ADRi. HAROLD OWEN WOMAN ADRIFT THE MENACE OF SUFFRAGISM WOMAN ADRIFT A STATEMENT OF THE CASE AGAINST SUFFRAGISM BY HAROLD ' OWEN " I enteitain very strong hope that if the case were clearly and cogently presented to the public opinion of the country, it would be found that some of the jubilations already being heard from the supporters of the Suffrage movement would be found to have been premature." — The Rt. Hon. H. H. Asquith [in Farliamint, Die. iQii]. NEW YORK E • P • BUTTON ^ COMPANY ji West Twenty-Third Streeti MY MOTHER'S MEMORY CONTENTS ChapUf Page I. The Scope of the Question ... 3 II. The " Right " to a Vote ... 17 III. The Road Begun by the First Step . 27 IV. "As IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING " . . 37 V. Superfluous Woman .... 45 VI, The Two Hemispheres of Mankind . 57 VII, The Man Behind the Vote ... 67 VIII, The Three " Rights " . . , 83 IX. The Two Kinds of Women . . .103 X. Sex and Politics 123 XI. How Could Woman Serve the State ? 135 XII. The Woman and the Law . -157 XIII. Chivalry and Martyrdom . . .173 XIV. The Suffragist's Bible . . .195 XV. Suffragist and Feminist . . .217 XVI. " Liberty " and a New Slavery . 237 XVII. The Great Experiment . . . 261 XVIII. The Wrong Road 289 CHAPTER I. The Scope Of The Question. THE "SHORT-CUT" TO SAVE THINKING— THE SUPER- FICIAL VIEW — THE "DEMOCRATIC" AkOUMENT — THE "DEMOCRATIC" BIGOT— MAN AND THE RACE— MAN AND NATURAL LAWS — THE LONG VIEW, CHAPTER I. The Scope Of The Question. The fundamental difference of opinion between those who support and those who oppose the extension of the franchise to women is that the former regard that step, with its impHcations, as one of progress, and the latter look upon it as at best a dangerous experiment and at worst a positive retrogression. In one sense of the word — the merely locomotive sense — the sup- porters are right. To move from any given point to a point beyond is undoubtedly to progress, in the sense of going forward. If A and B are on a cliff, and A remains where he finds himself, fifteen yards from the edge, but B progresses fifteen yards and a bit further than the unprogressive A, he is certainly going forward and leaving A behind. But when B is tumbling over the precipice he might just have time to reflect before he touched bottom that he had not progressed in the beneficent sense of that word. The modern movement among women has reached a stage when I venture to believe it threatens to become a progression of very much the same kind, and it will be the effort of this book to establish that truth. But to begin with it is not necessary to make that full contention. A preliminary point to be made clear is that, in the development of human political and social institutions, the same law of a false progress may hold good as in the physical world — when illustrated by any example, such as that which I have just given, showing that safety lies in refraining from going forward. 3 4 WOMAN ADRIFT The "Short-Cut" to Save Thinking. There can, I think, be no denial of the statement that a large proportion of those men who support Woman Suffrage do so, not on the particular ground that they believe the extension, in and of itself, to be desirable, or because they have sufficient enthusiasm for it to overcome their misgivings, but because they regard it as part of a general political progress. To satisfy their minds on this ground they do not need to carry them beyond the Reform Bill of 1832. Then the lower middle classes were enfranchised; in 1867 and 1884 the Franchise was further extended; Man- hood Suffrage is now almost as good as an accom- plished fact ; and the extension of the franchise to women thus seems to them to be merely the com- pletion of the movement of political enfranchisement and the last stage in the realisation of a perfect democracy — or, I should say, of a perfect democratic form of government. This is a short cut to an approval of the creed, and undoubtedly accounts for the majority of conversions among men. But this view obviously ignores alto- gether the consideration that permeates the entire case against the creed — the consideration that man and woman are as different in their social functions as they are in their physical structure. The short cut which allows for no foot to be put upon this widely disputed territory of sexual difference is clearly an entirely untrustworthy path to take. It is as though two persons, debating whether they should each take part in a walk to Brighton, took notice only of the fact that other men had performed the same pedestrian feat, and ignored altogether their own particular and relative fitness for the ordeal — their age, training and physical efficiency. And to the man who does not allow himself to think of what is involved in the assertion that woman is entitled to the franchise because man has secured it, that short-cut is the obvious and easy way to a whole-hearted support of the case. SCOPE OF THE QUESTION 5 The "Superficial" View. But the same short-cut is taken even by those whose function it is to instruct such people as do not stop to think. A writer in The Nation, dwelHng on the difficulty of discussing social-sexual questions because of the passions they arouse, remarked (May 27, 191 1): "Even the comparatively superficial issue of the political franchise, which might appear capable of discussion and solution on plain principles of democracy without any stirring of the social depths, is seen to excite counter - currents of emotional ex- citement exceeding any other of our time." Well, the counter-currents of emotional excitement aroused by those who oppose the cause are nothing to those currents of emotional excitement produced by those who stand for the cause, and for that at any rate we can be thankful. But it is not the issue that is "superficial," comparatively or otherwise; what is superficial is the notion that it is so. The fact that it stirs such emotional depths is rather for its supporters to apologise for than complain about, but assuredly the state of mind which regards Woman Suffrage as a superficial issue is not going to stir any intellectual " depths," though those also have to be sounded before we touch bottom. But to the plain man who takes this short-cut on his own initiative, and not through the instruction of more intellectual authorities, I would merely commend, at this stage, the reflections : (i) That if political power were as natural an attribute of women as it is of men, they would not have had to wait until so late in the day for an acknowledgment of it ; and (2) that the causes, whatever they be, which have hitherto ex- cluded women from political power, may still justly operate in continuance of that exclusion. No one will be so fatuous as to deny the arguable quality of those propositions, but once they are admitted to be even debateable, away at a breath goes the " super- ficial " theory. For the answer is not (to anticipate the only answer I can imagine to either proposition) 6 WOMAN ADRIFT that woman has been kept out of political power until the twentieth century for the same reason that the working man was kept out of political power until the end of the nineteenth, viz., the fact that political progress had not before reached him. That is at best but arguing in a circle, but that answer is vitiated entirely by the fact that political power has resided, under many different forms of government, in the hands of men as a sex ; and the establishment of democratic forms of government has only distributed power more fairly amongst the social classes of men. The "Democratic" Argument. But the argument that the extension of political power to women is now the next step in the march of democratic progress has to be met. It might be met in one direct way (if a man could now be found with the courage of anti-democratic sentiments) by denying the necessary virtue of democratic forms of government at all. But this is not an age in which such a denial could be profitably made in controversy, for the man who made it would put himself out of court. An oblique answer, however, might be made by the man who, though faithful to the democratic principle of govern- ment so far as his experience of its operation enabled him to approve of it, nevertheless put forward this reservation : that a democratic principle which involved the admission, and the eventual predominance, of woman in the control of the State would be a worse evil than a form of government which fell short of the democratic principle. Or, to put it in another way : If the democratic principle, carried to its logical human conclusion, is to land us into a state of society which, whether it be on a democratic basis or not, would not be a good state of society, then the democratic prin- ciple had better not be carried to its logical conclusion. But there is a third position to be taken up, and it is not a dogmatic one, opposing the dogma of democracy by a dogma of any other kind, but an agnostic position, SCOPE OF THE QUESTION 7 It simply submits the proposition for calm considera- tion that everything which is new may not be pro- gressive, in the beneficent sense of the word, whether it be done in the name of the democratic principle or any other ; and that it may be possible, in political develop- ment as in every other human activity in which Free Will can operate, for human society to take a wrong turn. For the use of the word " progress " may in itself create an illusion. The human race cannot see whither it is going — it moves only from one expedient to another in search of ultimate happiness and final truth. But can we be sure that every road which has never been trodden before, though it seem merely an extension of a given path, of necessity carries us on- ward ? May we not be diverging when we think we are progressing ? Are we to accept the Socratic idea that all good is voluntary, and so argue that the mere fact of