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THE IDEAL OF INDIAN WOMANHOOD
brought into this world without any sense of responsibility on the part of the parents. If some die at birth or soon afterwards, others follow directly. The standing tragedy is regarded as a freak of fate. The belief in fate or in the Will of God precludes the realisation of the sense of responsibility which alone could introduce intelligence in the habit of procreating.
At the other end of the social pole, there is no necessity for controlling the birth-rate artificially. With the rich, in the position to have varied interests in life, the birth-rate is automatically controlled. Even those who can well afford to bring up any number of children, as a rule, have only a few. This is so particularly among the well-to-do, with modern education and culture. There are various reasons for this apparently paradoxical phenomenon, the main being unconscious practice of birth-control. It results automatically from the mode of life of the educated and cultured rich.
The more cultured a nation, the lower the birth-rate. That is an empirical fact of sociology. France, for example, has the lowest birth-rate. In England as well as in the U. S. A., it is on the dcclinc. In contrast, Italy has the highest birthrate in Europe. Even before Mussolini introduced the practice of raising cannon-fodder en masse, the Italian peasant woman was famed for her fecundity. Before the war, when the vast bulk of
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