As we are now able to realise, the sudden expansion of the population accompanying the industrial revolution was an abnormal and, from the point of view of society, a morbid phenomenon. All the evidence goes to show that previously the population tended to increase very slowly, and social evolution was thus able to take place equably and harmoniously. It is only gradually that the birth-rate has begun to right itself again. The movement, as is well known, began in France, always the most advanced outpost of European civilisation. It has now spread to England, to Germany, to all Europe, to the whole world indeed, in so far as the world is in touch with European civilisation, and has long been well marked in the United States.

When we realise this we are also enabled to realise how futile, how misplaced, and how mischievous it is to raise the cry of "Race-suicide." It is futile because no outcry can affect a world-wide movement of civilisation. It is misplaced because the rise and fall of the population is not a matter of the birth-rate alone, but of the birth-rate combined with the death-rate, and while we cannot expect to touch the former we can influence the latter. It is mischievous because by fighting against a tendency which is not only inevitable but altogether beneficial, we blind ourselves to the advance of civilisation and risk the misdirection of all our energies. How far this blindness may be carried we see in the false patriotism of those who in the decline of the birth-rate fancy they see the ruin of their own particular country, oblivious of the fact that we are concerned with a phenomenon of world-wide extension.

The whole tendency of civilisation is to reduce the birth-rate, as Leroy-Beaulieu concludes in his comprehensive work on the population question. We may go further, and assert with the distinguished German economist, Roscher, that the chief cause of the superiority of a highly civilised State over lower stages of civilisation is precisely a greater degree of forethought and self-control in marriage and child-bearing.[4] Instead of talking about race-suicide, we should do well to observe at what an appalling rate, even yet, the population is increasing, and we should note that it is everywhere the poorest and most primitive countries, and in every country (as in Germany) the poorest regions, which show the highest birth-rate. On every hand, however, are hopeful signs. Thus, in Russia, where a very high birth-rate is to some extent compensated by a very high death-rate—the highest infantile death-rate in Europe—the birth-rate is falling, and we may anticipate that it will fall very rapidly with the extension of education and social enlightenment among the masses. Driven out of Europe, the alarmist falls back on the "Yellow Peril." But in Japan we find amid confused variations of the birth-rate and the death-rate nothing to indicate any alarming expansion of the population, while as to China we are in the dark. We only know that in China there is a high birth-rate largely compensated by a very high death-rate. We also know, however, that as Lowes Dickinson has lately reminded us, "the fundamental attitude of the Chinese towards life is that of the most modern West,"[5] and we shall probably find that with the growth of enlightenment the Chinese will deal with their high birth-rate in a far more radical and thorough manner than we have ever ventured on.

One last resort the would-be patriotic alarmist seeks when all others fail. He is good enough to admit that a general decline in the birth-rate might be beneficial. But, he points out, it affects social classes unequally. It is initiated, not by the degenerate and the unfit, whom we could well dispense with, but by the very best classes in the community, the well-to-do and the educated. One is inclined to remark, at once, that a social change initiated by its best social classes is scarcely likely to be pernicious. Where, it may be asked, if not among the most educated classes, is any process of amelioration to be initiated? We cannot make the world topsy-turvy to suit the convenience of topsy-turvy minds. All social movements tend to begin at the top and to permeate downwards. This has been the case with the decline in the birth-rate, but it is already well marked among the working classes, and has only failed to touch the lowest social stratum of all, too weak-minded and too reckless to be amenable to ordinary social motives. The rational method of meeting this situation is not a propaganda in favour of procreation—a truly imbecile propaganda, since it is only carried out and only likely to be carried out, by the very class which we wish to sterilise—but by a wise policy of regulative eugenics. We have to create the motives, and it is not an impossible task, which will act even upon the weak-minded and reckless lowest social stratum.

These facts have a significance which many of us have failed to realise. The Great War has brought home the gravity of that significance. It has been the perpetual refrain of the Pan-Germanists for many years that the vast and sudden expansion of the German peoples makes necessary a new movement of the German nations into the world and a new enlargement of frontiers, in other words, War. It is not only among the Germans, though among them it may have been more conscious, that a similar cause has led to the like result. It has ever been so. The expanding nation has always been a menace to the world and to itself. The arrest of the falling birth-rate, it cannot be too often repeated, would be the arrest of all civilisation and of all humanity.

[1] Ralph Thicknesse, A Year's Journey Through France and Spain, 1777, p. 298.

[2] The last twelve words quoted are by Miss Ethel Elderton in an otherwise sober memoir (Report on the English Birth-rate, 1914, p. 237) which shows that the birth control movement has begun, just where we should expect it to begin, among the better instructed classes.

[3] J.L. Myres, "The Causes of Rise and Fall in the Population of the Ancient World," Eugenics Review, April, 1915.

[4] Roscher, Grundlagen der National—konomie, 23rd ed., 1900, Bk. VI.

[5] G. Lowes Dickinson, The Civilisation of India, China, and Japan, 1914, p. 47.



VII

WAR AND DEMOCRACY

When we read our newspapers to-day we are constantly met by ingenious plans for bringing to an end the activities of Germany after the War. German military activity, it is universally agreed, must be brought to an end; Germany will have no further need of a military system save on the most modest scale. Germany must also be deprived of any colonial empire and shut out from eastward expansion. That being the case, Germany no longer needs a fleet, and must be brought back to Bismarck's naval attitude. Moreover, the industrial activities of Germany must also be destroyed; the Allied opponents of Germany will henceforth manufacture for themselves or for one another the goods they have hitherto been so foolish as to obtain from Germany, and though this may mean cutting themselves aloof from the country which has hitherto been their own best customer, that is a sacrifice to be cheerfully borne for the sake of principle. It is further argued that the world has no need of German activities in science; they are, it appears, much less valuable than we had been led to believe, and in any case no self-respecting people would encourage a science tainted by Kultur. The puzzled reader of these arguments, overlooking the fallacies they contain, may perhaps sometimes be tempted to ask: But what are Germans to be allowed to do? The implied answer is clear: Nothing.

The writers who urge these arguments with such conviction may be supposed to have an elementary knowledge of the history of the Germans. We are concerned, that is to say, with a people which has displayed an irrepressible energy, in one field or another, ever since the time, more than fifteen hundred years ago, when it excited the horror of the civilised world by sacking Rome. The same energy was manifested, a thousand years later, when the Germans again knocked at the door of Rome and drew away half the world from its allegiance to the Church. Still more recently, in yet other fields of industry and commerce and colonisation, these same Germans have displayed their energy by entering into more or less successful competition with that "Modern Rome," as some have termed it, which has its seat in the British Islands. Here is a people,—still youthful as we count age in our European world, for even the Celts had preceded them by nearly a thousand years,—which has successfully displayed its explosive or methodical force in the most diverse fields, military, religious, economic. From henceforth it is invited, by an allied army of terrified journalists, to expend these stupendous and irresistible energies on just Nothing.

We know, of course, what would happen were it possible to subject Germany to any such process of attempted repression. Whenever an individual or a mass of individuals is bidden to do nothing, it merely comes about that the activities aimed at, far from being suppressed, are turned into precisely the direction most unpleasant for the would-be suppressors. When in 1870 the Germans tried to "crush" France, the result was the reverse of that intended. The effects of "crushing" had been even more startingly reverse, on the other side—and this may furnish us with a precedent—when Napoleon trampled down Germany. Two centuries ago, after the brilliant victories of Marlborough, it was proposed to crush permanently the Militarism of France. But, as Swift wrote to Archbishop King just before the Peace of Utrecht, "limiting France to a certain number of ships and troops was, I doubt, not to be compassed." In spite of the exhaustion of France it was not even attempted. In the present case, when the war is over it is probable that Germany will still hold sufficiently great pledges to bargain with in safeguarding her own vital interests. If it were not so, if it were possible to inflict permanent injury on Germany, that would be the greatest misfortune that could happen to us; for it is clear that we should then be faced by a yet more united and yet more aggressively military Germany than the world has seen.[1] In Germany itself there is no doubt on this point. Germans are well aware that German activities cannot be brought to a sudden full stop, and they are also aware that even among Germany's present enemies there are those who after the War will be glad to become her friends. Any doubt or anxiety in the minds of thoughtful Germans is not concerning the continued existence of German energy in the world, but concerning the directions in which that energy will be exerted.

