=Women and children first.=--The noble cry on a sinking ship is “women and children first.” This perhaps is a plea for the service of helplessness as such, though it might be equally warranted as a demand for the sacrifice of the present to the future. And assuredly the cry for a sinking society must also be “women and children first.” It is well if the cry be raised when the ship of state is not yet sinking, but only water-logged or alcohol-logged. Temperance legislation and the agitation for temperance reform are themselves in need of reform. Their appalling record of failure--for it is such a record--should help even the fanatic, one thinks, to accept the introduction of the eugenic idea as a new principle of life for the temperance cause. In the present state of custom and opinion, the teetotaler cannot force his own wise habits upon the vast majority who do not agree with him. If he has an infinite amount of energy and resources, let him spend as much of both as he pleases upon the sort of propaganda with which we are familiar: he will, by the hypothesis, still have an infinite amount of both available for the cause to which the principle of race-culture would direct him. If, however, his energy and resources are finite,--if, indeed, they are by no means excessive in proportion to the urgent task which the ideal of race-culture asks of him, then let him not fritter away a moment or a penny or a breath until he has achieved the process of salvage or salvation which is expressed in the phrase “women and children first.” More accurately, perhaps, our cry must be “parents and possible parents first,” and this for present practical purposes is equivalent to “women and children first.”