evil of life.”

Malthus, however, never once suggested or advocated the limitation of population by mechanical means. He believed that it was a patriotic duty of men and women to _abstain from producing more children_ than the State could bear, and it is as well to remove at once a popular misconception which stains the name of a good man and a powerful though mistaken thinker.

Otter says of him in a memoir, “His life was more than any other we have ever witnessed, a perpetual flow of enlightened benevolence, contentment and peace; it was the best and purest philosophy, brightened by Christian views and softened by Christian charity.”

It is economically and from the sociological point of view that the modern student condemns the theories of Malthus and those who follow him.

Socialist thinkers disregard the entity of nations, and treat of the world and its population as a whole. The Christian Patriot loves his own country, believes in its destiny no less than he reveres its past, and knows that if our English nation is going to live, it must go on reproducing itself.

The “no room to live” theory is preposterous upon the face of it. In 1879, Lord Derby asked a somewhat obvious question. “Surely,” he said, “it is better to have thirty-five millions of human beings leading useful and intelligent lives, rather than forty millions struggling painfully for a bare subsistence.”

This has been made into a watchword by those who advocate the limitation of population.

It can be answered by a simple statement of fact--in our colonies there are places for a hundred million wives.

While I have not lost sight of the main object of this paper--to summarize the weight of Catholic Christian feeling upon the _mechanical_ limitation of population, and to tell how this is being accomplished--I find that there is yet some ground to be cleared before coming to the main issue.

I have said that there is only one material cause of our decadence, but there are many reasons.

More than a year ago in one or two newspapers, particularly the _Daily Chronicle_, various sociologists gave the results of their thought upon the matter. I print a few extracts here.

The outspoken Dr. Barry wrote:--

......”‘As for religion, Christian or any other, when its
dogmas are no longer believed, its ethics pass away,’ and he
draws a picture of the rotten state of society in our Western
world, which he attributes directly to the growth of
agnosticism. The fact that the birth-rate in England has been
declining for twenty-five years, and was lowest in 1904, seems
to Dr. Barry to be due to several causes--‘poverty and luxury,
pleasure-seeking and disbelief in the Bible,’ and he adds, ‘The
spirit of anarchic individualism that cries, “No God, no
Master!” is needed to tell us why Englishmen and their wives,
once dedicated to a blameless and lasting union, have fallen
into the pit which Malthus or his followers digged for them.’
England alone is not at fault. ‘Wherever unbelief has taken
hold, or doubt saps the ancient creeds, there Malthus reigns
instead of Christ.’”

A “well-known public man” wrote:--

......“It is within my knowledge that certain flats in Mayfair
and elsewhere for the married servant and artisan class are let
on the express or implied condition that not only no children
shall be brought into the tenements, but that none shall be
born there. The direct consequence of this embargo on natural
increase is terribly disastrous. Many footmen and coachmen in
Mayfair could tell a tragical story of the results of
compulsory sterility.

“A Japanese friend was telling me the other day that after an
absence from England of a dozen years he is startled at the
visible deterioration of the race and the great increase of
penniless British weaklings, who add strength to no nation.
‘You English are losing both patriotism and religion, and
consequently you are not only decadent but doomed, unless you
mend your ways in the treatment of women and children.’”

I take the following from a leading article in the _Church Times_:--

......“After making all allowances for minor contributory
causes, the fact remains and may be proved by a little inquiry,
that married people have come to regard a large family as a
curse instead of a Divine blessing. The birth-rates in London
are instructive. Residential districts, with fewest poor, show
the lowest rates. Hampstead 16·6 and Fulham 32·3 may be taken
as typical districts at each end of the scale. Stepney with its
Jewish population has a rate of 37. If the Aliens Bill is to be
effective it will need a clause compelling Jews to limit their
families, just as their Christian (!) neighbours do. The misery
of it all is that we find the practice of child murder, for
such it is in plain English, defended by men of education;
lawyers, medical men, and even priests make no secret of their
approval of it, if no more. And as working men become aware of
what their ‘betters’ are saying and doing--and they are not
slow to follow a similar course--the evil spreads. Our proper
leaders, the Bishops, ought long ago to have dealt with this
subject resolutely and firmly. But apparently a grain of
incense is a more terrible thing to them than the murder of an
existing if unborn personality. We can only judge by their
public utterances, but we have yet to learn that as a body
their lordships have spent a thousandth part of the time over
this supreme question of national morality that they have
devoted to the suppression of things disapproved of by Lady
Wimborne and her league. The spectacle of disproportionate
interest and action is melancholy, and indicative of incapacity
to observe the real dangers to be faced.”