voluntarily conferring political power on women, in the name and in the intention of progress, establishes that proceeding as a salutary step ? The " Democratic " Bigot. That attitude of mind is at least an unprovocative attitude. It eschews dogmatism and the confidence of partisanship, and speaks only in the accents of a consciousness of common human frailty. Nevertheless, I fear there are many to whom that attitude will not appeal, and who will view with the contempt of loftier minds any controversialist who does not share their cocksure faith in the saving grace of Predestined Progress, and who allows himself any questionings of whether human error may not creep even into " pro- gressive " politics. The case of such zealots is, from my point of view, blankly hopeless. But there is one advantage about a hopeless case, and that is that you know it is beyond your skill, and you simply give it up. To the man who is hypnotised by the very words " Democracy " and " Progress," so hypnotised that he cannot distinguish the thing from the name, arguments are useless. He 8 WOMAN ADRIFT holds an impregnable position, buttressed by his own outworks of unreason. There are, as we know, certain evangelists who go into the gospel " not for their health," but frankly for the dollars, frankly enough, at anyrate, for the discerning. But these men escape criticism because timid people are afraid to distinguish between what is religion and what is business. As they speak in the accents of orthodox religion, they remain unchallenged by people who think it impious even to expose hypocrisy practised in the name of religion, which is supposed to sanctify even those who make a mockery of it. So it is with those people who think it impious to look the words " Democracy " and " Pro- gress" in the face. You may be challenging the thing, but you touch the sacred names, and hence- forth are among the unprogressive and undemocratic damned. And perhaps it is natural that those people who reduce the science of life mainly to political terms, and who register progress only by parliamentary enactment, should be impatient at the suggestion that the ex- tension of political power to a hitherto unenfranchised body of human beings is not necessarily a progressive act, and that there may be restraining considerations that transcend even the importance of feeding the political machine. By those who live mainly in a political atmosphere, and who apply the standard of concrete legislative accomplishment to human progress, the diffidence and humility that question even some applications of one's own creed are looked upon with much less indulgence than direct and inveterate opposi- tion. All the odium of being what is picturesquely called "a backslider" attaches to you. And if you make any reservations about wherein " progress " lies, and of what democracy consists, and where we are " progressing " to, you are told that at last you have revealed yourself as the fearful reactionary you have always been suspected of being, and really ought to go and live in Russia. You may deny not only the wisdom, but the very existence of God ; but you SCOPE OF THE QUESTION 9 question at your peril the omniscient beneficence of the " progressive spirit " in politics. Nevertheless, that impiety must be risked in con- sidering the case of Woman Suffrage. It may be that it is purely and simply the development of political freedom, as Mill thought ; but what is certain is that no man can say it is that, and nothing more, with any confidence. What is equally certain is that it is quite as possible that the extension of the franchise to women, with its sanction for fresh departures by women in so many directions, may have far-reaching con- sequences that will induce some future generations to stampede hurriedly on a deliberately reactionary path, and seek, perhaps vainly, to undo what has been done in the blind pursuit of progress by people " ani- mated with the zeal of the progressive spirit." Man and the Race. Of course, it is really a question of Free Will and Predestination all over again, but in the secular sphere. Is it given to man in the political community to have the same responsibility of choice in his political actions as is given him as an individual ? We know that the individual man may make false steps that ruin his individual career or character. Is it not possible that political man may take false steps that will injure and even ruin his race ? I see no reason to doubt the possibility ; or to doubt that the false step may be taken even in the name of progress. It is in fact much more likely that such a step would be taken from good motives united to bad judgment than in any other way. Indeed, one cannot imagine man, considered as society, hastening the doom or decay of the race by any conscious and deliberate intention. But the question is whether he may not have it in his power to affect adversely the course of the human race by adopting some rash and heedless experiment such as is involved in changing the position of woman by giving her political power and encouraging her to gain economic independence B 10 WOMAN ADRIFT and to take an equal part with him, on equal terms, in the "struggle for life." One ultimate consequence of this " liberation," would be the evolution of another type of woman than that of to-day. For it is impossible to suppose that woman is going to follow man's pursuits and take her part in the rough and tumble of the world — not only the world of politics, as we shall see — without approximating herself to his characteristics. Even to-day there is a new note of masculine strenuousness and assertiveness in woman as the result of her freer movement in the world, and it is only reasonable to suppose that after, say, three centuries of " equality " with man she would have developed masculine traits up to the point where Nature bars the way by the final and essential fact of sex. And side by side with this approximation to masculine characteristics there would be a correspond- ing decline of those traits which now we speak of as " womanly." We may go even further, and say that it is highly probable that there would be a correspond- ing variation in the characteristics of man. A race of men born of several generations of mothers competing with men and each other in the struggle for life (which even an optimist may expect to be still in progress three hundred years hence) and a race of men, moreover, who are no longer the protectors of women, but their rivals and " equals," is not likely to be a race of men that has altered for the better, judged by our standard of the qualities that constitute masculinity. We may therefore arrive at the production of a race of men and women who are utterly unlike the men and women of our conception and experience to-day. • Several answers may be made to this exercise in forecasting the possibilities of a modification of men and women by the operation of all that is implied in Woman Suffrage and that lies beyond it. There is, first, that of the man who regards the modern woman's movement as a " superficial " issue, a mere matter of franchise ; of marking a ballot paper ; of reading the political leaders in the newspapers ; of making occas- SCOPE OF THE QUESTION ii ional speeches ; and of joining one or two of the thousand and one societies and leagues that will spring into existence, as the first organised step in the general and political regeneration of society that is to follow woman's advent into the political sphere. But that answer need not detain us. The mind that does not grasp the possibilities of the forces that would be liberated by a wholesale change in the status of woman is too shallow to be considered — though it is really a dangerous type of mind — in any serious argument. Man and Natural Laws. Another answer is that whatever type of man oi woman may be evolved by the operation of sex equality will be evolved in accordance with Nature's own plan ; and a third is that if it be found that the new order contravenes Nature's plan and threatens the race, Nature will reassert herself, and we shall beat a hasty re- treat, and shall have had our lesson. In a matter where- upon no man may dogmatise, we can only say that the latter contingency is at least probable. There has never before been a campaign of feminism such as that which to-day spreads from Russia over Northern Europe and from Turkey over the Latin countries to the United States of America. And the human race has absolutely no experience to guide it in endeavouring to estimate the consequences, immediate and remote, of the political equality and economic self-sufficiency of woman. But it is quite likely that the experiment may have to be made as part of the general sardonic plan, so that the theories of men may be rebuked. It is quite likely that the race will have to pass through the experience in order that it may gain the knowledge. But, in speculating upon forces and conditions con- cerning which there is no precedent or knowledge to guide us, we may also wonder whether man will have the opportunity to retrace his steps, and to repair the mischief after Nature's admonition. Nature is not a kindly old dame who preaches homilies to man and 12 WOMAN ADRIFT reasons with him on his perversity. She is a ruthless force, exacting her penalty ; and her lessons are learned only when it is often too late to profit by them. The notion that no race of men and women can be evolved which is not in accordance with Nature's plan is a cheery form of fatalism which overlooks altogether the ability of man to break Nature's laws. Yet the argument is often used that any fear of woman's en- franchisement producing a race of men and women who will depart unnaturally from the present types of the race, is grotesque. Anything within the realm of Nature is " natural," is the contention, and Nature's purpose cannot be perverted by man. A thousand examples