Often the baby is born wherever the driven mother can find shelter, the baby's interests in the matter being certainly of no account then or later. In the eyes of the law the child is without rights and belongs to no one. In the eyes of our Christian society he is a "branded outcast," in the eyes of his mother too often he is but a mark of her shame: conditions of injustice to the child that must too often result in the growing up of a poor type of child. It has been found that illegitimates at birth are quite as hardy as legitimate children; they would even seem to be born stronger, since they die, unlike the legitimate, more frequently in the _second_ month than the _first_; and more frequently in the _third_ than in the _second_ month. The deferred and insufficient regulation of the child's diet, the frequent failure on the part of the father to provide the means of support, the not uncommon indifference on the part of the mother towards her child's welfare, and the necessity of placing the child in cheap care, are the chief causes of the high mortality rates among illegitimate children. Even in the few fortunate cases where the maximum alimony is claimed and granted to the mother, there is no certainty that the weekly payments will be continued and regularly paid throughout the child's growing years, and though there is improvement in this direction since the Affiliation Orders Act, 1914, and the appointment of a Collecting Officer, there is still far too easy opportunity for the escape of a shirking father. The law takes no cognizance of the fact that in the majority of cases it is an absolute impossibility for the mothers, even with the best will in the world, unassisted, to place their children in proper conditions for their up-bringing. At present, with no authorized person to supervise the mother and check her absolute control, to see how she spends the alimony, where she places the child, what education it has, what prospects of growing into an effective adult; too often the child never reaches maturity and its case is often worse if it does survive; its home changed from one place to another, sometimes with the mother, sometimes boarded out with irresponsible people, or adopted with a premium, it is liable to gross neglect and the most far-reaching and incurable perversions of character. We have reached this truth then. _The urgent duty that rests with the law and with us all is the duty of taking action to prevent as far as it is possible, and in every way that we can, the penalty of its illegitimate birth being paid by the child._ VII Now, this is not going to be done as easily as it may seem; and before it can be done, in my opinion, we shall have to clear our minds from a serious error, to which we cling with feminist tentacles in order to indulge the sentiment so passionately clung to by women-reformers of the mother's right to her child.