most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which
the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose
very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold
heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the
passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the
vilest of her sex, and doomed for the most part to disease and
abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every eye as
the perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man.
Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most
efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged
purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a
few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her
with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of
remorse and despair. She remains while creeds and civilisations
rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for
the sins of the people."

Lecky's _History of European Morals_, Chap. V.

One of the many problems which have been intensified by the war is the
problem of the relations of the sexes. Difficult as it has always been,
the difficulty inevitably becomes greater when there is a grave
disproportion--an excess in numbers of one sex over the other. And in this
country, whereas there was a disproportion of something like a million more
women than men before the war broke out, there is now a disproportion of
about one and three-quarter millions.

This accidental and (I believe) temporary difficulty--a difficulty not
"natural" and necessary to human life, but artificial and peculiar to
certain conditions which may be altered--does not, of course, create the
problem we have to deal with: but it forces that problem on our attention
by sheer force of suffering inflicted on so large a scale. It compels us
to ask ourselves on what we base, and at what we value the moral standard
which, if it is to be preserved, must mean a tremendous sacrifice on the
part of so large a number of women as is involved in their acceptance of
life-long celibacy.

There is no subject on which it is more difficult to find a common
ground than this. To some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the
question--on what are your moral standards based? To others what we call
our "moral standards" are so obviously absurd and "unnatural" that the
question has for the