t, for greater offences.

Further, the law totally ignores the interests of the future in
conspicuous cases where one or other possible parent is hopelessly unfit
for such a function. In the interests not only of the individual but the
future it would be advisable to grant divorce to a person whose partner
had been confined in a lunatic asylum for, say five years, and who could
be certified as likely to remain insane permanently, or whose partner
had been confined in an Inebriates' Home for, say, two terms of one
year, or who could be proved and certified to be an incurable drunkard.

We must abolish these atrocious Separation Orders, with their direct
promotion of every kind of immorality, illegitimacy and cruelty to
women. But perhaps this chapter may be brought to a close since in
England the matter is now before a Royal Commission, and since our
stupidities are of no direct interest to the American reader. It was
necessary, however, to deal with the subject because of its immediate
and urgent bearing upon many of the problems of Womanhood.

CHAPTER XIX

THE RIGHTS OF MOTHERS

We reach here a central question which must be approached from the right
point of view or we shall certainly fail to solve it. That point of view
is the child's. There is a school of thought which approaches the
question otherwise--on abstract principles of justice and individual
independence. The only objection to them is that, if upheld on modern
conditions, these principles would soon leave us without anyone to
uphold them. The relation of the mother to the State is central and
fundamental, however considered, and the principles on which it must be
settled must, above all, be principles which are compatible with the
fundamental conditions on which States can endure.

Those principles, surely, are two. The first is that in a State we are
members one of another, and that those who need help must be helped.
This will be indignantly repudiated by a stern school of thought, but
what if it applies, everywhere, always and above all, to children? They
are members of the community who need help and they must be helped. The
second principle is indeed only a special case of the first. It is that
if the State is to continue, it must rear children.

We take it then, first, that the moral and social law is perfectly final
as to the right of every child to existence. There are no principles of
national welfare which can divorce us from the s