reatly impressed with the advisability of encouraging
English women to go out there that I strongly urge every suitable,
healthy, and useful woman between the age of twenty-five and
thirty-five to depart (if she has nothing to prevent her), and,
through the British Emigration Society, Imperial Institute, I shall
hope to do all that I can to assist them financially.

I am, sir,
Yours faithfully,
SOPHIE K. BEVAN.

(_Times_, Dec. 24, 1909.)

It was of interest for the student of opinion and practice to compare
this letter with another which appeared in the _Times_ within a few days
of it. This was an official letter from another Emigration Society and
advocated the object, worthy in itself, of sending boys to Australasia.
The letter ended with the following assertion regarding such boys: "They
are the pioneers of Empire, they will be the founders of nations to
come."

But the point exactly is that at present the nations to come in our
Colonies are not coming: much more likely as nations to come in
Australasia, as things go at present, are the Chinese and Japanese.
Before nations can be founded, the co-operation of women is
indispensable. We complain of the birth-rate in our Colonies, or at
least those few persons do who know that parenthood is the key to
national destiny. But we should complain of our own folly in so
interfering with the natural balance of the sexes as to create pressing
problems, wholly insoluble, alike at home and in our Colonies. At all
times "England wants men," but wherever it wants men it wants
women,--even in war we are now beginning to realize the importance of
the trained nurse. There can be no future for our Colonies if they are
to be inhabited by a bachelor generation, and the excess of women at
home prejudices the stability of the heart of empire. Either we must
cease exporting our boys and young manhood--which I certainly do not
advocate--or our girlhood must go also--which I certainly do advocate.
This is only one aspect of the question of vital imports and exports,
upon which a book of vital importance for any nation, and above all, for
England, might well be written.

Once again let us remind ourselves how cogently this question concerns
the conditions of marriage. It means that the conditio