Still in the course of time there was going to be another baby. Governments crying, “Fill the cradles,” seem not to see those that are already spilling over. But the development of birth politics has at last arrived at an important epoch—important to all the women in the world—in the recognition of the economic valuation of maternity. It has dashed acquiescent compliance in a world old point of view most tersely expressed in that religious dictum of Luther: “If a woman die from bearing, let her. She is only here to do it.” Mrs. Smith will not die from bearing to-day if her government can help it—nor any other mother in any other land. Instead, all science and sociology are summoned to see her through. The rising value of a baby demonstrates clearly that you cannot afford to lose a maker of men. The British Government and the German Government and the French Government, speeding up population, are now taking every precaution for the protection of maternity. The mortality record for women dying in child birth in England has been about 6,000 a year. In Germany it has been 10,000. There was also in addition to this death rate a damage rate. The national health insurance plan inaugurated by several countries before the war was beginning to reveal it: the claims for pregnancy disabilities, the actuaries reported, were threatening to swamp the insurance societies. New significance was added to these phenomena when there began to be the real war necessity for conserving population. The Registrar General, laying the case before Parliament in England, found it suddenly strengthened by a book presented by the Women’s Co-operative Guild. The volume constitutes one of the most amazing documents that ever found a place in any state archives. It is entitled “Maternity,” and is a symposium constituting the cry of woman in travail. A compilation of 160 letters written by members of this working women’s organisation recounting the personal experiences of each in childbirth, it reflects conditions under which motherhood is accomplished among the 32,000 members of the Guild. “Maternity,” with its simple, direct annals of agony is a classic in literature, a human document recommended for all nations to study. The gentlemen in the House of Commons, who had turned its tragic pages, looked into each other’s faces with a new understanding: there was more than maternal ignorance the matter with infant mortality! And a new population measure was determined on.