What is Germany's greatest danger? That is the subject of a pamphlet by Rudolf Goldscheid, of Vienna, now published in Switzerland, with a preface by Professor Forel, as originally written a year earlier, because it is believed that in the interval its conclusions have been confirmed by events.[2] Goldscheid is an independent and penetrating thinker in the economic field, and the author of a book on the principles of Social Biology (Hoeherentwicklung und Menschenoekonomie) which has been described by an English critic as the ablest defence of Socialism yet written. By the nature of his studies he is concerned with problems of human rather than merely national development, but he ardently desires the welfare of Germany, and is anxious that that welfare shall be on the soundest and most democratic basis. After the War, he says, there must necessarily be a tendency to approximate between the Central Powers and one or other of their present foes. It is clear (though this point is not discussed) that Italy, whose presence in the Triple Alliance was artificial, will not return, while French resentment at German devastation is far too great to be appeased for a long period to come. There remain, therefore, Russia and England. After the War German interests and German sympathies must gravitate either eastwards towards Russia or westwards towards England. Which is it to be?

There are many reasons why Germany should gravitate towards Russia. Such a movement was indeed already in active progress before the war, notwithstanding Russia's alliance with France, and may easily become yet more active after the war, when it is likely that the bonds between Russia and France may grow weaker, and when it is possible that the Germans, with their immense industry, economy and recuperative power, may prove to be in the best position—unless America cuts in—to finance Russia. Industrially Russia offers a vast field for German enterprise which no other country can well snatch away, and German is already to some extent the commercial language of Russia.[3]

Politically, moreover, a close understanding between the two supreme autocratic and anti-democratic powers of Europe is of the greatest mutual benefit, for any democratic movement within the borders of either Power is highly inconvenient to the other, so that it is to the advantage of both to stimulate each other in the task of repression.[4] It is this aspect of the approximation which arouses Goldscheid's alarm. It is mainly on this ground that he advocates a counter-balancing approximation between Germany and England which would lay Germany open to the West and serve to develop her latent democratic tendencies. He admits that at some points the interests of Germany and England run counter to each other, but at yet a greater number of points their interests are common. It is only by the development of these common interests, and the consequent permeation of Germany by democratic English ideas, that Goldscheid sees any salvation from Czarism, for that is "Germany's greatest danger," and at the same time the greatest danger to Europe.

That is Goldscheid's point of view. Our English point of view is necessarily somewhat different. With our politically democratic tendencies we see very little difference between Russia and Prussia. As they are at present constituted, we have no wish to be in very close political intimacy with either. It so happens, indeed, that, for the moment, the chances of fellowship in War have brought us into a condition of almost sentimental sympathy with the Russian people, such as has never existed among us before. But this sympathy, amply justified, as all who know Russia agree, is exclusively with the Russian people. It leaves the Russian Government, the Russian bureaucracy, the Russian political system, all that Goldscheid concentrates into the term "Czarism," severely alone. Our hostility to these may be for the moment latent, but it is as profound as it ever was. Czarism is even more remote from our sympathies than Kaiserism. All that has happened is that we cherish the pious hope that Russia is becoming converted to our own ideas on these points, although there is not the smallest item of solid fact to support that hope. Otherwise, Russian oppression of the Finns is just as odious to us as Prussian oppression of the Poles, and Russian persecution of Liberals as alien as German persecution of War-prisoners.[5] Our future policy, in the opinion of many, should, however, be to isolate Germany as completely as possible from English influence and to cultivate closer relations with Russia.[6] Such a policy, Goldscheid argues, will defeat its own ends. The more stringently England holds aloof from Germany the more anxiously will Germany cultivate good relationships with Russia. Such relationships, as we know, are easy to cultivate, because they are much in the interests of both countries which possess so large an extent of common frontier and so admirably supply each other's needs; it may be added also that the Russian commercial world is showing no keen desire to enter into close relations with England. Moreover, after the War, we may expect a weakening of French influence in Russia, for that influence was largely based on French gold, and a France no longer able or willing to finance Russia would no longer possess a strong hold over Russia. A Russo-German understanding, difficult to prevent in any case, is inimical to the interests of England, but it would be rendered inevitable by an attempt on the part of England to isolate Germany.[7]

Such an attempt could not be carried out completely and would break down on its weakest side, which is the East. So that the way lies open to a League of the Three Kaisers, the Dreikaiserbuendnis which would form a great island fortress of militarism and reaction amid the surrounding sea of democracy, able to repress those immense possibilities of progress within its own walls which would have been liberated by contact with the vital currents outside.

So long as the War lasts it is the interest of England to strike Germany and to strike hard. That is here assumed as certain. But when the War is over, it will no longer be in the interests of England, it will indeed be directly contrary to those interests, to continue cultivating hostility, provided, that is, that no rankling wounds are left. The fatal mistake of Bismarck in annexing Alsace-Lorraine introduced a poison into the European organism which is working still. But the Russo-Japanese War produced a more amicable understanding than had existed before, and the Boer War led to still more intimate relationships between the belligerents. It may be thought that the impression in England of German "frightfulness," and in Germany of English "treachery," may prove ineffaceable. But the Germans have been considered atrocious and the English perfidious for a long time past, yet that has not prevented English and Germans fighting side by side at Waterloo and on many another field; nor has it stood in the way of German worship of the quintessential Englishman, Shakespeare, nor English homage to the quintessential German Goethe.

The question of the future relations of England and Germany may, indeed, be said to lie on a higher plane than that of interest and policy, vitally urgent as their claims may be. It is the merit of Goldscheid's little book that—with faith in a future United States of Europe in which every country would develop its own peculiar aptitudes freely and harmoniously—he is able to look at the War from that European standpoint which is so rarely attained in England. He sees that more is at stake than a mere question of national rivalries; that democracy is at stake, and the whole future direction of civilisation. He looks beyond the enmities of the moment, and he knows that, unless we look beyond them, we not only condemn Europe to the prospect of unending war, we do more: we ensure the triumph of Reaction and the destruction of Democracy. "War and Reaction are brethren"; on that point Goldscheid is very sure, and he foretells and laments the temporary "demolition of Democracy" in England. We have only too much reason to believe his prophetic words, for since he wrote we have had a Coalition Government which is predominantly democratic, Liberal and Labour, and yet has been fatally impelled towards reaction and autocracy.[8] That the impulse is really fatal and inevitable we cannot doubt, for we see exactly the same movement in France, and even in Russia, where it might seem that reaction has so few triumphs to achieve. "The blood of the battlefield is the stream that drives the mills of Reaction." The elementary and fundamental fact that in Democracy the officers obey the men, while in Militarism the men obey the officers, is the key to the whole situation. We see at once why all reactionaries are on the side of war and a military basis of society. The fate of democracy in Europe hangs on this question of adequate pacification. "Democratisation and Pacification march side by side."[9] Unless we realise that fact we are not competent to decide on a sound European policy. For there is an intimate connection between a country's external policy and its internal policy. An internal reactionary policy means an external aggressive policy. To shut out English influence from Germany, to fortify German Junkerism and Militarism, to drive Germany into the arms of a yet more reactionary Russia, is to create a perpetual menace, alike to peace and to democracy, which involves the arrest of civilisation. However magnanimous the task may seem to some, it is not only the interest of England, but England's duty to Europe, to take the initiative in preparing the ground for a clear and good understanding with Germany. It is, moreover, only through England that France can be brought into harmonious relations with Germany, and when Russia then approaches her neighbour it will be in sympathy with her more progressive Western Allies and not in reactionary response to a reactionary Germany. It is along such lines as these that amid the confusion of the present we may catch a glimpse of the Europe of the future.

We have to remember that, as Goldscheid reminds us, this War is making all of us into citizens of the world. A world-wide outlook can no longer be reserved merely for philosophers. Some of the old bridges, it is true, have been washed away, but on every side walls are falling, and the petty fears and rivalries of European nations begin to look worse than trivial in the face of greater dangers. As our eyes begin to be opened we see Europe lying between the nether millstone of Asia and the upper millstone of America. It is not by constituting themselves a Mutual Suicide Club that the nations of Europe will avoid that peril.[10] A wise and far-seeing world-policy can alone avail, and the enemies of to-day will see themselves compelled, even by the mere logic of events, to join hands to-morrow lest a worse fate befall them. In so doing they may not only escape possible destruction, but they will be taking the greatest step ever taken in the organisation of the world. Which nation is to assume the initiative in such combined organisation? That remains the fateful question for Democracy.

[1] Treitschke in his History (Bk. I., Ch. III.) has well described "the elemental hatred which foreign injury pours into the veins of our good-natured people, for ever pursued by the question: 'Art thou yet on thy feet, Germania? Is the day of thy revenge at hand!'"

[2] Rudolf Goldscheid, Deutschlands Groesste Gefahr, Institut Orell Fuessli, Zuerich, 1916.

[3] One may remark that up to the outbreak of war fifty per cent. of the import trade of Russia has been with Germany. To suppose that that immense volume of trade can suddenly be transferred after the war from a neighbouring country which has intelligently and systematically adapted itself to its requirements to a remote country which has never shown the slightest aptitude to meet those requirements argues a simplicity of mind which in itself may be charming, but when translated into practical affairs it is stupendous folly.

