m he wrote many letters[70]
of direction and encouragement, gave up the work of collecting--to
Wallace's sincere disappointment--and came home because he felt that it
was wrong to take the lives of such wondrous and beautiful birds and
insects. Another correspondent, who had joined the Navy, wrote a number
of long letters to Wallace setting forth his conscientious objections to
killing, arrived at after reading Wallace's books; and although Wallace
endeavoured from prudential considerations to restrain him from giving
up his position, he nevertheless wholly sympathised with him and in the
end warmly defended him when it was necessary to do so. The sacrifice,
too, of human life in dangerous employments for the purpose of financial
gain, no less than the frightful slaughter of the battlefield, was
abhorrent to Wallace and aroused his intensest indignation. Life to him
was sacred. It had its origin in the spiritual kingdom. "We are lovers
of nature, from 'bugs' up to 'humans,'" he wrote to Mr. Fred Birch.

By every means he laboured earnestly to secure an equal opportunity of
leading a useful and happy life for all men and women. He championed the
cause of women--of their freer life and their more active and public
part in national service. He found the selective agency, which was to
work for the amelioration he desired, in a higher form of sexual
selection, which will be the prerogative of women; and therefore woman's
position in the not distant future "will be far higher and more
important than any which has been claimed for or by her in the past."
When political and social rights are conceded to her on equality with
men, her free choice in marriage, no longer influenced by economic and
social considerations, will guide the future moral progress of the race,
restore the lost equality of opportunity to every child born in our
country, and secure the balance between the sexes. "It will be their
(women's) special duty so to mould public opinion, through home training
and social influence, as to render the women of the future the
regenerators of the entire human race."

He was acutely anxious that his ideals should be realised on earth by
the masses of the people. He had a large and noble vision of their
future. And he had his plan for their immediate redemption--national
ownership of the soil, better housing, higher wages, certainty of
employment, abolition of preventable diseases, more leisure and wider
education, not mer