The Oregon daily journal., July 12, 1908, Page 25, Image 25

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TT 7 ITHIN the short period of five
tlf years the scornful pity vouch
r safed by Europe's leading na
tions to the United States for this country's
neglect of tlurime duty of a people-
race propagation has changed to sud
den, desperate searching, of hearts and sta
tistics on their own account.
It is no longer "The shameful race
suicide of the Americans." It is, "Why are
our oven cradles empty?"
The empty cradle I In teeming Eu
rope that vacant nest is now appalling gov
ernments, while whole peoples stand aghast
at dwindling numbers, even as a generation
ago they stood dismayed in the presence of
too many. .
Germany alone sees her cradles full.
She stands, a growing giant, among neigh-,
bors who dread her in the process of their
dwindling.
Russia, starving amid the smouldering
fres of her slumbering revolution, sees in
numerable sickly infants born and perish.
Her uncounted millions take no census of
them beyond the surmise that they vanish as
the herds do from the steppes. Where there
is too little food there is ever too little life,
Italy, in the south,' perceives her chil
dren bom and sees the cradle robbed by dis
ease that ample nourishment could amply
balk. w
England, from having taken huge
pride in her virtue as a welcoming parent,
is crying out in horror of infanticide and is
questioning "infant insurance" as though it
were a babe-devouring Moloch; yet her true
weakness is identical with that of France.
France is held up, by her own legisla
tors in her own eyes, as the horrible exam
ple, out of all the world, in race suicide.
Is it to be a childless or a Teutonic Eu
rope? VAST tl
for tl
towr
-aoi irironm cruDiea. Men infl wo
tb roott part mlddle-acad. itruinJ
ird th church atDB. Mad with
mani. iraniiaa witn thla coatacloua curloaltr
thay but oni another with their clenched flata.'
atrlrtor t Bg-bt to the center.'
"1 Jt the ad Drerfua areln beln aealD
fttedr I aiked the muacuiax butcher beetle me.
He apoke not, bat hit trie between the rea
with the butt of hie flat. It waa hie reply to the
queetlon that bad coet him a forward etep.
1 due n elbow into hie abdomen, j did not
tura to eee him elnk under the dixabllnff atroke.
The freniy bad aelaed upea roe. Klrklnr. atrfk
Inr. rending-. I forced my war lata the heart of a
group of Impromptu alllee whe, cohenng.
era had onward to the Terr doora of the edlflceT
There we beheld the marvel which all blaae
Pari had flocked to eea.
It waa a real French babr From the French
eX Philippe CamlUa.
FREXCHIIEN of today perctire so -geperttioa
in thit jraphie gketch of tb
imafingr future. Tbej reti it aod
rcmuk, tLoTihtfuI2:
It u poi ilia perti r eren prolalla,, , . .
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Publication of the vital
statistics of the nation dur
ing 1907 has left France
worse than worried. She is
despairing.
There were only 774,000
births last year. There were
793,000 deaths. For seven
years the French birthrate
has decreased at the rate of
12,000 a year.
In 1907 " it. decreased
83,000, nearly three times
as many. -
Within a century the
births in the French nation have fallen from
1,007,000 a year to less than three-fourths the
rate that let her conquer Europe.
France gAtos at her Paris, with its fashions
that dominate the world, its art which gives the
tone to all judgments of the beautiful, its satur
nalia of liaisons and of wit; France gazes at her
provinces, with their shrewdly tilled acreage and
their comfortable wealth; France gazes abroad
at br possessions; and France winces in appre
hension amid every glance of pride.
For how shall she remain supreme in art,
retain her colonies, or even stay strong enough
to keep her acres from following Alsace and
Lorraine into some hungry foreign maw, unless
she produce the babes who, in the darkening fu
ture, are destined to be herself. - .
The France of today beholds herself weak;
she sees the France of tomorrow weaker; but
the France of the future she sees unborn.
It needed a startling sermon, from the lips
of the AfOfricao who instantly commands the
attention of avilim! peoples, to direct 'public;
scrutiny to the national evasion racial duty;
tad, xhst with the land's drawing advantages of
PORTLAND OREGON, SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 12 1903
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Alarm in France
England Over Low
ering BirthRate
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resources and government, ita sirurement of the
best populations the Old World has still to
spare, suffices to maintain a growth that remains
the envy of the nations.