in the physical world confute that notion, which is just the notion on which Suffra- gists rely when some of the possible changes in the race that may result from woman's general " liberation " are speculated upon. One has only to think how often and in what connections the word " unnatural " is used, to realise that everything which is within the realm of man's physical possibility is not in accord with Nature's plan, if we are to assume that her plan is that her laws should be obeyed and that her prime object is the preservation of the race. If, then, the result of women's enfranchisement, with all its sanctions and implications, and the en- largement of woman's activity, is to interfere with the perpetuation of the race, we have an example of how man, by his own action, may be interfering with the course of Nature. The Long View. The point to be decided is whether that enfranchise- ment is likely to have that effect ; and it is too wide a question for discussion in a preliminary chapter. But one indication alone will suffice for the present purpose. Economic independence is as much the objective of the movement as political equality and power. But it is certain that economic independence, and still more the struggle to attain it, will diminish SCOPE OF THE QUESTION 13 enormously both the opportunities and capacity for the exercise of woman's maternal functions and duties. Let us assume that the woman's movement in England makes headway and succeeds in all its aims. Inspired by such an example, feminism in other countries will assert itself to the same degree, and it will be only a question of time for the movement to prevail among all the white races, that is amongst the most pro- gressive and civilised portion of mankind. The result of this widespread independence of woman would be, with absolute certainty, the numerical decrease of the white races ; and this would coincide with the in- creasing efficiency of coloured races all over the world, brought about by the adoption of the industrial and scientific methods of the white man. These methods, however, are more easily adopted and put into practice than the new ethical and political principles of the white races, and many generations of coloured people would live and die before any change took place in their own social and racial characteristics and customs. To copy the design of a battleship or an aeroplane is an easier thing than to copy either the political genius or the social institutions of another race ; and material efficiency is more easily imitable than moral or political principles. Hence it might well be that just when the white races were numerically declining rapidly, through the operation of the white woman's economic independence, the coloured races were gaining a pre- dominant position on the strength of the white man's — and not the white woman's — inventive and mechanical genius. Enough has now been said to achieve the purpose of this early chapter, that purpose being (l) to negative the idea that the woman's movement, even so far only as it confines itself to the demand for political equality, is a "superficial" issue to be decided only by the principles of a democratic franchise ; (2) to show that there is no question concerning which it is more imperative to take the long view ; and (3) to show that within a movement superficially considered WOMAN ADRIFT as one of mere political justice is the germ of many far-reaching consequences to the race. What some of these consequences may be, viewed not speculatively, but upon the positive evidence of the aims of the woman's movement, will be seen hereafter. CHAPTER II. The "Right" To A Vote. THE SUFFRAGISTS' " DEMAND "—GOVERNMENT AND THE PEOPLE— WHERE VOTES COME FROM — MAN AND THE VOTE. CHAPTER II. The "Right" To A Vote. When Mr Asquith made his announcement to a deputation in November, 191 1, of the intention of the Government to introduce a Manhood SuiTrage Bill, and to leave to the sense of the House of Commons any amendment that might be moved extending its provisions to women, there were many protests from the Suffragists. Indeed, not only was their language concerning the Prime Minister more violent and more insolent than it had ever been before, but the window-smashing campaign of a few nights afterwards touched high-water mark for rowdy- ism and destructiveness. It would seem that the nearer they get to their goal, the more valuable the con- cessions made by politicians to their cause, the more insensately violent they become ; and when perfectly sane people see this sort of thing, and note that prominent and indispensable supporters of Woman Suffrage like the Chancellor of the Exchequer merely continue to support the cause as though nothing had happened, sane people get so bewildered that they begin to doubt their own sanity in relation to a world which has seemed to have lost or changed or mislaid entirely the ordinary standards of reason. So I will not pursue further the extraordinary situation that the announcement by the Prime Minister that nothing stood between Suffragism and accomplished Woman Suffrage but a Parliament that had already voted in its favour, was the signal for the wildest outburst of disorder that the militant section had ever conducted. 17 18 WOMAN ADRIFT The Suffragists' "Demand." But their attitude in reasoned speech towards the Prime Minister's concession is worth considering, because it throws into relief two important points : the first is, the same lack of restraint in speech as in action, the same aberration from reason when they are discussing anything as when they are merely damaging property ; and the second is, their wholly mistaken notion that they have a " right " to a vote at all. Miss Christabel Pankhurst will be recognised as having the authority to express a representative opinion. " The Prime Minister suggests," she said, "that a Woman Suffrage amendment may be moved to the Manhood Suffrage Bill, but this suggestion is absolutely unsatisfactory, and is regarded as an insult to the intelligence of the Suffragists. We demand that the Government should assume the same responsibility for giving votes to women that they now extend to votes for men." It is not difficult to insult the in- telligence of Suffragists ; what is difficult is to flatter it. But it is obvious to any ordinary intelligence that in leaving it to the decision of the House of Commons whether woman should be given votes or not, Mr Asquith was offering the opportunity of conferring them to the only body in existence that could directly confer them. When it is further considered that Mr Asquith himself is inflexibly opposed to granting votes to women at all under any suffrage, limited or other- wise, and when it is further remembered that the Government of which he is the head includes at least half-a-dozc n men who are exactly of his opinion, any ordinary intelligence will realise that Mr Asquith was going to the limit not only of personal effacement, but of practical politics. And any ordinary intelligence w^ould also appreciate the fact that Mr Asquith was going much further than the principles of his own Government warrant, for that Government came into power to ensure that the will of the people should prevail ; and upon this supremely vital question the will of the people has never expressed itself in any THE "RIGHT" TO A VOTE 19 form that would give not merely a mandate to Parliament, but any indication of what its opinion of the principle of VVoman Suffrage is, one way or the other. And therefore Mr Asquith, himself an opponent of the creed, was even straining the tactical position against his own convictions, to say nothing of straining it against the unnumbered voters who are waiting for an opportunity to express their convictions outside the House of Commons altogether. But Miss Pankhurst not only described a mag- nanimous and even chivalrous, and as the event may prove, even a Quixotic concession, as an insult to the intelligence of the Suffragists, but said that they demanded that the Government should take the same responsibility for giving votes to women as they took for giving votes to unenfranchised men. They demanded, that is to say, that the Government as a collective body should introduce a Woman Suffrage Bill on their own responsibility, although the Govern- ment, as a collective body, is reduced to impotence on that question by the mere fact that the individual members composing it are divided in opinion, and the head of the Government himself, who holds the life of the whole Government in his own hands, is himself a determined, and, I hope will prove, a deadly opponent of the whole movement. Government and the People. Now, if a male voter were to demand that the same Government should introduce a Tariff Reform Budget, or if a male voter were to demand that a Unionist Government should introduce a Home Rule Bill (even though some of its members might be Devolutionists), he would be looked upon as a person of imperfect intelligence, but such demands would be only slightly more off the plane of rationality and reality than that Suffragists should demand that a Government of which the head himself is an opponent of Woman Suffrage should bring in a l ill to grant it. It is the nearest 20 WOMAN ADRIFT mundane equivalent to asking for the moon — tliough the moon, unhappily, is at any rate being dangled within their reach. But what can be said of the sense for politics of women who " demand " from a Government that which that Government by the very factors of its composition, cannot give ? Any ordinary intelligence realises that there is only one supreme power that could make that demand of the Government, and that is the supreme power of The People, who have never yet been asked to say a yea or a nay upon the subject ; and even that supreme power could not enforce its demand upon that Government, for the obvious reason that the head of the Government, by