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The problem that faces a State when it sends its best and most virile men to kill and to be killed has certain aspects that few have the courage to handle. For long years, while Europe was an armed camp, the claims of love were admitted amid the demands of war, but now that the dreaded era—which each nation was hurrying through the medium of extravagant armaments and secret diplomacy—has come upon us, we are without a definite plan for securing the continuity of the best elements in the race. If I thought that this appalling war were no more than the prelude to others, I would pray that every woman might be sterile, but hope, our last and eternal refuge against the ills of life, suggests that this most terrible cataclysm will strengthen the hands of democracy and give it the strength to resist further sacrifices in years to come. While the grass grows the horse starves, and while we think of the generation to come, thousands, hundreds of thousands of Europe's best and bravest lie in their hasty graves, and the cry of Mother Earth is still "they come." What has been done by our rulers to see that the fittest shall leave behind them some to take a share of the white man's burden?