sex side of their nature.

I emphasize this point here, because it is involved in the present state
of affairs. I have reminded you that there are nearly 2,000,000 women
whose lives are to be considered. If the number were quite small, it might
comfortably be assumed that the women who remained unmarried were those
who, in any case, had no vocation for marriage. For it is, of course, true
that there are such women, as there are such men. The normal man and woman
desire marriage and parenthood, and are fitted for it; but there are always
exceptions who either do not desire it, or, desiring it, feel bound to
put it aside at the call of some other vocation, which they feel to
be supremely theirs, and which is not compatible with marriage. They
sacrifice; but they do so joyfully, not for repression, but for a different
life, another vocation. And where the number of the unmarried is small,
it may without essential injustice be supposed that these are the natural
celibates.

But you cannot suppose that of 2,000,000! Among the number how many are
young widows, girls engaged to marry men now dead, and how many whose
_natural_ vocation was marriage, motherhood, home-making, and all that is
meant by such things as these? If this be the normal vocation of the normal
woman how many of these have been deprived of all that seemed to them to
make life worth living? Is it astonishing if they rebel? If they determine
to snatch at anything that yet lies in their grasp? If they affirm "the
right to motherhood" when they want children, or the satisfaction of the
sex-instinct when that need becomes imperious?

If we are to say to such women--"The normal life is denied to you, not
by your fault, or because you do not need it, but because we have
unfortunately been obliged to sacrifice in war the men who should have been