handing his resignation to the King, might dissolve the Government into thin air at any time he pleased. Moreover, even the supreme power of The People could not formulate that demand until the opportunity had been given to it to formulate a demand of a totally opposite character. And the homely proverb, " You may lead a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink," exactly and sanely answers the Suffragist ''demand " that the Government shall take a Cabinet responsibility for commending a measure upon which the Cabinet has no collective mind. But, leaving for further discussion and enlighten- ment the naive ideas possessed by the Suffragists on the parliamentary procedure and political practice of their country, in which they wish to bear a predominant part, let us pay some little attention to the word " demand," in connection with the claim to vote. There are two kinds of demands — that of the high- wayman who demands your money, and that of a work- man who demands wages legally and properly due for work done, or a tradesman who demands money for goods supplied. One is the demand that has nothing but temporary physical force behind it, and the other is the demand of a moral right, sanctioned and converted into a legal right by the law of the land. The demand for a vote, however, may partake of something of the nature of both of these demands. It may be backed by THE "RIGHT" TO A VOTE 21 such force as would overawe a Government unsupported by the sovereign people (though no amount of force could overawe a Government supported by the people, for the people itself would also have to be overawed), and it may be backed by such an expression of the popular will as would make even the threat of force absurdly unnecessary in a political system such as ours, in which rebellion by the executive against the sover- eign people is no longer practical politics. But the demand of any section of the population for a vote, un- backed either by force to overawe a Government or by the moral support of the sovereign people, is a demand made to the winds — apart from the almost inconceiv- able yet apparently probable contingency that a Parlia- ment elected to vindicate the will of the people might ignore the will of the people altogether. Votes have been demanded, and secured, when both these elements have been present — the one implicit and the other actual — but no votes can ever be secured, whatever be demanded, if neither of these elements is effectively present — short, again, of a Parliament willing to sell the pass. Where Votes Come From. And now, after showing that votes can be got only where votes come from, we have cleared the ground for considering the proposition that nobody has an abstract right to demand any vote whatever. Let us think for a moment what a vote is. It is the expedient adopted for securing the participation of many minds and men in a Government — that and nothing more. In our own country (which is the only country that need concern us in this matter at all) a vote is the outcome of centuries of struggle — against monarchical absolutism, against feudal and aristocratic supremacy, and against class privilege. But no English- man was born with a natural right to a vote any more than he was born with a natural right to a job in the Civil Service, Even when manhood suffrage is an 22 WOMAN ADRIFT accomplished fact he will be born only to the statutory right to have a vote when he attains adult age. He gets his vote, in short, by statutory law, that is to say, ultimately, by the will of the people. And that statu- tory right might be statutorily taken away from him — still by the sovereign people. If he commits a felony, for instance, the statutory right is taken away the moment he is convicted of it. The concession of a v'ote to adult male citizens is now so admittedly the prin- ciple upon which a democratic State should be built up, that a proposal is to come before Parliament to extend the vote to all adult males, and men have bad to wait for a vote, as a statutory and not a natural right upon attaining an adult age, until the first Parliament of the fifth George, although the political instrument called a vote has existed in England for some seven centuries. But just as a vote is the expression of a democratic state, so a democratic state — a state in which supreme power is conferred upon the voters — might at any time take away the vote from any section of itself not strong enough to outvote the rest. Democracies, like auto- cracies, have their caprices, and if the English de- mocracy were some day to take it into its head that red-haired people were unfit to exercise the franchise, no power in the constitution could secure to red-haired men (who, I believe, are in a distinct minority) the continuance of a vote. But in a democratic state, sanely conducted, the giving or the withholding of a vote depends in practice upon the will of the people, as affected not by caprice but by the rational consider- ation of the desirability or otherwise of conferring or withholding the privilege. And that is just how the matter stands with regard to Votes for Women. If Suffragists want votes, it is of the sovereign people that they must ask them, and not of a Government which has not the collective willingness of its own wisdom either to grant or to refuse them ; and not of a Parliament elected to vindicate the will of the sovereign peo )le, which has no moral right whatever to bestow THE "RIGHT" TO A VOTE 23 them, though it may bestow them by an act of treason to the people. Man and the Vote. But not only is a vote the artificial creation of cen- turies of political evolution — it is the special creation of men. It is through the direct action of men alone that such a form of government has been evolved as to bring into existence such a thing as a vote. If it be said that women may claim an indirect part in the long struggle which has produced such a thing as a vote, because they helped to produce the men who created it, the answer is that they may still go on playing the same indirect political part, and that they may still go on, as man's helpmate, doing for him and through him for the State now that he has a vote, just those things they did for him and through him for the State whilst he was engaged in the political and material work which has culminated in the vote. But it is of the men that women must demand their votes.' If a plebiscite of the women of England revealed that every woman demanded the vote, it would still be a reproach to the masculine mind of man if he conceded that de- mand against his own convictions of its desirability, though it is certain that he would concede it even if his misgivings went along with it. But the assumption that a small section of women, of unascertained di- mensions, but extreme persistence, can " demand " the votes over the heads and behind the backs of the entire male electorate is an assumption (even though it be sanctioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer him- self) insufferable to everything but the meekest masculinity. But the Suffragists do not appear to have grasped the function of an electorate in a demo- cratic state. It may be willing to be convinced, but it is not willing to be ignored. 'At Dublin Miss Christabel Pankhurst said (October, 191 1) that Suffragists did not admit that they had to ask men for the vote at all. WOMAN ADRIFT Three points, I hope, have now been made cleai with regard to the vote. The first is that it is nobody's natural right, but a right created only by law, the power behind the law in a democratic state being the power of the vote itself ; the second is that it is the creation of the struggles of men ; and the third is that it is the existing holders of the vote, who are men, who alone have the power to say whether it shall be extended to women. But the right acquired in a vote implies certain duties to be performed. If it has been confined to men hitherto, that has been because men, by their nature, achieve- ments and services to the state, possess an aptitude and a qualification for the discharge of the duties concerned with a vote which justify their possession of it, though the fact that they created it and conferred it on themselves is their original justification for pos- sessing it. And the next stage of thr matter is to consider whether women possess, as a sex and not exceptionally, the same aptitude and the same quali- fications for exercising the vote as the men, and the same justification for possessing it ; or what are the differences between men and women which make it desirable or otherwise that women should be admitted to the right that man has won for himself. CHAPTER III. The Road Begun By The First Step. VOTES FOR ALL WOMEN IF FOR ANY — WOMEN IN PARLIAMENT— WOMEN ON THE BENCH— THE RE- ACTION. i CHAPTER III. The Road Begun By The First Step. The vote is claimed for women chiefly on the ground that it is a logical extension of the vote given to men. Logic, however, is not always to be trusted in human affairs, for nothing is more illogical than human nature, which is the parent of all human institutions, even political ones. And there is a sanity of things more trustworthy even than the logic of things ; as we may often find by the mere expedient of carrying a given line of conduct to its logical conclusion, and seeing into what a bog of difficulty it lands us. But the claim that women are entitled to a vote as a consequence of the fact that men possess them depends, even as a logical proposition, on the correct- ness of the implied premiss that meu and women are, in respect of political aptitude, the same sort of human being. " Man," said Aristotle, " is a political animal." But is woman ? The first thing to do, then, is to establish the difference between man and woman as political animals, and if that can be done to the extent of showing that the political aptitude