In Times Like These

by Nellie L. McClung

Granting that population is very desirable, would it not be well to save what we have? Six or seven thousand of our population in Canada drop out of the race every year as a direct result of the liquor traffic, and a higher percentage than this perish from the same cause in some other countries. Would it not be well to save them? Thousands of babies die every year from preventable causes. Free milk depositories and district nurses and free dispensaries would save many of them. In the Far West, on the border of civilization, where women are beyond the reach of nurses and doctors, many mothers and babies die every year. How would it be to try to save them? Delegations of public-spirited women have waited upon august bodies of men, and pleaded the cause of these brave women who are paying the toll of colonization, and have asked that Government nurses be sent to them in their hour of need. But up to date not one dollar of Government money has been spent on them notwithstanding the fact that when a duke or a prince comes to visit our country, we can pour out money like water!

It does not seem to the thoughtful observer that we need more children nearly so much as we need better children, and a higher value set upon all human life. In this day of war, when men are counted of less value than cattle, it is a doubtful favor to the child to bring it into life under any circumstances, but to bring children into the world, suffering from the handicaps caused by the ignorance, poverty, or criminality of the parents, is an appalling crime against the innocent and helpless, and yet one about which practically nothing is said. Marriage, homemaking, and the rearing of children are left entirely to chance, and so it is no wonder that humanity produces so many specimens who, if they were silk stockings or boots, would be marked "Seconds." The Bishop's cry has found many an echo: "Let us have more."

Women in several of the states have instituted campaigns for "Better Babies," and by offering prizes and disseminating information, they have given a better chance to many a little traveler on life's highway. But all who have endeavored in any way to secure legislation or government grants for the protection of children, have found that legislators are more willing to pass laws for the protection of cattle than for the protection of children, for cattle have a real value and children have only a sentimental value.

If children die—what of it? "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away." Let us have more. This is the sore thought with women. It is not that the bringing of children into the world is attended with pain and worry and weariness—it is not that: it is that they are held of such small value in the eyes of this man-made world. This is the sorest thought of all!

Even as I write these words, I hear the bugle calling, and down the street our brave boys in khaki are marching. Today I passed on the street a mother and her only son, who is now a soldier and going away with the next contingent. The lad was trying to cheer her as they walked along. She held him by the hand:—he was just a little boy to her.

"It was not for this that I raised him," she said to me bitterly. "It was not for this! The whole thing is wrong, and it is just as hard on the German women as on us!"

Even in her sorrow she had the universal outlook—the very thing that so many philosophers declare that women have not got!

I could not help but think that if there had been women in the German Reichstag, women with authority behind them, when the Kaiser began to lay his plans for the war, the results might have been very different. I do not believe women with boys of their own would ever sit down and wilfully plan slaughter, and if there had been women there when the Kaiser and his brutal war-lords discussed the way in which they would plunge all Europe into bloodshed, I believe one of those deep-bosomed, motherly, blue-eyed German women would have stood upon her feet and said: "William—forget it!" But the German women were not there—they were at home, raising children! So the preparations for war went on unchecked, and the resolutions passed without a dissenting voice. In German rule, we have a glorious example of male statecraft, uncontaminated by any feminine foolishness.

No doubt, it is because all our statecraft has been one-sided, that we find that human welfare has lagged far behind material welfare. We have made wonderful strides in convenience and comfort, but have not yet solved the problems of poverty, crime or insanity. Perhaps they, too, will yield to treatment when they are better understood, and men and women are both on the job. As it is now, criminals have only man's treatment, which is the hurry-up method—"hang him, and be done with him," or "chuck him into jail, and be quick about it, and let me forget him." Mothers would have more patience, more understanding, for they have been dealing with bad little boys all their lives.

The little family jars which arise in every home, are settled nine out of ten times by the mother, unless she is the sort of spineless, anemic woman, who lies down on the job, and says, "I'll tell your father," which acts as a threat, and sometimes is effective, though it solves no difficulty.