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cally and psychically stronger through the work and sacrifices war has brought on them. Many imaginary illnesses will have disappeared, but such cases are, no doubt, comparatively few compared to those where women's health has been ruined by the sorrow and tribulations of war. Therefore they will have to spare themselves in some sphere. And the only possible sphere will be that in which the state will expect most of them: motherhood.

I have never agreed with those feminists who claim that the one way in which the married woman proves her worth is by her ability to earn a livelihood. Her ability to bear and educate her children and build a home is so handicapped by her leaving her home to procure a livelihood that the only way to solve the problem would be to consider her motherhood a state service, and reward it accordingly In America, one state has already begun to give a 'Mothers' Pension' to poor mothers, so that they will be relieved of the duty of supporting the family during the tender years of the child, and will be able to devote themselves instead to the duties of upbringing./

But this ideal way of solving the problem of motherhood and self-support was very distant even before the war, and though now, in the interest of the birth-rate, there is a good deal of talk about different means of helping mothers, when peace comes the people will have to shoulder the mountain of war debt, and there will be hardly any funds left in Europe with which to help women. Therefore, this ideal solution of the problem will be postponed to a still more distant future. Among the nations so heavily oppressed by the war, it will inevitably be necessary to count on a far greater number of women having to become self-supporting than formerly. This will bring about very radical changes in the community, in

economic conditions, in family life, and in the increase of population. Family life, during the next generations, will be more sober, more prosaic. The death of so many men will, to a certain extent, do away with competition between the sexes, but also with marriage. The number of illegitimate children will increase, but they will be better cared for. On the whole, the increase of popula tion will be hindered by woman's inability both to bear and provide for children, and to those who look upon woman as the producer of soldiers, this will seem a misfortune. To those, however, who look upon the matter in a more human way, it will, on the contrary, become a condition for future development that women resolutely refuse mass production of children, and more consistently seek to improve the quality of humanity, while they, at the same time, try more energetically to procure the right to have a share in dictating the politics on which the lives of their sons and daughters are so dependent./

V

Women were aiming at this already before the war. The more capitalistically organized the productions of a country are, the smaller the birth-rate. This fact had already begun to create what the eminent sociologist, Goldscheid, terms Human Economy. In an excellent pamphlet, The Woman Question and Human Economy, he shows that the woman's movement must centre.round human economy. When woman, as a producer of humanity, becomes conscious of herself, she will rise up against the unfruitful fruitfulness that has been her lot. She will no longer bear a great number of children, half of whom die for lack of vitality or because the parents have not the means to bring them up, and the other

half of whom are quickly decimated by an industrialism that takes account only of the quantity produced, not of the human material involved. She will no longer bear sons to be used up for war; and when the majority of women revolt against the abuses that they have been subjected to, then even men will be forced to resort to human economy to replace the present waste in the field of labor, and, preeminently, in the field of war./Goldscheid wrote this before the war.

If women, after the war, willingly comply with the wish for 'national child-bearing,' and 'patriotically' support this competition, they do not deserve anything better than that their sons twenty years hence shall fill new trenches! Let us hope that they will not be willing!

"If, for national reasons, woman should become untrue to the highest instincts of her nature, which lead her to give the race only children of love, she will sink so deep that neither the right to vote nor any other rights will be able to help her./Warning voices have already been heard pointing out that, from a biological point of view (that is, the transmission of hereditary traits), love is necessary. My intuition in this respect seems therefore to be verified. What love means to spiritual happiness every'one knows who is truly loved. It may be selfish to think of one's self; but for the good of the race, one may well wish that the women of the generation out of which every fourth must remain single, will sooner bear this sacrifice than submit to bear loveless children for the sake of the nation. The more advanced youth of the Latin countries had already begun to embrace the idealism of the Germanic races, and to reject the old custom of marriages arranged by parents. Among the Germans and English, as well as other Germanic peoples, popu

lar opinion had gone so far as to regard the mariage de convenance as a lower form of marriage. To return to this form would seem a sin to all emancipated souls, even if the temptation came in the disguise of 'national welfare.' The degradation of sexual morals that follows every war will be of little consequence compared to this lowering of our sex-ethics which have taken thousands of years to develop.

Camp life and long sojourns in conquered towns always lower the morals of otherwise pureminded men. Has not this war given proof enough of the degree to which the vicious elements of these vast armies can go, in spite of all discipline? In the long run, however, women's sacrifice of herself to the supposed needs of her country would be more detrimental to the race than these lapses, which, during the war, have already caused so many diseases and other unfortunate consequences.