of the one has no corresponding existence in the other, then the fact that men have votes gives no support whatever to women's claim to have votes. So that if woman be given a vote, it will have to be given on other grounds entirely ; but if there are no other grounds in reason and expediency to justify it, then the claim falls to the ground even when shifted on to another leg. Votes for all Women if for Any. And in considering this question there is only one assumption upon which it is reasonable to proceed, 27 28 WOMAN ADRIFT and that is that if any women receive votes, all will receive them, and that women will not end their political activity as voters, but will extend themselves over the whole political and official sphere, just as men now do. Any other assumption is futile and profit- less, and is looking only to the next two or three years, instead of the next twenty and fifty. I know that many men in favour of granting the franchise, and many women who claim it, endeavour to reassure themselves and the prudent that all that is involved in this claim is that a woman should take a fairly intelligent interest in the general drift of politics, and make a mark on a piece of paper once in every three or four years. But, pointing out in passing that this fanciful limitation in itself constitutes an admission that men and women are not the same kind of being, let me proceed to make it clear that that limitation could not be maintained for more than a few years after the first critical step — the step that counts — had been taken. If one woman receives the vote, as a woman, every woman will eventually get it. Already its advocates have passed beyond the stage of asking that women of property only shall be enfranchised. The Conser- vatives would naturally be content — if they looked only to base party advantage' — by a partial solution ' Happily the indications are that the Conservative party will take a perfectly honest attitude on this question, and not de- grade itself by fishing in troubled Liberal waters. Mr F. E. Smith, writing in the January number of the Oxford and Cambridge Review, promises to support Mr Asquith "in any circumstances against any combination of politicians who attempt to establish Female Suffrage in any form, modified or extreme." That spirit is echoed by Liberal anti-suffragists. The position of anti-suffragists, in fact, whether Liberal or Conservative, is that all other political divisions and questions become subordinate to this question, which transcends even the division between the Liberal and the Conservative mind. And if a Liberal Parliament passed Woman Suffrage whilst in possession of a majority given them to uphold the will of the people, then e\ eiy honest Liberal would be driven to admit that the absolute veto of the Lords was destroyed by a Parlia- THE FIRST STEP 29 of the matter that reinforced their own strength ; but they know quite well that once the principle of sex- equality in the franchise is allowed, women will receive votes on the same terms as men ; and men are doubt- less about to receive votes on the strength of adult age. If women get votes at all, then all adult women will get votes ; and at the time of writing these words the Chancellor of the Exchequer has intimated his willingness himself to move the amendment that will secure an adult franchise to women. But it would be impossible, indeed, to defend for long any anomalous differentiation between the two franchises. For logic alone would then guide the course of the stream, once logic had made the first breach through which the waters burst. It is clear as day that if women are to receive votes because men have got them, they will receive votes on precisely the same technical quali- fication as men possess. The end of the first stage would therefore be adult suffrage for women. Women in Parliament. The next stage would be the claim and clamour of women to enter Parliament. No argument could stand a year's attack of the anomalous distinction which excluded women from the House of Commons or even the House of Lords. They would say, and rightly, "Our wisdom is consulted by candidates for Parlia- ment ; we are allowed to make the candidates into members of Parliament ; but we are denied the choice of a single member of our sex to represent the interests of millions of women in Parliament itself ! How much longer are we to be asked to endure this insult to our intelligence, this degradation of our sex, this crying ment lost to all sense of honour. He would also be driven to admit that when the Conservatives contended that the sub- jugation of the Lords left the way clear to the Commons to betray the people, the Conservative knew better than the Liberal. But even the Conservative did not warn us that the betrayal might come from the very Parliament that scorned that general warning as a malignant party cry. WOMAN ADRIFT injustice to our interests, this musty survival of a fly- blown sex prejudice, this last remnant of man's arro- gance ? " What could any one say in reply to such a case, when the original position of political equality had once been conceded ? There would be nothing what- ever to be said. I, at any rate, cannot think of any conceivable answer to it, once the vote were given, that I could make with any respect for my intelligence. Nay, not only should I be unable to oppose it, but I should give it my positive support if only that, after the deluge, I might derive what sardonic satisfaction I could from the development ; and, feeling that posterity might look after itself so far as I was concerned, since my own generation had ignored its claims, I should settle down to extract out of the situation the com- pensation of a spectacle that would cynically divert me in my declining days. The second stage, then, would be the admission of women into Parliament. Thereafter, the tragi -comedy would move swiftly through its succeeding phases. Once in Parliament, women would claim to enter the ranks of the Ministry itself — candid Suffragists already say that that, and a good deal more, is what they are aiming at. That might be resisted for a while, but militant methods at work in the House of Commons, and inspired by the humourless ingenuity of the militant methods outside with which we are already familiar, would soon make that claim good. And each irresistible step taken would make the next easier and more irresistible, so that women would then be admitted to the higher offices of State, and would permeate the whole official body of the State, which threatens according to present ten- dencies, to be increased enormously. The claim to positions in the magistracy, Recorderships, and finally the Bench of the High Court, would be then made good ; for there would be no answer to the same contention that all artificial distinctions of sex in the State must be swept aside. Moreover, it would no longer be merely a power of argument, of persistence, THE FIRST STEP of arrogance, of passive resistance, and of all the resources of the feminine mind that would be em- ployed. Beyond these resources women would possess a concrete political power — every male parliamentary candidate who was compelled to ask their suffrages would be at their mercy, and would — from what we know of the weaker kind of parliamentary candidate — make promises right and left. Women on the Bench. Let me pause to dispel an illusion on this point of women attaining the higher offices of State — the illusion created by the comic perception. If the fact of a woman as Prime Minister, or as Lord Chief Justice is now conveyed, either pictorially or literally, you laugh at it as an absurdity. The masculine mind, even though it be of that type which says, " Let them have it ! — what does it matter ? " nevertheless recoils in derisive laughter before the notion of a woman presiding at an Old Bailey trial, or introducing a Budget, or threatening a foreign Power with the displeasure of Great Britain. The laughter, of course, is only the instinctive expression of the difference that is instinctively realised between men and women. But that difference must be realised, not by laughter and the comic spirit, but by reason and intelligence; and realised at the beginning and not half-way through the journey. If laughter is to be dethroned by logic to begin with, it will find itself laughed at by logic later on. And if we now laugh at the notion of a woman as a King's Bench judge, it is only because the logical con- clusion of a step logically taken in the first place, startles us by its unfamiliarity now. But it would not startle us ten years after Woman Suffrage had been granted. We should have become so familiarised with each successive invasion by woman of man's sphere, that we should not even have the assistance of a sense of novelty and incongruity to help us to frame an answer to this claim : " There is not a single woman 32 WOMAN ADKIFT judge upon the High Court Bench ! Day after day criminal cases arise in which our sex — the majority of the voters of these islands, pray remember — is vitally interested. Laws are no longer man-made, but those who administer the laws are still men. How long shall we be asked to endure this affront to our sex, how much longer shall we be expected to tolerate this withered branch still lingering on the dead tree of a blasted sex supremacy ? " The Reaction. And so, rolling on like a snowball, the movement would irresistibly progress until all departments of State administration were permeated by women. And then would come an interesting development. For it would gradually dawn upon men that women were filling positions of honour and profit in the State but were not filling the positions of arduous labour for which physical qualifications are needed. It would occur to men that though women were Home Office inspectors of confectionery shops or State inspectors of nurseries, it was from the ranks of men that State