[4] Sir Valentine Chirol remarks of Bismarck, in an Oxford Pamphlet on "Germany and the Fear of Russia":—"Friendship with Russia was one of the cardinal principles of his foreign policy, and one thing he always relied upon to make Russia amenable to German influence was that she should never succeed in healing the Polish sore."

[5] In making these observations on the Russians and the Prussians, I do not, of course, overlook the fact that all nations, like individuals,

"Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to,"

and the English treatment of the conscientious objector in the Great War has been just as odious as Russian treatment of the Finns or Prussian treatment of war prisoners, and even more foolish, since it strikes at our own most cherished principles.

[6] There is, indeed, another school which would like to shut off all foreign countries by a tariff wall and make the British Empire mutually self-supporting, on the economic basis adopted by those three old ladies in decayed circumstances who subsisted by taking tea in one another's houses.

[7] Even if partially successful, as has lately been pointed out, the greater the financial depression of Germany the greater would be the advantage to Russia of doing business with Germany.

[8] It may be proper to point out that I by no means wish to imply that democracy is necessarily the ultimate and most desirable form of political society, but merely that it is a necessary stage for those peoples that have not yet reached it. Even Treitschke in his famous History, while idealising the Prussian State, always assumes that movement towards democracy is beneficial progress. For the larger question of the comparative merits of the different forms of political society, see an admirable little book by C. Delisle Burns, Political Ideals (1915). And see also the searching study, Political Parties (English translation, 1915), by Robert Michels, who, while accepting democracy as the highest political form, argues that practically it always works out as oligarchy.

[9] Professor D.S. Jordan has quoted the letter of a German officer to a friend in Roumania (published in the Bucharest Adverul, 21 Aug., 1915): "How difficult it was to convince our Emperor that the moment had arrived for letting loose the war, otherwise Pacifism, Internationalism, Anti-Militarism, and so many other noxious weeds would have infected our stupid people. That would have been the end of our dazzling nobility. We have everything to gain by the war, and all the chimeras and stupidities of democracy will be chased from the world for an infinite time."

[10] "Let us be patient," a Japanese is reported to have said lately, "until Europe has completed her hara-kiri."



VIII

FEMINISM AND MASCULINISM

During more than a century we have seen the slow but steady growth of the great Women's movement, of the movement of Feminism in the wide sense of that term. The conquests of this movement have sometimes been described by rhetorical feminists as triumphs over "Man." That is scarcely true. The champions of Feminism have nearly as often been men as women, and the forces of Anti-feminism have been the vague massive inert forces of an order which had indeed made the world in an undue degree "a man's world," but unconsciously and involuntarily, and by an instrumentation which was feminine as well as masculine. The advocates of Woman's Rights have seldom been met by the charge that they were unjustly encroaching on the Rights of Man. Feminism has never encountered an aggressive and self-conscious Masculinism.

Now, however, when the claims of Feminism are becoming practically recognised in our social life, and some of its largest demands are being granted, it is interesting to observe the appearance of a new attitude. We are, for the first time, beginning to hear of "Masculinism." Just as Feminism represents the affirmation of neglected rights and functions of Womanhood, so Masculinism represents the assertion of the rights and functions of Manhood which, it is supposed, the rising tide of Feminism threatens to submerge.

Those who proclaim the necessity of an assertion of the rights of Masculinism usually hold up America as an awful example of the triumph of Feminism. Thus Fritz Voechting in a book published in Germany, "On the American Cult of Woman," is appalled by what he sees in the United States. To him it is "the American danger," and he thinks it may be traced partly to the influence of the matriarchal system of the American Indians on the early European invaders and partly to the effects of co-education in undermining the fundamental conceptions of feminine subordination. This state of things is so terrible to the German mind, which has a constitutional bias to masculinism, that to Herr Voechting America seems a land where all the privileges have been captured by Woman and nothing is left to Man, but, like a good little boy, to be seen and not heard. That is a slight exaggeration, as other Germans, even since the War, have pointed out in German periodicals. Even if it were true, however, as a German Feminist has remarked, it would still be a pleasant variation from a rule we are so familiar with in the Old World. That it should be put forward at all indicates the growing perception of a cleavage between the claims of Masculinism and the claims of Feminism.

It is not altogether easy at present to ascertain whom we are to recognise as the champions and representatives of Masculinism. Various notable figures are mentioned, from Nietzsche to Mr. Theodore Dreiser. Nietzsche, however, can scarcely be regarded as in all respects an opponent to Feminism, and some prominent feminists even count themselves his disciples. One may also feel doubtful whether Mr. Dreiser feels himself called upon to put on the armour of masculinism and play the part assigned to him. Another distinguished novelist, Mr. Robert Herrick, whose name has been mentioned in this connection, is probably too well-balanced, too comprehensive in his outlook, to be fairly claimed as a banner-bearer of masculinism. The name of Strindberg is most often mentioned, but surely very unfortunately. However great Strindberg's genius, and however acute and virulent his analysis of woman, Strindberg with his pronounced morbidity and sensitive fragility seems a very unhappy figure to put forward as the ideal representative of the virtues of masculinity. Much the same may be said of Weininger. The name of Mr. Belfort Bax, once associated with William Morris in the Socialistic campaign, may fairly be mentioned as a pioneer in this field. For many years he has protested vigorously against the encroachment of Feminism, and pointed out the various privileges, social and legal, which are possessed by women to the disadvantage of men. But although he is a distinguished student of philosophy, it can scarcely be said that Mr. Bax has clearly presented in any wide philosophic manner the demands of the masculinistic spirit or definitely grasped the contest between Feminism and Masculinism. The name of William Morris would be an inspiring battle-cry if it could be fairly raised on the side of Masculinism. Unfortunately, however, the masculine figures scarcely seem eager to put on the armour of Masculinism. They are far too sensitive to the charm of Womanhood ever to rank themselves actively in any anti-feministic party. At the most they remain neutral.

Thus it is that the new movement cannot yet be regarded as organised. There is, however, a temptation for those among us who have all their lives been working in the cause of Feminism to belittle the future possibilities of Masculinism. There can be no doubt that all civilisation is now, and always has been to some extent, on the side of Feminism. Wherever a great development of civilisation has occurred—whether in ancient Egypt, or in later Rome, or in eighteenth-century France—there the influence of woman has prevailed, while laws and social institutions have taken on a character favourable to women. The whole current of civilisation tends to deprive men of the privileges which belong to brute force, and to confer on them the qualities which in ruder societies are especially associated with women. Whenever, as in the present great European War, brute force becomes temporarily predominant, the causes associated with Feminism are roughly pushed into the background. It is, indeed, the War which gives a new actuality to this question. War has always been regarded as the special and peculiar province of Man, indeed, the sacred refuge of the masculine spirit and the ultimate appeal in human affairs. That is not the view of Feminism, nor yet the standpoint of Eugenics. Yet, to-day, in spite of all our homage to Feminism and Eugenics, we witness the greatest war of the world. It is an instructive spectacle from our present point of view. We realise, for one thing, how futile it is for Feminism to adopt the garb of masculine militancy. The militancy of the Suffragettes, which looked so brave and imposing in times of peace, disappeared like child's play at the first touch of real militancy. That was patriotic of the Suffragettes, no doubt; but it was also a necessary measure of self-preservation, for non-combatants who carry bombs about in time of war, when armed sentries are swarming everywhere, are not likely to have much time for hunger-striking.

We witness another feature of war which has a bearing on Eugenics. It is sometimes said that war is necessary for the preservation of heroic and virile qualities which, without war and the cultivation of military ideals, would be lost to the race, and that so the race would degenerate. To-day France, which is the chief seat of anti-Militarism, and Belgium, a land of peaceful industrialism which had no military service until a few years ago, and England, which has always been content to possess a contemptible little army, and Russia whose popular ideals are humane and mystical, have sent to the front swarms of professional men and clerks and artisans and peasants who had never occupied themselves with war at all. Yet these men have proved as heroic and even as skilful in the game of war as the men of Germany, where war is idolised and where the practice of military virtues and military exercises is regarded as the highest function alike of the individual and of the State. We see that we need not any longer worry over the possible extinction of these heroic qualities. What we may more profitably worry over is the question whether there is not some higher and nobler way of employing them than in the destruction of the finest fruits of civilisation and the slaughter of those very stocks on which Eugenics mainly relies for its materials.

We can also realise to-day that war is not only an opportunity for the exercise of virtues. It is also an opportunity for the exercise of vices. "War is Hell" said Sherman, and that is the opinion of most great reflective soldiers. We see that there is nothing too brutal, too cruel, too cowardly, too mean, and too filthy for some, at all events, of modern civilised troops to commit, whether by, or against, the orders of their officers. In France, a few months before the present War, I found myself in a railway train at Laon with two or three soldiers; a young woman came to the carriage door, but, seeing the soldiers, she passed on; they were decent, well-behaved men, and one of them remarked, with a smile, on the suspicion which the military costume arouses in women. Perhaps, however, it is a suspicion that is firmly based on ancient traditions. There is the fatally seamy side of be-praised Militarism, and there Feminism has a triumphant argument.

