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The Whole Duty of Woman
No. I.
In the previous paper it was pointed out that we ought to mobilize every healthy man of military age.
The meddlesome old women that have prevented our having an army are now busy in making the service unpopular by trying to deprive the soldier of his principle pleasures.
They say "Mr. Thomas Atkins is a gentleman" and should be "put on his honour", not to say "Bother! also Blow! Of Wickedness the germs".
At the same time they close the public-houses at 10 to prevent him getting drunk, and they want to forbid women to be out after 8:30 at night in garrison towns.
It may be as well to prohibit the fiercer forms of alcohol, but to prevent a soldier from kissing a girl is not only against human nature, but against public policy.
No. II.
We have been at war six months, and already women are starving by the hundred thousand.
In France, at the very outset of mobilization, every job that women can do was done by women. You cannot train women to be chauffeurs, engine-drivers, and skilled artificers in a week.., but they make excellent ticket-collectors, conductors, and a thousand other things at a moment's notice. No eligible male would be allowed to serve in a shop, or indeed to fulfil any civil function at all until he has been through his allotted minimum of military training and passed into the Reserve.*
There is ample work for every woman in the country if but this one simple [?] step is taken. At present women seem to think that their only way of service is nursing plus knitting unwearable socks, and sewing shirts less practicable than shrouds.
But beyond this is a matter of importance outweighing it [illegible] the sword outweighs the noodle.
No. III.
Killed outright, or dead of wounds or disease, we have already lost perhaps 150,000 men.
Before this war is over we may have lost half a million or a million—who knows. Perhaps far more. It is not possible to replace them; emigration may cease, though I doubt it, but at the best it must be twenty years before the adult males of England are as numerous as they were in July 1914.
I shall not here enter into the argument that proves the prosperity of a country, roughly speaking, to vary as the proportion of males to females.
The age-defying prosperity of China, based on female infanticide, a comparison of happy polyandrous Ledakh with wretched polygamous Baltistan contiguous, the discontent of our excess female population, these are subjects for reflexion and research at leisure.
Enough for the moment to point out that in order to restore the fighting strength of the country, we must have men by the million. And these men will not be found under gooseberry-bushes; they will develop from babies.
We must therefore have as many million babies every year as we can get.
No. IV.
These babies must be healthy, lusty, sturdy little devils if they are to fight the Chinese (or whoever it may be) in 1940 (or whenever it is). Therefore their mothers had better be all the young handsome robust women, and their fathers had better be the well-fed, well-drilled, athletic soldiers, than the old men, and the damaged men, and the silly knock-kneed cigaretted loungers who are evading military service.
Every man before he is called to the firing line ought to do his damnedest to begat as many babies as he can. Even if he comes back unscathed, he may have had his nerves shaken; and there is at present a very fair chance of his not coming back. Let him leave a soldier or so in embryo to accumulate to the credit account of Edward VIII. or George VI. If he fails in this duty, his sons may be the serfs of Wilhelm III !
No. V.
Away, then, with the Bishop of London, and old maids, and tom fools generally! Silences to the sterile hags whose envy urges them to the inquisition joys of Rescue Work and Y.M.C.A. and Helping the Fallen and 'White Slave' campaigns of hysteria, falsehood and blackmail.
And let every woman capable of bearing a child consider herself shamed unless she bears one in her womb or at her breast!
No. VI.
These remarks are 'subversive of morality'.
In the alternative, however, the soldier is driven to self-abuse or to worse, as every student of the subject knows, or worst of all, to the frequentation of the prostitute, to his own utter ruin, and the ruin of his whole race for all time, through disease.
If you wish, then, to toy with antiquities, make marriage easy. Let any soldier or sailor marry without fuss or the bother of banns or licences, or any such red tape tomfoolery. Ask the blessing of the God of Generation, if you will, in the good old words of the Book of Common Prayer; but at least let us get the business through without any hitches.
