RANCHLANDS 105 



rotten at heart. The loss of a healthy, vigorous, 

 natural sexual instinct is fatal; and just as 

 much so if the loss is by disuse and atrophy as 

 if it is by abuse and perversion. Whether the 

 man, in the exercise of one form of selfish- 

 ness, leads a life of easy self-indulgence and 

 celibate profligacy; or whether in the exercise 

 of a colder but no less repulsive selfishness, he 

 sacrifices what is highest to some form of mere 

 material achievement in accord with the base 

 proverb that ''he travels farthest who travels 

 alone"; or whether the sacrifice is made in 

 the name of the warped and diseased conscience 

 of asceticism; the result is equally evil. So, 

 likewise, with the woman. In many modern 

 novels there is portrayed a type of cold, selfish, 

 sexless woman who plumes herself on being 

 "respectable," but who is really a rather less 

 desirable member of society than a prostitute. 

 Unfortunately the portrayal is true to life. 

 The woman who shrinks from motherhood is 

 as low a creature as a man of the professional 

 pacificist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his 

 duty as a soldier. The only full life for man or 

 woman is led by those men and women who 

 together, with hearts both gentle and valiant, 

 face lives of love and duty, who see their chil- 

 dren rise up to call them blessed and who leave 