Again--

“The personal causes of this mischief are fear of pain (_i. e._
failure to see in pain the discipline of God which elevates
human nature), hatred of duty, shirking of responsibility, love
of pleasure, the substitution of hedonism for the religion of
Jesus Christ the Lord, and ignorance of the Holy Spirit as Lord
of _all_ life. How far religious teachers are accountable for
this we leave to their own consciences to say. The same causes
are at work in the high mortality of infants. The honour of
doing her best for her child is cast aside by many a mother
because it involves a certain amount of self-restraint and some
seclusion from the gaieties of the hour; and recourse is had to
all sorts of patent nostrums and infants’ ‘food’ (often the
cause of rickets) until the hospitals are over full of young
children, whose sufferings are the result (God grant that they
may be the atonement also) of their mothers’ negligences and
ignorances. Where there is not deliberate and wilful avoidance
of maternal duty, there is neglect through awful ignorance.”

In the _Daily Mail_ Mr. H. G. Wells writes:--

.......“On the other hand think of the discouragements. While
the mother toils in a restricted anxious home amid her
children, she sees through her imperfectly cleaned window (one
can’t do everything) the childless wives having a glorious
time, going a-bicycling with their husbands, dressed gaudily
with all his superfluous income, talking about their ‘Rights.’
As her children grow up to an age when they might help drudge
with her or drudge for her, the State, without a word of thanks
to her, takes them away to teach them and make good citizens of
them. If the husband presently becomes bored by his restricted
prolific household and its incessant demands, and absconds, or
if he is simply unlucky and gets out of work, the State deals
with her in a spirit of austere ingratitude. She is subjected
to ‘charity’ and every conceivable indignity; she undergoes
profounder humiliations than fall to the lot of the most
dissolute women. If a husband ‘goes wrong’ and a woman has kept
childless, she can get employment, she can shift for herself
and be well quit of him, but a family disaster for a mother is
catastrophe.

“I submit the situation is preposterous. I do not believe that
with increasing intelligence and refinement women will go on
marrying and bearing children under such conditions. I gather
that the statistics of marriage-rates and birth-rates bear me
out in this.”

And in the _Daily Chronicle_ the Rev. Cartmel-Robinson:--

......“This phenomenon of the falling birth-rate is of course
not confined to England; it is to be met with, you might say
generally, in all Christian countries. It would be far more
marked but for the tremendous decline in the death-rate,
especially among infants. We ourselves should be vitally
bankrupt but for this factor, and in France, as you know, the
population is slowly dropping. That is an old story, but it is
startling to learn, as President Roosevelt tells us, that the
native-born American population is actually declining.

“One of the main causes, no doubt, is the determined pursuit of
pleasure by all classes. The man will not take the burden of
providing for a family, or, at any rate, a large family, upon
himself, because that would mean a curtailment of his luxuries,
perhaps even his necessities, while the woman refuses to spend
all the prime of her life in child-bearing and child-rearing.
She also wants to enjoy herself, and the pure, simple joys of
maternity, which we used to think ought to be sufficient for a
woman, have in many cases become irksome.

“For my part I do not think that you will ever rouse England to
this question of home and children by an appeal to patriotism.
The Englishman has become too cosmopolitan for that, and I am
afraid the feeling is growing.

“The reason for the decline in America is said to be that women
are becoming neurotic, and will not face the dangers and
responsibilities of motherhood. No doubt that is true to a
certain extent here also, and it is quite certain that among
intellectual and highly-educated women, such as are trained at
our universities in increasing numbers, the maternal instinct,
the capacity for love, if you like to put it in that way, is
apt to be destroyed.

“Then, among the middle classes thousands of young women, who
not many years ago would have looked to marriage as their
natural career, are earning their own livings, and are less
eager to rush into matrimony.”

I have taken these extracts from the words of a few people crying in the wilderness. All of the dicta are at least eighteen months old. I am writing now, in November 1906, and three days ago the apparently inevitable paragraph again made its appearance:--

“RECORD LOW BIRTH-RATE.

“The births registered in England and Wales during the three
months ended September 30--234,624, or 26·9 per 1,000 of the
population--was the lowest rate recorded in any third quarter
since civil registration was established.

“The average in the same quarters of the past ten years was
28·8.”

These opinions as to the reasons for the terrible decadence of England are doubtless all true. They are all contributory causes, and I do not think we can put a single one of them aside. Nothing could be more dismal or more hopeless reading. As one goes on, one experiences a sense as of a chill, deepening shadow.

Few people who read will be able to adopt the average man’s attitude towards unpleasant and disturbing matters--to sidle by with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders.

Where then do we stand?

So far I have endeavoured to show (_a_) the entire indifference of the ordinary man and woman to the fall in the birth-rate; (_b_) the only light, in which, as I understand it, one can see the problem as a whole--in the light of the Incarnation; (_c_) the fact that the Christian Sociologist to-day is inclined to condemn the theory that the limitation of population is necessary at all, even by legitimate methods of abstinence and control; (_d_) the varied reasons which, in the opinion of those who have studied the question deeply, contribute to the one central and shocking fact--

_That incredible numbers of English men and women many of them professing themselves Christians, are constantly using methods to prevent the birth of children._

Every parish clergyman in England is perfectly aware of what is going on. Every Nonconformist minister, and indeed every one whose work brings him in touch with large masses of people in the capacities of leader, adviser, or friend, knows it also. Just as the figures of the Registrar General form a gauge by which to measure the generality of the malignant influence, so the personal experience of any man of the world will supply particular evidence of the state of things within his immediate purview and surroundings.

