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CHAPTER EIGHT

attitude towards the subject, but arise from the limited knowledge of their own history among English speaking peoples. For the purpose of the present chapter one may take it that in spite of my recent efforts in this direction[1] there still remains a very strong misapprehension that scientific and medically advisable methods of birth control are in some ways displeasing to whichever Deity the individual believes in, and are counter to the teachings of Christianity. In fact there are some who go so far as to say that contraception is "against God's Law."

Yet there are Churchmen who see clearly the mistakenness of such an attitude and the Dean of St. Paul's, as Chairman of the first Birth-rate Commission of the National Council of Public Morals, said, "Within the last century the death-rate has been reduced from the mediæval level (45) to 14, and if the birth-rate were maintained at anything like its natural level, about 40, all over the world, the population of the globe, which now is 1,700 millions, would in 120 years have reached 27,000 millions,

  1. ↑ First Presidential Address to the C.B.C. in the Cambridge Magazine, January, 1922. Reprinted as "Early Days of Birth Control." Pp. 32. London, 1922. Also "Married Love," "Wise Parenthood" and "A New Gospel."

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