forced the Company to increase the number and improve the efficiency of its soldiery; and compelled us to intervene in Native politics. The Black Hole of Calcutta, and the vengeance necessarily exacted for that atrocity, involved ultimately the assumption of authority over the provinces of Bengal and Orissa. Meantime the Directors of the Company at home saw in these conquests only entanglements and hindrances to trade and the consequent lessening of dividends. Consequently Governor succeeded Governor, and Governor-General succeeded Governor-General, each pledged to the hilt to keep out of all political adventures. Yet, one and all, they were compelled to increase our possessions in the Peninsula.

"The same is true, mutatis mutandis, of all our possessions. The conquest of Canada, our greatest Colony, was forced on us by the efforts of the French to jockey us out of the settlements made by the passengers on the "Mayflower" in New England, and by those of our countrymen who had settled in Virginia and the Carolinas. So, too, with Egypt and the Sudan. No Minister could be more averse from armed adventures than was Mr. Gladstone, who was yet forced to undertake the expedition of 1883. Surely God has laid on us this Empire as a responsibility; we can preserve it only by fulfilling the duties incumbent on us in consequence of its possession."

625TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING,

HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, WESTMINSTER, S.W., ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7TH, 1921, AT 4.30 P.M.

DR. MARY D. SCHARLIEB, C.B.E., IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the previous meeting were read, confirmed and signed. The HON. SECRETARY announced the following Elections:-BrigadierGeneral H. R. Adair, C.B.E., as a Member, and Walter H. Frizell, Esq., M.A., J.P., Mrs. H. V. de Satgé, and Ronald Macgregor, Esq., as Associates.

on

The CHAIRMAN then introduced DR. AMAND ROUTH to read his paper "Motherhood."

MOTHERHOOD. By AMAND ROUTH, M.D., F.R.C.P.

THIS

HIS subject was suggested to me last year by Colonel Mackinlay, who was then Chairman of Council. Motherhood can be discussed from numerous standpoints.

'Be

Without motherhood" life would cease to exist. fruitful and multiply " is as much a Precept from God now as it was when first given, although now that our world is well populated, we are appreciating quality as well as quantity, and are trying to make men and women healthy and fit for marriage and parenthood, so as to ensure that their children should also be mentally and physically equipped. This is worthy parenthood and especially worthy motherhood.

The instinct of motherhood is present in most little girls, and explains their keenness to have their own dolls and pets, or to nurse their own little brothers and sisters.

Normally, this instinct is less marked as puberty approaches, because of the association of sexual mysteries which perplex the growing girl owing to the want of judicious instruction by mother or teachers.

If a child's knowledge of maternity and sex is wisely and gradually acquired, especially by nature study, she will pass safely through puberty and adolescence into womanhood

without having her maternal instincts obscured by sex problems, and when marriage comes, she will be sufficiently prepared for its obligations and for maternity.

If sexual problems, which are intensified by the physical and mental developments of adolescence, have not been wisely explained, the growing girl may drift into an ignorance which may lead to disaster, or to a dislike of maternity which may prevent marriage; or to a mistaken determination to convert normal marriage into a union unassociated with maternity.

One of the purposes for which we are brought into the world is that when the opportunity for marriage and parenthood should arrive, we should be ready and fit to grasp it, prepared by suitable domestic, hygienic and biological education, and fitted by physical health and moral attainments to bring up our children so that their usefulness in the world may be guaranteed.

THE ETHICS OF MOTHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE.

Motherhood must be normally associated with marriage if it is to be a state of happiness between the partners, and if it is to become a national asset of permanent value.

As regards young and healthy men and women, marriage can only be a normal, useful and happy union when associated with motherhood. Motherhood without marriage, and marriage of the young associated with the prevention of motherhood, are really mere sexual unions which are not only irregular but are ethically, socially and morally wrong.

The marriage with which motherhood should be associated must be monogamous, and it must be a permanent union during the joint life of the partners, a union, that is to say, which, as the ideal, only the death of one of the partners should be able to shorten "Till Death us do part."

I would advise everyone interested in the subject to read Dr. F. W. Foerster's book on Marriage and the Sex Problem,* which Rev. C. H. Malden, one of the Secretaries of the White Cross League, lent me. Its clear views have helped me greatly to prepare this address.