Always remembering that the evil is progressive, is hourly increasing, the observer of social phenomena at once asks himself if there is not some definite and organized control and direction of it. The desire to obtain the gratifications of passion while evading its responsibilities is, perhaps, the strongest feeling implanted in the fallen nature of mankind. This is sufficient to create a demand for knowledge of how to obtain the desired end, and the demand has in its turn created the supply.

There is a definite literature upon the subject, there is a large body of highly-trained and cultured men and women ready and anxious to disseminate the necessary information to produce these results.

I propose to deal briefly, in the first instance, with the literature which urges and explains practices which the laws of God, the laws of Nature, and the teachings of the Church utterly and emphatically condemn.

The people who call themselves “Malthusians” (and to avoid an injustice to the memory of Malthus I shall here style them Neo-Malthusians) have an organ of their own in the shape of a periodical which is the official voice of a league into which they have formed themselves. The periodical has, I believe, an extensive circulation, and it is published at the lowest possible price. Moreover, in each number of it which I have seen the following notice appears:--

“The Secretary of the Malthusian League will be glad to send
copies of back numbers of this journal to friends willing to
distribute them for propagandist purposes.”

We see that an ordered press campaign is in progress. This periodical is most ably written and edited. Signed articles appear in it by men and women of standing and position. I find it impossible to doubt for a moment that these economists and scientists are not absolutely sincere, and actuated by a high and laudable desire to benefit the world in which they live.

It is unnecessary to give the title of the periodical, but immediately beneath it the following sentence is printed in large letters--

“A CRUSADE AGAINST POVERTY.”

Here is the _raison d’être_ of the journal plainly stated, and so far it is no more than indicating the precise aim of Malthus--to find an economic remedy for the sufferings of poverty.

I proceed to give some examples of the teaching inculcated in the journal, and in the first place quote from a review of _L’Instinct d’Amour_, by Dr. Joanny Roux, a very distinguished French physician:--

“Must all who refuse to procreate refrain from love? How easy
it is to clothe one’s self in the robes of social purity when
replying to this question! The social purists tell the world
that chastity is obligatory if procreation be not intended. It
is impossible to carry out this view. The philosopher contents
himself with studying sterile love and its consequences. He
rejoices to think that thousands of infants are left out of the
world who would have been doomed to suffer. The inconveniences
resulting from some selfish people who refrain from parentage
are as nothing in the balance when weighed against the horrors
of indigence.

“Should we not, by acting thus, lead to a progressive
diminution of the population? Certainly; but that would be a
good thing. As if, forsooth, human progress depended on
quantity, and not on quality! Take China as an example of
quantity without quality. Some writers seem to wish that the
earth should be filled up with miserable and suffering people.
Malthus, that gentle clergyman, in 1798, was the first to
protest against such a view. Over-reproduction, he showed, was
the cause of poverty. He, however, thought the only remedy for
this was chastity, and was quite opposed to _sterile love_.

“To accept sterile love, some say, is to run counter to Nature
and natural morality. ‘No,’ says Dr. Roux, ‘it is the
preserving of these laws. In all cases where we construct
houses or warm ourselves, we get one law of Nature to defend us
against the other which injures us. We must not forget that our
instincts are fixed customs of very ancient date; and there can
be no doubt that man has the right to intervene in questions of
that sexual instinct if morality (_i. e._ happiness) requires
it of him.’”

When one reads these passages a flood of light as to the real influence and direction of such teachings comes to us at once. The writer, no doubt sincerely enough, assumes as an axiom of his whole position, that there is no law but “Nature,” no morality but what he calls “Natural Morality.” We are, in fact, under no obligations to anything but the promptings of animal instinct which are part of our human nature.

We see immediately the inherent negation of Christianity implied in this attitude, and apart from the definite teaching of the Faith upon the question, which I shall enter into later, it is most important that we should realize that the holders and preachers of Neo-Malthusianism must always be opposed to Christianity. Even those people who do not profess their hatred for, or disbelief in our Lord in so many words, logically imply them. Christians who may not have troubled themselves about this menace to the State and its morals must be told in no uncertain voice that the movement is purely heathen in its position and built upon a basis of heathenism. Let us call things by their right names, and realize that the Neo-Malthusian worshipping Nature and the Chinese Coolie worshipping his Joss are only two manifestations of exactly the same thing.

Nor are the people who are attempting to turn marriage into a polite and recognized form of prostitution always so reticent as to their attitude towards the Christian Faith. In an article which professes to sum up the work of the Malthusian League I read:--

......“The medical profession in England is still too much under
the sway of the Church and conventional opinion to be able to
discuss the population difficulty, except to censure those who
are wise enough to follow science instead of theological
traditions derived from the _juventus mundi_. Dr. Taylor, of
Birmingham, who is said to be an ardent Churchman, in a
presidential address to the Gynæcological Society, attacked the
views of the Neo-Malthusians.”

