Young Darwin

Londoners of a Victorian cast of mind peeped cautiously last week into a new book, The Need for Eugenic Reform, by Major Leonard Darwin. They had not yet recovered from The Origin of Species by the Major's late father, Charles Darwin. Their horridest fears were stirred when they discovered that the "eugenic reform" demanded by the major is a law penalizing individuals who bring into the world a greater number of children than their income will permit them to support decently.

Stouter-hearted readers pondered well Major Darwin's proposals:

1) All couples receiving public assistance, relief from the state, unemployment doles, or free feeding of children, shall be warned that they must have not more than two children.

2) Upon the birth of a third child, all public assistance shall cease immediately.

3) Should subsequent investigation (to be made in all cases) show that the children are not being reared under decent conditions, then the father and mother shall be segregated from each other until such time as they may possess the means to rear their children adequately.

The Major continues:

"The proposed deterrent should be known by all to be certain to follow immediately on any disregard of a warning given, and it should be sufficiently drastic to strike the imagination of even the dullwitted. If it became known that all this would be the inevitable result of parenthood under these conditions, a fall would take place in the birth rate of all this section of the less fit, with great beneficial results, both immediate and racial."

The Significance. Since a root cause of war from which most surface causes spring is admittedly the pressure of increasing population, it is to the advantage of all nations to ease and curb this pressure wisely, lest haphazard blood-letting continue.* But in Rome, Minister of Interior Luigi Federzoni cried last week:

"We must repress all the dangerous theories which can wound the morals and health of our people. . . . Large numbers of children in the families, which are the greatest riches of the Italian nation, offer the most powerful instrument for Italy's expansion in the world. . . ."

* Since the close of the "World War," the "Last War," the "War to End War," not a single year has passed without a first class war. Thus far, the 20th Century has experienced only one year tolerably free from formal warfare: 1910.