When we consider the general subject of Eugenics we touch upon the highest ground, and are concerned with our best hopes for the future of the world. There can be no doubt that Birth Control, considered as a phase of Eugenics, is not only a precious but also an indispensable instrument in moulding the coming man to the measure of our developing ideals. Without Birth Control we are powerless in the face of the awful evils which flow from random and reckless reproduction. With it we possess a power so great that some persons have professed to see in it a menace to the propagation of the race, amusing themselves with the idea that if people possess the means to prevent the conception of children they will never have children at all. It is not necessary to discuss such a grotesque notion seriously. The desire for children is far too deeply implanted in mankind and womankind alike ever to be rooted out. If there are today many parents whose lives are rendered wretched by large families and the miseries of excessive child-bearing, there are an equal number whose lives are wretched because they have no children at all, and who snatch eagerly at any straw which offers the smallest promise of relief to the craving. Certainly there are people who desire marriage, but--some for very sound and estimable reasons and other for reasons which may less well bear examination--do not desire children at all. For the class of married people who do not desire children at all, contraceptive methods, far from being a social evil, are a social blessing. For nothing is as certain as that it is an unmixed evil for a community to possess unwilling, undesirable parents. Birth Control would be an unmixed blessing if it merely enabled us to exclude such persons from the ranks of parenthood. We desire no parents who are not competent and willing parents. Only such parents are fit to father and to mother a future race worthy to rule the world. It is sometimes said that the control of conception, since it is frequently carried out immediately upon marriage, will tend to delay parenthood until an unduly late age. Birth Control has, however, no necessary result of this kind, and might even act in the reverse direction. A chief cause of delay in marriage is the prospect of the burden and expense of an unrestricted flow of children into the family; and it is said that in Great Britain, since 1911, with the extension of the use of contraceptives, there has been a slight but regular increase not only in the general marriage rate but also in the proposition of early marriage. The ability to control the number of children not only enables marriage to take place at an early age, but also makes it possible for the couple to have at least one child soon after marriage. The total number of children are thus spaced out, instead of following in rapid succession.