It would be out of place, and would lead us too far, to discuss here these various practical outcomes of the foolish attempt to belittle the immense racial importance of motherhood.  It is enough here to touch on the one point of the excess of infantile mortality.

In England—­which is not from the social point of view in a very much worse condition than most countries, for in Austria and Russia the infant mortality is higher still, though in Australia and New Zealand much lower, but still excessive—­more than one-fourth of the total number of deaths every year is of infants under one year of age.  In the opinion of medical officers of health who are in the best position to form an opinion, about one-half of this mortality, roughly speaking, is absolutely preventable.  Moreover, it is doubtful whether there is any real movement of decrease in this mortality; during the past half century it has sometimes slightly risen and sometimes slightly fallen, and though during the past few years the general movement of mortality for children under five in England and Wales has shown a tendency to decrease, in London (according to J.F.J.  Sykes, although Sir Shirley Murphy has attempted to minimize the significance of these figures) the infantile mortality rate for the first three months of life actually rose from 69 per 1,000 in the period 1888-1892 to 75 per 1,000 in the period 1898-1901.  (This refers, it must be remembered, to the period before the introduction of the Notification of Births Act.) In any case, although the general mortality shows a marked tendency to improvement there is certainly no adequately corresponding improvement in the infantile mortality.  This is scarcely surprising, when we realize that there has been no change for the better, but rather for the worse, in the conditions under which our infants are born and reared.  Thus William Hall, who has had an intimate knowledge extending over fifty-six years of the slums of Leeds, and has weighed and measured many thousands of slum children, besides examining over 120,000 boys and girls as to their fitness for factory labor, states (British Medical Journal, October 14, 1905) that “fifty years ago the slum mother was much more sober, cleanly, domestic, and motherly than she is to-day; she was herself better nourished and she almost always suckled her children, and after weaning they received more nutritious bone-making food, and she was able to prepare more wholesome food at home.”  The system of compulsory education has had an unfortunate influence in exerting a strain on the parents and worsening the conditions of the home.  For, excellent as education is in itself, it is not the primary need of life, and has been made compulsory before the more essential things of life have been made equally compulsory.  How absolutely unnecessary this great mortality is may be shown, without evoking the good example of Australia and New Zealand, by merely comparing small English