nd the sterilized milk depot and
the fractional analysis of cow's milk and its recomposition in suitable
proportions of proteid, fat, etc., as devised by Rotch, were rightly
acclaimed and admitted to save vast numbers of infant lives. All this is
mere stop-gap, wonderfully effective, no doubt, but only stop-gap
nevertheless. In France they are going ahead, and public opinion in
London is being slowly persuaded to follow along the more recent French
lines. The modern principle upon which we should act is Nature's
principle--saving the children through their mothers. Expectant
motherhood must be taken care of; we must feed, not the child, but the
nursing mother, and the child through her. If we rightly take care of
her, she will construct a perfect food for the child. There is no other
path of racial safety. It is not our present concern to deal with the
problems of infancy and childhood as they require, and surely we need
not wait to prove that nursing motherhood cannot safely be superseded,
but must be retained and safeguarded.

If this postulate be granted, we have to determine how it comes about
that the German figures, for instance, are showing this extraordinarily
rapid decline in maternal lactation. As has already been noted in
passing, we must reject the suggestion that the natural type of women is
changing. Such a change of natural type in any living race can occur
only through selection for parenthood, and such selection in the case in
question can scarcely be imagined to occur in the direction of choosing
women who are naturally less capable of nursing. On the contrary, the
tendency of the selective principle must always be toward the greater
survival of infants whose mothers can nurse them, and who in their turn,
if they are to be women, will be more likely to be able to nurse their
children. Further, the action of selection cannot demonstrate itself
more quickly than is permitted by the length of human generations. It
must therefore be rejected as any interpretation of this case. If women
are ceasing to be able to nurse their babies, and if this change is
occurring with such extraordinary rapidity as the German figures
indicate, plainly the explanation must be found in the action of some
recent and novel condition or conditions upon womanhood.

Perhaps it need scarcely be insisted that the distinction here sought to
be made is of the utmost importance. If the natural type of womanhood
were actually changing,