Page:Women and war, an appeal to the women of all nations.djvu/7

 Rh We can picture the agonised watching of mothers over starving children, the slow death of the dear ones, their heart-rending cries, or their visible fading from the mothers' arms; or the premature births of infants who frequently are neurotic or idiotic, due to ghastly frights and anxieties of mothers in time of war. Their homes burnt, their furniture used for fuel, their crops taken, bedding and clothes stolen; homeless, naked, starved, widows, orphans, childless, such are the victims of war. And do men care? Do they ever think of the stupendous misery they produce in the other half of their nation by their support of war?

Tens of thousands of women in all countries are in poverty because of the heavy taxation necessary to maintain armaments. For the cost of one Dreadnought, 175,000 children could be fed for a year.

In a recent cartoon called "Armed to the Death" is portrayed a woman crucified on a sword. And are not women crucified by war! How many women are there who can never marry because their potential husbands have been killed off! How many can never become mothers because the potential fathers have been slain; because, also, a great unmarried army is maintained in every country. Then, forsooth! there is an outcry about the birthrate! More babies must be born! What wisdom it is to kill off the strong young men, and then cry out about the birth-rate. But soldiers must be forthcoming for the next war. Therefore women are censured for refusing to bring into the world children, which, in their turn, shall be food for powder.

"Eugenics tell us that the effect of war upon nations is to spoil the breed by the very simple process of the reversion of selection."