to
an illegitimate child. She was a beautiful girl; the father, who did
not live in the village, was strong and young; probably the child
would have been healthy. But the girl was sent from her situation and,
later, was driven from her home by her father. At the last she sought
refuge in a disused quarry, and she was there for two days without
food. When we found her her child had been born and was dead.
Afterwards the girl went mad. I will add no comment, except to record
my belief that under a saner social organisation such crimes against
love would be impossible.

As was said years ago by the wise Senancour, "The human race would
gain much if virtue were made less laborious." Let us view these large
questions in the light of their results to the individual and the
race. This practical morality will serve us better than any
traditional code. So only shall we learn to see if we cannot rid love
of stress and pain that is unendurable. We force women and men into
rebellion, into fearing concealments, and the dark and furtive ways of
vice. For this reason we must, I believe, make the regulations of law
as wide as possible, taking care only that mothers and all children
must be safeguarded, whether in legal marriage or outside. All of
which forces the conclusion: the same act of love cannot be good or
bad just because it is performed in or out of marriage. To hold such
an opinion is really as absurd as saying that food is more or less
digestible according to whether grace is, or is not, said before the
meal. All marriage forms are only matters of custom and expediency.

In face of the iniquity of our bastardy laws we may well pause to
doubt the traditional ideas of our sexual code and conventional
morality. It seems to me that in these questions of sex we have
receded further and further from the reality of things, and become
blinded and baffled by the very idols to love that men have set up.
One thing renders love altogether and incurably wrong, and that is
waste. The terribly high death-rate among illegitimate children alone
suffices to illustrate the actual conditions, to say nothing of the
greater waste often carried on in those children who live. The
question of the maintenance of such unfathered children is a scandal
of our time. We may surely claim that the birth of any child, without
exception, must be preceded by some form of contract which, though not
necessarily binding the mother and the father to each other,