d that they have been habituated to
look upon themselves through the eyes of men. Very imperfectly have
women developed their own self-consciousness, the realization of their
tremendous and supreme position in civilization. Women can develop
this power only in one way; by the exercise of responsibility, by the
exercise of judgment, reason or discrimination. They need ask for
no "rights." They need only assert power. Only by the exercise of
self-guidance and intelligent self-direction can that inalienable,
supreme, pivotal power be expressed. More than ever in history
women need to realize that nothing can ever come to us from another.
Everything we attain we must owe to ourselves. Our own spirit must
vitalize it. Our own heart must feel it. For we are not passive
machines. We are not to be lectured, guided and molded this way or that.
We are alive and intelligent, we women, no less than men, and we must
awaken to the essential realization that we are living beings, endowed
with will, choice, comprehension, and that every step in life must be
taken at our own initiative.

Moral and sexual balance in civilization will only be established by the
assertion and expression of power on the part of women. This power will
not be found in any futile seeking for economic independence or in the
aping of men in industrial and business pursuits, nor by joining battle
for the so-called "single standard." Woman's power can only be expressed
and make itself felt when she refuses the task of bringing unwanted
children into the world to be exploited in industry and slaughtered in
wars. When we refuse to produce battalions of babies to be exploited;
when we declare to the nation; "Show us that the best possible chance in
life is given to every child now brought into the world, before you cry
for more! At present our children are a glut on the market. You hold
infant life cheap. Help us to make the world a fit place for children.
When you have done this, we will bear you children,--then we shall be
true women." The new morality will express this power and responsibility
on the part of women.

"With the realization of the moral responsibility of women," writes
Havelock Ellis, "the natural relations of life spring back to their due
biological adjustment. Motherhood is restored to its natural sacredness.
It becomes the concern of the woman herself, and not of society nor any
individual, to determine the conditions under which the child shall