And again:--

.......“We have to chronicle the prosecution of a new organ of the
League, _Salud y Fuerza_, published in Barcelona, on account of
an admirable article by Señor Leon Devaldez. Spain is the most
retrograde of all our European nations; but the prosecution, we
believe, will end in the defeat of the clerical party, as has
been the case in England and in France. Science is destroying
our traditional superstitions.”

I feel sure that a great many people have not the slightest idea that not only is this detestable propaganda utterly incompatible with the profession of Christianity, but must logically be opposed to it.

Here is a case in point. The official organ of the Malthusian League quotes a letter from “a warmhearted clergyman,” whose name is not given, in which he says:--

“The theory of Neo-Malthusianism finds a way out of the
difficulty. It is the use of preventive checks which, while
they make possible to all married persons the gratification of
their natural desires, will prevent the possibility of the
ordinary results of such gratification following. ‘This
clergyman,’ adds the editor, ‘is one of the few who are fit to
follow in the footsteps of Malthus, Whately, and Chalmers.’”

It is a not uninteresting speculation, which we may permit ourselves for a moment, as to the probable identity and character of this “clergyman.” One hopes, of course, that he was not a clergyman, and that the editor of the journal, naturally unfamiliar with ecclesiastical affairs, gives the title to some minister of one of the Unitarian sects. But if the writer of the letter is really an ordained priest, then he must surely be either--

(1) An honest fool who means to do right, and does it as far as he knows how.

(2) A dishonest fool who means to do wrong, and does it.

(3) A fool who does whichever of the two he finds most convenient in this or that regard.

We need not, therefore, take the anonymous writer very seriously, but I quote him because the incident throws a side-light upon the psychology of the half Christian. It would be as unwise as it is unnecessary to quote freely from any of the Neo-Malthusian publications. My business in this essay is to make it quite clear to readers that there is a powerful and able organization which is constantly producing literature teaching the limitation of families. There are now six or seven “Malthusian Leagues” in existence, in England, Holland, Germany, France, Belgium, and Spain, and a Woman’s International Branch uniting the women of these countries, while the printed matter issued by these organizations is enormous.

In the English journal to which I have been referring there are many advertisements of books and pamphlets in which the wording is undoubtedly designed to attract others than the earnest seeker after truth. I read, to give one example, that for eightpence post free I can obtain “_The Strike of a Sex_; or, Woman on Strike against the Male Sex for her ‘Magna Charta.’ One of the most advanced books ever published; intended to revolutionize public opinion on the relation of the sexes. Should be read by every person.”

And lower down in the same column I am informed that the publishers of this sort of thing not only sell books advocating Neo-Malthusian practices, but are also willing to provide the means for committing them.

So much for the unsavoury products of the Neo-Malthusian press, products which would make the gentle old clergyman of Haileybury turn away in loathing and disgust could he but see them. Large as the output of this pseudo-economic obscenity is, it does not reach a twentieth part of the people who are responsible for the decline of the birth-rate. They have derived their knowledge from another channel, from the instructions of the medical man or his lesser colleague the chemist.

The poorer classes who, a few years ago were ignorant of this propaganda, are now being instructed in it by the men from whom they buy their medicines. Doctors, in the majority of cases, are perfectly willing to explain to married people how they may avoid having children by means other than those of self-control. As a rule the medical man seems to have no conscience at all in this regard. His point of view is too often merely materialistic and concerned with nothing but physical function, and he has become in many cases, the active agent of the malignant forces which are sapping our national honour and prosperity. In discussing the question, more than one person has expressed his amazement at the readiness of doctors to explain and advocate the limitation of families. The doctors of England form one of the finest classes in the community. I will venture to say that very few men and women arrive at middle life without experiencing a lively feeling of gratitude, friendship, or even affection for some medical man. The devotion to his high calling, of even the average English doctor, is a fact in the lives of nearly all of us. It is the more surprising, and alarming also, when we realize, as inquirers are forced to realize, how wrong and mistaken the general attitude of the physician is towards this aspect of the sexual relations of men and women. It is said that infidelity is rife among those who are educated to cure our bodily ailments, that the agnostic habit of mind is frequent in this profession. I am not competent to judge of this, or to pronounce an opinion upon such a statement, though my own experience is directly opposed to it. But it is certain that until the last fifteen years the scientific temperament was disinclined to believe in anything it could not weigh, measure, analyze, touch, or see. Huxley, for example, was a striking instance of this position. But science has been revolutionized within the experience of one generation, and the “cock-sureness” has disappeared. We are all realizing that “unseen” simply means that which does not appeal to our sense of sight, or perhaps that which does not appeal to any of our senses. One of the most famous and honoured scientific men of to-day, Sir Oliver Lodge, says in regard to miracles, “I think we should hesitate very much before saying that they are impossible, because we do not know what may be the power of a great personality over natural forces.”

