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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
of my mother ; because, in my opinion, she embodics an ideal which should inspire all womankind. She bore children not as a domestic, religious, social or national duty ; not out of obligation for a male who, notwithstanding all sloppy sentimentality about love, stood to her in the base relation of ownership ; not in dcference to any scriptural injunction which places women on the level of the cow, kept to breed chillren so that the continuity of the ownership of property may be preserved ; nor at the insolent behest of some mediaeval autocrat, or of a Mussolini or Hitler of our day, who require cannonfodiler for wholesale massacre to be enacted for the satisfaction of personal vanity or for the material aggrandisement of the ruling class. I ain born of the joy of my motlıcr which was, of course, shared by my father, Whatever parental care I was given, was a spontancous gift demonstrating the real nobility of parenthood. There was no string attached to it. I have not been launched in this world as an investment. I am not bound by the sense of filial duty La relic of feudal-patriarchal tradition, performed always with a feeling of gall, though professed with sentimental hypocrisy. Love and duty cannot go hand in hand. Filial love, to be sincere and joyfully felt, must be free from the sense of obligation.
My parents did not usher me in this world as a premeditated act. I am the by-product of the
