Canada is an instructive example because we have some ground for believing that the difference between the English-speaking and French-speaking populations—­the greater care of the former in procreation and the more recklessly destructive methods of the latter in attaining the same ends—­are due to their different attitudes towards the use of methods of birth-control.  What the result of a general use of such methods is we know from the example already mentioned of Holland, where they are taught, officially recognised, and in general use, not only among the rich but among the poor.  The result is that the birth-rate has been falling slowly and steadily for forty years.  But the death-rate has also been falling and at a greater rate.  So that the more the birth-rate has fallen the higher has been the rate of increase among the population.

It is perhaps in Australia and New Zealand that we find the most satisfactory proofs of the benefits of a falling birth-rate in relation to “Race-Suicide.”  The evidence may well appeal to us the more since it is precisely here that the race-suicide fanatic finds freest scope for his wrath.  He looks gleefully at China with its prolific women, at Russia with its magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40.  No nonsense about birth-control there!  No shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity!  No immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture.  And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is choked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of “Race-Suicide” nearly in sight and the spectre of the Last Man rising before him.  For there is no doubt about it, Australia and New Zealand contain a population which is gradually reaching the highest point yet known of democratic organisation and general social well-being, and the birth-rate has been falling with terrific speed.  Sixty-years ago in the Australian Commonwealth it was nearly 44, only forty years ago in New Zealand it was 42.  Now it is only about 26 in both lands.  Yet the survival-rate, the actual growth of the population, is not so very much less with this low birth-rate than it was with the high birth-rate.  For the death-rate has also fallen in both lands to about 10 (in New Zealand to 9) which is lower than any other country in the world.  The result is that Australia and New Zealand, where (so it is claimed) preventives of conception are hawked from door to door, instead of being awful examples of “Race-Suicide,” actually present the highest rate of race-increase in the world (only excepting Canada, where it is less firmly and less healthily based), nearly twice that of Great Britain and able at the present rate to double itself every 44 years.  So much for “Race-Suicide.”