inspectors of coal mines were drawn. It might occur to men that though women collected rates and taxes in comfortable offices, they did not collect customs at ports. It might occur to men that though women were medical officers of the State nursing homes, men were the medical officers of the Board of Trade who went out on un- pleasant little tugs to board liners. It might occur to men, indeed, that women were securing " the soft jobs," but leaving men to do that work which was still " a man's work." And as in little things, so in big. It might occur to men that if no woman had yet been First Lord of the Admiralty, that was merely an accidental circumstance that might at any moment be remedied by a little extra political pressure ; but that it was nevertheless absurd that a woman should be a First Lord of the Admiralty when no woman was an admiral; and that it was ridiculous for a woman to be Secretary at War when no woman was enrolled as a soldier • or THE FIRST STEP 33 that a woman should be at the head, as Home Secretary, of the Metropolitan police, when no woman had en- rolled herself as a policeman to protect life and pro- perty in the city and suburbs in the small hours of the morning. And when these things had dawned upon men, they would realise that the first step taken in the second decade of the twentieth century was the step from which had proceeded the wholly impossible situation that women were given a position of equality in the control of the State without being called upon to perform these functions which are the final and funda- mental guarantee of the very existence of the State, either externally in relation to other States, or in- ternally in relation to the maintenance of law and order within itself. It would, in short, dawn upon men that women were, in relation to the State, a privileged class, having complete power without final responsi- bility. What would happen then — and that point would be inevitably reached — I do not know. Possibly, the male portion of the race would have lost so much ot its virility under feminine influence and predominance that they would only have enough masculine courage left to propose that it was time women should take their full share of the work of the State and the nation. But if that degree of emasculation had not been reached, then the vigour of men, confronted by this culminating conclusion of a logical proceeding, would more pro- bably assert itself again. Brought face to face with the position that women must either be granted a privileged position of power in the State, or be soldiers, sailors, and policemen as well as politicians, judges, and comfortable bureaucrats — colliers, navvies and dustmen as well as clerks, inspectors and doctors, — the probability is that men would rise up to end the im- possible situation we had prepared for them, and would come to the conclusion that Nature was wiser than the theorists had been, survey a hard-bitten and unlovely womanhood with pity, and establish once again the 34 WOMAN ADRIFT political dominion of man, whilst restoring woman to her old position of social dignity and domestic grace. And now we can return to the point wherein lies the main difference between men and women, in order to shew that the difference between them, despite all their likenesses, just makes the difference between Woman Suffrage being wise and inevitable and being foolish and chimerical. CHAPTER IV. " As It Was In The Beginning." THE LEGENDARY WOMAN — NATURE'S FIAT— MAN THE WORKER. CHAPTER IV. " As It Was In The Beginning." A CHAPTER dealing with some of the essential differ- ences between men and women is a convenient place for uttering a certain warning and a certain protest. The protest is against the indignation which plain language concerning the sexes incites among Suftra- gists. The warning is that if it be necessary to use plain language about the essential facts of sex, plain language must be used. It is indeed an odd thing that although women are now the most audacious breakers of convention, and although women novelists are the greatest offenders in the production of erotic fiction, a man is rebuked for calling attention to some of the plain facts about the phenomenon of sex even in a serious discussion by which they themselves have raised the whole question of the difference between one sex and another. I have known cases in which men, dealing straightforwardly and reverently with some of the fundamental truths about the sexes, have been rebuked by Suffragists for being " coarse-minded." It may or may not have been that the modesty of the protestants was shocked. But what chiefly concerned them was that it is an extremely easy thing to cover a man with ignominy by pretending or asserting that he has shocked sensitive female ears, and so that prudery was, in some cases coming within my own knowledge, merely a characteristically mean way of taking ad- vantage of one aspect of that difference in sex which they deny. But that epithet need not deter anyone from raising proper and relevant points connected with sex, for truly modest people are not affected by a straight- forward presentation of relevant truths. Doctors are 37 38 WOMAN ADRIFT not coarse-minded men — rather the opposite — and the question of decency no more arises in relation to a serious discussion of this matter than it does in a surgical operation or in a lecture to students in the theatre of a medical school. The man who faints at the sight of blood should not go in for boxing. And the woman who shrinks when confronted with some of the vital truths about sex should not raise a question which is a sex question and no other. The Legendary Woman. Now, it is generally implied by Suffragists that the relative positions of man and woman as they now are, are not what they naturally should be and once were ; but that at some point in the far backward abysm of time woman was strong, self-reliant, " man's equal, and not his slave," and as good a man, in fact, as her male partner. But in the course of the ages, by brute force and physical superiority — so the argument runs — man acquired a tyrannical empire over woman, subjugated her, made her his domestic helot, and began the process of subjection which ended in her having no Vote. And woman is now going to throw off these chains, and resume her rightful — and as I understand the argument, her original — relation to man, and become a free, enlightened, and self-sufficient and independent being. Now the point at which this subjugation of woman took place is wropt in the mists and mystery of unrecorded time. As is the case with the Social Contract of discredited political philosophers, no man can put his finger on the time when woman was the equal of her male mate. And the difficulty in both cases is the same : There never was a time when man, in " a state of nature," was a simple charming savage, living a life of idyllic felicity, subject to no laws but those of Nature, and unhampered by the superior force of any form of government. And there never was a time when woman held an equal position as man's mate, doing exactly what he did, and being " subject to no limitations of sex," and realising the AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING ' 39 ideal condition which Suffragists wish to see her now resume. For though she was once a beast of burden and toil, conforming herself like man to primitive conditions, it is not to that state of nature that Suffragists wish her to return but to that wholly mythical state when she was a free, glorious being, in every respect the equal of man. But man's sphere and woman's sphere have been substantially the same throughout the ages, and the reason for that is that the two spheres have not been delimited by the tyranny of man but by the tyranny of Nature. Even the contention that woman has been subjugated by man's physical superiority js an ad- mission of the nonsense of the natural-equality theory, for if man and woman started as physical equals in the human race (and in the dawn of things physical strength and not moral grandeur would be the sole test of superiority) why did woman not hold her place? Why, indeed, did she not subjugate man ? Nature's Fiat. The simple truth is that woman started the race (if the idea of rivalry is to be allowed at all) horribly handicapped by the fact that Nature assigned to her the function of giving birth to children ; and Nature, moreover, inconsiderately ordained that the human gestatory period should be nine months — probably a very senseless arrangement, but there it is — and so the race could only be perpetuated by woman being hors de combat, so far as any violent physical struggle for life was concerned, for a considerable portion of each year during each effective use of her fecund period — that is to say, during the most active years of her life. Moreover, Nature ordained that even when woman was not engaged in the work of per- petuating the race, she should be subject to physical phenomena during those same years, which amounted to physical disabilities when considered in relation to man's freedom from anything of the kind, and so impaired her physical efficiency compared with his. 40 WOMAN ADRIFT These inalienable features of her sex may not be desirable, but as they are there, and are naturally incidental to the perpetuation of the race, and exist even apart from it, they must be accepted. Man the Worker. But man was placed under no such disabilities. The act which put woman out of the combat for at least three months of tha year did not lay him under any such prolonged physical disability. If it had done, how would men and women have lived, seeing that there is no human neuter to look after them ? And so Nature herself, and not man, doomed woman to an unequal physical relation with man, and it is an inequality from which she cannot escape, except to some extent by the evasion of Nature's intention concerning