Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/259

Rh the resources of which are insufficient for their support shall receive an additional grant for every child above the third under thirteen years of age. The amount of the allocation is to be determined by the municipal council subject to the approval of the Council General and the Minister of the Interior, but it can not be lower than 60 francs per year for each child nor superior to 90 francs.

More effective measures for combatting tuberculosis, the abolition of divorce, legislation permitting the judicial determination of paternity in the case of illegitimate births and the suppression of convents with their 60,000 female celibates are some of the other secondary remedies proposed, but it is certain that such measures will not reach the real cause of the evil. As I have said, the parliament passed a law during the past summer authorizing the judicial determination of illegitimate paternity and its results will be watched with interest. In regard to the suppression of convents, M. Bertillon has remarked that at best it would not result in the addition of more than four or five thousand children annually to the population, whereas France needs at least 500,000 more births per year.

The restoration of religious sentiments would, according to many students of the problem, result in a new attitude toward the obligation to rear families. Among those who share in this view is M. Leroy-Beaulieu who, in a recent article in the Journal des Débats, protested against the government's hostile attitude toward the traditional religious beliefs of the people. It is necessary, he declared, that our statesmen should at once abandon the absurd and odious war which they have waged for a quarter of a century, and particularly during the last fifteen years, against our country's traditional religious beliefs.

The criminal suppression of the methods now being employed by the Malthusian propagandists is another proposed remedy. During the past year the senate has had under consideration a law for this purpose and one which proposes to give the correctional tribunals jurisdiction of cases of abortion, with a view to rendering convictions in such cases more certain. Senator Barthou, Premier and Minister of Justice, in advocating the adoption of this law in 1912 said: "I am certain that the senate will understand that the proposed law is a measure of public safety and national salubrity." There is little doubt that the suppression of provoked abortions and of infanticide would have important results upon the increase of the population, and it is equally certain that the best public sentiment of France demands legislation for this purpose, but its enforcement would obviously be attended with great practical difficulties.

Simplification of the formalities of marriage with a view to encouraging an increase in the number has also been advocated. It may be added that by laws passed in 1896 and 1897 a number of the old rigorous requirements of the civil code were abolished, notably those