“Well, you realise perhaps that, in the hands of a patriotic medical staff, the system can be so worked that every woman who is ‘approved’ can be provided with a ‘eugenic’ mate from an approved panel, drawn chiefly from the Military Class, eh?”
“Is this one of Mr. Villele’s jokes at the expense of the Meccanians?” I asked Mr. Johnson.
“He is telling the story in his own way,” answered Johnson, “but in substance it is quite true.”
“But it sounds incredible,” I said. “What do the husbands say to it?”
“Oh, the business is done very quietly. A woman is ordered a ‘cure’ by the ‘medical authority,’ and she goes away for a little time. The men on the panel are kept in training, like pugilists used to be. As for the husbands—did you ever attend any lectures in the Universities on Meccanian ethics? Of course you have not been in the country very long. Jealousy is regarded as an obsolete virtue, or vice, whichever you like. Besides, you must not imagine the custom affects large numbers. Probably not more than 10 per cent of the women, chiefly in the Fifth and Sixth, and to some extent in the Fourth, Class, are affected.”
“But I should have thought that social caste would be an insuperable obstacle,” I said.
“Surely not! When did you hear that women were chosen for such purposes from any particular class? It is not a question of marriage.”
“There is one circumstance,” interposed Mr. Johnson, “that has some bearing on this subject. Domestic life in Meccania for generations past has been based on quite a different ideal from that prevalent in other parts of Europe. A Meccanian in the old days used to choose a wife very much as he would choose a horse. She was thought of as the mother of children; in fact, the Meccanian sociologists used to maintain that this was one of the marks of their superiority over other European nations. Conjugal affection was recognised only as a sort of by-product of marriage. Of course they always pretended to cultivate a kind of Romanticism because they wrote a lot of verse about the spring, and moonlight and kisses and love-longing, but their Romanticism never went beyond that. As the object of Meccanian sentiment, one person would do just as well as another.”
“Our friend seems very much surprised at many things he finds in Meccania,” remarked Mr. Villele, “and my own countrymen, and more especially my own countrywomen, only half believe the accounts they read about this country, simply because they think human nature is the same everywhere; but then they are ignorant of history. Civilisations just as extraordinary have existed in ancient times, created through the influence of a few dominant ideas. The Meccanians are a primitive people with a mechanical culture. They have never been civilised, because they have no conception of an individual soul. Consequently they find it easy to devote themselves to a common purpose.”