Race Suicide Alarms France.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 24, 1912:
Births Last Year Were 124,000 Less Than a Decade Previous.
    PARIS, Nov. 23.— The birth rate of France was lower by more than 124,000 in 1911 than in 1901. Louis Klotz, Minister of Finance, stated this fact to the Commission on Depopulation at its first session to-day, and added:
    "Military inferiority, economic inferiority, and the diminution of the power or France in the world will sooner or later be the inevitable consequences of the sterility of our nation."
    M. Klotz declared that the figures were most disquieting. The number of births last year were only 742,114 in the whole of France, against 857,274 a decade ago. In two years, he said, the deaths actually exceeded the births. This was a sad state of things and a danger to the country, placing France in a situation of inferiority in comparison with the other great nations. The lower birth rate, while a perplexing phenomenon among all civilized peoples, was, he said, a greater problem in France than elsewhere. The births, he concluded, exceeded the deaths in 1910 in Germany by 879,110, in Austria Hungary by 573,520, in Great Britain by 413,779, and in Italy by 461,771, but in France by only 71,418.
    M. Klotz reviewed the ineffective Government and private measures taken in the past to help parents of large families, to limit the hours of work of women about to become mothers, and to reduce infant mortality. It was necessary, he said, to study these and other factors, including the evil effects of alcohol. The relation of drunkenness to infant mortality would hereafter, he declared, be studied in every part of France.