cial conscience of its duty to the
race ... let there be no heritage if you would build up and preserve a
virile and efficient people. Here, I hold, we reach the kernel of the
truth which the science of eugenics has at present revealed."

It is also a part of eugenic practice to oppose vigorously and
unmistakably any social practice leading to the reduction in the
reproductivity of the desirable and valuable elements of society.
There is to be included here for censure a long list of customs and
practices, from the enforced celibacy of the Church to the horror of
horrors--warfare. A moment's reflection will suggest many
reprehensible practices of this kind more or less current in certain
classes or communities. The requirement of nonmarriage on the part of
women teachers--persons of tested and demonstrated ability, is a very
general practice of decidedly noneugenic character. In Great Britain
more than 75,000 nurses, all of whom must have passed physical
examination, are cut off from reproduction by the same requirement of
nonmarriage. Many less striking but all too common practices have the
final effect of forbidding marriage to the healthy, physically or
mentally capable, helpful, classes. "Help wanted. Must be
unencumbered."

More vigorously and more unmistakably does the Eugenist discourage
anything that leads to matings of the unfit and, above all, to their
reproduction. Many countries, from Servia to the Argentine Republic,
have statutes forbidding the marriage of the insane, idiots, deaf and
dumb, certain classes of criminals, and persons afflicted with certain
contagious diseases. It is to be hoped that these laws are enforced
with greater effectiveness than that with which our own less stringent
laws of similar character are administered. After all, it is the
reproduction of these persons that should be limited, and among many
of these classes the fact of nonmarriage would provide not the
slightest barrier to reproduction.

It is unfortunately true, but true none the less, that there are
current forms of so-called philanthropy which, by relieving defective
parents of the care of their defective offspring, thus encourage them
in the production of more defective offspring; and so the flames are
fed. Relief is the smallest part of the problem. Any condition which
leads to the multiplication of the innately defective and dependent
classes must be sternly opposed. No matter how benign the guise of any
form of re