here should be placed over these
visiting-guardians a Government-appointed, permanent, highly salaried
official--a kind of over-guardian-parent or Consultant, who would
supervise the work of the ordinary guardians in difficult cases, and
advise as to the best means of administering the law. This high official
ought, in my opinion, to be a woman.

Such a scheme as I have outlined (briefly and, I know, inadequately)
would achieve the three-fold purpose of (1) safeguarding the child, (2)
guiding and helping the mother, (3) fastening responsibility on the
father. If wisely administered by guardians, acting with sympathy and
understanding, it could hardly fail to achieve the desired result of
protecting the child. Every illegitimately born child would be placed in
a position of safety.

As a preliminary step, and pending legislation, it would be an excellent
plan if groups of interested people, or societies, were to form local
representative committees to appoint voluntary Visiting-guardians. By
this means the plan could be tried, and some kind of responsible and
authoritative guardianship at once undertaken. We ought to do this now,
for death and suffering to the little children are going on while we
delay.

There is no more for me to say.

The saving of these little ones is a plain duty upon me and upon you, my
readers. Let us clear hardness from our minds and sentiment from our
hearts; both will equally lead us astray. The child is the real care of
the State and of us all; it is the child who is dependent; the child who
has been sinned against; the child we have to protect. Save these
babies from death and from life that is worse than death; give these
children a right start in life. Let no illegitimately born child be able
to say in after years, "I have called and ye refused; I have stretched
out my hand and no man regarded."

FOOTNOTES:

[151:1] Freud.

[153:1] The illegitimate percentage of total births for the first half
of 1918 was 6 per cent., in 1914 it was 4.24 per cent.

[154:1] See article by Havelock Ellis. _The New Statesman_, May 25th,
1918. Also Prinzing, whom Ellis quotes.

[158:1] In an article which appeared in _Maternity and Child Welfare_,
in 1918, I first brought this question forward: the article was in
answer to a discussion which had previously taken place in that useful
and excellent little journal on the Unmarried Mother and her Child. I
shall use some portion of what I then said in