_Witness_.--My main contention was in regard to the enormous antenatal mortality.... The number of abortions is about four times as great as the still-birth.... Assuming that the still-births are 3 per cent., and the abortions 12 per cent., the two together are 15 per cent. Of the mass of evidence regarding this terrible aspect of the national life, these quotations must suffice. The public conscience has, in this last generation, become so deadened on the part of masses of the {43} people that life is no longer sacred. 'It is always a great comfort to me,' says Dr. Amand Routh, 'that it is criminal as well as wrong--that one can show that the law considers it to be murder.' To escape from inconvenience, to secure freedom from responsibility, to attain untrammelled devotion to pleasure--the weapon of murder is freely used. One of the witnesses, Mrs. Burgwin, told the Commission an experience. 'When I went to Moscow,' says Mrs. Burgwin, 'I went to see the great Foundling Hospital ... and I felt very ashamed when I came away, because I said to a Russian doctor there, "You know this is very serious; you have got a couple of thousand illegitimate children, and by bringing them into a place like this you are only encouraging illegitimacy!" And he said to me, "Well, Mrs. Burgwin, is not that better than what you do in England? There, even your married people murder the children."' {44} V There is another cause of the falling birthrate which I will only indicate. However necessary it may be to look facts in the face, there are facts so ugly that they do not bear even contemplation. One great cause of the fall in the birthrate is the social disease. One or two quotations must suffice. 'I hold,' says Dr. Ballantyne, 'that in a given family, if syphilis enters it, it is the most deadly thing for the future of that family.' 'Have you any idea about the proportion of antenatal deaths which are due to syphilis?' 'Of course, one's idea is,' answered Dr. Amand Routh, 'that it is an enormous proportion--perhaps one-fourth....' 'Dr. Willey was of opinion that probably 32.8 per cent. of the total still-births were due to syphilis.' 'I would hold the view that it is a considerable proportion,' says Dr. Ballantyne, {45} 'founding upon Fournier's evidence in France, where he speaks broadly of families being swept out of existence before birth by syphilis.' 'We have been recently told that there are 500,000 fresh cases of syphilis yearly in this country and three times that number of cases of gonorrhea.'