ll fall a
certain burden of lifelong disadvantage. Many perhaps are deterred from
breaking the moral law by this knowledge, but the number of
illegitimates born in England and Wales in 1905 was 37,300; and, in the
interests of these unfortunate victims of others' selfishness, I think
it is high time a more kindly and broad-minded attitude towards their
social disability was adopted.

I remember as a young girl going to see a play called _A Bunch of
Violets_. The heroine discovers that her husband's previous wife is
alive and that her child is therefore illegitimate. She tells her
daughter to choose between the parents, explaining the worldly
advantages of staying with her rich, influential father. The harangue
concludes with words to the effect: 'With me you will be poor and
shamed, and _you can never marry_.' Doubtless this ridiculous point of
view was adopted solely for the benefit of the young girls in the
audience, but its unreasonableness disgusted me for one. Even to the
limited intelligence of seventeen it is obvious that, since a name is of
so much importance in life, an illegitimate girl had better marry as
quickly as she possibly can, in order to obtain one!

Free love has recently been much discussed in connection with socialism,
and, thanks no doubt to the misrepresentations of certain newspapers,
the idea seems to have gained ground that the abolition of marriage and
the substitution of free love was part of the socialist programme.
No more untrue charge could possibly be made, as inquiries at the
headquarters of the various socialist bodies will quickly prove.

The people who advocate free love are very fond of arguing that so
personal a matter only concerns themselves. All who think thus should
have had a grave warning in a recent _cause celebre_, in which murder,
attempted suicide, permanent maiming, and a tangle of misery involving
innocent children down to the third generation, were proved to have
resulted from a 'free' union entered on nearly thirty years before. This
and the many other tragedies of free love, which appear in the
newspapers from time to time, seem to prove the mistake of imagining
that we are accountable to none for our actions. A relationship which
affects the future generation can never be a private and personal
matter. E. R. Chapman in a very interesting essay on marriage published
some years ago says: 'To exchange legal marriage for mere voluntary
unions, mere temporary partner