erm if you go back to the nineteen thirties, for example, depression, love on the dole, deferral of marriage, potential husbands killed in the first World War, low birthrate, small families, below the level that would replace the population in future, and many of the Wartime and late War reports erm the Royal Commission on population, which reported in forty nine, suggested that population may stagnate, round about forty million plus, even decline to about thirty million.