But even so there must be a matter of ten million woman left without a mate. But if they cannot bear legitimate children, let them bear bastards. They can find plenty of Shakespeare to back them: in 'King Lear', for instance. And plenty of authority, if need be, in Holy Writ. Polygamy, by the way, is nowhere prohibited in the Bible, or even discouraged except in the case of bishops and deacons.
Anyhow, never mind about this; let the king have his 10,000,000 spare babies in 1915.
Motherhood is holy; and not all the curses of the 'pious', and the envious sham-contempt of the sterile, can make it otherwise.
No. VII.
Nor is this proposal without precedent.
Frederick the Great stood godfather to any child, legitimate or illegitimate, that could claim for Father one of the famous Grenadiers.
Our present government has already recognized the principle by paying allowances to 'immoral' dependants of a soldier, provided that he has 'made a home' for them. (Those without a home of course need no assistance, countrymen of Jevons and John Stuart Hill!)
All that is needed is to give the movement a sentimental fillip. Let us call all unmarried mothers "King George's Martyrs" or even "Asquiths" (meaning 'wait and see!') and call the children "Little Kitcheners", or in any other way throw a sop to the 'Daily Mirror' type of mind. I am not expert in these devices: but the kind editors will know how to do it.
No. VIII.
But this is the essence of the need: make motherhood on any terms honourable, and prostitution and sterility disgraceful. At the present time the richest and most famous women in England are all prostitutes, and have won that wealth, fame, (and sometimes even rank) by prostitution. It is only the unsuccessful courtesan that is really despised. The others are envied. Not that this state of things is altogether to be deprecated. The apotheosis of the harlot is given the stimulant to fatherhood.
But the common prostitute is the curse of society, especially at such a time as the present. She must be ruthlessly exterminated by destroying the reason for her existence, which is the sexual inattractiveness, ignorance, and incapacity of the average woman, and the shame and disaster which await her if she do her duty by the state.
No. IX.
Frank, clean, sensible sexual education for all is therefore our first great need.
And our second, the proper estimate of Motherhood as such. A woman is to be honoured above others if she provides the state with a soldier without having previously driven the best possible bargain for herself.
I am well aware that the only valid argument for marriage is that it purports to provide for the welfare of the offspring. In a very large percentage of cases it of course fails utterly to do so. But—call it socialism, if you like!—just now it must be the duty of the state to assure the welfare of every possible future soldier. And if the women of this country will take the law into their own hands, see their duty, and do it, there will be so many bastards that the state will have no option but to recognize them. You cannot outlaw a third of the community.
As the great crises it is always the women who must turn shame to honour.
When the world itself was at stake, did not One Woman dare all only to find her reproach taken away by an honest man, and—glory beyond glory!—to have the fatherhood of the child acknowledged by the Omnipotent Himself?
No. X.
Motherhood is holy.
Fatherhood is holy.
The act of creation is a sacrament.
Let these things be no more the matter of lewd jest and shocked prudery.
Let love be a religion, with every man a king and priest, and every woman a crowned princess, unto God.
Let not this purity be soiled with fees to clergymen, and consideration of property, and succession, and social status; these are fetish-sacrifices to the wooden gods of propriety.
Let the Beauty of Strength match the Strength of Beauty for the prize of Birth!
Let Love rule in Holiness and Solemnity, and Purity find its consecration in the Climax of Life.
For your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost.
* This training should be done by drafting 25% of all sound men between 18 and 40, the oldest first, so that in 2 years every man would be a soldier. All 'territorial battalions', 'groups of pals', and the other petty bribes, comprises and insincerities of volunteering must be swept away at a stroke. There is no friendship like comradeship in arms. All children of 14, male and female, should undergo 4 years semi-military training on hygienic and gymnastic lines, and taught tidiness, industry, and duty. This training should, however, be graduated so as to impose no strain on any of the children, and it should be made glad. Dancing, swimming, and such aptitudes should be preferred to drilling. Once a child conquers the sloth of youth though its interest in play it becomes so active that it seeks hard work of its own accord.
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