, for some of which the
general public is as yet unprepared. The call is already made for
more concentration upon the better enforcement of existing laws,
rather than upon constant demand for new legislation in the interest
of social welfare.

=Women's Interest in Public Life a Social Asset.=--The fact, however,
that so many women are actively engaged not only in watching
legislation and in learning the character and ability of political
leaders in the national Congress, but also in trying to raise the
average life of the people of the country by and through better laws
and more efficient enforcement, is cause for great encouragement. It
shows that women came into their kingdom of political power just as
the state was ready to take on the functions no longer fully expressed
within the family circle. If we must be shocked by learning that a
baby a day is being given away in New York City through advertisements
in the daily papers, and with a haste and carelessness that proves
lack of responsibility in parents and guardians, we may be relieved of
fear that love of children is dying out when we see what are the
things that millions of women are now banded together to secure for
the betterment of all child-life. Largely owing to such efforts, fewer
babies die during the first year of life now in any listed one hundred
thousand, than ever before in our American history. If we find that
many people are living without the comforts they need and in
conditions inimical to health and morality, we can at least take
comfort in the fact that fewer go to the "poorhouse" than used to be
found there when all sorts of dependents were sent to that one
institution. With the state's new discrimination and graded assorting
of young and old and sick and well and sane and insane and normal and
subnormal, the state care is on lines at once more humane to the
individual and more helpful to social organization.

The state is indeed turning father and mother in its newer agencies
for social conservation and social aid to the distressed and
miserable. And as the state thus does the work that once was attempted
and poorly done by the collective family, it must more and more call
to its service the men and women of parental quality and of fit and
devoted expression of the protective and the nurturing elements of
human nature.

=Social Service in Peace.=--The state has always called for
sacrificial service from its members. It has called most of