As the years go on, we may have great hopes that the regarding of psychology as just as much a necessary part of a doctor’s education as biology, or therapeutics will produce a better feeling among medical men in regard to the great question of which the statistics of the birth-rate form the gauge. Doctors will probably understand that harm done to the body and harm done to the soul react upon one another with remorseless certainty, and that there can be no real separation of spirit and matter. And directly this is understood we shall never find medical men recommending and assisting what Dr. Roux calls “sterile love” though some of us could find a very different name for it.

The layman unhesitatingly accepts the advice of his physician, and here “private judgment” hardly exists. If a priest tells a certain type of Englishman that Evening Communions spoil and maim our holiest sacrament, and are bad for the soul, he will resent it, and say that he will choose for himself in the matter. Yet if a doctor tells the same person that it is dangerous to eat mushrooms that have been gathered for more than two days, or that the irritation at his wrists is a symptom of uric acid in the blood, there will be no question of disbelief. The influence of doctors is incalculable, they rule us by our fear of death and our instinct of self-preservation, and rarely do we find that they abuse the trust reposed in them, or use their great power for ill always excepting the instance under discussion. When, therefore, the medical profession can be brought to see the preventive check system as it really is, when doctors understand that interference with natural laws induces a deterioration of character and temperament which eventually acts upon the body for its harm, and tends to race-degeneracy, then much will be gained. And when they progress still further in the coming reconciliation of science with the Christian Revelation, and own that the laws of God, set out and promulgated by His Holy Church, are no less binding than the laws made known by the revelation of science, then the battle will be half won. The final victory or defeat will be with the priests and ministers of every church and sect, the men who are the physicians of our souls.

The last few pages have been occupied with a statement of the Neo-Malthusian propaganda. I have been careful rather to understate than exaggerate the case. Much that I might have included, corroborative testimony from people who know, individual instances, letters, and so forth, has been rejected for the purposes of this essay. Were I writing another book upon the subject I should have used this material. In a collection of papers devoted to various subjects, and which will have a more general appeal than a work devoted entirely to vital statistics, it is impossible. But any one who has followed me thus far may be sure that I have been strictly temperate in statement.

We have seen what the Neo-Malthusians, avowed and secret, are doing. What is the Church doing to stem the evil? and what is the teaching of the Church upon the subject?

The teaching of the Church is perfectly clear; my contention is that it is so rarely taught as to be practically unknown to large masses of Christians.

No one ever goes to his parish priest and asks if adultery is wrong. Yet innumerable clergymen have told me that they are constantly asked by parishioners if there is “any harm” in the use of methods to limit families.

Such people are not, of course, of a very spiritual life, or very acute intelligence, or they would easily find the answer to such a question for themselves. But very few of us are either spiritually minded or of uncommon intelligence, and legislation must be for the average man. Voltaire said, “_on dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons_,” and what was spoken as a sneer contains the germ of a great truth. Let me say once more, and I am certain of what I say, that the “_gros bataillons_” are quite ignorant of their moral obligations in marriage in so far as they relate to the question under discussion.

Why?

The truth is, in the first instance, very difficult to convey from the pulpit and to a mixed audience, though, to take three great names at random, the President of the United States, and our own Bishops of Ripon and London have spoken out. In accusing the clergy and nonconformist ministers of shirking their duty we must remember the enormous difficulty of their task. I have no responsibility but that of my own conviction, and no one is compelled to buy this book who does not wish to do so. It is therefore quite easy for me to sit in my study and write as I am doing. But the preacher, great as his opportunity and influence are, must by the nature of the case, be in a very different position. He is an official and recognized leader of his flock in spiritual affairs, a hundred considerations weigh with him; he is constrained on all sides by prejudice and convention which might do incalculable harm in other directions if the one was outraged and the other ignored. The position of the priest is admirably summed up in a pamphlet which Father Black has sent me. In it he explains that it is impossible for a preacher when addressing a general congregation to speak in other than general terms, or to say all that he may feel it is, in some cases, very desirable or even necessary to convey. He cannot but be aware that with sins of impurity especially, the very persons who commit them are generally of too delicate ears to endure to hear them called by their right names. This _sentimental_ purity is not incompatible with corruption of life. He wishes to warn the innocent without enlightening their innocence, to lift the veil sufficiently to show their sin to the guilty, and yet to teach them by delicacy and not bring a railing accusation which would probably only harden instead of converting.

It is gravely necessary to realize how difficult the priest’s task is, but at the same time it is extraordinary how little organized condemnation of the evil exists. No one can accurately measure or gauge the influence exercised by clergy in private conversations and admonitions, and this is doubtless considerable. But it is sporadic and not systematic, there is too much timidity and hesitation, and while the enemy is well organized and equipped we are without a plan of campaign and have no regular army in the field.

