But there is this hope.  It is among the mentally alert and well-informed men and women that birth-control is first understood and applied, and it is among this very same class that the medical prevention of venereal disease is also first understood and applied.  Thus, there will tend to be less disease among this class than among the mentally torpid and ill-informed masses of the community.  This in itself will not improve the race, but it will prevent the deterioration of certain classes and increase their numbers.  Nevertheless, so long as the irresponsible and feeble-minded and diseased are permitted to multiply indiscriminately, as at present, they must ultimately outnumber and overwhelm the classes which are practising self-restraint or applying birth-control.  This process may even be hastened by a political enfranchisement, which enables twelve feeble-minded persons to outvote two wise men six times over.  Thus, to succeed democracy must raise and maintain the general average of brains and character throughout the community.  In so far as it permits low-grade individuals to be born in the homes of the masses, and high-grade individuals in the homes of the classes, it is manufacturing a rod to thrash its own back, successful rebellion against which mode of Government ends in mere anarchy and chaos.[D]

[Footnote D:  The present need of the white race is to increase its numbers of fit and decrease its numbers of unfit.  Over-population (except in a few patches of the Old World) is not likely to be a problem for the white race for centuries.  They have several continents practically empty and undeveloped, and science has as yet touched only the fringe of the possible productivity of the earth in the matter of food supplies.  The worst feature of the British Empire is that there are too many Englishmen and not enough Anzacs.—­E.A.R.]

One duty at any rate is quite clear.  No woman should run any chance of conception unless she is certain of her own health and the health of her partner—­the man who is to be the father of the child she is to bring into the world.  If her husband’s health is unsound, and she cannot avoid intercourse, she can certainly take precautions against conception and against infection.  The control of fecundity and the control of infection are parallel problems, and generally speaking, the measures a woman takes to prevent conception will also prevent infection.  If these precautions are not taken, a woman may not only become seriously ill herself, but she may blast the health of her unborn babe—­or infect it herself during or after birth.  Clearly then it is her personal, as well as her maternal and national, duty to apply preventive measures.