conception; the charge was described by the Lord Chief Justice, who 

tried the case, as one of the most ill-advised and injudicious ever made 

in a court of justice. But it served an undesigned end by giving 

enormous publicity to the subject and advertising the methods it sought 

to suppress. There can be no doubt, however, that even apart from this 

trial the movement would have proceeded on the same lines. The times 

were ripe, the great industrial expansion had passed its first feverish 

phase, social conditions were improving, education was spreading. The 

inevitable character of the movement is indicated by the fact that at 

the very same time it began to be manifested all over Europe, indeed in 

every civilized country of the world. 

"At the present time the birth-rate (as well as usually the death-rate) 

is falling in every country of the world sufficiently civilized to 

possess statistics of its own vital movement. The fall varies in 

rapidity. It has been considerable in the more progressive countries; it 

has lingered in the more backward countries. If we examine the latest 

statistics for Europe, we find that every country, without exception, 

with a progressive and educated population, and a fairly high state of 

social well-being, presents a birth-rate below 30 per 1,000. We also 

find that every country in Europe in which the mass of the people are 

primitive, ignorant, or in a socially unsatisfactory condition (even 

although the governing classes may be progressive or ambitious) shows a 

birth-rate of above 30 per 1,000. France, Great Britain, Belgium, 

Holland, the Scandinavian countries, and Switzerland are in the first 

group. Russia, Austro-Hungary, Italy, Spain, and the Balkan countries 

are in the second group. The German Empire was formerly in the second 

group, but now comes within the first group, and has carried on the 

movement so energetically that the birth-rate of Berlin is already below 

that of London, and that at the present rate of decline the birth-rate 

of the German Empire will before long sink to that of France. Outside 

Europe, in the United States just as much as in Australia and New 

Zealand, the same progressive movement is proceeding with equal 

activity." 

The same authority sums up the present attitude of the advocates of 

scientific and rational Birth Control, as follows: "The wide survey of 

the question of birth limitation has settled the question of the 

desirability of the adoption of preventing conception, and finally 

settled those who would waste out time with their fears that it is not