Now, since our imaginary New Republic, which is to set itself to the
making of a better generation of men, will find the possibility of
improving the race by selective breeding too remote for anything but
further organised inquiry, it is evident that its first point of attack
will have to be the wastage of such births as the world gets to-day.
Throughout the world the New Republic will address itself to this
problem, and when a working solution has been obtained, then the New
Republican on press and platform, the New Republican in pulpit and
theatre, the New Republican upon electoral committee and in the ballot
box, will press weightily to see that solution realised. Upon the
theory of New Republicanism as it was discussed in our first paper an
effective solution (effective enough, let us say, to abolish seventy or
eighty per cent.) of this scandal of infantile suffering would have
precedence over almost every existing political consideration.

The problem of securing the maximum chance of life and health for every
baby born into the world is an extremely complicated one, and the
reader must not too hastily assume that a pithy, complete recipe is
attempted here. Yet, complicated though the problem is, there does not
occur any demonstrable impossibility such as there is in the question
of selective breeding. I believe that a solution is possible, that its
broad lines may be already stated, and that it could very easily be
worked out to an immediate practical application.

Let us glance first at a solution that is now widely understood to be
incorrect. Philanthropic people in the past have attempted, and many
are still striving, to meet the birth waste by the very obvious
expedients of lying-in hospitals, orphanages and foundling
institutions, waifs' homes, Barnardo institutions and the like, and