The Prayer-book, in the Marriage Service, tells us explicitly, “First it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of His Holy Name.” Here we have the voice of the Church speaking plainly enough, and both it and the authority of Scripture are unanimous in clear expression or unmistakable implication. The Christian attitude has been admirably summed up in Father Black’s pamphlet, to which I acknowledged my indebtedness in the preface of my book _First it was Ordained_, and from which strong, lucid, and outspoken statement I quote a few sentences:--

“Of this systematic wickedness, unfaithfulness is the natural
consequence in many cases. Logically there is nothing but a
sense of commercial honesty to keep a woman who has lost the
reverence of marriage to one man. The obligation has no hold on
her higher nature, and when passion or convenience press the
balance there is no sufficient reason why she should be very
scrupulous.

“If women treat themselves, and are treated by their husbands
as mere animals, all idea of chivalry is at an end; and this,
no doubt, is in a measure the ground for a license of speech
and action in even our public amusements, contrary not only to
the _ethos_ of Christianity, but to the principles of a
civilization worthy of the name.

“Women who interfere with the natural end of marriage--the
bearing of children--are wives in name, in reality prostitutes.
Men who require or encourage such acts are corrupters, not
husbands. When I said in my sermon that trifling with God’s
laws of marriage was a horrible sin, I was thinking chiefly of
the woman’s side of the matter.

“True manliness is, however, no less to be desired than true
womanliness. In the words of Lord Tennyson--

“‘Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,’ the man should
find in himself and display to his wife. Philosophy and
religion are in accord here. St. John writes to young men,
‘because ye are _strong_ and have overcome the wicked one.’
Professor Huxley, ‘that man has had a liberal education who has
been so trained that his body is the ready servant of his will;
whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will
the servant of a tender conscience, who has learned to love all
beauty and to hate all vileness, to respect others as himself.’
To me that judgment seems a manly one which pronounces the
corruption of a wife by a husband a viler thing than the
gratification of lust in the common stews. This latter less
deeply degrading to society or injurious to the nation at
large.

“But you and I, my dear sir, are Christians; and our concern is
with Christian marriage. Here, as in everything else, the truth
of Christ will deliver men from mistakes. Christian marriage in
common with all other Christian things has in it the law of
self-denial and self-conquest. Such is the Apostolic view of
it; thus it is to be ‘in the Lord,’ and only ‘in the Lord’ is
it permitted to the Christian.

“Holy Scripture is of course everywhere clear as to the end of
marriage, and God’s condemnation express against the perversion
of it, ‘the Lord slew him.’ St. Paul wills ‘that women marry
_and bear children_.’”

Is not this plain speaking? and could it be bettered as an expression of a militant Christian’s hatred and horror of what is debasing and foul?--I think not. We are not all given the power of feeling the intense loathing for a very generally committed sin which is manifested here. A life in the world and of the world induces a tolerance which is very often laziness and cowardice. We are not to hate the sinner, of course, but only the sin, but which of us cares to inveigh against the vice of a friend? Savonarola was not a popular parson, though Santa Maria del Fiore was always crowded when he was in the pulpit. We ought to be thankful for such bludgeon-sturdy words as these which show us the carrion-passions which war against the soul in their true light.

I know, you know, most men know, how extraordinarily easy it is to become familiar with our vices so that in a short time they become no vices at all, but just little pleasant failings which we share with some of the best fellows in the world. And all becomes dim and misty in the shadowy thoroughfares of thought, while it is only now and then--perhaps never at all--that some bugle-breeze blows over us and sounds _réveillée_ to the sleeping soul.

If we are sensualists, though we don’t realize it, we always live as though we were immortal; immortal in the sense that we shall never die and once more be born. Yet it is a strange truth in life that the man or woman who is converted to a clean life from sins of the body, has often more power than any one else to warn and exhort against sensuality. It is the man from whose eye the mote and beam has been removed who can speak most convincingly of the horrors of the dark. “Experto crede!” he calls out to mankind, and out of the uncleanness is brought forth meat. Let us see what Aurelius Augustinus--that old Father of the Church we call Saint Augustine--has to say of this danger and sin which we are considering. We all know what the Saint’s early life was like, what was the life of a young man at a Pagan University in the fourth century. From his eighteenth year until he was thirty-two the Saint whom we revere lived in open vice at Carthage. On Easter Eve, April 387, he was baptized, and tradition tells us that then the massive harmony of the _Te Deum_ was composed. No theologian has influenced the mind of Christendom more greatly than this man, not only by his writings, but by the spectacle we find in them of the fervour and devotion of his inner life. Remember that he knew all the bitter knowledge of lust, and hear how he writes of those who would prevent conception:--

“Quia etsi non causa propagandæ prolis concumbitur, non tamen
hujus libidinis causa propagationi prolis obsistitur sive voto
malo, sive opere malo. Nam quid hoc faciunt quamvis vocentur
conjuges, non sunt, nec ullam nuptiarum retinent veritatem, sed
honestum nomen velandæ turpitudini obtendunt.”

