Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The declining birth-rate / Herbert Thurston. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![IRE 2ARY THE DECLINING B BY THE REV. HERBERT THURSTON, S.J. THE general and persistent fall in the birth-rate (ie. in the number of children annually born per thousand of population) has long engaged the attention of political economists. This decline has taken place on such a scale in nearly all the more progressive countries of the world that it has at last come to be looked upon as a danger, the nature and causes of which call for organized investigation. Some short time before the present war began, a voluntary but fairly representative Commission was formed to inquire into the problems involved—so far at any rate as they affected the United Kingdom. The Report of the Commissioners, now at last pub- lished in 1916,? has claims upon the attention of al] public-spirited Catholics, partly on account of its bearing on the question of population at a time when the manhood strength of each country is seen to be a vital factor in its military effectiveness, but still more urgently because the moral problenis have been definitely pronounced upon by the Church in a way which leaves no room for difference of opinion. t Reprinted from The Month. ® The Declining Birth-Rate, its Causes and Effects. London Chapman and Hall. 1916,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3347588x_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
