The position of those who would free the father from responsibility is even less defensible when, as we commonly find, they are prepared to make the mother's responsibility more extensive and less avoidable than ever. Why this distinction? And if parental responsibility is a "fetish" when it refers to a father, why is it not the same when it refers to a mother? In the schemes of Mr. H. G. Wells, kaleidoscopic in their glitter and inconsistency, there remains from year to year this one permanent element, that while the mother must attend to her business, it is no business of the father. This is the essential feature, the one novelty of his scheme. Already the married mother--he proposes nothing for the unmarried mother--is legally entitled to some measure of support. His endowment of motherhood is essentially a _discharge of fatherhood_, and should be so called. There can be no compromise, nothing but a fight to the finish, between the principle of endowing motherhood by making fatherhood less responsible, and the principle here fought for, of endowing motherhood by making fatherhood more responsible. As Nature has been doing so, in the main line of progress for many millions of years,--a statement not of interpretation or theory but of observed fact--I have no fear of the ultimate issue. But it might well be that any portion of mankind, perhaps a portion ill to be spared, should destroy itself by an attempt to run counter to the great principle of progress here stated. There is an abundance of men who will be very happy to side with Mr. Wells. Men have never been wanting, in any time or place, who were happy to gratify their instincts without having to answer for the consequences; and it has always been the first issue of any society that was to endure, to see that they did not have their way: hence human marriage. The "endowment of motherhood" sounds as if it were a scheme greatly for the benefit of women. Let them beware. Let them begin to think of, not the remoter, but the immediate and obvious consequences of any such schemes as are proffered by the overt or covert enemies of marriage, and they will quickly perceive that _the last way in which to secure the rights of women is to abrogate the duties of men_. The support allotted to such schemes as these is not feminine but masculine. That is the impression I derive from discussions following lectures on the subject; and that is what I should expect, judging from the natural tendencies of men, and the profound intuition of women in such matters. And, conversely, the opposition to such principles as are expressed here, and embodied in the "Women's Charter," will be masculine. But woman has been civilizing man from the beginning, and she will have her way here also--for, in the last resort, not merely youth, but the Unborn must be served.