LET BABY ALONE!

Everybody loves a baby, but "they surely are lots of trouble." Problems of birth rate and population perpetually harass legislators all over the world. In yesterday's news dispatches alone came indications of concern for these questions in France, Italy, and Nebraska.

Birth rate figures for the last nine months show French parents persisting in their now chronic refusal to maintain the race. This is a source of great worry to Gallic statesmen, but no such drastic measures have been proposed there as have recently appeared in Omaha. In the Nebraska capital city a bill is under discussion providing for the annulment of all marriages which have been deliberately unproductive after two years of opportunity. Report has it, however, that the threat to irresponsible but happy married life is not a serious one, for a storm of protest has risen to block the plan.

The science of population remains in too hazy a state to make legislative meddling with the birth rate profitable or even safe. Mussolini shows wisdom in his speech Thursday announcing that he would prohibit any attempt to restrict the rapid growth of Italian population, in spite of the fact that the situation is a very "preoccupying feature of the national life." France finds her low birth rate an asset and a liability, and is consequently in a quandary. Her limited supply of cannon fodder has long been considered the weak spot in her armor against the prolific Hun. The deadly baby is Germany's strongest weapon in her ancient feud with France. The other horn of the dilemma is the fact that French economic strength depends on a society of small land-holders, so that a new born baby has almost as great a capacity for inflicting injury at home as abroad. At the Peace Conference M Clemenceau tried to solve the problem by destroying Germany. That plan apparently a failure, indications are that France is turning to her colonies in the hope of producing soldiers there while she maintains peasant prosperity and low numbers on the continent.

Certainly, the trend is clear. France, not knowing what to do, allows her birth rate to dwindle unchecked; Italy lets hers rise; and plans in Nebraska to illegalize sterility go up in smoke. Let baby alone, is the rule.