rate income can allow himself. Four is an outside number, but it is
worth making some sacrifices to attain it. Professor E. A. Ross has
recently stated in _The American Journal of Sociology_ that although
restriction 'results in diffusion of economic well-being; lessens infant
mortality; ceases population pressure, which is the principal cause of
war, mass poverty, wolfish competition and class conflict,' yet there
are 'disquieting effects, and in one-child or two-child families both
parents and children miss many of the best lessons of life; the type to
be standardised is not the family of one to three but the family of four
to six.' The German scientist, Moebius, has also stated his opinion that
the general adoption of the two-children system would lead to
deterioration of the race.

But whether the family numbers one or six, it is all one to Father
Bernard Vaughan, who in his violent attack on modern parents draws no
distinction between the rich man who has but one child and the
hard-working professional man who has several. To limit one's family at
all is in his eyes a heinous and revolting sin, 'a vile practice,' and
people who do it are 'traitors to an all-important clause in the sacred
contract which they called upon God to witness they meant to keep.' This
last is hardly logical--none of us are responsible for the wording of
the marriage service, and we cannot very well interrupt the recital of
its barbaric formulae to explain that there are limitations to our desire
for multiplication.

Father Vaughan also says that this disinclination to multiply means 'the
extinction of Christian morality,' and constitutes 'defiance of God.' It
is not clear to me why a respectable middle-class couple who decide that
three children is a more suitable number than twelve or fourteen for an
income of, say, L300 a year, should be accused of defying God by this
exercise of common-sense and self-control. Is the idea that the children
will only be sent if the Almighty wishes us to have them, and it is
therefore impious to regulate the number? It would be just as fair to
accuse a young woman who refuses several offers of marriage of defying
God, since He clearly wishes her to marry. Bodily ills and accidents
presumably come from the same divine agency, yet no one thinks it sinful
to seek to remedy these with the means science has provided for the
purpose. Why are the means of regulating families made known to us if we
are not to use