With France only the bare figures and the
bare, abortive remedies proposed have edged be
yond the reserve of a people unanimous in their
endeavor to conceal their recreancy. But that
has been enough.
Confefsed before the world, brilliant, au
dacious, economical, prudent France stands ex
posed in the nakedness of its cradles, furnished
with all the'essentials of a powerful! idertlcp
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A
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ing race, from layettes
to nourishment, unfurnished
with that one essential
which is indispensable, the
baby.
And always, at her very
door, thrives the dreaded
menace of the ancient and
6teadily expanding foe, Ger
many. The land of the
kaiser takes in her statistics
of population a pride equal
to the humiliation with
which France contemplates
hers. She announces them
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with haughty superiority.
The German empire; .at the time of its for
mation, had 40,000,000 inhabitants. France, at
the time, had between 33,000.000 and 39,000,000,
a difference which, for all practical purposes,
was actual equality.
In 1905 the population of German;- had in
creased to more than 60.:00,OO0. At the be
ginning of 1907 it had reached 61.5oO.000. In
the fifteen years between 1S90 and 1905 Ger
many added to her population 11,000,0; 3 human
beings.
France, within the sme period, hsd ad
vanced only a puny million. The German ratio of
increase was more than a dozen time thai of
the French.
Now the German empire has 22,000,000
more than France, an advance of 60 per cent.
A dozen years, and the relative rates of increase
will have given Germany a preponderance .
amounting to 80,000,000 perhaps more than
that, for the French net total of population,
now made public, shows that the deaths are at .
last coming to exceed the births; that the ra
lion, like a plant, for year able to maintain
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barely its original numbers, is dying out' with '
the generation that was originally , too weak to
increase and thrive.
"A little further on," the German publicists
boast, "say, twenty-five years hence, the Ger-
man population will be double that of France
for every passing year the figures of population
change to the greater advantage of the German
empire.
"In France," they declare, with aL truth,
"there is a remarkable lack of soldiers and la
borers. Although the requirements of the mili
tary service have been considerably moainea
from time to time, it is increasingly difficult toi
fill the regular quota of the army on a peace I
footing. In a few years It will be wholly im-j
possible. m I
"Only that nation whose population is on
the increase will be able, in decades to come, to.
hold its own in the universal competition for
political and economical influence." I
The analysis of French society, last mad'.,,
upon the basis of the exact count of the popu-;
lation as being 38,350,733, 'afforded some strik- .
ing hints of the causes that are operating forj
the elimination of the French from among tha
world's peoples. 1
Females are markedly in excess of males,
numbering 19,533,899 as agair-t 18,816,899. Wid
ows and divorced women constitute an army of .
2,384,897; divorced men and widowers are less ',
than half the number, only l)0a,884. !
There are 9,781,117 families; but 1,314,783
of those "families" are without children, while
2.249,337 have but one child and 2,018,665 have,
the two that, apparently sufficient to maintain' '
the normal of population," are in reality abso ..
lutely inadequate, because a large percentage of l
children perish before reaciin-r the stage of re
production in their turn. t ' ',
Among two-thirds of the FrcacS families
the average number of children does not tx
ceed three: and even that does not suffice to
maintain the standard; this year's returns show .
deaths 19.000 in excess of births.
Sociologists, studying these figures in their
quest after the secret cause, have discovered it
in the strangest of all anomalies. .
Upon France, nearly a century after -his
terrible activities ceased in their exercise, rests
the crushing curse of her worshiped Napoleon,
Creating an empire by a series of conflicts
which drained the land of all the strongest vi
rility that remained to it after the sensualities of
its nobles and the oppression of its peasants, be
sought to perpetuate it by plagiarizing from .
Montesquieu an idea of government whi& was
destined inevitably to deprive the conquerors of
the very warriors they seeded to hold in sub jec-1
tion the kingdoms they had acquired. It was
as though, having rounded up a den of tigers, be
had planned to reduce the number of keepers
until none should be left to wield the whip of
government. . . . f
Into the fundamental law of France he la .
Jected the requirement of a division of the prop- '
erty of the parents, at death, among all their,
children. It seemed to mean complete emlity
of. all U the family in their start in the rice
for fort one. - 1 '
The real effect became apparent within iwt
generations, A paternal inheritance t il--.t
for one heir waa poverty fur nary !... 1!
couple who could ciscern no rea r t'e I ; c
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