ADOPTION: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL.
• [To 'ME EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The appeal which Miss Josephine Plows-Day makes in your issue of July 26th hardly discloses the fact to an eminitiated reader that the National Adoption Society seeks to relieve unmarried mothers of the inconvenience and burden of the so-called " unwanted children," by placing them "in homes in this island and across the seas." As a worker for more than thirty years amongst women and girls in preventive and rescue organizations, I would ask what assurance can there he that in these newly found homes circumstances, of which ' rcseue workers have frequent experience, will not arise which will render these children before long again "unwanted." What is wanted in this matter is a national conscience. If our aim is to increase illegitimacy still further, then let us raise money in order directly to relieve unnatural parents of their primary obligations, and make it still easier for the unmarried mother to bring forth the " unwanted child." But if the aim of all right-minded people is, as it assuredly must be, to cheok illegitimacy, there must be a moral offensive against the eauses of the evil with a view to prevention at their source. The danger of the moment is lest, with the best intentions, the poliesof relieving unmarried women of illegitimate children should become generally accepted in the alleged interest of the nation's well-being. If so, we may as well advocate outright a national endowment of illegitimacy.—I am, Sir, &c., Westbourne Terrace, IV. EDITH WETHERED. [Miss Plows-Day wrote, we believe, -with delicacy, but without any wish to hide the truth. During the war a. certain number of married women have had illegitimate children. Now that the husbands have returned home, such children would prob. ably be happier if adopted under scrupulously careful provisions. But we hold that the true corollary of the whole business is that there should be an adequate law of adoption in this country—a law giving the children full legal rights.— ED. Spectator.]
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