her, in avoiding maternity altogether — which is the direction in which the extremer doctrines of modern feminism are tending. But even by that deliberate evasion of her duty — an evasion which contracts woman, as will shortly be shown, out of the only sphere in which she is biologically or socially essential — she cannot wholly escape from the ban of physical inferiority. For woman's physical structure, confirmed by the ages during which she has discharged her maternal duties as a matter of course, has become unsuited to such violent physical exertion as man can sustain, and Nature has decreed that even if she avoids maternity, her physical con- stitution is subject to ravages and changes which have no physiological counterpart in man. And so, although we know really nothing histori- cally of our very earliest ancestors, we know that even their relations to each other, as primitive man and woman, must have been determined for them. The first woman on earth was no doubt a stalwart, sinewy, hairy and uncouth creature — very different from the refined product of our civilisation and of the long process of female differentiation in social function which began even then. But we can see how the "AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING" 41 differentiation must have begun. When the first man discovered that his mate was with child, he saw that he was born into a scheme of things in which he would have to do the hardest work, and that his mate would have to remain behind in whatever was their dwelling whilst he adventured forth in quest of their common elemental wants ; or, if they were nomads, that he would have to bear the heavier burdens and shield his mate from what physical fatigue he could spare her. One cannot suppose that the primitive animalistic man carried his tender- ness and care to the same pitch as that which he exhibits to day, but he must have learnt the elements of a crude chivalry even then, or the race would hardly have got a start at all. And the arrival of the offspring, and then its successors, would naturally confirm her in her domestic status. The offspring had to be nursed and nurtured during its helpless years (and the human child takes longer than any other young animal to arrive at maturity), the slain birds and animals brought home by man had to be pre- pared for food and their skins prepared for clothing ; and so without any inherited experience or traditional knowledge, the first man and the first woman found their spheres delimited for them — mapped out by Nature herself In short, the beginning of the differ- ence between the social functions of man and woman was in the beginning. All this, of course (and a little more to follow), is very elementary truth, but the point is that it is the truth. And though it is elementary it is all-impor- tant. Or rather, because it is elementary it is all- important. The elemental facts are what should guide us in dealing with so general and broad and deep a question as that of sex, the prime and elemental facts of which will always remain defiantly true. And so it is more important that we should consider the inalien- able, inherent, and elemental facts of sex than such ab- normal or accidental modifications of them as may be furnished here and there by ancient or modern examples. 42 WOMAN ADRIFT Having now seen how and when woman's social relation to man was determined ; how and when the natural spheres of man and woman were delimited ; and why it comes about that woman is man's physical inferior, and at a disadvantage with man in con- fronting the external world, we may now begin to consider whither this physical inferiority of woman has led, and how far it governs her aptitude, not only as a human being in her personal and domestic relations with man, but in her relation to all those activities which build up and maintain the State. CHAPTER V. Superfluous Woman. THE STATE INDEPENDENT OF WOMAN — INDUSTRIAL ISM WITHOUT WOMEN — WOMAN AND THE ARTS- WOMAN IN LITERATURE AND SCIENCE — TWO HYPO THESES. CHAPTER V. Superfluous Woman. In the previous chapter it was parenthetically stated that the function of bringing children into the world was the only function which made woman essential to the State. That may seem a very surprising statement to those who have not thought the matter out beyond the "logical" or "democratic" basis of women's claim to vote. But it is strictly true. A modified form of that statement would be, however, of wider truth, and if we say that woman is not essential to the State except in so far as she is essential to the Home we have said all that can be said for woman's essentially necessary place in the social organism. If we first consider the State as a centralised govern- ment, and examine woman's relation to it ; and if we then consider the State as limited not only to a cen- tralised executive government, but including also those material and moral activities which make up a modern community of human beings, not touching the family life, we shall see that it is equally true, whether the first limited or the second wider view is taken of what constitutes the State, that woman is wholly superfluous to the State except as a bearer of children and a nursing mother. The State Independent of Woman. It is obvious that the State, considered merely as a government, has no need of woman at all, and that is the State into which she wishes to penetrate by the legal key of a vote that will afterwards unlock all other doors. The State does not need woman, first, as 45 46 WOMAN ADRIFT soldiers or as sailors, that is for its defence. I need not linger on that proposition, as it expresses a self-evident fact. Nor does the State, considered as government, need women as statesmen, ambassadors, civil servants or police. That statement also is self-evident, for it is the statement of existing fact. And the whole machinery of government could still go on working if the direst calamity that ever could afflict man fell upon him, and woman ceased to be. To give no opportunity for a debating point — or rather to close it right away — I admit it is clear to the lowest intelligence that the State, in such a case, would not need to provide for any remote contingencies, but that is because the function reserved to woman, making her by that alone indis- pensable to the State, is that she should bear children (although, as we shall later see, maternity serves the family rather than the State just as paternity does). But for the time being, and for the purposes of its current existence, woman could be dispensed with entirely, so far as the State is concerned. That pro- position also requires no proof. For as things actually are — save for a few women officials in the central administration — the whole machinery of the State into which some women wish that all women may enter, at the present moment goes on absolutely unimpeded and un- assisted by women. There are also women outside the central administration — in the Post Office, for instance, and as workhouse and infirmary officials, and as school teachers. But they are there not because they are sexually necessary, and they could be replaced by men to-morrow (with those few exceptions where women are preferable because of the domestic nature of their oc- cupations) without materially affecting the efficient working of the machinery of government — central, subordinate, and local. So that almost at the outset of considering this whole question, we are confronted by the fact that the sphere into which woman wishes to enter is a sphere that has no need of her whatever. SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN 47 Industrialism without Woman. And now we have to consider the relation of women to the State in its less restricted aspect — viz., the general community, into which women may pene- trate, if they wish, without the vote at all. We are now considering the State as the general community, outside the Home altogether, and therefore as regards its non-domestic activities ; and we are supposing that women are not immured in their homes, but are left to their own devices, but that they have nothing what- ever to do with any trade, profession, or occupation outside the four walls of their homes. Well, the transport services of the country, to begin with, would still go on exactly in the same way, for the simple reason that the transport services of the country by rail, tram, 'bus, or boat, as things are, receive no assistance whatever from women — except a few wives of a few bargees, who are not indispensable to working the canal-boats, however, though they oc- casionally take a little exercise along with the horse on the towing-path, but who use the canal-boats as dwellings, so that they are still at home. And the iron and coal industries of the country would continue in the same unhindered way, for just the same reason. For though there are, in the case of the coal industry, a few pit-brow women (concerning whom Suffragists are not quite sure whether man ought to be ashamed of himself for allowing them to work at such an unwomanly occupation, or ashamed of himself for contemplating such an interference with woman's freedom as to stop them working at it) — though a few pit-brow women are to be found in Lancashire, no one will contend that if they all went to the Isle of Man to-morrow their places could not be filled, I will merely say adequately, by masculine muscles. Nor would the building trades, the shipping, the docks, and the engineering trades be affected in the slightest degree if women remained at home and only emerged to do their shopping, for the simple reason that as far as those trades are concerned 48 WOMAN ADKIFT the women already stay at home. And all those trades are the most wealth producing and the most essential industries of the country. In the next group of trades, such as the textile, dressmaking, and pottery trades, there would be for the time