Arizona republican., 1916-04-16
BIRTH RATE IN GERMANY FALLS
 DURING THE WAR
Republican A. p. Leased Wire]

TRepublican A. p. Leased Wire] l
 BERLIN, April 15.-Beyond the pres ent problems of the successful conduct of the war and maintaining the food supply, the decline in the German birth rate is receiving more and more public attention.
 In the course of a discussion of the matter in the Prussian diet. recently, Dr. krohne, of the medical department of the Prussian government, said that during the first twelve or thirteen years of the present century drop from 8 to 27 had occurred in the rate of living births in Germany to every 1000 of the population, and he said that the birth rate had fallen during this time more rapidly than during the previous twen- ty-five years. "No civilized people" he continued, has ever shown such a drop in so short a time For a Similar reduction in it's birth rate France required over 70 years, but we only 12. We already have 56O, 900 fewer births annually than we should have had if the rate of the year 1900 had been maintained. This  be 2,500, 900 greater than it is and that the total should be nearly 1,000,O00 instead of 6S,000,000. That is an ad vantage which, in view of the great losses in this war, cannot be too highly valued. It has been said, indeed. that we need not be greatly concerned, in asmuch as we have an extraordinarily favorable mortality rate; and it is true that our death rate has been greatly reduced within thirty years, thanks to our gratifying economic development, our improved manner of living, and es- pecially our splendid sanitary meas ures. Thirty years ago the death rate was 26 to 1000 of the population. Today it is only 14-which means that there die today 100000 fewer persons an nuaHy than would die if we still had the death rate of 1886.
 But we must face the regrettable fact that while the death rate has fur ther diminished during the past thir- teen or fourteen years, the birth rate has fallen still more rapidly. The death rate has decreased A. but the birth rate has fallen 7.7 or 75 per cent more rapidly than the mortality figure Irrespective of what the outcome of the war may be- Germans see in their great Slav neighbOr a menace which not even victory will remove, for Rus sia, with a population about twice that of Germany, has yearly excess of births over deaths of more than r per cent. against slightly more than F per cent for Germany.
 PucSia still bac daatb rata of per cent Germany's death rate has been reduced from 26.S per cent in the | sixties to 15 per cent but the latter figure is nearly as low as it can be brought. German sociologists realize that the Russian death rate is bound 1 to be reduced rapidly. They point to l the antialcohol regulations and the l better system of grain distribution as
 two factors which are bound to make themselves felt shortly, and, as showing
 the possibility of progress along other
 sociological lines, they point out that
 the number of illiterates in the Russian
 army sank from 6O.4 in 1903 to 35.7 per
 cent in 1911.
 | Another factor is the possibility that
 the emigration from Russia, which was
 
 great extent stop after the war. Ger
 many's emigration has been of negli-
 gible proportions for more than de- cade.
 l Still another consideration is dis
 cusSed in an article in current maga-
 zine under the title "The Wars Influ- ence on the Will to Propacate' The lauthor says:
 Several months ago I heard for the first time from the lips of d working woman the statement that no mother could longer accept with clear con science the responsibility of bearing
 children. Better no child than to bring children into the world for the fearful fate of becoming food for powder. Since
 that time I have heard the same ex- tpressiOns from the mouths of women
 and also of men of the most different
 classes. Everywhere deep repug-
 nance to beget children. It is therefore
 to be feared that the war threatens to
 add a new, earnest and very effective
 motive to those that now work to limit the number of births."
 Further complicating the subject, is
 the fact that there will be a great ex-
 cess of women over men after the war. Before the war the excess of females
 over males was 900000 in round num-
 bers. Owing, however to the greater
 longevity of the females, the great
 bulk of the excess consisted of women more than 50, that is, beyond the child
 bearing age. The excess of women of fruitful age, however, will be in-
 creased by approximately the number of men killed in the war; removing hundreds of thousands of women from , consideration as possible mothers
 LETCHER SENDS