In this connection I may allude in passing to a little conflict between Masculinism and Feminism which has lately taken place in Germany. Germany, as we know, is the country where the claims of Masculinism are most loudly asserted, and those of Feminism treated with most contempt. It is the country where the ideals of men and of women are in sharpest conflict. There has been a great outcry among men in Germany against the "treachery" and "unworthiness" of German women in bestowing chocolates and flowers on the prisoners, as well as doing other little services for them. The attitude towards prisoners approved by the men—one trusts it is not to be regarded as a characteristic outcome of Masculinism—is that of petty insults, of spiteful cruelty, and mean deprivations. Dr. Helene Stoecker, a prominent leader of the more advanced band of German Feminists, has lately published a protest against this treatment of enemies who are helpless, unarmed, and often wounded—based, not on sentiment, but on the highest and most rational grounds—which is an honour to German women and to their Feminist leaders.[1]

Taken altogether, it seems probable that when this most stupendous of wars is ended, it will be felt—not only from the side of Feminism, but even of Masculinism,—that War is merely an eruption of ancient barbarism which in its present virulent forms would not have been tolerated even by savages. Such methods are hopelessly out of date in days when wars may be engineered by a small clique of ambitious politicians and self-interested capitalists, while whole nations fight, with or without enthusiasm, merely because they have no choice in the matter. All the powers of civilisation are working towards the elimination of wars. In the future, it seems evident, militarism will not furnish the basis for the masculinistic spirit. It must seek other supports.

That is what will probably happen. We must expect that the increasing power of women and of the feminine influence will be met by a more emphatic and a more rational assertion of the qualities of men and the masculine spirit in life. It was unjust and unreasonable to subject women to conditions that were primarily made by men and for men. It would be equally unjust and unreasonable to expect men to confine their activities within limits which are more and more becoming adjusted to feminine preferences and feminine capacities. We are now learning to realise that the tertiary physical, and psychic sexual differences—those distinctions which are only found on the average, but on the average are constant[2]—are very profound and very subtle. A man is a man throughout, a woman is a woman throughout, and that difference is manifest in all the energies of body and soul. The modern doctrine of the internal secretions—the hormones which are the intimate stimulants to physical and psychic activity in the organism—makes clear to us one of the deepest and most all-pervading sources of this difference between men and women. The hormonic balance in men and women is unlike; the generative ferments of the ductless glands work to different ends.[3] Masculine qualities and feminine qualities are fundamentally and eternally distinct and incommensurate. Energy, struggle, daring, initiative, originality, and independence, even though sometimes combined with rashness, extravagance, and defect, seem likely to remain qualities in which men—on the average, it must be remembered—will be more conspicuous than women. Their manifestation will resist the efforts put forth to constrain them by the feminising influences of life.

Such considerations have a real bearing on the problem of Eugenics. As I view that problem, it is first of all concerned, in part with the acquisition of scientific knowledge concerning heredity and the influences which affect heredity; in part with the establishment of sound ideals of the types which the society of the future demands for its great tasks; and in part—perhaps even in chief part—with the acquisition of a sense of personal responsibility. Eugenic legislation is a secondary matter which cannot come at the beginning. It cannot come before our knowledge is firmly based and widely diffused; it cannot come until we are clear as to the ideals which we wish to see embodied in human character and human action; it cannot come until the sense of personal responsibility towards the race is so widely spread throughout the community that its absence is universally felt to be either a crime or a disease.

I fear that point of view is not always accepted in England and still less in America. It is widely held throughout the world that America is not only the land of Feminism, but the land in which laws are passed on every possible subject, and with considerable indifference as to whether they are carried out, or even whether they could be carried out. This tendency is certainly well illustrated by eugenic legislation in the United States. In the single point of sterilisation for eugenic ends—and I select a point which is admirable in itself and for which legislation is perhaps desirable—at least twelve States have passed laws. Yet most of these laws are a dead letter; every one of them is by the best experts considered at some point unwise; and the remarkable fact remains that the total number of eugenical sterilising operations performed in the States without any law at all is greater than the total of those performed under the laws. So that the laws really seem to have themselves a sterilising effect on a most useful eugenic operation.[4]

I refrain from mentioning the muddles and undesigned evils produced by other legislation of a much less admirable nature.[5] But I may perhaps be allowed to mention that it has seemed to some observers that there is a connection between the Feminism of America and the American mania for hasty laws which will not, and often cannot, be carried out in practice. Certainly there is no reason to suppose that women are firmly antagonistic to such legislation. Nice, pretty, virtuous little laws, complete in every detail, seem to appeal irresistibly to the feminine mind. (And, of course, many men have feminine minds.) It is true that such laws are only meant for show. But then women are so accustomed to things that are only meant for show, and are well aware that if one attempted to use such things they would fall to pieces at once.

However that may be, we shall probably find at last that we must fall back on the ancient truth that no external regulation, however pretty and plausible, will suffice to lead men and women to the goal of any higher social end. We must realise that there can be no sure guide to fine living save that which comes from within, and is supported by the firmly cultivated sense of personal responsibility. Our prayer must still be the simple, old-fashioned prayer of the Psalmist: "Create in me a clean heart, O God"—and to Hell with your laws!

In other words, our aim must be to evolve a social order in which the sense of freedom and the sense of responsibility are both carried to the highest point, and that is impossible by the aid of measures which are only beneficial for the children of Perdition. That there are such beings, incapable alike either of freedom or of responsibility, we have to recognise. It is our business to care for them—until with the help of eugenics we can in some degree extinguish their stocks—in such refuges and reformatories as may be found desirable. But it is not our business to treat the whole world as a refuge and a reformatory. That is fatal to human freedom and fatal to human responsibility. By all means provide the halt and the lame with crutches. But do not insist that the sound and the robust shall never stir abroad without crutches. The result will only be that we shall all become more or less halt and lame.

It is only by such a method as this—by segregating the hopelessly feeble members of society and by allowing the others to take all the risks of their freedom and responsibility even though we strongly disapprove—that we can look for the coming of a better world. It is only by such a method as this that we can afford to give scope to all those varying and ever-contradictory activities which go to the making of any world worth living in. For Conflict, even the conflict of ideals, is a part of all vital progress, and each party to the conflict needs free play if that conflict is to yield us any profit. That is why Masculinists have no right to impede the play of Feminism, and Feminists no right to impede the play of Masculinism. The fundamental qualities of Man, equally with the fundamental qualities of Woman, are for ever needed in any harmonious civilisation. There is a place for Masculinism as well as a place for Feminism. From the highest standpoint there is not really any conflict at all. They alike serve the large cause of Humanity, which equally includes them both.

[1] "Wuerdelose Weiber," Die Neue Generation, Aug.-Sept., 1914.

[2] Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fifth ed., 1914, p. 21.

[3] The conception of sexuality as dependent on the combined operation of various internal ductless glands, and not on the sexual glands proper alone, has been especially worked out by Professor W. Blair Bell, The Sex Complex, 1916.

[4] H.H. Laughlin, The Legal, Legislative, and Administrative Aspects of Sterilisation, Eugenics Record Office Bulletin, No. 1, OB, 1914.

[5] I have discussed these already in a chapter of my book, The Task of Social Hygiene.



IX

THE MENTAL DIFFERENCES OF MEN AND WOMEN

The Great War, which has changed so many things, has nowhere effected a greater change than in the sphere of women's activities. In all the belligerent countries women have been called upon to undertake work which they had never been offered before. Europe has thus become a great experimental laboratory for testing the aptitudes of women. The results of these tests, as they are slowly realised, cannot fail to have permanent effects on the sexual division of labour. It is still too early to speak confidently as to what those effects will be. But we may be certain that, whatever they are, they can only spring from deep-lying natural distinctions.

The differences between the minds of men and the minds of women are, indeed, presented to all of us every day. It should, therefore, we might imagine, be one of the easiest of tasks to ascertain what they are. And yet there are few matters on which such contradictory and often extravagant opinions are maintained. For many people the question has not arisen; there are no mental differences, they seem to take for granted, between men and women. For others the mental superiority of man at every point is an unquestionable article of faith, though they may not always go so far as to agree with the German doctor, Mobius, who boldly wrote a book on "The Physiological Weak-mindedness of Women." For others, again, the predominance of men is an accident, due to the influences of brute force; let the intelligence of women have freer play and the world generally will be straightened out.

