Kelly, Michael

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The Linacre QuarterlyVolume 31 | Number 3 Article 11August 1964Standing Room at Least (If Properly Policed)Michael KellyFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnqRecommended CitationKelly, Michael (1964) "Standing Room at Least (If Properly Policed)," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 31 : No. 3 , Article 11.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol31/iss3/11ST ANDING ROOM AT LEAST (If Properly Policed) MICHAEL KELLY, M.D.An editor-New Englander, saying "The Hour is Late,"1 Has fallen for the very boring platitudes of Dorn. 2 He helps our John to Rock3 us on to fear about the fate That hangeth o'er the more and more who still wait to be born. 'Tis weakness sad of science bad when dead-end has been reached; When we can't think we spill more ink-the law of Parkinson. Your ears we fill with slogans shrill in every language screeched, To blind4 you to the prospects true which wait for every one. The specialist, no apiarist, finds bees within his bonnet; Clings to his own small quirk, now grown to a Malthusian must. If we don't take, for his· dear sake, his cure when he breathes on it; From bad to worse, the universe is certain to go bust. An explosion late of books in spate is all on population;0 They fill them out with moan and shout upon their outlook sour. Yet Aussie takes now a hundred thousand yearly by migration; And every day in U.S.A. hears calls for more manpower. Both India and China far have people too too many. It has been so since eons ago; we cannot alter that. But how the mind of the do-good kind doth go explosive, when he The remedy to pull doth try from statistician's hat ! A pessimistic mental twist is that of good John Rock; We have his word that bishops erred in past days-and still do. "Race suicide"-that slogan died when families started to flock; A joy in growing our own has gro_wn since the days of World War II. I Editorial New Eng. ]. Med. 268: 1415, 1963. 2The late H. F. Do.rn, World population growth. International dilemma Science 135:284, 1962. ' ' SJ. Rock, The time has come.'A Catholic doctor's proposals to end the battle over birth control, New York, A. A. Knopf, 1963. 4Please forgive mixed metaphor. 5Borrowed from Garret Hardin, A second sermon on the mount, Perspect. Biol. Med. 6:366, 1963. 136 LINACRE QUARTERLY R c' ho bate their own birth rate have conscience good as ours; F�r · t�;: the ban episcopan roars gently like a dove. 6 Can a priest unwed from his single bed with justi�e cla1m1 t?ese p�wers O'er the daily chores and knightly scores of a married man m love·. If magic pill worketh no ill but only good effects, . . 'Tis sometimes wise to temporize, though much desired the mite. All those who love have knowledge of the purpose tru� o� sex; In consciences enlightened there's first place for what is nght. With Asia's goal of pill control let us not inte�fere; It's urgency is local; we must keep out of that. un. . See bush fires past control burn vast countrysides every year, But that should not make you feel hot in Boston or Manhattan. From year to year upon this sphere the total growth of food, Through progress new in science true has kept on the ascent. A�d from the sea economy in taking all the_ good, Both animal and vegetable, we still have to invent. Can streams be moved and great woods sh_oved flat down. with Australia's curse is the spill perverse of nvers uncontroll d._ atom burst? For that waste insane, a huge dry plain below sea le��l d?th thirst; When in they flow, a -great sea will show my v1s1on s not too When water spurts o'er _ world's dese�ts from the uns�l�ef sea; Like Southern Califorma, pal 9, they re gardens beatif.1c . It is a sin to say we' re in for "standing ro?� only _i • . And what is now much worse-and how;9 1t IS unsC1entJf1c. bold.8 Let all the "haves" convert to "saves," whil� "ha�ir�.g'' all they ought; And day by day in every way turn having mto givmg. . The "have-nots" need more roads, more seed, more trucks, more ships, thought; . . . l · More schools equipped and factones shipped will lead to better ivmg. 6Bottom, Midsummer Night's Dream. ii ,84. .TAnd woman, too. 8The whole of Lake Eyre ( 100 miles long) as at or below sea level. 9Sorry the secondary rhyme necessitated these descents into the colloquial. AUGUST, 1964 more 137 (' 

Standing Room at Least (If Properly Policed)

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Standing Room at Least (If Properly Policed)

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