Note 31 — Chapter III · NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
Reading edition
A recent book on the subject, summing up the various recommendations made in France up to 1918 for increasing the birth-rate is La Natalité: ses Lois Economiques et Psychologiques, by Gaston Rageot.
The present writer remembers being present ten years before the War at a Conference at the Sorbonne on this subject. One of the lecturers summarised all the various plans that had been tried to increase the birth-rate. ‘They have all failed,’ he concluded, ‘and I doubt if anything remains to be done.’ And one of the savants present added: ‘Except to applaud.’