If I but had the eloquence of Hecuba mourning her slaughtered sons! The crime of war is bad enough: this butchery of hope and promise and human lives is one so black that the heart and mind of every woman who has borne a child should revolt against it until it is tolerated no more. It is easy to escape into an aristocratic theory of society. It has been done before, and ends in the guillotine. These working mothers are the people who must be lied to and terrified by bogies for fear that they use their votes to help themselves. And it is they who, when they sit in conference, demand of the State the right to stem the tide of children, to endow mothers, to pension widows, to teach and tend maternity and ensure rest for pregnant and nursing women; to see that houses and schools are built, and to control and purify the food-supply. Here is the most serious problem for the mothers, and one which the middle-class politician does not touch, because for the middle-class pure and fresh food is almost always obtainable. It is for the working mother to tackle those tins. She cannot now destroy industrialism, which dragged her work and her after it to the mill; but she can claim her right to control it in the name of life and the destiny of her children. Control of the population is essential to solving the food-problem and improving national health. Women in small houses know it. They know, moreover, that contraceptives are better than infanticide and war. The survival of the fittest is a false doctrine in child-bearing as in fighting. Every child which starts with a reasonably good constitution can, by the right care up to one year and food up to five, grow up to be strong and well. And, if the weak and unhealthy are discouraged from breeding and healthy mothers given proper care, great improvements are possible. Poor food and over-crowding are the ladder down which we go to mental deficiency and ultimate complete feebleness of mind.[12] If we cared for life, the best food would by law go to the pregnant and nursing mothers instead of, as at present, to clubs for fat old gentlemen and the frequenters of palatial hotels. It is probable that at present we do not produce enough milk, or produce and import enough butter and eggs to distribute adequately to all.[13] But, by stabilizing or decreasing our population, and by co-operation, intensive culture and control of marketing abroad and of marketing and purity at home, we could see to it that everybody had enough and that what they had was really good.