The Washington herald., 1917-08-22
IT'S UP TO MOTHERS.
By DOROTHY DIX.
The Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.

cation was not OF the depravity of
man. but of the ease with which girls
yield to temptation. Dozens of the
poor, pitiful creatures about whom
the law was vainly trying to stretch
a protecting arm, told the stories of
their downfall. and these stories were
almost without exception incredibly
naive and simple.
There was nothing of the villain
still pursued in these tragic tales
No revelation of a deep. dark, de-
signing plot of which a hapless girl
was the victim. No Michaellian sub
tlety weaving a net of silken threads
so tightly about her that she was
caught unawares In its soft, unbreak-
able meshes. No plausible satan
holding before her the glittering bau-
bles of the riches of the world that
she was to buy with her soul.
No. BY these girls own confess
sions the only temptations ever Of
fered them were cheap and sordid in
the extreme-an automobile ride, or a
drink, or a dinner, or an excursion to
some nearby pleasure resort-and the
stories to which they lent too will
ling ear were so palpably false on
their faces that it did not seem posi-
BILE that they could have deceived
even a flve-year-old child.
This is a bitter illustration of the
,, truth that we cannot reiterate too
often, that the only power that can
really protect a girl is home infiu-
ence, and the only individual who can
safeguard her is her mother. In the
last analysis the whole question comes
back to the way the girl was brought
up, and the ideals that were instilled
into her in her very cradle.
II these were good she can walk
| through the very pit unscatched with
not so much as the smell of fire hang
| ing TO her garments. But IL her home
influence were bad, and IL she had a
mother who taught her loose ideals of
conduct, not ali the laws and all the
statutes ever compiled can protect her
nor all the police keep her safe,
| though you set plain clothes man
on every street corner to guard her.
It is a good thing for the law to
/ do all it can to protect girls. 1t is
| a good thing to run down and merci-
| lessly punish white slaveTs and mash
ers and all their evil crew, but in the
/ end the girl must save herself, and
she cannot do that unless he- mother
| has put in her hand the sword with
which she must fight her battle
| against temptation.
/ The law cannot go with the girl
! into every ramifcatICn of her daily
. life A policeman cannot be forever
At her elbow. Even the most par
ticular of mothers cannot be con-
tinually at her daughters side as a
chaperon. and so. at last. 1t is the
girl herself who stands or falls, who
keeps herself clean and white, or
who stumbles into the mud.
And every girl is what her mother
has made her. II the mother has
bred into her daughter strong. up
right principles, II she has taught her
/ from the time she could understand
anything to speak the truth, to live
straight and TO hold her honor above
her life, IL she has taught the girl
sclf-control and dignity and a modesty
that shrinks from everything coarse
and vulgar with an actual physical
disgust. why. that girl is as safe
from temptation anywhere in the
world as she would be in a convent.
She has got the magic in her own
strength to resist temptation, but that
actually turns temptation away fror>
her and moves it out OF her pathway.
The purity OF pure, high-minded
girl is a visible aura about her that
even the dullest and most british man
sees and respects.
But If a girl has been cursed with
a mother who brings her up with no
20 I'd Ap ti-hfnprnrnneg -
Gates in her no ideals of virtue or
honor. who teaches her, directly or
indirectly. that the chief object of
a woman's life is to get what fineTy
she can and so to what places OF
amusement she can, and that it doesn't
matter how one gets things; If such a
girl is raised up to be the prey OF
her emotions and her appetites, who
can wonder that she is the victim of
the first temptation that comes her
way? Or what wisdom could frame a
law to protect her?
The girl with the vicious or weak
mother goes as inevitably wrong as
the girl with the good. strong mother
goes inevitably right and so it's up
to the mothers far more than It is
to the police to protect the girls.
The importance of mothers Swing
their daughters the kind Of training
that will mt them for the battle OF life
needs to be insisted on nore right
now than ever before. because war
has changed the whole universe for
women and practically this whole
generation of girls will he forced out
into the world to work.
Girls are going into OCCUPATIONS and
situations that women have never
filed before. Girls. whose parents
expected to keep them sheltered in
the home, are being thrust suddenly
out into the maelstrom of business.
where they must stand or fall, sink
or swim, according to the strength
that is in them.
The mothers cannot follow theis
girls into this strange new life, but
they can prepare their daughters for
it by teaching them three things.
The first Is that there is no armor
that protects a girl like modesty. The
majority of men with whom a girl
comes in contact begin their ac
Quaintanceship by testing out her
moral PRINCIPLES. They tell her on
colored stories. They attempt per-
soral familiarities. They invite her
to dinner or supper at some restau-
rant of shady repute
The girl can settle her status at
once by the way she meets these ad-
vances. She can refuse the invita-
tions, and shrink disgustedly at the
hand or her shoulder, and she can
apparently fall to understand the
double entendre story, and while
many men will tell a girl a smytty
story, not one in a thousand has got
the nerve to explain it to her If she is
too innocent TO comprehend its un-
savory points. And this is to be said
of men, that the worst of them have
such a reverence for what is really
pure and good in wopnapboo5 tba+