se has
any rights but to serve her, for the future absolutely depends upon her.
So does the future of our society depend upon its mothers. In our
species there are many and not one, as in the bee-hive. If there were
just one individual who was to be the mother of the next generation,
even our politicians would perceive that she was the most important
person in the community, and that her rights were supreme. But the
principle stands, though, as it happens, human mothers are not one in
each generation, but many. They are in our society what the queen bee is
in the hive, and the future will transcend the present and the past just
in so far as they are well-chosen, and well cared for.

To the best of my belief this principle has not yet been recognized by
any one. The rights of women and the rights of wives are often
discussed, but the rights of mothers is a term expressing a principle
which is not to be called new, only because in the bee-hive, for
instance, we see it expressed and inerrably served.

Perhaps it may be permitted to close with a personal reminiscence which,
at any rate, bears on the genesis of this chapter. Some nine years ago
when I was resident-surgeon to the Edinburgh Maternity Hospital, I
proposed to get up a concert for the patients on Boxing Day, and on
asking permission of the distinguished obstetrician who was in supreme
charge, was met with the question, "Do they deserve it?" After several
seconds there slowly dawned the fact which I knew but had long
forgotten, that the mothers in the large ward where the music was
proposed, were all unmarried, and finally I answered, "I don't know."
Nor do I know to this day, and though the answer was given in weakness
and in a disconcerted voice, I doubt whether any wiser one could be
framed. We all know what desert means, and merit and credit, until we
begin to think and study: and we end by discovering that we do not know
what, in the last analysis, these terms mean. But, at any rate, these
women,--one of them, I remember, was a child of fourteen--were mothers,
and whatever favoured their convalescence unquestionably made for the
survival of their babies. It might have been argued that if the patients
did not deserve music, they did not deserve the air and light and food
and skill and kindness with which they were being restored to health.
But it is not a question of deserts. These women were mothers. If they
should not have been, they should not have been, a