oblem of poverty (the acutest evidence of man's
failure), and to fostering the talents of millions of men and women
that to-day constitute a part of the wastage of Earth. Of course,
being mortal, we shall make mistakes, give way, no doubt, to racial
jealousies, and personal ambitions; but our eyes have been opened wide
by this war and it is impossible that we should make the terrible
mistakes we inevitably would have made had we obtained power before we
had seen and read its hideous revelations--day after day, month after
month, year after year! It is true that men have made these
resolutions many times, but men have too much of the sort of blood
that goes to the head, and their lust for money is even greater than
their lust for power.

Now, this may sound fantastic but it is indisputably probable. Much
has been said of the patriotic exaltation of young women during war
and just after its close, which leads them to marry almost any one in
order to give a son to the state, or even to dispense with the legal
formality. But although I heard a great deal of that sort of talk
during the first months of the war I don't hear so much of it now. Nor
did I hear anything like as much of it in France as I expected. To
quote one woman of great intelligence with whom I talked many times,
and who is one of the Government's chosen aids; she said one day, "It
was a terrible distress to me that I had only one child, and I
consulted every specialist in France. Now I am thankful that I did
have but one son to come home to me with a gangrene wound, and then,
after months of battling for his life, to insist upon going back to
the Front and exposing it every day. I used to feel sad, too, that
Valentine Thompson" (who is not only beautiful but an Amazon in
physique) "did not marry and be happy like other girls, instead of
becoming a public character and working at first one scheme or another
for the amelioration of the lot of woman. Now, I am thankful that she
never married. Her father is too old to go to war and she has neither
husband nor son to agonize over. Far better she live the life of
usefulness she does than deliberately take upon herself the common
burdens of women." No Frenchwoman could be more patriotic than the one
who made this speech to me, and if she had had many sons she would
have girded them all for war, but she had suffered too much herself
and she saw too much suffering among her friends daily, not to hate
the accursed in