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It is to be noted here that many the psychic disturbances due to the war are partly attributed to the arresting of normal sex-conditions. A German neurologist, for instance, thinks that the psychic epidemics which cause people to create, believe, and spread the wildest and most unreasonable rumors, are partly due to the unbalanced mental condition caused by an unnaturally arrested family life. It seems more likely, however, that a critical consideration of impressions and reports is made impossible through the absence of that reasoned restraint that in normal times keeps the imagination and judgment of the educated within certain bounds. This unbalanced state of mind is shown by a new category of crimes that have come up since the war, in which women play an unusually large rôle. They help to set afloat false and scandalous rumors for instance, that another woman, during her husband's absence, has taken a lover. There are such cases,

and they often lead to tragic results on the husband's return. Yet the whole affair may not infrequently have started in another woman's unbalanced imagination. And, when they are driven to bay, such scandal-mongers often declare that they were impelled by some inexplicable mysterious power. It is not unusual, for instance, for women to tell their relatives sorrowful and quite unfounded news from the front. These psychic manifestations remind me of another form of false witness that was common during the witch-trials that flourished during the hysterical condition after the Thirty Years' War. That the German women throw flowers, cigarettes, chocolate, and the like, to prisoners of war may, in some cases, be attributed to compassion, but often also to a form of sentimentality which sometimes shows itself in a cruder way. The fact that a German woman was imprisoned for suggesting to a Russian prisoner that they marry on his release goes to prove that neither flirtation nor love is restricted by racetheories.

Abel Hermant speaks of the 'woman who does not know that there is war in Europe.' They are found in every country, and comprise a nation in themselves, just as the mothers do. The members of the first-mentioned class have, at all times, proved very ini-, mical to any uplifting influences, but that they may have good sides that come to the fore in times of war is indisputable.

VI

The war has destroyed millions of homes. It has shattered happiness beyond all belief. It has spoiled innumerable lives, and yet we must remember that it has also made unforeseen happiness possible. The literature of the war is full of stories of the heroic women

who have braved every danger in order to be able to follow or become united with their lovers. It also tells of unions that have been sundered, and of anguished doubt that has become crushing certainty. Even in the love-life of the community, war brought some slight compensation with its incalculable evil. It has sometimes appeared as the deliverer as well as the enslaver.

The war has called forth a new and pathetic phenomenon in the nation of mothers. From many of these one has heard the cry, 'My son is dead – give me another.' They have heard of some homeless soldier, whom, without knowing him, they have overwhelmed with presents, even offering him a home. It is natural that many pathetic and comical discoveries have been made when the two have finally met. Such is also the case when many of the unmarried women, both young and old, meet their 'war-sons.' A small refined woman may discover that her war-son is a coarse brutal fellow; or the reverse may be the case. A young man who entertains romantic ideas about the woman he corresponded with, may return to find her an ugly old maid, or a young girl may find her war-friend to be a serious, elderly man. In many cases, however, these new relationships have been a source of harmless joy.

The fact that many little war-children have been adopted by mothers who have lost their own children, or by women who have never known what motherhood means, shows one of the ways in which women have been able to glean some sweetness from the bitterness of war. But how meagre, how artificial are these joys compared to all the natural, life-giving, promising human relationships that have been crushed under the iron hoofs of the black horse of War!

A DIFFERENT WORLD AFTER THE WAR

BY BOUCK WHITE

SAID Lord Rosebery at London University not long ago: 'All Europe is disappearing, never to return in its present shape. At the conclusion of the war, the form it will assume will be unlike anything with which the world has grown familiar.'

His words stand too nakedly. It is not a time for cocksure prophesyings. The breakup is over too wide an area, and is of so dismaying a complexity, that no intelligence is sufficiently cosmic to receive all of the factors and mould them into a coherent forecast. This much of his prognostication, however, is certain: Christendom at the close of the war will be in a state favorable for a reshaping into something different, something higher than it ever has been before.

The termination of hostilities is going to be the signal for a volcanic outburst. Through a large part of the last year I have been in Europe. I was in the trenches, field-hospitals, dugouts, and headquarters of high military command. I conversed with the men, sharing their dangers, their hardships, their pleasures. At the rear likewise, removed from the shouting and the tumult, I talked with peasants in their ancient habitations. I went over into Spain and traveled through France; I was in Switzerland and Italy; I touched at Greece when the Balkan outburst was preparing; I was in Asiatic Turkey; I passed through Bulgaria a couple of times, and was in Rome. From both Flanders and the Dutch coast I watched the naval activities on the

restless North Sea waves. I visited Germany, and England immediately thereafter. Front and back, on both sides of the battle-lines, I have seen.

