If this is true of the healthy and the sound, however, how much more true ought it to be [p214] of the unhealthy and the degenerate! Again, in regard to them, if the State takes upon itself to shoulder the burden of indigent degenerates of all kinds, it is entitled to impose limits upon their multiplication. He who pays may lay down his conditions. And this would remain true, whether the present system were to be maintained, or whether it were superseded within the next quarter of a century by Bolshevism or Communism. Since it is the iron law of population that multiplication follows any easing of the conditions of the indigent, either by making earlier marriages a possibility, or by making the consequences of early marriages tolerable, it follows that all Governments, whether Capitalistic, Bolshevist, or Communistic, if they undertake to succour the indigent, whose families exceed their resources, must in the end impose certain limits upon multiplication. And where they take over the whole burden as they do in this country, of indigent lunatics and other degenerates, they have the right to exercise all the means at their command for preventing degenerates from being born. Communists and Bolshevists may scout this question, just as dishonest vote-catching past Governments have done; but let a Labour Government come permanently into power, let a Bolshevist minority attempt to rule this country, and it would soon discover, what all creditable thinkers know already, that the question of population is one about which even the most benign government _must_ frame some definite policy. Indeed it would soon discover the fact, which will [p215] perhaps only become apparent to all in many years to come: that a truly benign policy in this matter is one which at present would strike all sentimentalists, and other Utopians as hopelessly ruthless and inhuman. It is in the procreation of children that a man and woman’s sense of responsibility first encounters its crucial test. For generations in this country, men and women’s sense of responsibility in this matter has been systematically undermined; and, as regards the procreation of degenerates, of the unhealthy, and of the insane, it might be said that there is literally no conscience left in modern man concerning this crime. It will behove all serious and patriotic governments in the future, therefore, whether they are capitalistic or Bolshevist, to face this pressing problem of modern times, and the vandalistic work of centuries,--the destruction of the English working man and woman’s sense of responsibility in regard to procreation,--will by hook or by crook have to be repaired, and a new conscience regarding this matter created in the breasts of all. Thus the tasks hinted at in this short chapter are seen to be stupendous enough, and yet which of them can possibly be accomplished simply by the wand of the Communist, Bolshevist, or economic social reformer?