stance of the feminine over-haste in reform,
which, while casting out one devil, but prepares the way for seven
other devils worse than the first. Women seem to expect to solve
problems that have vexed civilisation since the beginnings of society.
This attitude is a little irritating. Every attempt hitherto to
grapple with prostitution has been a failure. Women have to remember
that it has existed as an institution in nearly all historic times and
among nearly all races of men. It is as old as monogamic marriage, and
maybe the result of that form of the sexual relationship, and not, as
some have held, a survival of primitive sexual licence. The action of
women in this question must be based on an educated opinion, which is
cognisant with the past history of prostitution, recognises the facts
of its action to-day in all civilised countries, and understands the
complexity of the problem from the man's side as well as the woman's.
Nothing less than this is necessary if any fruitful change is to be
effected, when women shall come to have a voice to direct the action
the State should assume towards this matter. The one measure which has
recently been brought forward and passed, largely aided by women,
especially the militant Suffragists--I refer to the White Slave
Traffic Bill--is just the most useless, ill-devised and really
preposterous law with which this tremendous problem could be mocked.
As Bernard Shaw has recently said--

"The act is the final triumph of the vice it pretends to
repress. There is one remedy and one alone, for the White Slave
Traffic. Make it impossible, by the enactment of a Minimum Wage
law and by the proper provision of the unemployed, for any woman
to be forced to choose between prostitution and penury, and the
White Slaver will have no more power over the daughters of
labourers, artisans and clerks than he (or under the New Act
she) will have over the wives of Bishops."

Now all this is true, but is not all the truth. Remove the economic
pressure and no woman will be driven, or be likely to be trapped, into
entering the oldest profession in the world; but this does not say
that she _will not enter it_. The establishment of a minimum wage will
assuredly lighten the evil, but it will not end prostitution. The
economic factor is by no means the only factor. It is quite true that
poverty drives many women into the profession--that this should be so
is one of the socia