The reproductive instinct is normally stronger in men than in women; because in matters of sex, whatever he may be in other things, man is certainly the giver and woman the receiver of the gift. This fact has led to the assumption that man is, therefore, responsible for all the sins of sex, and this would undoubtedly be true were instinct and passion matters quite beyond our personal control, but they are not. The instinct of self-preservation is the most fundamental feeling that we have, and yet in the sinking of the "Titanic" and the horror of the "Lusitania," we saw this instinct controlled--how gloriously--by the highest manhood of men, not only of those from whom we should have expected the utmost consideration, but also of those who, we might have thought, had forfeited their manhood by lives of uncontrolled and sodden self-indulgence, lives full of injury to women, and to children born through them. Their manhood was not lacking when the call to protect the women and the children came in terms which they could understand. Why were they not taught to control the other fundamental instinct of life at a time when such a thing was possible? Are men responsible for the evil of their upbringing? Is it not their mothers rather, who should bear the heaviest burden of blame? Every man is born of woman and almost every man is cared for by a woman throughout his earliest years. The Jesuits, in their wisdom, founded on much experience, have said: "Give me a child until he is seven and after that you may do what you like with him!" It is these early years that count most in a man's future. What have the mothers done in these years? Have they taught their children the laws of the transmission of life in their sacredness and their beauty, or, while willingly telling them of all the other facts of life, have they let this one, by far the most important, go untold, fear tying their tongues, and given to themselves the excuse of ignorance unequal to its task--an ignorance which in a mother is culpable--I had almost said criminal? Moreover, the responsibility of women for the moral standards of men does not end with their boyhood, for each sex is ultimately what the other demands of it to be. Men have demanded purity of their women, but women have not demanded it of men. Have not good women been in the habit of receiving into their society men whose past they know to have been bad--yes, and even of encouraging their daughters to marry such men for the sake of money or of social position? Women's responsibility for the social evil is greater than that of men, and those who are most responsible are the good women of the community. The arraignment is severe, but is it not deserved?