‘A great responsibility,’ said he, ’rests with those who, possessing commanding influence, refrain from requisite action, and who, instead of seeking to cure proved and acknowledged evils, connive at driving them beneath the surface, where, in secret, they steadily grow and expand.’  And all this for the sake of the ‘young person,’ to whose mythical innocence the welfare of a whole nation is often sacrificed.  M. Zola’s views are summed up in the words:  ’Let all be exposed and discussed, in order that all may be cured!’

He regards Neo-Malthusianism and its practices as abominable, and when he had learnt more of the actual situation in England he was emphatically of opinion that his book ‘Fecondite,’ though applied to France alone, might well, with little alteration, be applied to this country also.

The fluctuations in the English birth-rate from 1872 to 1897 were to him full of meaning.  At a certain period, for instance, they showed all the harm wrought by the abominable Bradlaugh-Besant campaign.  But what he dwelt on still more was the absolute physical incapacity of so many English mothers to suckle their own offspring.  Circumstances are much the same both in France and the United States, at least among the older Colonial families.  In three or four generations the women of a family in which the practice of suckling has ceased, are altogether unable to give the breast; and the ‘bottle’ ensues, with its thousand evils and a gradual deterioration of the race.

On the last occasion when James Russell Lowell came to England he was asked what change, if any, he remarked since his last visit, among the people he met, and he replied that he was most struck by the falling off in height, and breadth of shoulders, of the average man in the London streets.

Though matters have not yet reached such a point as in France and elsewhere, it is I think incontestable that the English race, like many another, is physically deteriorating.  Athletics tend to improve the standard, but there must be proper material to work upon, and M. Zola, I found, held the view that for a race to be healthy its womenfolk should be willing and able to discharge the primary duties of Nature.  When he discovered that so many Englishwomen would not or could not suckle their babes, he remarked that England had started on the same downward course as France.

He often watched the troops of nursemaids and children whom he met during his afternoon strolls.  He noticed and told me how many of the former neglected their charges, standing about, flirting or gossiping, or looking into shop windows, while the baby in the bassinette or the mail-cart sucked away at that vile invention the bone and gutta-percha ‘soother,’ and he was astonished that ladies should apparently consider it beneath them to accompany baby on the promenade.  Indeed the invariable absence of the mothers gave him a rather bad opinion of them:  for surely they must know that many of the nurse-girls neglected the infants and yet they exercised no supervision.  ‘Of course,’ said he, ’they are visiting or receiving, or reading novels, or bicycling or playing lawn tennis.  Ah! well, that is hardly my conception of a mother’s duty towards her infant, whatever be her station in life.’