"The war is strengthening this tendency of women to take up work that is not domestic. I have heard it said that women first got into the undomestic kinds of business in France during the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon wanted to have all the men out in the line of battle, so he had girls instructed in bookkeeping and other kinds of office work. "The business activities of Frenchwomen date from that time. And a similar result seems to be coming out of this war. In France, in England, in all the countries engaged in the war the women are filling the positions left vacant by the men." "Do you think," I asked, "that this is a good thing for civilization, this increased activity of women in business?" "I don't know," said Mr. Martin, musingly. "I don't know. But I do know this, that the main employment of woman is to rear a family. Office work, administrative work--these things are of only secondary importance. The one vital thing for women to do is to rear families. They must do this if the human race is to continue." "Mr. Martin," I said, "you told me that Thackeray, if he were alive, would satirize the reformers. Just what sort of reformer is it that has taken the place of the snob?" Mr. Martin did not at once answer. He smiled, as if enjoying some entertaining memory. Then he started to speak, and mentioned the name of a prominent reformer. But his New England caution checked him. He said: "No, I'd better not say anything about that. I'd rather not. I'd rather say that the things that the snobs admired and particularly embodied have lost prestige during the last twenty years. "After 1898, after our great rise to prosperity, the captains of industry and of finance were the great men of the country. But I think these great men are less stunning now than they were then. And money is less stunning, too. "All the business of money-making has had a great loss of prestige since 1900. People think more of other things. And the people who are thinking of other things than money-making have more of a 'punch' than they had before. The wise have more of a punch, and so have the foolish." Again came that reminiscent smile. "Reformers can be very trying," he said. "Very trying, indeed. Did you ever read Brand Whitlock's _Forty Years of It_? Brand Whitlock had his own trials with the reformers. Whitlock is a sensible, generous man, and his attitude toward reformers is a good deal humorous and not at all violent. That would be Thackeray's attitude toward them, I think, if he were living to-day. He'd satirize the reformers instead of the snobs." Mr. Martin is not inclined to condemn or to accept absolutely any of the modern reform movements. "All reform movements," he said, "run until they get a check. Then they stop. But what they have accomplished is not lost." The society women who undertake sociological reform work find in Mr. Martin no unsympathetic critic.