And of those who use drugs to prevent the birth of children, he further says:--

“Aliquando eo usque pervenit hæc libidinosa crudelitas, vel
libido crudelis, ut etiam sterilitatis venena procuret.

“Prorsus si ambo tales sunt, conjuges non sunt, et si ab initio
tales fuerunt, non sibi per connubium, sed per stuprum potius
convenerunt. Si autem non ambo sunt tales audeo dicere aut
illa est quodam mode meretrix mariti, aut ille adulter uxoris.”

What is to be done? What is the duty of Christians, and how shall they combat this evil? Unless it is to spread and spread till every part of our natural life is infected, something must be done. The Neo-Malthusians are not only teaching married people how to avoid the responsibilities of marriage, but they are teaching unmarried people to do so as well. This is a fact which must not be lost sight of, as more than one clergyman has pointed out. If fear of consequences is removed chastity becomes more than ever threatened. If there is the wish and inclination to sin, and that wish is only not gratified because inconvenient results may lead to discovery, it is true that the moral value of people in such a case is small. But a general recognition of the fact that it is easy to sin will have incalculable influence for harm on those who are as yet on the border-line between the claims of self-gratification and control. Public sentiment becomes lax and unstrung. Simultaneously with the decline of the birth-rate the newspapers show every day that the old ideal, the sacred English ideal of the family is departing. Our greatest living novelist says openly, “Certainly one day the conditions of marriage will be changed. Marriage will be allowed for a certain period, say ten years.” In many parts of America, where the President is ceaselessly urging his countrymen to denounce and give up Neo-Malthusian practices, the home has already disappeared. From a large collection of information and statistics I take only one example, quoted in a leading English newspaper. There is no need for a single word of comment, save that I do not vouch for the truth of the newspaper report which, in its very appearance, proves my point.

“Mrs. Le Page, a New York lady who has just married her eighth
husband, crystallizes her experience in life.

“Five of her seven former husbands are still alive, and they
have just sent messages of encouragement to the new incumbent.
The other two have died.

“Mrs. Le Page’s maiden name was Mary Johnson, and she was the
daughter of a Connecticut farmer. She was only fourteen, but
well grown for her age, when she contracted a runaway marriage
with a seventeen-year-old Danbury clerk named William Wakeman.
In accordance with the American practice of hyphenating family
names, she became Mrs. William Johnson-Wakeman. It was a happy
marriage for three days, and then her family interfered, and
the marriage was annulled.

“Two years later, while in a New York elevated train, she made
the acquaintance of Mr. Harry Saunders, a rich contractor’s son
and a commercial traveller. After two days’ courtship she
became Mrs. Henry Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders, and lived in
perfect happiness, accompanying her husband on his travels for
three years, until he died.

“Shortly afterwards the lady married a railroad man, and was
happy as Mrs. Joseph Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers, until he
was killed in an accident. She next married a Jersey grocer,
but the bonds being severed in the Divorce Court, she married a
hotel-keeper, becoming Mrs. John
Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-Lindley.

“Being once more disappointed, she was again freed by
the Divorce Court, and continued her search for the ideal
husband, whom she thought she had found when she became
Mrs. Thomas Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-Lindley-Godfrey.
But John Godfrey compared unfavourably with his predecessors, and
the Divorce Court restored her freedom. On the following day she
became Mrs. Wilbury-Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-Godfrey-Gay-
(she says that the name too well described his character, as she
shortly proved to the satisfaction of the Divorce Court) Crowther.
This husband soon revealed his true character, and she had no
difficulty in regaining her maiden liberty.

“Mrs. Benjamin (many hyphens) Le Page believes that her
husband, who is English born, and has made considerable money
in this country, is the long-sought ideal, but if he does not
prove so--she is only thirty-nine, and there is still plenty of
time to continue the search. She says that she had long wished
to marry an Englishman, having been favourably impressed by
what she had heard of their high qualities as husbands. She
intends giving the experiment a thorough trial. So far, it has
proved satisfactory, but she says that it is impossible to form
a correct judgment of any man until she has been married for
two or three weeks.

“Marriage, she says, is such a lottery, but it is the blessed
state which it is ordained every woman shall occupy. Her life’s
mission is to find a pre-ordained mate, and she would not be
deterred as many women, by a first failure, but should try and
try again until successful.

“‘My experience,’ she says, ‘is that women make a mistake in
waiting for a man to do all the wooing. When I was young and
inexperienced I fell into that error, and consequently I had
several disappointments. But when I was thirty I realized that
a woman’s duty--well, right--was to do the wooing.’”

Again I ask what is to be done to influence public opinion, to rouse Christians in the same way that the National Conscience has been roused upon the Drink question?

An enormous amount of good can be done by the personal efforts and example of those in a position to influence others--pastors, doctors, Christian layworkers. Yet is it an impossible hope that some day a league or confraternity to fight the battle may be started? Are there no people of sufficient weight and importance in the world’s eye to come forward and do this, no folk whose place will secure them a hearing, whose convictions will interest and convert others?