In these conflicting attitudes we may trace not only the confidence we are all apt to feel in our intimate knowledge of a familiar subject we have never studied, but also the inevitable influence of sexual bias. Of such bias there is more than one kind. There is the egoistic bias by which we are led to regard our own sex as naturally better than any other could be, and there is the altruistic bias by which we are led to find a charming and mysterious superiority in the opposite sex. These different kinds of sexual bias act with varying force in particular cases; it is usually necessary to allow for them.

Notwithstanding the fantastic divergencies of opinion on this matter, it seems not impossible to place the question on a fairly sound and rational base. In so complex a question there must always be room for some variations of individual opinion, for no two persons can approach the consideration of it with quite the same prepossessions, or with quite the same experience.

At the outset there is one great fundamental fact always to be borne in mind: the difference of the sexes in physical organisation. That we may term the biological factor in determining the sexual mental differences. A strong body does not involve a strong brain nor a weak body a weak brain; but there is still an intimate connection between the organisation of the body generally and the organisation of the brain, which may be regarded as an executive assemblage of delegates from all parts of the body. Fundamental differences in the organisation of the body cannot fail to involve differences in the nervous system generally, and especially in that supreme collection of nervous ganglia which we term the brain. In this way the special adaptation of woman's body to the exercise of maternity, with the presence of special organs and glands subservient to that object, and without any important equivalents in man's body, cannot fail to affect the brain. We now know that the organism is largely under the control of a number of internal secretions or hormones, which work together harmoniously in normal persons, influencing body and mind, but are liable to disturbance, and are differently balanced and with a different action in the two sexes.[1] It is not, we must remember, by any means altogether the exercise of the maternal function which causes the difference; the organs and aptitudes are equally present even if the function is not exercised, so that a woman cannot make herself a man by refraining from childbearing.

In another way this biological factor makes itself felt, and that is in the differences in the muscular systems of men and women. These we must also consider fundamental. Although the extreme muscular weakness of average civilised women as compared to civilised men is certainly artificial and easily possible to remove by training, yet even in savages, among whom the women do most of the muscular work, they seldom equal or exceed the men in strength; any superiority, when it exists, being mainly shown in such passive forms of exertion as bearing burdens. In civilisation, even under the influence of careful athletic training, women are unable to compete muscularly with men; and it is a significant fact that on the variety stage there are very few "strong women." It would seem that the difficulty in developing great muscular strength in women is connected with the special adaptation of woman's form and organisation to the maternal function. But whatever the cause may be, the resulting difference is one which has a very real bearing on the mental distinctions of men and women. It is well ascertained that what we call "mental" fatigue expresses itself physiologically in the same bodily manifestation as muscular fatigue. The avocations which we commonly consider mental are at the same time muscular; and even the sensory organs, like the eye, are largely muscular. It is commonly found in various great business departments where men and women may be said to work more or less side by side that the work of women is less valuable, largely because they are not able to bear additional strain; under pressure of extra work they give in before men do. It is noteworthy that the claims for sick benefit made by women under the National Insurance System in England have proved much greater (even three times greater) than the actuaries anticipated beforehand; while the Sick Insurance Societies of Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland also report that women are ill oftener and for longer periods than men. Largely, no doubt, that is due to the special strain and the rigid monotony of our modern industrial system, but not entirely. Nearly two hundred years ago (in 1729) Swift wrote of women to Bolingbroke: "I protest I never knew a very deserving person of that sex who had not too much reason to complain of ill-health." The regulations of the world have been mainly made by men on the instinctive basis of their own needs, and until women have a large part in making them on the basis of their needs, women are not likely to be so healthy as men.

This by no means necessarily implies any mental inferiority; it is much more the result of muscular inferiority. Even in the arts muscular qualities count for much and are often essential, since a solid muscular system is needed even for very delicate actions; the arts of design demand muscular qualities; to play the violin is a muscular strain, and only a robust woman can become a famous singer.

The greater precocity of girls is another aspect of the biological factor in sexual mental differences. It is a psychic as well as a physical fact. This has been shown conclusively by careful investigation in many parts of the civilised world and notably in America, where the school system renders such sexual comparison easy and reliable at all ages. There can now be no doubt that a girl at, let us say, the age of fourteen is on the average taller and heavier than a boy at the same age, though the degrees of this difference and the precise age at which it occurs vary with the individual and the race. Corresponding to this is a mental difference; in many branches of study, though not all, the girl of fourteen is superior to the boy, quicker, more intelligent, gifted with a better memory. Precocity, however, is a quality of dubious virtue. It is frequently found, indeed, in men of the highest genius; but, on the other hand, it is found among animals and among savages, and is here of no good augury. Many observers of the lower races have noted how the child is highly intelligent and well disposed, but seems to degenerate as he grows older; In the comparison of girls and boys, both as regards physical and mental qualities, it is constantly found that while the girls hold their own, and in many respects more than hold their own, with boys up to the age of fifteen or sixteen, after that the girls remain almost or quite stationary, while in the boys the curve of progress is continued without interruption. Some people have argued, hypothetically, that the greater precocity of girls is an artificial product of civilisation, due to the confined life of girls, produced, as it were, by the artificial overheating of the system in the hothouse of the home. This is a mistake. The same precocity of girls appears to exist even among the uncivilised, and independently of the special circumstances of life. It is even found among animals also, and is said to be notably obvious in giraffes. It will hardly be argued that the female giraffe leads a more confined and domestic life than her brother.

Yet another aspect of the biological factor is to be found in the bearing of heredity on this question. To judge by the statements that one sometimes sees, men and women might be two distinct species, separately propagated. The conviction of some men that women are not fitted to exercise various social and political duties, and the conviction of some women that men are a morally inferior sex, are both alike absurd, for they both rest on the assumption that women do not inherit from their fathers, nor men from their mothers. Nothing is more certain than that—when, of course, we put aside the sexual characters and the special qualities associated with those characters—men and women, on the average, inherit equally from both of their parents, allowing for the fact that that heredity is controlled and modified by the special organisation of each sex. There are, indeed, various laws of heredity which qualify this statement, and notably the tendency whereby extremes of variation are more common in the male sex—so that genius and idiocy are alike more prevalent in men. But, on the whole, there can be no doubt that the qualities of a man or of a woman are a more or less varied mixture of those of both parents; and, even when there is no blending, both parents are almost equally likely to be influential in heredity. The good qualities of the one parent will therefore benefit the child of the opposite sex, and the bad qualities will equally be transmitted to the offspring of opposite sex.

There is another element in the settlement of this question which may also be fairly called objective, and that is the historical factor. We are prone to believe that the particular status of the sexes that prevails among ourselves corresponds to a universal and unchangeable order of things. In reality this is far from being the case. It may, indeed, be truly said that there is no kind of social position, no sort of avocation, public or domestic, among ourselves exclusively appertaining to one sex, which has not at some time or in some part of the world belonged to the opposite sex, and with the most excellent results. We regard it as alone right and proper for a man to take the initiative in courtship, yet among the Papuans of New Guinea a man would think it indecorous and ridiculous to court a girl; it was the girl's privilege to take the initiative in this matter, and she exercised it with delicacy and skill and the best moral results, until the shocked missionaries upset the native system and unintentionally introduced looser ways. There is, again, no implement which we regard as so peculiarly and exclusively feminine as the needle. Yet in some parts of Africa a woman never touches a needle; that is man's work, and a wife who can show a neglected rent in her petticoat is even considered to have a fair claim for a divorce. Innumerable similar examples appear when we consider the human species in time and space. The historical aspect of this matter may thus be said in some degree to counterbalance the biological aspect. If the fundamental constitution of the sexes renders their mental characters necessarily different, the difference is still not so pronounced as to prevent one sex sometimes playing effectively the parts which are generally played by the other sex.

It is not necessary to go outside the white European race to find evidences of the reality of this historical factor of the question before us. It would appear that at the dawn of European civilisation women were taking a leading part in the evolution of human progress. Various survivals which are enshrined in the myths and legends of classic antiquity show us the most ancient deities as goddesses; and, moreover, we encounter the significant fact that at the origin nearly all the arts and industries were presided over by female, not by male, deities. In Greece, as well as in Asia Minor, India, and Egypt, as Paul Lafargue has pointed out, woman seems to have taken divine rank before men; all the first inventions of the more useful arts and crafts, except in metals, are ascribed to goddesses; the Muses presided over poetry and music long before Apollo; Isis was "the lady of bread," and Demeter taught men to sow barley and corn instead of eating each other. Thus even among our own forefathers we may catch a glimpse of a state of things which, as various anthropologists have shown (notably Otis Mason in his Woman's Share in Primitive Culture), we may witness in the most widely separated parts of the world. Thus among the Xosa Kaffirs, as well as other A-bantu stocks, Fritsch states that "the man claims for himself war, hunting, occupation with cattle; all household cares, even the building of the house, as well as the cultivation of the ground, are woman's affair; hardly in the most laborious work will a man lend a hand."[2] So that when to-day we see women entering the most various avocations, that is not a dangerous innovation, but perhaps merely a return to ancient and natural conditions.

