dition of safety by free-divorce once established, would do
much to mitigate the hostility against marriage which is so
unfortunately prevalent among us to-day. Practical morality is
teaching us the immorality of indissoluble marriage. In Spain, a
country that I know well, where marriage is indissoluble, an
increasing number of men--and these the best and most thoughtful--are
refraining from marriage for this very reason. It follows, as a
result, that in Spain the illegitimate birth-rate is very high. The
difficulty of divorce is also a strong factor that upholds
prostitution.

Many women and men of exceptional gifts and character, conscious of an
increasing intolerance against the makeshift morality imposed upon our
sexual life, are standing outside of marriage and evading parentage.
For this waste we are responsible to the future. Thus, finally, we
find this truth: the principle of divorce reform forms the most
practical foundation--and one waiting ready to our hands--for the
reformation of marriage and the re-establishment of its sanctity. It
also has direct and urgent bearing on many of the problems of
womanhood.

III.--_Prostitution_

"Nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor nought so good but strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied,
And vice sometimes by action dignified."--_Romeo and Juliet._

"In nature there's no blemish but the mind,
None can be called deformed but the unkind."--_Twelfth Night._

A brief and final section of this chapter on the sexual relationships
must be devoted to the question of the conditions of prostitution,
which are really part of the conditions of marriage, being correlated
with that institution in its present coercive form, in fact, part of
it and growing out of it.

The extent of the problems involved here are so immense, the
difficulties so great and the issues so involved that I hesitate at
making any attempt to treat so wide a subject briefly and necessarily
inadequately in the short space at my disposal. Yet it seems to me
impossible to take the easy way and pass it over in silence, and I may
be able to contribute a word or two of worth to this very complex
social phenomenon. I shall limit myself to the aspects of the question
that seem to me important, choosing in preference the facts about
which I have some