e, they were Mothers, not in our sense of
helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land,
every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting
horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers
of People. Mother-love with them was not a brute passion, a mere
"instinct," a wholly personal feeling; it was--a religion.

It included that limitless feeling of sisterhood, that wide unity in
service, which was so difficult for us to grasp. And it was National,
Racial, Human--oh, I don't know how to say it.

We are used to seeing what we call "a mother" completely wrapped up in
her own pink bundle of fascinating babyhood, and taking but the faintest
theoretic interest in anybody else's bundle, to say nothing of the
common needs of ALL the bundles. But these women were working all
together at the grandest of tasks--they were Making People--and they
made them well.

There followed a period of "negative eugenics" which must have been an
appalling sacrifice. We are commonly willing to "lay down our lives" for
our country, but they had to forego motherhood for their country--and it
was precisely the hardest thing for them to do.

When I got this far in my reading I went to Somel for more light. We
were as friendly by that time as I had ever been in my life with any
woman. A mighty comfortable soul she was, giving one the nice smooth
mother-feeling a man likes in a woman, and yet giving also the clear
intelligence and dependableness I used to assume to be masculine
qualities. We had talked volumes already.

"See here," said I. "Here was this dreadful period when they got far too
thick, and decided to limit the population. We have a lot of talk about
that among us, but your position is so different that I'd like to know a
little more about it.

"I understand that you make Motherhood the highest social service--a
sacrament, really; that it is only undertaken once, by the majority of
the population; that those held unfit are not allowed even that; and
that to be encouraged to bear more than one child is the very highest
reward and honor in the power of the state."

(She interpolated here that the nearest approach to an aristocracy
they had was to come of a line of "Over Mothers"--those who had been so
honored.)

"But what I do not understand, naturally, is how you prevent it. I
gathered that each woman had five. You have no tyrannical husbands to
hold in check--and you surel