It is not until specialisation becomes necessary and until men are relieved from the constant burden of battle and the chase that the frequent superiority of woman is lost. The modern industrial activities are dangerous, when they are dangerous, not because the work is too hard—for the work of primitive women is harder—but because it is an unnaturally and artificially dreary and monotonous work which stifles the mind, depresses the spirits, and injures the body, so that, it is said, 40 per cent. of married women who have been factory girls are treated for pelvic disorders before they are thirty. It is the conditions of women's work which need changing in order that they may become, like those of primitive women, so various that they develop the mind and fortify the body. This, however, is an evil which will be righted by the development of the mechanical side of industry, for machines tend constantly to become larger, heavier, speedier, more numerous and more automatic, requiring fewer workers to tend them, and these more frequently men.[3]

It may be added that the early predominance of woman in the work of civilisation is altogether independent of that conception of a primitive matriarchate, or government of women, which was set forth some fifty years ago by Bachofen, and has since caused so much controversy. Descent in the female line, not uncommonly found among primitive peoples, undoubtedly tended to place women in a position of great influence; but it by no means necessarily involved any gynecocracy, or rule of women, and such rule is merely a hypothesis which by some enthusiasts has been carried to absurd lengths.

We see, therefore, that when we are approaching the question of the mental differences of the sexes among ourselves to-day, it is not impossible to find certain guiding clues which will save us from running into extravagance in either direction.

Without doubt the only way in which we can obtain a satisfactory answer to the numerous problems which meet us when we approach the question is by experiment. I have, indeed, insisted on the importance of these preliminary biological and historical considerations mainly because they indicate with what safety and freedom from risk we may trust to experiment. The sexes are far too securely poised by organic constitution and ancient tradition for any permanently injurious results to occur from the attempt to attain a better social readjustment in this matter. When the experiment fails, individuals may to some extent suffer, but social equilibrium swiftly and automatically rights itself. Practically, however, nearly every social experiment of this kind means that certain restrictions limiting the duties or privileges of women are removed, and when artificial coercions are thus taken away it can merely happen, as Mary Wollstonecraft long ago put it, that by the common law of gravity the sexes fall into their proper places. That, we may be sure, will be the final result of the interesting experiments for which the laboratory to-day is furnished by all the belligerent countries.

Definitely formulated statistical data of these results are scarcely yet available. But we may study the action of this natural process on one great practical experiment in mental sexual differences which has been going on for some time past. At one time in the various administrations of the International Postal Union there was a sudden resolve to introduce female labour to a very large extent; it was thought that this would be cheaper than male labour and equally efficient. There was consequently a great outcry at the ousting of male labour, the introduction of the thin end of a wedge which would break up society. We can now see that that outcry was foolish. Within recent years nearly all the countries which previously introduced women freely into their postal and telegraph services are now doing so only under certain conditions, and some are ceasing to admit them at all. This great practical experiment, carried out on an immense scale in thirty-five different countries, has, on the whole, shown that while women are not inferior to men, at all events within the ordinary range of work, the substitution of a female for a male staff always means a considerable increase of numbers, that women are less rapid than men, less able to undertake the higher grade work, less able to exert authority over others, more lacking both in initiative and in endurance, while they require more sick leave and lose interest and energy on marriage. The advantages of female labour are thus to some extent neutralised, and in the opinions of the administrations of some countries more than neutralised, by certain disadvantages. The general result is that men are found more fitted for some branches of work and women more fitted for other branches; the result is compensation without any tendency for one sex to oust the other.

It may, indeed, be objected that in practical life no perfectly satisfactory experiments exist as to the respective mental qualities of men and women, since men and women are never found working under conditions that are exactly the same for both sexes. If, however, we turn to the psychological laboratory, where it is possible to carry on experiments under precisely identical conditions, the results are still the same. There are nearly always differences between men and women, but these differences are complex and manifold; they do not always agree; they never show any general piling up of the advantages on the side of one sex or of the other. In reaction-time, in delicacy of sensory perception, in accuracy of estimation and precision of movement, there are nearly always sexual differences, a few that are fairly constant, many that differ at different ages, in various countries, or even in different groups of individuals. We cannot usually explain these differences or attach any precise significance to them, any more than we can say why it is that (at all events in America) blue is most often the favourite colour of men and red of women. We may be sure that these things have a meaning, and often a really fundamental significance, but at present, for the most part, they remain mysterious to us.

When we attempt to survey and sum up all the variegated facts which science and practical life are slowly accumulating with reference to the mental differences between men and women[4] we reach two main conclusions. On the one hand there is a fundamental equality of the sexes. It would certainly appear that women vary within a narrower range than men—that is to say, that the two extremes of genius and of idiocy are both more likely to show themselves in men. This implies that the pioneers in progress are most likely to be men. That, indeed, may be said to be a biological fact. "In all that concerns the evolution of ornamental characters the male leads; in him we see the trend which evolution is taking; the female and young afford us the measure of their advance along the new line which has to be taken."[5] In the human sphere of the arts and sciences, similarly, men, not women, take the lead. That men were the first decorative artists, rather than women, is indicated by the fact that the natural objects designed by early pre-historic artists were mainly women and wild beasts, that is to say, they were the work of masculine hunters, executed in idle intervals of the chase. But within the range in which nearly all of us move, there are always many men who in mental respects can do what most women can do, many women who can do what most men can do. We are not justified in excluding a whole sex absolutely from any field. In so doing we should certainly be depriving the world of some portion of its executive ability. The sexes may always safely be left to find their own levels.

On the other hand, the mental diversity of men and women is equally fundamental. It is rooted in organisation. The well-intentioned efforts of many pioneers in women's movements to treat men and women as identical, and, as it were, to force women into masculine moulds, were both mischievous and useless. Women will always be different from men, mentally as well as physically. It is well for both sexes that it should be so. It is owing to these differences that each sex can bring to the world's work various aptitudes that the other lacks. It is owing to these differences also that men and women have their undying charm for each other. We cannot change them, and we need not wish to.

[1] See, for instance, Blair Bell's The Sex Complex, 1916, though the deductions drawn in this book must not always be accepted without qualifications.

[2] G. Fritsch, Die Eingeborene Sued-Afrikas, 1892, p. 79.

[3] 1 D.R. Malcolm Keir, "Women in Industry," Popular Science Monthly, October, 1913.

[4] See, for many of the chief of these, Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 5th Edition, 1914.

[5] W.P. Pycraft, The Courtship of Animal, p. 9.



X

THE WHITE SLAVE CRUSADE

During recent years we have witnessed a remarkable attempt—more popular and more international in character than any before—to deal with that ancient sexual evil which has for some time been picturesquely described as the White Slave Traffic. Less than forty years ago Professor Sheldon Amos wrote that this subject can scarcely be touched upon by journalists, and "can never form a topic of common conversation." Nowadays Churches, societies, journalists, legislators have all joined the ranks of the agitators. Not only has there been no voice on the opposite side, which was scarcely to be expected—for there has never been any anxiety to cry aloud the defence of "White Slavery" from the house-tops—but there has been a new and noteworthy conquest over indifference and over that sacred silence which was supposed to encompass all sexual topics with suitable darkness. The banishment of that silence in the cause of social hygiene is, indeed, not the least significant feature of this agitation.

It is inevitable, however, that these periodical fits of virtuous indignation by which Society is overtaken should speedily be spent. The victim of the moral fever finds himself exhausted by the struggle, scarcely able to cope with the complications of the disease, and, at the best, only too anxious to forget what he has passed through. He has an uneasy feeling that in the course of his delirium he has said and done many foolish things which it would now be unpleasant to recall too precisely.

There is no use in attempting to disguise the fact that this is what happened in the White Slave Traffic agitation. It became clear that we had been largely misled in regard to the evils to be combated, and that we were seduced into sanctioning various remedies for these evils which in cold blood it is impossible to approve of, even if we could believe them to be effective.

It is not even clear that all those who have talked about the "White Slave Traffic" have been quite sure what they meant by the term. Some people, indeed, have seemed to think that it meant prostitution in general. That is, of course, an absurd misapprehension. We are concerned with a trade which flourishes on prostitution, but that trade is not itself the trade or (as some prefer to call it) the profession of prostitutes. Indeed, the prostitute, under ordinary conditions and unharassed by persecution, is in many respects anything but a slave. She is much less a slave than the ordinary married woman. She is not fettered in humble dependence on the will of a husband from whom it is the most difficult thing in the world to escape; she is bound to no man and free to make her own terms in life; while if she should have a child, that child is absolutely her own, and she is not liable to have it torn from her arms by the hands of the law. Apart from arbitrary and accidental circumstances, due to the condition of social feeling, the prostitute enjoys a position of independence which the married woman is still struggling to obtain.

