It would at once have enormous social
consequences. No woman would remain a celibate except by her own
choice. Men would have to behave themselves in order to win wives, and
would cease to occupy the demoralizing position of being able to get
wives whenever they want them. It would in fact mean a new world in
many ways.
As things are, however, the unhealthy conditions of modern life produce
a greater mortality among boy babies than among girl babies, and males
come to be in a minority. This state of affairs has been greatly
aggravated by the war, but it was serious even before 1914. It was then
the case that the women outnumbered the men by about a million. The
number must be nearer a million and a half to-day.
The result is that over a million women have to face the prospect of a
life in which their most deeply implanted instincts--the instincts for
wifehood and motherhood--cannot find their normal satisfaction, and the
problem thus created is one of the most difficult in the whole of life.
It is, of course, nothing less than insulting nonsense to talk about
these women as "superfluous women.
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