The people of the United States have recently been called upon to
exercise their traditional generosity not merely to aid the European
Relief Council in its efforts to keep alive three million, five hundred
thousand starving children in Central Europe, but in addition to
contribute to that enormous fund to save the thirty million Chinese
who find themselves at the verge of starvation, owing to one of those
recurrent famines which strike often at that densely populated and inert
country, where procreative recklessness is encouraged as a matter of
duty. The results of this international charity have not justified the
effort nor repaid the generosity to which it appealed. In the first
place, no effort was made to prevent the recurrence of the disaster; in
the second place, philanthropy of this type attempts to sweep back the
tide of miseries created by unrestricted propagation, with the feeble
broom of sentiment. As one of the most observant and impartial of
authorities on the Far East, J. O. P. Bland, has pointed out: "So long
as China maintains a birth-rate that is estimated at fifty-five per
thousand or more, the only possible alternative to these visitations
would be emigration and this would have to be on such a scale as would
speedily overrun and overfill the habitable globe. Neither humanitarian
schemes, international charities nor philanthropies can prevent
widespread disaster to a people which habitually breeds up to and
beyond the maximum limits of its food supply.
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