A FORBIDDEN FRUIT

She's a young woman alone, an artist, who earns honestly, that is. painfully, his life. Her name is... I have to give her a name to introduce her to you, her name is Germaine Langlois. And Miss Germaine Langlois has just sent to her friends, of whom I have the honor to be, a little card designed as follows:
⁻ Germaine Langlois is happy to announce the birth of her daughter Marianne-Emma born in Paris, July 14, 1923 —
Miss Langlois? Do you mean Madame Langlois? No, I say Mademoiselle. And this is precisely what makes the little box original. Miss Langlois is not yet married. Little Marianne, born on the national holiday, is a child like the Spirit of the Laws, who, according to its proud author, had a father, but no mother “prolem sine matre creatam”. here it is the opposite, it is the father who is missing. We can not have everything….
But I see good people frowning and hear them say to me: “You are speaking very lightly of a serious matter. You who last year carried out such a just and timely campaign against the excesses of pornography, how can you approve of such morals? » I neither approve nor blame them; I notice them. It seems difficult to me to deny the existence, and even the right to the existence of natural children. And every time I see one born, if his mother “prevents him from dying”, I push patriotism to the point of rejoicing for my country. I also take gallantry to the point of taking my hat off to the mother, who, with her baby in her arms, appears to me worthy of all respect. I go even further into perversity: a young woman like this seems to me all the more worthy of sympathy the more alone and abandoned she is. To be honest, I barely know Miss Langlois. I have only aspired to the honor of being counted among his friends since receiving the announcement reproduced above. I don't know anything about his personal situation, but I find his gesture bold, straight, valiant.
This is not to say, certainly, that I offer him as an example to all young girls, any more than I wish them to catch the plague. But, all in all, if you have to choose, it's still better to catch a child than the plague. — No, sir, interrupts an intransigent moralist, it is better to get married. Ah! that you are right, Mr. uncompromising moralist, I form with you the most sincere wishes so that all our nubile virgins find tomorrow the brave man of a husband that they are waiting for and that they deserve. But…
But we lost eighteen hundred thousand men in the war, and since 1918 (it would be good if a fair statistic could inform us on this point), the "resequences of the war" have probably taken away five or six hundred thousand. moreover. This is what I call the “surdeaths”. Add to this an approximately equal number of survivors, who must give up marriage because they are no longer able to work for a family, and you will not be far from concluding with me that the war broke down France's half of the possible fiancés. Result: two girls for (or against) one boy. Consequence: there will be, these days, a lot of Mademoiselle Langlois, and, I hope, a lot of forbidden fruit” in the orchard of France. So, Mr. Uncompromising Moralist, I invite you to investigate whether there is not a painful and tragic conflict between your rule of morals and the national will to live. I ask you if so many poor girls that nature will tomorrow reduce to “sin” are not in their own way the first and most pitiful victims of the war. I urge you to ask yourself – weighing the words and the responsibilities – this truly patriotic question: “Is it really their fault, or that of the Boches? » If you grant me that the great international killing in which they had no part is a mitigating circumstance for these unfortunate people, do not blame them too much for what they can do, even on their own, to repair the terrible misfortune. . And above all, do not forget, O moralist, that the first of our “devastated regions”, the most desolate, the most painful, the one we never talk about, is the hearts of our daughters.

Gustave Téry