“This is her kingdom. Her duties here are not only family, but national. There are no humble duties in a home: they are all great and national duties, directly determining the advancement of the world. Like all great duties, they imply great outputs of energy, self-denial, and restraint, and it is impossible for her to use her energies effectively in two directions. She cannot be at the hub of the wheel and the tire both at the same time. In other words, she cannot be at home and in parliament or the law courts, or the council chambers of the nation, or the studios or dentists’ parlours at one and the same time. “‘_Woman must be free to create her own conduct and to seek her own experiences for self-development_,’ runs another dictum of our Feminist sage. “In the home she is only free to create her own conduct in a manner conducive to the well-being of the home. If she swerves from this law, she is a defaulter and an enemy to good. The same may be said of her freedom in self-development. “Certainly she must be free to develop herself, and so must the man be free to develop himself. “But the man who develops his muscles in golf at the expense of his business time and energy is a slacker and a defaulter and a home-injurer. And the woman who develops her political instincts or her mind power at the expense of her home time and energy is the same.” [Sidenote: The World-Builders] “It seems to me,” said my audience, “that you look on women as though they were all married and with household duties to perform.” “I look on women as though they were all married women, or women preparing to enter that state. No other women are of any account at all as world-builders. “They may be delightful, charming, pleasant, true women in every way, but if they are not married they are not true women-factors in the progress of the world. Simply because they have no hand in the physical building of the future. “The child is the future made visible and concrete. When you lay your finger on a child you are touching not flesh only, but future ages. “The unmarried woman-genius may influence the art or the thought of her time; the labourer’s wife who produces a bouncing boy that lives has produced the future. More than that, she has sent forth her own attributes to dwell in the future. More than that, by her care and education of that child she is laying the foundation for vast world effects. “That is the woman’s triumphant position in the scheme of things. She is a partner in world-building, and the duties lying on her share of the partnership are patent and obvious to the meanest intelligence. “They are both moral and material, and they imply in their performance one supreme virtue: self-sacrifice. Not freedom to develop according to inclination; not freedom to alter her morals; not freedom to imitate the worst faults of men; but slavery in the interests of her children, her husband, and her home.