, for the
sake of the children.

This seemed to us a wholly incredible thing: first, that any nation
should have the foresight, the strength, and the persistence to plan
and fulfill such a task; and second, that women should have had so much
initiative. We have assumed, as a matter of course, that women had
none; that only the man, with his natural energy and impatience of
restriction, would ever invent anything.

Here we found that the pressure of life upon the environment develops in
the human mind its inventive reactions, regardless of sex; and further,
that a fully awakened motherhood plans and works without limit, for the
good of the child.

That the children might be most nobly born, and reared in an environment
calculated to allow the richest, freest growth, they had deliberately
remodeled and improved the whole state.

I do not mean in the least that they stopped at that, any more than
a child stops at childhood. The most impressive part of their whole
culture beyond this perfect system of child-rearing was the range of
interests and associations open to them all, for life. But in the field
of literature I was most struck, at first, by the child-motive.

They had the same gradation of simple repetitive verse and story that we
are familiar with, and the most exquisite, imaginative tales; but where,
with us, these are the dribbled remnants of ancient folk myths and
primitive lullabies, theirs were the exquisite work of great artists;
not only simple and unfailing in appeal to the child-mind, but TRUE,
true to the living world about them.

To sit in one of their nurseries for a day was to change one's views
forever as to babyhood. The youngest ones, rosy fatlings in their
mothers' arms, or sleeping lightly in the flower-sweet air, seemed
natural enough, save that they never cried. I never heard a child cry in
Herland, save once or twice at a bad fall; and then people ran to help,
as we would at a scream of agony from a grown person.

Each mother had her year of glory; the time to love and learn, living
closely with her child, nursing it proudly, often for two years or more.
This perhaps was one reason for their wonderful vigor.

But after the baby-year the mother was not so constantly in attendance,
unless, indeed, her work was among the little ones. She was never
far off, however, and her attitude toward the co-mothers, whose proud
child-service was direct and continuous, was lovely to see.

As for the