are willing to submit Birth Control to this test. It is part of the
purpose of this book to appeal to the scientist for aid, to arouse that
interest which will result in widespread research and investigation. I
believe that my personal experience with this idea must be that of
the race at large. We must temper our emotion and enthusiasm with
the impersonal determination of science. We must unite in the task of
creating an instrument of steel, strong but supple, if we are to triumph
finally in the war for human emancipation.



CHAPTER II: Conscripted Motherhood

"Their poor, old ravaged and stiffened faces, their poor,
old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil, their patient souls
made me weep. They are our conscripts. They are the venerable
ones whom we should reverence. All the mystery of womanhood
seems incarnated in their ugly being--the Mothers! the Mothers!
Ye are all one!"

--From the Letters of William James

Motherhood, which is not only the oldest but the most important
profession in the world, has received few of the benefits of
civilization. It is a curious fact that a civilization devoted to
mother-worship, that publicly professes a worship of mother and child,
should close its eyes to the appalling waste of human life and human
energy resulting from those dire consequences of leaving the whole
problem of child-bearing to chance and blind instinct. It would be
untrue to say that among the civilized nations of the world to-day, the