VII.—FRIENDSHIP
VIII.—MISUNDERSTANDINGS
IX.—FURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS: THE NEED FOR SEX CHIVALRY
X.—"THE SIN OF THE BRIDEGROOM"
XI.—COMMON-SENSE AND DIVORCE LAW REFORM
I
THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES
"There has arisen in society, a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of her sex, and doomed for the most part to disease and abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every eye as the perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man. Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. She remains while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."
Lecky's History of European Morals, Chap. V.
One of the many problems which have been intensified by the war is the problem of the relations of the sexes. Difficult as it has always been, the difficulty inevitably becomes greater when there is a grave disproportion—an excess in numbers of one sex over the other. And in this country, whereas there was a disproportion of something like a million more women than men before the war broke out, there is now a disproportion of about one and three-quarter millions.