The White Slave Traffic, therefore, is not prostitution; it is the commercialised exploitation of prostitutes. The independent prostitute, living alone, scarcely lends herself to the White Slave trader. It is on houses of prostitution, where the less independent and usually weaker-minded prostitutes are segregated, that the traffic is based. Such houses cannot even exist without such traffic. There is little inducement for a girl to enter such a house, in full knowledge of what it involves, on her own initiative. The proprietors of such houses must therefore give orders for the "goods" they desire, and it is the business of procurers, by persuasion, misrepresentation, deceit, intoxication, to supply them. "The White Slave Traffic," as Kneeland states, "is thus not only a hideous reality, but a reality almost wholly dependent on the existence of houses of prostitution," and as the authors of The Social Evil state, it is "the most shameful species of business enterprise in modern times."[1]

In this intimate dependence of the White Slave Traffic on houses of prostitution, there lies, it may be pointed out, a hope for the future. We are concerned, for the most part, with the more coarse-grained part of the masculine population and with the more ignorant, degraded, and weak-minded part of the army of prostitutes. Although much has been said of the enormous extension of the White Slave Traffic during recent years, it is important to remember that that extension is chiefly marked in connection with the great new centres of population in the younger countries. It is fostered by the conditions prevailing in crude, youthful, prosperous, but incompletely blended, communities, which have too swiftly attained luxury, but have not yet attained the more humane and refined developments of civilisation, and among whom women are often scarce.[2] Although there are not yet any very clear signs of the decay of prostitution in civilisation, there can hardly be a doubt that civilisation is unfavourable to houses of prostitution. They offer no inducements to the more intelligent and independent prostitutes, and their inmates usually present little attraction to any men save those whose demands are of the humblest character. There is, therefore, a tendency to the natural and spontaneous decay of organised houses of prostitution under modern civilised conditions; the prostitute and her clients alike shun such houses. Along this line we may foresee the disappearance of the White Slave Traffic, apart altogether from any social or legal attempts at its direct suppression.[3]

It is sometimes said that the relation of the isolated prostitute to her souteneur constitutes a form of "white slavery." Undoubtedly that may sometimes be the case. We are here in a confused field where the facts are complicated by a number of considerations, and where circumstances may very widely differ, for the "fancy boy"—selected from affection by the prostitute herself—may easily become the souteneur, or "cadet" as he is termed in New York, who seduces and trains to prostitution a large number of girls. The prostitute is so often a little weak in character and a little defective in intelligence; she is so often regarded as a legitimate prey by the world in which she moves, and a legitimate object of contempt and oppression by the social world above her and its legal officers, that she easily becomes abjectly dependent on the man who in some degree protects her from this extortion, contempt, and oppression, even though he sometimes trains her to his own ends and exploits her professional activities for his own advantage. These circumstances so often occur that some investigators consider that they represent the general rule. No doubt they are the most conspicuous cases. But they can scarcely be regarded as representing the normal relations of the prostitute to the man she is attracted to. She is earning her own living, and if she possesses a little modicum of character and intelligence, she knows that she can choose her own lover and dismiss him when she so pleases. He may beat her occasionally, but all over the world this is not always displeasing to the primitively feminine woman. "It is indeed true," as Kneeland remarks, "that many prostitutes do not believe their lovers care for them unless they 'beat them up' occasionally." The woman in this position is not more of a "white slave" than many wives, and some husbands, who submit to the whims and tyrannies of their conjugal partners, with, indeed, the additional hardship and misfortune that they are legally bound to them. And the souteneur, although from the respectable point of view he has put himself into a low-down moral position, is, after all, not so very unlike those parasitic wives who, on a higher social level, live lazily on their husbands' professional earnings, and sometimes give much less than the souteneur in return.

When, however, we put aside the complicated question of the prostitute's relationship to the man who is her lover, protector, and "bully," we have to recognise that there really is a "White Slave Traffic," carried on in a ruthlessly business-like manner and on an international scale, with watchful agents, men and women, ever ready to detect and lure the victims. But even this too amply demonstrated fact was not found sufficiently highly spiced by the White Slave Traffic agitators. It was necessary to excite the public mind by sensational incidents. Everyone was told stories, as of incidents that had lately occurred in the next street, of innocent, refined, and well-bred girls who were snatched away by infamous brigands beneath the eyes of their friends, to be immured in dungeons of vice and never more heard of. Such incidents, if they ever occurred, would be too bizarre to be justifiably taken into account in great social movements. But it is even doubtful whether they ever occur. The White Slave traders are not heroes of romance, even of infamous romance; less so, indeed, than many more ordinary criminals; they are engaged in a very definite and very profitable business. They have no need to run serious risks. The world is full of girls who are over-worked, ill-paid, ignorant, weak, vain, greedy, lazy, or even only afflicted with a little innocent love of adventure, and it is among these that White Slave traders may easily find what their business demands, while experience enables them to detect the most likely subjects.

Careful inquiry, even among those who have made it their special business to collect all the evidence that can be brought together to prove the infamous character of the White Slave Traffic, has apparently failed to furnish any reliable evidence of these sensational stories. It is easy to find prostitutes who are often dissatisfied with the life (in what occupation is it not easy?), but it is not easy to find prostitutes who cannot escape from that life when they sufficiently wish to do so, and are willing to face the difficulty of finding some other occupation. The very fact that the whole object of their exploitation is to bring them in contact with men belonging to the outside world is itself a guarantee that they are kept in touch with that world. Mrs. Billington-Grieg, a well-known pioneer in social movements, has carefully investigated the alleged cases of forcible abduction which were so freely talked about when the White Slave Bill was passed into law in England, but even the Vigilance Societies actively engaged in advocating the bill could not enable her to discover a single case in which a girl had been entrapped against her will.[4] No other result could reasonably have been expected. When so many girls are willing, and even eager, to be persuaded, there is little need for the risky adventure of capturing the unwilling. The uneasy realisation of these facts cannot fail to leave many honest Vice-Crusaders with unpleasant memories of their past.

It is not only in regard to alleged facts, but also in regard to proposed remedies, that the White Slave Agitation may properly be criticised. In England it distinguished itself by the ferocity with which the lash was advocated, and finally legalised. Benevolent bishops joined with genteel old maids in calling loudly for whips, and even in desiring to lay them personally on the backs of the offenders, notwithstanding that these Crusaders were nominally Christians, the followers of a Master who conspicuously reserved His indignation, not for sinners and law-breakers, but for self-satisfied saints and scrupulous law-keepers—just the same kind of excellent people, in fact, who are most prone to become Vice-Crusaders. Here again, it is probable, many unpleasant memories have been stored up.

It is well recognised by criminologists that the lash is both a barbarous and an ineffective method of punishment. "The history of flagellation," as Collas states in his great work on this subject, "is the history of a moral bankruptcy."[5] The survival of barbarous punishments from barbarous days, when ferocious punishments were a matter of course and the death penalty was inflicted for horse-stealing without in the least diminishing that offence, may be intelligible. But the re-enactment of such measures in so-called civilised days is an everlasting discredit to those who advocate it, and a disgrace to the community which permits it. This was pointed out at the time by a large body of social reformers, and will no doubt be realised at leisure by the persons concerned in the agitation.

Apart altogether from its barbarity, the lash is peculiarly unsuited for use in the White Slave trade, because it will never descend on the back of the real trader. The whip has no terrors for those engaged in illegitimate financial transactions, for in such transactions the principal can always afford to arrange that it shall fall on a subordinate who finds it worth while to run the risks. This method has long been practised by those who exploit prostitution for profit. To increase the risks merely means that the subordinate must be more heavily paid. That means that the whole business must be carried on more actively to cover the increased risks and expenses. It is a very ancient fact that moral legislation increases the evil it is designed to combat.[6]

It is necessary to point out some of the unhappy features of this agitation, not in order to minimise the evils it was directed against, nor to insinuate that they cannot be lessened, but as a warning against the reaction which follows such ill-considered efforts. The fiery zealot in a fury of blind rage strikes wildly at the evil he has just discovered, and then flings down his weapon, glad to forget all about his momentary rage and the errors it led him into. It is not so that ancient evils are destroyed, evils, it must be remembered, that derive their vitality in part from human nature and in part from the structure of our society. By ensuring that our workers, and especially our women workers, are decently paid, so that they can live comfortably on their wages, we shall not indeed have abolished prostitution, which is more than an economic phenomenon,[7] but we shall more effectually check the White Slave trader than by the most draconic legislation the most imaginative Vice-Crusader ever devised. And when we ensure that these same workers have ample time and opportunity for free and joyous recreation, we shall have done more to kill the fascination of the White Slave Traffic than by endless police regulations for the moral supervision of the young.