In Europe's populace a restive spirit is setting in. Not articulate as yet. It has not bubbled up to the surface. But deep down, the fires are boiling; the brew is simmering. At the front in Flanders, I lived in a hamlet where the reserve trenches were dug. Here the troops from the front fire-line would come back at periodic intervals for recuperation, preparatory to a new turn at the parapets some miles across the meadow. A railroad train came once a day, connecting with the world outside. This train brought us the mail, including daily papers. Two dailies largely circulated among the soldiers were La Bataille Syndicaliste and La Guerre Sociale. The censor could expurgate the red matter from their pages, but he could not expurgate the title at the top, or the hundred subtle suggestions of revolt everywhere in their columns; and they were sold openly by hawkers. I asked one of them how these two papers went. 'Grandly,' said he; 'I sell 'em by the dozens.'

I am not saying that the presence of these papers betokens any trend toward present rebellion. The people in the trenches opposite are a sufficient deterrent. But I am saying that, with the coming of peace, the minds of soldiers nourished on this daily nutriment will be in a mood for anything but tame acquiescence if the terms of that peace should prove the war to have

been fruitless. One day, so it is reported, a sign appeared above the German parapet: "The English are fools.' The sign disappeared, was succeeded by a second: 'The French are fools.' A third: 'We Germans are fools.' A fourth pointed the moral: 'Let's go home.'

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I was riding on the Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad into Constantinople. Traveling in a compartment with me were some German soldiers, sent to the Levant. One in particular interested me. He had no enthusiasm for the war. Not that he was a shirker. Grit was finely in his composition. But he had no liking to throw his young life into a conflict of dynasties. I asked him then why he was in the war. He told me it was because he was forced. He quickly sought to cover up the nakedness of the avowal - for we were in the zone of martial law, and girt with espionage - by deriding the British. "The English Tommy,' said he, 'is bribed into the war by belly-bait - roast chicken and jam tarts. Anybody would fight, if he could see that kind of ration-limber driving up through the communication trenches three times a day.' Thereupon he went off into a description of the hard fare that the Teuton Tommy got. It recalls the prediction of Herr Bebel: 'As long as all goes well and victory crowns our banners, they [the German Socialists] can do little but let themselves be swept along with the triumphant flood. But once let the impression take root that Hohenzollern prestige has lost its magic-once let the War Lord's pride be humbled by a genuine disaster to his arms then prepare for a miracle.'

The prevailing sentiment in Austria I found to be one of profound lethargy. There the war is most unpopular. Now that they are in, they have got to keep on - like men in a treadmill, exhausted but still ceaselessly tramping on, because sharp knives wait at the bottom

to impale whoso faints or lies down. Said the Arbeiter Zeitung, Austria's Socialist organ, recently, 'Duty bids us be silent, but our hearts are burning.'

Throughout the central empires the idea I received from all save the military was that of a people who had got into the war without knowing it, and were now stunned by the fact beyond the power of intelligent activity to redress the evil. The Socialist organ, Soltbrecht, publishes this excerpt from a secret manifesto circulated by the Socialists of Austria-Hungary: 'After the war we shall imitate the French, who found a way to a republic through revolution.'

The voices of unrest in England are many. I was talking in London with J. Ramsay Macdonald, Member of Parliament, who has been foremost in protesting against the war. 'You would be surprised,' said he, 'to see the letters I get from people who wish to hearten me in my stand, and to assure me that I am not alone.' And he pointed to a great heap of correspondence on his desk.

In Italy I was talking with a high official in one of the legations at Rome. The conversation turned on the slow progress made by the Italian troops. "There's a reason,' said he; 'Italy has not called out her full force.' 'Why not?' I asked. He looked at me a moment. 'Don't you know,' said he, 'that Italy has been for a number of years on the verge of a social overthrow?" Count Tasso Tassinari, defending Italy for not taking part in the recent Balkan campaign of the Allies, writes: 'Salandra and Sonnino were loath to try the dangerous experiment of sending our men to foreign soil. Italy is enough for us, is the battle-cry of Italian Socialists; and Socialism in Italy is a very powerful party indeed.'

One night I was traveling through the Thracian Plain in European Tur

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