evolution teaches us the increasing importance and dignity of
fatherhood, I was asked whether I had any argument in favour of parental
responsibility. To this the fitting reply seemed to be that, primarily,
I believe in parental responsibility because I believe in human
responsibility. It need hardly be said that the questioner belonged to
that important political party which loathes the idea of paternal
responsibility and styles it a "fetish." Without it none of us would be
here. Yet the Socialists are less likely than any other party to abandon
the idea of human responsibility. They propose to hold men responsible
for the remoter effects of their acts--upon the present--as no other
party does. The maker of money is held to account for his deeds and
their effect upon the life around him. I agree with the principle: but I
maintain that the maker of men is also to be held to account for his
deeds and their effect upon the future and the life of this world to
come. No Socialist can afford to question the practical political
principle that men are to be held responsible for their deeds: and no
Socialist can explain the sudden and unexplained abandonment of this
principle when we come to the most important of all a man's deeds. To be
consistent, the Socialist should uphold the doctrine of a man's
responsibility for the remoter consequences of his acts in this supreme
sphere, more earnestly and thoughtfully and providently than any of his
opponents.

The position of those who would free the father from responsibility is
even less defensible when, as we commonly find, they are prepared to
make the mother's responsibility more extensive and less avoidable than
ever. Why this distinction? And if parental responsibility is a "fetish"
when it refers to a father, why is it not the same when it refers to a
mother? In the schemes of Mr. H. G. Wells, kaleidoscopic in their
glitter and inconsistency, there remains from year to year this one
permanent element, that while the mother must attend to her business, it
is no business of the father. This is the essential feature, the one
novelty of his scheme. Already the married mother--he proposes nothing
for the unmarried mother--is legally entitled to some measure of
support. His endowment of motherhood is essentially a _discharge of
fatherhood_, and should be so called. There can be no compromise,
nothing but a fight to the finish, between the principle of endowing
motherhood by making f