BR TO GILBERT MURRAY, 18 MAY 1951
BRACERS 52424. TLS. Murray papers, Bodleian
Edited by W. Bruneau. Proofread by A.G. Bone

<letterhead>
41 Queen’s Road
Richmond
Surrey
18th May, 1951.

Dear Gilbert,

Thank you for your two letters. I think you are unduly pessimistic about birth control in Asia and Africa. Most people in those continents would practise birth control if they knew how, but medical missions are supported by Catholics and Baptists, and refuse to give the information. I do not think that the people of India or the people of China are nearly as obscurantista in this matter as the people of Connecticut or Massachusetts. Nehru has been advocating birth control.b

But for the Catholic Church, we could easily teach birth control in the unduly prolific parts of the world. England, one hundred years ago, was just as prolific, and anyone then would have thought the change which has occurred impossible.

My broadcasts have to be very brief, and I am not able to say more than a small part of what I want to say. They are extracted from a book which I hope will be published somewhere about next January.

Yours ever,
B.R.

Textual Notes

• a

  obscurantist obscurantists

• b

  Nehru has … birth control. inserted by hand