the cruelty of preventing women, who have been deceived, from seeking financial aid from the fathers of their children, by establishing foundling institutions. Thus the new-born babe is deprived not only of its father but of its mother as well. According to the French conception foundlings are orphans, and the French bourgeoisie thus permits its illegitimate children to be reared as “children of the nation” at the expense of the state. A wonderful institution! Lately French methods have been copied in Germany. The new German civil law contains provisions in regard to the legal status of illegitimate children, that are in contradiction to the more humane laws that were in force heretofore. One paragraph states that “an illegitimate child and its father are not regarded as being related,” while Emperor Joseph II had already decreed that legitimate and illegitimate children should be equal before the law. Another paragraph states that “an illegitimate child is fatherless if its mother maintained relations with several men at the time of conception.” The child is made to suffer for its mother’s frivolousness, weakness or poverty. Frivolous fathers are not taken into consideration by the law. The law concerning illegitimate children furthermore provides: “it is the mother’s right and duty to care for the person of the illegitimate child. The father of the illegitimate child is obliged to provide for same until the completion of its sixteenth year, in accordance with ~the social status of the mother~.” According to former Prussian law, the seducer was obliged to provide for the child in accordance with his own social status and wealth. If the woman had been seduced with the promise of marriage, she was entitled to all the rights of a divorced wife, and in those cases the illegitimate children were regarded as legitimate before the law. These more just and humane provisions have now been dispensed with. The tendency of German legislation is a retrogressive one.