undeveloped, and science has as yet touched only the fringe of the
possible productivity of the earth in the matter of food supplies. The
worst feature of the British Empire is that there are too many Englishmen
and not enough Anzacs.--E.A.R.]

One duty at any rate is quite clear. No woman should run any chance of
conception unless she is certain of her own health and the health of her
partner--the man who is to be the father of the child she is to bring into
the world. If her husband's health is unsound, and she cannot avoid
intercourse, she can certainly take precautions against conception and
against infection. The control of fecundity and the control of infection
are parallel problems, and generally speaking, the measures a woman takes
to prevent conception will also prevent infection. If these precautions
are not taken, a woman may not only become seriously ill herself, but she
may blast the health of her unborn babe--or infect it herself during or
after birth. Clearly then it is her personal, as well as her maternal and
national, duty to apply preventive measures.

Women should understand that there is _always_ a great deal of venereal
disease--millions of fresh cases every year in the British Empire. During
the war there were about half-a-million fresh infections per annum among
the soldiers in the British armies alone--about two million men infected
altogether at the very least.[E] Some were cured, others patched up; some
very badly treated; some not treated at all; many demobilised while in an
infective condition, and thus liable to come home and sow in the bodies of
clean women the seeds of diseases picked up in foreign lands in moments of
excitement and folly. Blame these men if we must, but in all fairness let
us ask ourselves: _Who infected them?_ And the answer is: _Diseased
women._