Under existing social conditions the opportunities for sexual relationships to meet the needs of those women and men unable, or not desiring, to marry must, in almost all cases, entail the sacrifice of the woman. It is an unsocial, because an ostracised union. Our efforts at reform have so far been not only ineffective, but absurd. It is no use shirking it, if some change cannot be made, then we must accept prostitution and wild-love as well as the degradation of all the more honourable partnerships entered into outside of marriage.
I believe that many of these problems of our sexual life must remain unsolved; some of them, perhaps, are unsolvable, but certain of the evils are preventable. And first note this: there is one rule that is able and ought to guide us. I have asserted elsewhere,[85] what again I would affirm here: it is an essential fact of sexual morality, as I conceive it, that in any relation between the two sexes—I care not whether the association be legal or illegal—the position of the woman as the mother must be made secure. The immoral union is the union which results in bad and irresponsible parenthood.
It is because I believe this, that I wish to see saner, more practical, and more moral relations made possible between those women and men who live together but do not marry.
But before I attempt the difficult task of suggesting what seems to me the way in which better conditions could be established, it will be necessary to note briefly a few facts concerning changes actually taking place in the position of women, which it seems to me must be certain to affect profoundly the conditions of marriage and the problem we are considering.
The quite new importance as workers which women have now obtained will react inevitably on the relations between the sexes. In every sort of occupation, in clerking, shop-assisting, railway work, motor driving and conducting, police work, in labour on the land and in many more unusual capacities, they are being found efficient beyond precedent. And in the munition factories, in the handling of heavy and intricate machinery, their adaptability and inventiveness, as well as their steadfastness and enthusiasm, have surprised all those who are without knowledge of the bewildering resourcefulness of the feminine character. All the disengaged energy of women has been employed. They have gained a strong position in the economic world. This is evident, but what is not realised are the forces working beneath.