* Marriage and the Sex Problem, by Dr. F. W. Foerster, Professor of Education in the University of Vienna, and formerly Special Lecturer on Psychology and Ethics at the University of Zurich; Translated by Meyrick Booth, B.Sc. Messrs. Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 3, Paternoster Buildings, E.C.

Marriage should be considered as the only state in which intimate sex relationships may occur, and all such relationships apart from marriage should be morally prohibited.

Curiously, yet not unexpectedly, as Dr. Foerster says, most of the suggestions for sexual reform proceed from women writers, such as Ellen Key, the Swedish authoress, but undisciplined and weak men are easily led by the subjective reasoning of these emotionalists, and join in the immature worship of merely natural instincts.

This "new morality " or " new ethics " considers that marriage ceases to be a justifiable state when love, in any of its meanings, fades, and must give way to new relationships.

Loyalty to one's partner is ignored. The paths of evolution of two personalities are not thought worth running parallel for a lifetime. Thus Motherhood ceases to be the link of the sacred union of the partners as in a normal Christian monogamous marriage, but becomes merely a loose tie between mother and child, whether the mother be married or not.

The "Right to Motherhood" becomes an easy further step, and the still further step, the "right to sex-life" soon follows, and with it that false sympathy which, whilst anxious to help the illegitimate child and its mother, demands that all distinction between the married and the unmarried mother should be obliterated, and even to declare as Forel does, "that any such distinction is immoral." It is even claimed that all moral condemnation of unmarried mothers should be done away with, as in this way alone can the position of these women be raised.

Like the action of all moving pendulums, whether material or ethical, there has been a tendency to go from the one extreme of early Victorian severity to an encouragement of unmarried maternity, and even to assume that the "right to motherhood," apart from marriage, needs consideration.

Such tendencies prove the existence of loose irrational free thinking on the sacred union of the sexes.

I will quote a few warning words from a woman scientist, and they should rivet our attention, for they clearly show what this change in the moral standard may lead to, involving as it does the assumption that chastity is not essential to social life. These are the words as quoted in the newspapers :

"It must be remembered that chastity imposes a rule of life which is contrary to natural impulses, and that there are many more girls than boys, women than men in the land. It must

be also remembered that the wider education of girls, their entry into the world of labour and their general emancipation, all tend towards a liberation of natural impulses, and a desire for freedom of choice. The right to motherhood' is a doctrine which is rapidly gaining ground."

"The right to motherhood," if the partners are married, is, of course, a happy ideal, but this is not what these words mean, for the quotation continues its words of warning as follows:

"It is quite possible that the future may see, especially in view of our progressive thought on the subject of unmarried motherhood, some forms of extra-marital sex-relationship and of parenthood finding a recognized place in our social code."

If this warning is justified all sections of the community should move themselves to check these dangers to national purity before they dominate our country.

Our nation and especially its women have a strong basis of common sense and resistance, when cherished ethical foundations are threatened, and I do not believe that extra-marital motherhood will ever become a national institution, for our monogamist marriages and traditions of "home" tend to blend the parents into a harmonious family life, and boys and girls are brought up to protect and reverence motherhood. Attempts to level down family life to a mere sexual association will, I feel sure, fail. What binding obligations regarding the education and welfare of children can there be in mere sexual unions?

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Mothers often try to be true to their duty in these respects to children born out of wedlock, but this is far from substantiating the dictum of Ellen Key, as quoted by Foerster, that all motherhood is holy if it has called forth deep impulses of duty." An unmarried mother's life may become a holy one, but in irregular motherhood the impulses which led to it were not holy, and self-control would usually have been non-existent. We may encourage maternal love and solicitude for the child of an irregular union, and we may penalize the runaway father by making him financially responsible, but we cannot call such a motherhood holy without condoning such unions.

As Foerster says: "The unwavering condemnation of irregular motherhood must always remain the foundation of woman's code of honour. If the unmarried mother is put on the same plane as the married mother, the sure effect will be to lower the institution of marriage, to lessen its significance and to make it appear superfluous.'