George Orwell
As I Please
Tribune, 14 April 1944 The April issue of Common
Wealth devotes several paragraphs to the problem of the falling British birthrate. A
good deal of what it says is true, but it also lets drop the following remarks:
The know-alls are quick to point to contraceptives, nutritional errors,
infertility, selfishness, economic insecurity, etc., as basic causes of decline. But facts
do not support them. In Nazi Germany, where contraceptives are illegal, the birthrate has
reached a record low ebb, whereas in the Soviet Union, where there are no such
restrictions, population is healthily on the up and up . . . . Reproduction, as the
Peckham experiment has helped to prove, is stimulated in an environment marked by
fellowship and cooperation . . . . Once meaning and purpose are restored to life, the
wheels of production are kept humming, and life is again an adventure instead of just an
endurance, we shall hear no more of the baby shortage.
It is not fair to the public to treat all-important subjects in this
slapdash way. To begin with, you would gather from the passage quoted above that Hitler lowered the German
birthrate. On the contrary, he raised it to levels unheard-of during the Weimar Republic. Before the war
it was above replacement level, for the first time in many years. The catastrophic drop in
the German birthrate began in 1942, and must have been partly caused by so many German
males being away from home. Figures cannot be available yet, but the Russian birthrate
must also certainly have dropped over the same period.
You would also gather that the high Russian birthrate dates from
the Revolution. But it was also
high in Czarist times. Nor is there any mention of the countries where the birthrate is
highest of all, that is, India, China, and (only a little way behind) Japan. Would it be
accurate to say, for instance, that a South Indian peasants life is an
adventure instead of just an endurance"?
The one thing that can be said with almost complete certainty on
this subject is that a high birthrate goes with a low standard of living, and vice versa.
There are few if any real exceptions to this. Otherwise the question is exceedingly
complex. It is, all the same, vitally important to learn as much about it as we can,
because there will be a calamitous drop in our own population unless the present trend is
reversed within ten or, at most, twenty years. One ought not to assume, as some people do,
that this is impossible, for such changes of trend have often happened before. The experts
are proving now that our population will be only a few millions by the end of this
century, but they were also proving in 1870 that by 1940 it would be 100 millions. To
reach replacement level again, our birthrate would not have to take such a sensational
upward turns as, for instance, the Turkish birthrate did after Mustapha Kemal took over. But the
first necessity is to find out why populations rise and fall, and it is just as
unscientific to assume that a high birthrate is a byproduct of Socialism as to swallow everything
that is said on the subject by childless Roman Catholic priests.
When I read of the goings-on in the House of Commons the week before
last, I could not help being reminded of a little incident that I witnessed twenty years
ago and more.
It was at a village cricket match. The captain of one side was
the local squire who, besides being exceedingly rich, was a vain, childish man to whom the
winning of this match seemed extremely important. Those playing on his side were all or
nearly all his own tenants.
The squires side were batting, and he himself was out and
was sitting in the pavilion. One of the batsmen accidentally hit his own wicket at about
the same moment as the ball entered the wicketkeepers hands. Thats not
out, said the squire promptly, and went on talking to the person beside him. The
umpire, however, gave a verdict of out, and the batsman was half-way back to
the pavilion before the squire realized what was happening. Suddenly he caught sight of
the returning batsman, and his face turned several shades redder.
What! he cried, hes given him out?
Nonsense! Of course hes not out! And then, standing up, he cupped his hands
and shouted to the umpire: Hi, what did you give that man out for? He wasnt
out at all!
The batsman had halted. The umpire hesitated, then recalled the
batsman to the wicket and the game went on.
I was only a boy at the time, and this incident seemed to me
about the most shocking thing I had ever seen. Now, so much do we coarsen with the passage
of time, my reaction would merely be to inquire whether the umpire was the squires
tenant as well.
Attacking Mr C. A. Smith and myself in the Malvern Torch for
various remarks about the Christian religion, Mr Sidney Dark grows very angry because I
have suggested that the belief in personal immortality is decaying. I would
wager, he says, that if a Gallup poll were taken seventy-five per cent (of the
British population) would confess to a vague belief in survival. Writing elsewhere
during the same week, Mr Dark puts it at eighty-five per cent.
Now, I find it very rare to meet anyone, of whatever background,
who admits to believing in personal immortality. Still, I think it quite likely that if
you asked everyone the question and put pencil and paper in his hands, a fairly large
number (I am not so free with my percentages as Mr Dark) would admit the possibility that
after death there might be something. The point Mr Dark has missed is that the
belief, such as it is, hasnt the actuality it had for our forefathers. Never,
literally never in recent years, have I met anyone who gave me the impression of believing
in the next world as firmly as he believed in the existence of, for instance, Australia.
Belief in the next world does not influence conduct as it would if it were genuine. With
that endless existence beyond death to look forward to, how trivial our lives here would
seem! Most Christians profess to believe in Hell. Yet have you ever met a Christian who
seemed as afraid of Hell as he was of cancer? Even very devout Christians will make jokes
about Hell. They wouldnt make jokes about leprosy, or R.A.F. pilots with their faces
burnt away: the subject is too painful. Here there springs into my mind a little triolet
by the late G. K. Chesterton:
Its a pity that Poppa has sold his soul,
It makes him sizzle at breakfast so.
The money was useful, but still on the whole
Its a pity that Poppa has sold his soul
When he might have held on like the Baron de Coal,
And not cleared out when the price was low.
Its a pity that Poppa has sold his soul,
It makes him sizzle at breakfast so.
Chesterton, a Catholic, would presumably have said that he believed in
Hell. If his next-door neighbour had been burnt to death he would not have written a comic
poem about it, yet he can make jokes about somebody being fried for millions of years. I
say that such belief has no reality. It is a sham currency, like the money in Samuel Butlers Musical
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