This was borne in mind when the Central states governments dealt with a similar condition in 1916, the factors of which were these: There had been killed in action, crippled for life, and incapacitated by disease nearly five million men who had gone to the fronts in the very prime of life. That meant a serious loss to a community—considering Germany and Austria-Hungary a single unit in this respect—which then had approximately twenty million women in the state of puberty. Reduced to statistics, the situation was that there were only four men of marriageable age for every five women. It was estimated at the time that before the war was over these odds would go to three to five. Recent casualty statistics show that this stage has been nearly reached.
I must make reference here to the fact that the normal and healthy woman finds life with the physically impaired man a torture. A good many cases of that sort have come to my attention. One of them is so typical of all others that I will give its details.
At a certain Berlin drawing-room I made the acquaintance of a charming young woman of the better class. I may say that she is a writer of considerable merit.
A few months before the outbreak of the war she had married a professional man of quality. When the mobilization came he was drafted as an officer of the reserve.
For months at a time the two did not see each other, and when finally the man returned home for good one leg had been amputated at the knee and the other a little above the ankle. The woman did what most women would do under the circumstances. She received the man with open arms and nursed him back to complete recovery.
Soon it was evident that all was not well with the relations of the two. The woman tried to forget that her husband was a cripple for life. But the harder she tried the more grew a feeling of repulsion for the man. Finally, she decided to live alone.
It would be very simple to label the woman a heartless creature. But it would be quite as unjust. The foes of even that small portion of realism which the most logical of us are able to identify may be inclined to take the stand that sex has little to do with what is called love. And yet in the healthy race it forms the social force majeure. It is not for me to decide whether the woman in question did well in leaving the man. After all, that is her own affair—so much more her own affair since the man, as yet not reconciled to his great misfortune, began to plague her with most vicious outbreaks of jealousy, when as yet he had no reason for it.
The man is to be pitied by all, and unless he is able to calm his mind with the solace that comes from philosophical temperament, it would have been far better were he among the dead. He may in the end find another mate; but, seen from the angle of natural law, it must be doubted that the pity, which would have to be the great factor in such a love, would in any degree be as valuable as the sexual instinct which caused the other woman to go her own ways. Idealism and practice are always two different things. The former is the star that guides the craft, while practice is the storm-tossed sea.
More than fifty thousand Russian prisoners-of-war petitioned the Austrian government to be admitted to citizenship in the country that held them captive. Many of these men had been sent into the rural districts to assist the farmers. Others were busy around the cities. They had come to be reconciled with their lot, had acquired a fair working knowledge of the language, and association with the women had led to the usual results. The crop of "war" babies increased.
The Russians were willing to marry these women, but under the law could not do so. Hence the petition for admission to the usual civil rights. The Austrian government recognized the situation, but in the absence of the necessary legislative authority could do nothing to admit the Russian to Austrian Staatsangehörigkeit. Yet it was eager to do that. The new blood was needed.