I rather fancy, so ignorant was I then, that this was the first time I had heard that word "bastard," at any rate I felt the word emotionally, in a sharp and different way, when I heard it applied to little children, whom I knew and loved, was caring for and teaching. In this way, the greatest good was done me. I was made to feel. And when, in the later years of my life, I was brought by circumstances to consider the fate of the illegitimately born child, I was prepared already to understand the unprotected helplessness of these unfortunate little ones. I fully realized the cruel uncertainty that dogs like a foul shadow their young footsteps, the shame of their unhonored birth, which separates them from other children (and a child suffers so terribly from being separated, dislikes so passionately being different from its companions), shame that may always be brought suddenly as a hindrance against them, so that, even under the most favorable circumstances, they live in danger; grow up sensitive and passionately possessive, because so many things all other children have by right, relations who really are relations, a father and the right to use his name, a birth-certificate that does not record their parents' sin, are demanded from them in vain, so that at every turn they must fear the sword of contempt, against which they have no shield. II In many ways the position of the illegitimately born child, always sufficiently bad, has been rendered worse under war conditions. For one thing, their number has increased; the illegitimate birth-rate has steadily gone up in the war years and now is the highest on record.[153:1] And although it is easily possible to exaggerate the action of sexual irregularities, manifestly there can be no doubt that this war has acted directly as, indeed, war always does in increasing illegitimate births. Indirectly also the effect, after a war of such magnitude as this one has been, must be even greater in the immediate future in consequence of the resultant inequality of the sexes. All other factors determinant of illegitimacy are really dependent on the ratio of the number of unmarried males capable of paternity to the number of unmarried women capable of maternity in the community at a given time. Whenever the circle of nubile women surrounding the virile male becomes larger, there will be a corresponding increase in the number of illegitimately born children.[154:1]