Page:Women Wanted.djvu/413

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THE RING AND THE WOMAN
377

at home to whom the soldier at the front knows that it belongs—even though she has no marriage lines to show. So the War Office pen writes off one discrimination. Of children who used to be called "illegitimate," 50,000 born annually in England and 180,000 born annually in Germany will now be entitled to start life with equal financial government aid that the others get.

It is the first step in the direction of the new arrangements about parenthood. The polite fiction that used to pass, that there were any children without fathers, is going to be ruled out of court. Of all the laws that have been written that evidence the difference in the point of view of men and women, see the illegitimacy laws. Napoleon put it in his code "La recherche de la paternite est interdite," and it was only in 1913 that the feminists of France, led by Margaret Durand, succeeded in getting that edict modified so that a woman in France is no longer "forbidden" to look for the father of her child. Up in Norway, where women vote, they put on the statute books in 1915 a very different law: it commands that the father of the child shall be found. This is the famous law framed by Johan Castberg, minister of justice, and inspired by his sister-in-law, Fru Kathe Anker Moler. The draft of the bill was submitted in advance to the women's clubs of the country: the National Women's Council of Norway stamped it with the seal of approval. So that there can be no doubt but that it has put the matter as a woman thinketh. Even the title of the