"I have no doubt that if natural checks were allowed to operate right
through the human as they do in the animal world, a better result
would follow. Among the brutes, the weaker are driven to the wall, the
diseased fall out in the race of life. The old brutes, when feeble or
sickly, are killed. If men insisted that those who were sickly should
be allowed to die without help of medicine or science, if those who
are weak were put upon one side and crushed, if those who were old and
useless were killed, if those who were not capable of providing food
for themselves were allowed to starve, if all this were done, the
struggle for existence among men would be as real as it is among
brutes and would doubtless result in the production of a higher race
of men.
"But are you willing to do that or to allow it to be done?"
We are not willing to let it be done. Mother hearts cling to children,
no matter how diseased, misshapen and miserable. Sons and daughters
hold fast to parents, no matter how helpless. We do not allow the weak
to depart; neither do we cease to bring more weak and helpless beings
into the world. Among the dire results is war, which kills off, not
the weak and the helpless, but the strong and the fit.
What shall be done? We have our choice of one of three policies. We
may abandon our science and leave the weak and diseased to die, or
kill them, as the brutes do. Or we may go on overpopulating the earth
and have our famines and our wars while the earth exists. Or we can
accept the third, sane, sensible, moral and practicable plan of birth
control. We can refuse to bring weak, the helpless and the unwanted
children into the world. We can refuse to overcrowd families, nations
and the earth. There are these ways to meet the situation, and only
these three ways.
The world will never abandon its preventive and curative science; it
may be expected to elevate and extend it beyond our present
imagination. The efforts to do away with famine and the opposition to
war are growing by leaps and bounds. Upon these efforts are largely
based our modern social revolutions.
There remains only the third expedient--birth control, the real cure
for war. This fact was called to the attention of the Peace Conference
in Paris, in 1919, by the Malthusian League, which adopted the
following resolution at its annual general meeting in London in June
of that year:
"The Malthusian League desires to point out that the proposed scheme
for the League of Nations has neglected to take account of the
important questions of _the pressure of population_, which _causes the
great international economic competition_ and rivalry, and of the
_increase of population_, which is put forward as a justification for
_claiming increase of territory_. It, therefore, wishes to put on
record its belief that the League of Nations will only be able to
fulfill its aim _when it adds a clause_ to the following effect:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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