who, in a debate on the subject in the Prussian Diet, February 1916,
asserted: "Unfortunately this view has gained followers amongst the
German women.... These women, in refusing to rear strong and able
children to continue the race, drag into the dust that which is the
highest end of women--motherhood. It is to be hoped that the willingness
to bear sacrifices will lead to a change for the better.... We need
an increase in human beings to guard against the attacks of envious
neighbors as well as to fulfil our cultural mission. Our whole economic
development depends on increase of our people." Today we are fully aware
of how imperial Germany fulfiled that cultural mission of hers; nor
can we overlook the fact that the countries with a smaller birth-rate
survived the ordeal. Even from the traditional militaristic standpoint,
strength does not reside in numbers, though the Caesars, the Napoleons
and the Kaisers of the world have always believed that large exploitable
populations were necessary for their own individual power. If Marxian
dictatorship means the dictatorship of a small minority wielding power
in the interest of the proletariat, a high-birth rate may be necessary,
though we may here recall the answer of the lamented Dr. Alfred Fried to
the German imperialists: "It is madness, the apotheosis of unreason, to
wish to breed and care for human beings in order that in the flower of
their youth they may be sent in millions to be slaughtered wholesale by
machinery. We need no wholesale production of men, have no need of the
`fruitful fertility of women,' no need of wholesale wares, fattened and
dressed for slaughter What we do need is careful maintenance of those
already born. If the bearing of children is a moral and religious duty,
then it is a much higher duty to secure the sacredness and security of
human life, so that children born and bred with trouble and sacrifice
may not be offered up in the bloom of youth to a political dogma at the
bidding of secret diplomacy."