This mixture of ancient Puritanism and advanced sociology is as incongruous as it is mischievous. A woman who sincerely regards sex-pleasure in the way generally implied by the use of the word "lust"--a woman who has not the same healthy desire of it as her partner--has no right to marry: except, of course, to marry a man with similarly antique views. A wife of such a kind may very well consider that she is being "paid" to surrender her body. The normal wife is not paid for that at all. She is paid--if there is any paying--to care for the home and her children: which is as well earned a payment as the fee of a lawyer. And from the sentimental point of view it does not make a particle of difference whether she is paid out of her husband's income or out of the coffers of the State. She would still "sell her body," if there is any selling of body. But there is not. Maternity and sex-pleasure are entirely different matters. I am deliberately trying to undermine the plea for the endowment of motherhood, because the proposal seems to me to present very grave difficulties which even so penetrating a sociologist as Mr. H. G. Wells has, apparently, not appreciated. Mr. Wells is, of course, in a very different position from the Feminist writers who advocate the complete endowment or maintenance of wives or mothers by the State. Such a scheme would cost about £300,000,000 a year, and need not be discussed. Mr. Wells suggests rather a modest contribution per child born (leaving out, I assume, wealthier mothers); a practicable scheme, with much in its favour. Yet it seems to me that such endowment would mean that we would encourage the weakest in will, the most sensual, the least intelligent and least provident of our people, to breed. Intelligent women would not abandon the practice of restricting births because the State offered them a few shillings per child. The better class--whether of manual or professional workers--would have to pay for the undesirable fertility of the worst class. We are just beginning to realise that quality of children is more precious than quantity, and the endowment of motherhood would not encourage this saner view. The kind of brute who is at present restrained by the paternity-law would be restrained no longer: the rougher type of husband--a very numerous type--would pay so much less to his wife when he found the State contributing (either in cash or kind) to her: the man who at present practises restriction, not out of consideration for his wife and family, but to have more shillings for himself, would cease to practise it, and lay a greater burden on his wife.