Eighteen months ago I published, in my book _First it was Ordained_, the sketch of an organized society on definite lines. In the course of the tale the founder of this league writes to an official in the Census Office who is alarmed at the decline of the birth-rate, and outlines the lines on which the society is to be started.

With some necessary elisions this is the letter:--

“You will see, therefore, that though there has been, and
doubtless will continue to be, a great deal of windy talk on
these matters, there is no organized body of men and women, no
league, no union, either religious or political or both, which
is devoted to dealing with the question, to rousing the
national conscience and fighting the Neo-Malthusians tooth and
nail.

“Wifehood--which generally means motherhood--is the predominant
profession of women all over the world. The future of the
world, and of course of any state in it, rests upon the quality
and the quantity of its children. A prominent sociologist has
just written, ‘If the conditions under which the profession of
motherhood is exercised are silly and rotten, our fleets, our
armies, do no more than guard a thing that dies. In Great
Britain, now, I think they are more or less silly and rotten.’
Let us admit that this writer is correct. He does no more than
voice conclusions at which even the most superficial student of
the census returns must have arrived.

“What is to be done, then? How are we who are Christians and
love our Lord, citizens who love our country, to fight the
present conditions?

“That is what a band of people, including those I have
mentioned, are discussing. They have arrived at a definite
conclusion.

“A great league is to be formed of English men and women. Great
names will be at the head of it, it is to be national. I have
already pointed out to you that even the revelations of the
census have not stirred the ordinary person. His patriotism has
not been roused, and, you may be certain--as I am certain--that
no question of national expediency on this point _will_ stir
the ordinary person, who is either indifferent or actually
engaged in helping England’s decadence by the restriction of
his own family. A league started on the grounds of expediency
and the common good alone would be an egregious failure.

“Utilitarianism never fired a great moral movement yet. It
never will; because, before a man becomes a national
utilitarian, he must get over _personal_ utilitarianism. And in
this case of the restriction of family, the degradation of
marriage, _personal_ utilitarianism is directly opposed to
national welfare, and the personal wins.

“We must come back to the one Power and Force over the hearts
and minds of men and women. We must come back to religion.

“Here is the Church’s great opportunity. There has never,
perhaps, in the whole history of the Church in England been
such a chance given to her. Our crusade must be a crusade made
in the light of the Incarnation, under the auspices of God the
Holy Ghost--_the Lord and Giver of Life_.

“Do you begin to see what I mean, what we hope for? The part of
the Holy Spirit’s work, which we recite in the Creed, has been
largely forgotten. Lord and Giver of Life! We are about to
revive the recognition and memory of the fact. We are going to
use this cardinal point of Christian belief as our watchword
and battle-cry.

“The gradual decline of literal belief in the Incarnation, the
growth of a Protestantism which is on its way towards
Unitarianism, the spread of Unitarian doctrines under other
names, among the varied sects of dissent, have meant that an
appalling disregard of life as the gift of God, its Author, has
come among us. It is because you and I believe that Jesus was
God as well as man that we insist upon the sacredness of human
life.

“To-day, the loss of thousands of lives in a battle is printed
as a piece of casual news. There is no particular sense of
horror in the minds of any one. Murders are committed every day
in momentary bursts of passion over trifles. Suicides increase,
not only when some long-continued misery may seem to give a
shadow of excuse, but when there has been some trivial
disappointment. And so, leaving out a hundred other instances,
one comes down to the truth of which every priest, every
doctor, and every nurse is aware, the frustration of God’s
intention of childbirth--the reason for the terrible
disclosures which you and your colleagues have given to the
world in your census returns.

“Our league will be, therefore, a great _Church_ League. We
shall invite every English man and woman to join it, who
believes that Christ was God. This is the only way in which we
can make such a society do its work and accomplish its end.
Directly we begin to allow the political altruist who has no
definite belief in Christianity to join us, so surely our
influence and opportunity will begin to decline. Compromise is
no use whatever. We shall be bitterly assailed, and for a time
we shall not seem to make much headway. I say _seem_, and for
this reason: people who belong to us will not advertise their
membership. The press, which is not interested, as a whole, in
religious affairs, will not understand our aims, nor will it
be--so I imagine--in sympathy with them. And any movement that
has for its object, as this will have, the improvement of
sexual morality, will be fought by the methods of ridicule and
contempt. But this will be but surface, and in time the
influence of our work will not only be felt, but seen. The
wizards of figures will be at work once more.”

Is this a dream and impracticable? It is for the great middle classes of England to answer during the coming years. The middle classes really rule. They do not command public opinion, but they do what is more than that--they persuade it. They represent more than the remaining classes the austerity and also the Christianity of the United Kingdom and the Dominions beyond the seas.

The question rests with them, and there are many who still hope and believe they will be faithful to their trust who are convinced--“DABIT DEUS HIS QUOQUE FINEM.”

THE HISTORICIDES OF OXFORD