No doubt the element of human nature in the manifestations we are concerned with will still be at work, an obscure instinct often acting differently in each sex, but tending to drive both into the same risks. Here we need even more fundamental social changes. It is sheer foolishness to suppose that when we raise our little dams in the path of a great stream of human impulse that stream will forthwith flow calmly back to its source. We must make our new channels concurrently with our dams. If we wish to influence prostitution we must re-make our marriage laws and modify our whole conception of the sexual relationships. In the meanwhile, we can at least begin to-day a task of education which must slowly though surely undermine the White Slave trader's stronghold. Such an education needs to be not merely instruction in the facts of sex and wise guidance concerning all the dangers and risks of the sexual life; it must also involve a training of the will, a development of the sense of responsibility, such as can never be secured by shutting our young people up in a hot-house, sheltered from every fortifying breath of the outside world. Certainly there are many among us—and precisely the most hopeless persons from our present point of view—who can never grow into really responsible persons.[8] Neither should they ever have been born. It is our business to see that they are not born; and that, if they are, they are at least placed under due social guardianship, so that we may not be tempted to make laws for society in general which are only needed by this feeble and infirm folk. Thus it is that when we seek to deal with the White Slave Trader and his victims and his patrons we have to realise that they are all very much, as we have made them, moulded by their parents before birth, nourished on their mothers' knees. The task of making them over again next time, and making them better, is a revolutionary task, but it begins at home, and there is no home in which some part of the task cannot be carried out.

It is possible that at some period in the world's history, not only will the White Slave Traffic disappear, but even prostitution itself, and it is for us to work towards that day. But we may be quite sure that the social state which sees the last of the "social evil" will be a social state very unlike ours.

[1] The nature of prostitution and of the White Slave Traffic and their relation to each other may clearly be studied in such valuable first-hand investigations of the subject as The Social Evil: With Special Reference to Conditions Existing in the City of New York, 2nd edition, edited by E.R.A. Seligman, Putnam's, 1912; Commercialised Prostitution in New York City, by G.J. Kneeland, New York Century Co., 1913; Prostitution in Europe, by Abraham Flexner, New York Century Co., 1914; The Social Evil in Chicago, by the Vice-Commission of Chicago, 1911. As regards prostitution in England and its causes I should like to call attention to an admirable little book, Downward Paths, published by Bell & Sons, 1916. The literature of the subject is, however, extensive, and a useful bibliography will be found in the first-named volume.

[2] This is especially true of many regions in America, both North and South, where a hideous mixture of disparate nationalities furnishes conditions peculiarly favourable to the "White Slave Traffic," when prosperity increases. See, for instance, the well-informed and temperately written book by Miss Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, 1912.

[3] See Havelock Ellis: Sex in Relation to Society (Studies in the Psychology of Sex), Vol. VI., Ch. VII.

[4] "The White Slave Traffic," English Review, June, 1913. It is just just the same in America. Mr. Brand-Whitlock, when Mayor of Toledo, thoroughly investigated a sensational story of this kind brought to him in great detail by a social worker and found that it possessed not the slightest basis of truth. "It was," he remarks in an able paper on "The White Slave" (Forum, Feb., 1914), "simply another variant of the story that had gone the rounds of the continents, a story which had been somehow psychologically timed to meet the hysteria which the pulpit, the Press, and the legislature had displayed."

[5] G.F. Collas, Geschichte des Flagellantismus, 1913, Vol. I., p. 16.

[6] I have brought together some of the evidence on this point in the chapter on "Immorality and the Law" in my book, The Task of Social Hygiene.

[7] The idea is cherished by many, especially among socialists, that prostitution is mainly an economic question, and that to raise wages is to dry up the stream of prostitution. That is certainly a fallacy, unsupported by careful investigators, though all are agreed that the economic condition of the wage-earner is one factor in the problem. Thus Commissioner Adelaide Cox, at the head of the Women's Social Wing of the Salvation Army, speaking from a very long and extensive acquaintance with prostitutes, while not denying that women are often "wickedly underpaid," finds that the cause of prostitution is "essentially a moral one, and cannot be successfully fought by other than moral weapons."—(Westminster Gazette, Dec. 2nd, 1912). In a yet wider sense, it may be said that the question of the causes of prostitution is essentially social.

[8] This is a very important clue indeed in dealing with the problem of prostitution. "It is the weak-minded, unintelligent girl," Goddard states in his valuable work on Feeblemindedness, "who makes the White Slave Traffic possible." Dr. Hickson found that over 85 per cent. of the women brought before the Morals Court in Chicago were distinctly feeble-minded, and Dr. Olga Bridgeman states that among the girls committed for sexual delinquency to the Training School of Geneva, Illinois, 97 per cent. were feeble-minded by the Binet tests, and to be regarded as "helpless victims." (Walter Clarke, Social Hygiene, June, 1915, and Journal of Mental Science, Jan., 1916, p. 222.) There are fallacies in these figures, but it would appear that about half of the prostitutes in institutions are to be regarded as mentally defective.



XI

THE CONQUEST OF VENEREAL DISEASE

The final Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases has brought to an end an important and laborious investigation at what many may regard as an unfavourable moment. Perhaps, however, the moment is not so unfavourable as it seems. There is no period when venereal diseases flourish so exuberantly as in war time, and we shall have a sad harvest to gather here when the War is over.[1] Moreover, the War is teaching us to face the real facts of life more frankly and more courageously than ever before, and there is no field, scarcely even a battlefield, where a training in frankness and courage is so necessary as in this of Venereal Disease. It is difficult even to say that there is any larger field, for it has been found possible to doubt whether the great War of to-day, when all is summed up, will have produced more death, disease, and misery than is produced in the ordinary course of events, during a single generation, by venereal disease.

There are, as every man and woman ought to know, two main and quite distinct diseases (any other being unimportant) poetically termed "Venereal" because chiefly, though not by any means only, propagated in the intercourse over which the Roman goddess Venus once presided. These two diseases are syphilis and gonorrhoea. Both these diseases are very serious, often terrible, in their effects on the individual attacked, and both liable to be poisonous to the race. There has long been a popular notion that, while syphilis is indeed an awful disease, gonorrhoea may be accepted with a light heart. That, we now know, is a grave mistake. Gonorrhoea may seem trivial at the outset, but its results, especially for a woman and her children (when it allows her to have any), are anything but trivial; while its greater frequency, and the indifference with which it is regarded, still further increase its dangers.

About the serious nature of syphilis there is no doubt. It is a comparatively modern disease, not clearly known in Europe before the discovery of America at the end of the fifteenth century, and by some authorities[2] to-day supposed to have been imported from America. But it soon ravaged the whole of our world, and has continued to do so ever since. During recent years it has perhaps shown a slight tendency to decrease, though nothing to what could be achieved by systematic methods; but its evils are still sufficiently alarming. Exactly how common it is cannot be ascertained with certainty. At least 10 per cent., probably more, of the population in our large cities have been infected by syphilis, some before birth. In 1912 for an average strength of 120,000 men in the English Navy, nearly 300,000 days were lost as a result of venereal disease, while among 100,000 soldiers in the Home Army for the same year, an average of nearly 600 men were constantly sick from the same cause. We may estimate from this small example how vast must be the total loss of working power due to venereal disease. Moreover, in Sir William Osler's words, "of the killing diseases syphilis comes third or fourth." Its prevalence varies in different regions and different social classes. The mortality rate from syphilis for males above fifteen is highest for unskilled labour, then for the group intermediate between unskilled and skilled labour, then for the upper and middle class, followed by the group intermediate between this class and skilled labour, while skilled labour, textile workers, and miners follow, and agricultural labourers come out most favourably of all. These differences do not represent any ascending grade in virtue or sexual abstinence, but are dependent upon differences in social condition; thus syphilis is comparatively rare among agricultural labourers because they associate only with women they know and are not exposed to the temptation of strange women, while it is high among the upper class because they are shut out from sexual intimacy with women of their own class and so resort to prostitutes. On the whole, however, it will be seen, the poison of syphilis is fairly diffused among all classes. This poison may work through many years or even the whole of life, and its early manifestations are the least important. It may begin before birth: thus, one recent investigation shows that in 150 syphilitic families there were only 390 seemingly healthy children to 401 infant deaths, stillbirths, and miscarriages (as against 172 in 180 healthy families), the great majority of these failures being infant deaths and thus representing a large amount of wasted energy and expense.[3] Syphilis is, again, the most serious single cause of the most severe forms of brain disease and insanity, this often coming on many years after the infection, and when the early symptoms were but slight. Blindness and deafness from the beginning of life are in a large proportion of cases due to syphilis. There is, indeed, no organ of the body which is not liable to break down, often with fatal results, through syphilis, so that it has been well said that a doctor who knows syphilis thoroughly is familiar with every branch of his profession.