There are other reasons for the decline in the birthrate of the educated and civilized people of every country than the fact that motherhood does not completely satisfy the physical and mental demands of women--financial reasons, social reasons, and reasons that partake of both of them, yet not entirely of them, such as the occupation of women and the celibacy which comes of enforcement or from choice. These must be taken into consideration in our social renaissance when we shall erect our ideals of justice and liberty. The time will never come again when woman shall be man's willing or unwilling slave. The time has gone by when society shall require that the wife be faithful while the husband is faithless. Never again will the saintly, self-sacrificing woman who never questions her husband's authority but who yields supinely to his will be our ideal. Woman may not be so strong as man. She may not be so truthful. She may be more impressionable to sinister influences. She may be less capable of erecting ideals and conforming her conduct to them. She may be less steadfast in the pursuit of any plan of life, or less capable of adhering to the ideal canons of conduct. She may or may not have any or all of the sins of omission or commission of which she is accused by man, but she is a human being made in God's image, of whom He may be more proud than He is of man. She has been rocked in the cradle of liberty and of freedom for the past five years, and to such purpose that at the present moment she is not only able to walk but to stride. In the future it will require the best effort of man to outdistance her, even though he has the benefit of ages of experience and the advantage of a start of forty thousand years. We shall soon see whether Socrates was right when he said: "Woman once made equal to man becometh his superior." CHAPTER XII POSTBELLUM VAGARIES It seems incredible that we who have chanted "Peace on earth, good-will to men" for upward of two thousand years, professing the Christian religion and enjoying its benefits, should have in the year 1914 proceeded to discredit our professions and our protestations.