Mother-love with them was not a brute passion, a mere "instinct," a wholly personal feeling; it was--a religion.
It included that limitless feeling of sisterhood, that wide unity in service, which was so difficult for us to grasp.

And it was National, Racial, Human--oh, I don't know how to say it.
We are used to seeing what we call "a mother" completely wrapped up in her own pink bundle of fascinating babyhood, and taking but the faintest theoretic interest in anybody else's bundle, to say nothing of the common needs of ALL the bundles.

But these women were working all together at the grandest of tasks--they were Making People--and they made them well.
There followed a period of "negative eugenics" which must have been an appalling sacrifice.

We are commonly willing to "lay down our lives" for our country, but they had to forego motherhood for their country--and it was precisely the hardest thing for them to do.
When I got this far in my reading I went to Somel for more light.

We were as friendly by that time as I had ever been in my life with any woman.