people appear to have about it is that in some parts of the world, like
India and China, every man is blessed with three or four wives. It is a
perfectly fantastic picture. The balance of the sexes--on the whole--is
equal. It is, therefore, a physical impossibility for polygamy to be a
universal custom. It cannot be practised, and has never been practised,
except among the rich--a small class always. Now that surely makes
it obvious that it is not a real solution. It might meet a temporary
difficulty; but is it reasonable, is it statesmanlike, to alter our entire
moral standard merely to tide over a temporary difficulty; to meet a state
of affairs which is purely artificial? I think that morals go deeper,
and should be based on some fundamental need, rather than on a purely
artificial need created by a passing difficulty, however great that
difficulty may be at the time. I do not, therefore, wish to dwell on other
better but temporary solutions, such as emigration. I do think that this is
a solution which would ease the situation to some extent, and in a normal
and right way, because the disproportion in the Overseas Dominions, where
the balance is the other way, and there are more men than women, is every
whit as unwholesome and as disastrous as is the disproportion of women in
this country. Consequently, from the point of view of both men and women,
I think that emigration is a thing that ought to be considered and helped
forward very much more than it is; but there, again, this is only a
temporary solution. We are trying to arrive at some moral position which is
based on the permanent needs and the real nature of human beings.

It has become almost a habit with me to feel that the real solution of
every problem can be found, by those people who are hurt by it, if they
will take hold of life _where it hurts_, and find out, not how they
themselves can escape from that hurt, but how they can prevent that
hurt from becoming a permanent factor in the lives of their brothers and
sisters. Now, the point at which this problem hurts many of us lies in