probable that we should all be the better for the same treatment;
but, as I asked just now, will the girls be the better for it? The
disengaged philosopher can only answer that question in one way. That
feverish community-work which they have been doing through a four
years' orgy of patriotism will have taught them very much of life and
manners. It will have taught them, among other more desirable things,
how to spend money, and how to keep a good many young men greatly
entertained; but it will not, I fear, have taught them how to save
money, how to make one man happy and comfortable, or how to bring up
children in the fear of God.

And if it has failed to teach those things it will have failed to fit
them for this world, to say the least. It will not only have failed
them, but it will have failed us with them. For the world needs at
this moment a thousand things before it can be made tolerable again;
and all of those can be summed up into one paramount need, which is
for men and women who will observe faithfully the laws of their being.
And what, pray, are the laws of their being? At the outside, three; in
reality, two: to work, to love and to have children.

At this hour neither men nor women will work. The strain is taken off,
the bow relaxed. At the same time they must have money, that they may
spend it; for as always happens in moments of reaction, the
simplest way of expressing high spirits and a sense of ease is
wild expenditure. So wages must be high, and because wages are high
everything is dear. There are no houses, and there will be none; there
can be no marriages, and there will be none; there will be no milk for
children, so there will be no children. How long are such things to
go on? Just so long as we disregard the laws of our being. We began to
neglect them long before the war, and they must be learned again. We