"There is something that should be here that is not here. They have a need, a need that is just as strong and complete in itself as the love which we have for each other."
The sobbing was so far away and so low that they scarcely heard it at first. It came from the opposite side of the enormous room, and they could not see the woman with bent back and tearstained face who was kneeling beside one of the cribs, and tenderly caressing the cheeks of a sleeping infant.
FIFTEEN
They heard only the sobbing for a moment and then the voice of the woman rang out in the stillness. There was pain and bitterness in her voice, and frustration, and a terrible unhappiness.
"He is my child!" she cried. "I know he is my child! You took him away from me, and put about his neck a chain and a metal tag bearing only two letters and a serial number. Cold, cruel letters engraved on metal!
"A serial number only, to mark him forever as lost and abandoned, a child who will grow to manhood knowing nothing of a mother's love, a mother's selfless devotion.
"You have cheated us and denied us the right to think of ourselves as the mothers of men. You have denied us the great and wonderful joy of looking upon the face of a sleeping child and knowing that the child has need of us. We cannot take our own flesh into our arms and cradle the tiny, precious new life that love has brought into the world and feel, because every mother is proud in a wholly wonderful way, that we have been privileged beyond all other women."
"We cannot suckle and nourish that life with the sweet flowing of a mother's milk. We can never know the tenderness and joy of feeling that the love which we bestow can never be wasted, that it is a gift given freely and without stint, and that all we ask in return is to feel the tug of tiny hands at our breasts and the moving about of a small body in gentle, contented drowsiness."
"You have cheated us in another way. You have made even love's beginning seem ugly, by stripping it of all tenderness, all romantic glamour. You have set us apart from the rest of society, you have veiled what we do, looking upon it as a necessary evil, and you have turned your faces from the mating centers in shame, as if loving were a crime and an abomination.