alcohol and motor-cars and warships and fine clothes and art, and so
forth, that no arrangements for the support of motherhood can be made.
If we lay down the proposition that no mother should work because she is
already doing the supreme work, it may be replied that this is
economically impossible; the thing cannot be done. The only reply to
this is that the State which cannot afford to provide rightly for the
means of its continuance had better discontinue, and must in any case
soon do so. Motherhood is rapidly declining as a numerical fact in
civilized communities generally. Not merely does the birth-rate fall
persistently and without the slightest regard to the commentators
thereon, but it will continue to do so for many years to come. In the
light of this fact the great argument of presidents and bishops,
politicians and journalists, moralists and social censors generally is
that somehow or other this decline must be arrested. To all of which one
replies, for the thousand and first time, that, whatever it ought to be,
it will not be arrested; that the really moral policy, the really human
one, and the only possible one, is to take care of the children that are
born. Then when we have abolished our infant and child mortality and
have solved the substantial problem of finding room for all new-comers,
having ceased to far more than decimate them, we may begin cautiously
to suggest that perhaps if the birth-rate were slightly to rise we might
be able to cope with the product. At present the disgraceful fact is not
the birth-rate, but what we do with the birth-rate; though more
disgraceful perhaps are the blindness and ignorance and assurance of the
host of commentators in high places who waste their time and ours in
animadverting upon a fact--the falling birth-rate--which is a necessary
condition and consequence of organic progress, whilst the motherhood we
have is so urgently in need of protection and idealization in the minds
of the people.

We have reached the conclusion that all motherhood is to be protected.
This means that from some source or other the money shall be forthcoming
for the maintenance of the mother and her children. For, in the first
place, the children are not to work because, if they do, they will not
be able to work as they should in the future. The State cannot afford to
let them work. Further, the proper care of childhood is so continuous
and exacting a task, and of such supreme moment, that it