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Show PBESIDENT BOOSEVELT ON RACE SUICIDE President Roosevelt is an emphatic believer in the Biblical precept "Increase "In-crease and multiply." Himself the father of six children, he looks with alarm upon the tendency among American men and women to shirk the duties of marriage, and especially of parenthood.' He has issued an earnest ear-nest protest against this tendency. It takes the form of a letter to Mrs. John Van Vorst, joint author with Miss Marie Van Vorst of "The Woman Who Toils." The paragraph which especially attracted at-tracted the president's attention was one in which Mrs. Van Vorst deplored the voluntary sterility of the American-born women of this country. She declared that the fecundity among them is less thaivin. any other nation na-tion in the world, unless it be France, whose anxiety regarding her depopulation depopu-lation we would share in full measure were it not for the foreign immigration immigra-tion to the United States. Immediately upon reading it President Presi-dent Roosevelt wrote the following letter let-ter to the author: "White House, Washington, Oct. 18, 1902: "My Dear. Mrs. Van Vorst I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated your article 'The Woman Who Toils.' But to me there is a most melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is fundamentally infinitely more important than any other question in this country, that is, the question of race suicide, complete or partial. "An easy, good-natured kindliness and a desire to be 'independent' that is, to live one's own life according to one's own desires are in no sense substitutes for the fundamental vir-tures, vir-tures, for the practice of the strong racial qualities without which there can be no strong races the qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of scorn of what is men, base and selfish, of eager desire to w6rk or fight or suffer, as the case may be, provided the end to be attained at-tained is great enough, and the contemptuous con-temptuous putting aside of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and worry. "I -do not know whether I most .pity or most despise the foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand under-stand that the only things really worth having in life are those the acquirement acquire-ment of which normally means cost and effort. If a man or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout through-out life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy children, 1 feel for them deep and respectful sympathy the sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the beginning of a campaign, ; or the man who toils hard and is brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage, and bas a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike " having children, is in effect ef-fect a criminal against the race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people. "Of course, no one quality makes a good citizen, and no one quality will save a nation. But there are certain great qualities for the lack of . which no amount of intellectual brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life can atone, and which show decadence deca-dence and corruption in the nation just as much as if they are produced by selfishness among comparatively poor people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, and if the omen do not recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother why, that nation has cause to be alarmed about its future. "There is no physical trouble among us Americans. The trouble with the situation you set forth is one of character, char-acter, and therefore we can' conquer it if we only will. Very sincerely yours, IVTHEODORIi ROOSE VELT." ! |