I


THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES


"There has arisen in society, a figure which is certainly the
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