being an absolute stoppage if women remained at home ; and the trades would be entirely dislocated. But the stoppage would only be temporary, and the d'slocation would last only as long as was necessary to adjust the trades to the fresh economic conditions involved by the increase of the cost of production due to the higher rates of payment to men, but if the purely economic condition is ignored, these trades also would be entirely unaffected by woman's withdrawal from them. If women clerks were withdrawn from the Post Office counters, the male substitutes that would be found for them would, in the opinion of some people — not necessarily a right opinion, but it is not very far wrong — improve the service. In the whole banking and brokering world the withdrawal of women would disturb merely the clerical machinery, and restore to something like "economic independence" the poor male clerk who now goes to the wall mainly because girls who live at home, and hope some day to marry, are willing and able to do his work, more or less efficiently, for a less reward. Take the whole body of industry from end to end, and there is not one of the chief wealth producing industries that depends upon women for its existence, if we delete 'he economic advantages of female labour to the employers m certain industries. The fact that in these industries women are employed — always in a subordinate capacity — must not confuse the fact that they are there for capitalistic economic advantage, and not because as a sex they are necessary for the work to be done ; and if their places were supplied by men and boys to-morrow the industries could go on just the same as before — temporary economic disturbance apart. SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN 49 Woman and the Arts. Leaving trades, and coming to professions, the same rule holds. No woman is needed in the legal pro- fession whatever — a fact which is proved by its own self. No woman is needed in the medical profession — a fact which is not affected by the fact that the medical profession includes women. If every woman doctor retired to-morrow, the practice of surgery and medicine would continue unimpaired — and unassisted by any contribution to medical or surgical science that women have ever made. To say that no woman is needed in art and literature would be too sweeping a statement, so crudely put, but we can nevertheless bring it without any difficulty within the scope of the hypothesis that no woman need leave her home, and yet the State, in all its activities, could go on. But when I say that no woman is needed in art and literature, I have my mind on this fact : That the whole body of literature and art left after subtract- ing from it the best that women have contributed to either branch, would be just what would be left if the same number of second-rate male artists and literary men had never been born. There would be a gap, but the body of art and literature left after woman's contributions had been taken away would be quite enough to go on with — no gap would be made by the withdrawal of any work of the first rank. But somebody will say that, in talking about art, I have forgotten the dramatic art and actresses. Well, even the word " actresses " has no terrors for me, for the English stage flourished in Shakespeare's day when women were forbidden by law to take part in stage plays, and boys took the female parts. But I concede the wholly immaterial point so far as the dramatic art is concerned, that though no woman has yet written a play that the world will ever want to resurrect, it is desirable that actresses should still charm us on the stage and bore us (as I am afraid we must say they sometimes do) in the illustrated papers. so WOMAN ADRIFT But no single work of art of supreme genius has been produced by a woman since the world began, though the whole realm of art has been open to her since Sappho sang, and though neither her domestic subjection nor her political inequality can have re- strained her if she had the impulse within her. But perhaps I had better here take Mill's own words on the point. They were included in that chapter of his book, " The Subjection of Women," in which he was, broadly speaking, trying to prove the contrary of what is being maintained in this chapter. For he was endeavouring to prove the fitness of women to share in the work of the State, and not what I am endeavouring to show, that so alien is the State to woman that, apart from her maternal functions in the home, the State does not need her at all. And Mill admitted : " But they have not yet produced any of those great and luminous new ideas which form an era of thought, nor those fundamentally new con- ceptions in art which open a vista of possible effects not before thought of, and found a new school." And though woman's activities in literature and art since Mill's day have enormously and amazingly increased, that admission still holds good : even the highest and best of them only attains a place in the second rank. Woman in Literature and Science In literature she could be deleted with more loss and regrets than in art, and in contemporary fiction especially she would be missed ; but neither art nor literature would be sensibly affected. We should be sorry to have to miss "Jane Eyre," or "Aurora Leigh," or " Adam Bede," or " Robert Elsmere," but though a few women writers have attained a very high rank, even the best of them lack that quality which trayisfigures. And if we have to compare what would be missed by woman's withdrawal from art and litera- ture, as compared with man's, we may say that, in the case of woman's accomplishment, it would be like SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN 51 missing five hundred pounds out of a very big fortune indeed, but that in the case of what man has accom- plished it would be like missing an arm or a leg, or even a head, from a body. And art and letters do not depend on voting power or even economic in- dependence — they are the media of self expression. Amongst the arts, music is that which owes least to culture and most to the possession of original powers. And as far as creative music is concerned, woman would not be missed in the slightest degree, for she has created no music whatever that comes anywhere near the first rank. In executive music she is out- distanced by the great male performers ; and we have to come to vocal music and to the contralto and soprano voices of women before we stumble on a single instance in which woman is indispensable in the State (considered, moreover, in its widest possible aspect as the general community) — and even so we have the choir of St Peter's and our own memories of the angelic voices of boys in our own cathedrals to show us that still woman would not be indispensable even in that class of work and achievement which it becomes a mere fanciful exercise to exclude her from. To science — mechanical, electrical and physical — woman has contributed nothing of essential import- ance. I dodge two stock brick-bats thrown at me — one, Madame Curie, who shared with her husband a glorious discovery, and the other, Mrs Ayrton, who has made some researches into the behaviour of the electric arc which are no doubt important, though I am scientifically incompetent to say how important. But for these two solitary examples of any original achievement performed by woman in the realm of science to be made to disprove my point so far even as science is concerned, it will be necessary to prove that the collaborated discovery made by Madame Curie, and the original researches of Mrs Ayrton, would not have been made by a man, if not there- about, then very shortly after. And even if we include domestic occupations 52 WOMAN ADRIFT outside the domestic sphere — cooking and sewing for instance — the best journeymen in these occupations are still men and not women, and as for what it is a pleasure to call la haute ecole de la cuisine, the name of M. Soyer just now is quite enough. But the significance of M. Soyer deserves, I think, a chapter all to himself In short there is not a single relation that woman holds either to the State or the general community, outside her maternal functions, in which she is indispensable. Two Hypotheses. That surely is not merely a very significant but a stupendous fact. For it means, if we care to conceive the horrid possibility, that if women were limited merely to the purposes of reproduction, the State and the nation could still continue. Nay, deprive her even of her duties as a mother, once a mother, take her own offspring off her hands, and delete all that is meant by a mother's care, and still she is not indis- pensable to the material needs of the State. Deprive her, in fact, of the priceless part of her — her place in the Home itself — deprive her of all relation with the outside world and the world would still go on. It would not be the same world if the priceless part of woman were suppressed. For it is impossible to estim- ate what the race of man owes to the work of woman in the home as wife or mother — even as that marred soul, the housekeeper. But nobody but the Suffragist wishes to cheapen or weaken the priceless part of her. But what we could deprive her of without loss to the State or the nation in any single material , particular is all that work which lies outside the home. And if we want really to find out what woman's place in the world is, let us imagine two things. Let us first imagine that the woman's movement had taken her away from the home altogether, leaving it just the sort of thing it would be like if every man were a bachelor looking after himself The picture will hardly bear being looked upon. And now let us suppose that SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN 53 the woman's movement had been not what we know it to be but its very opposite — and there is indeed such a movement, only the other and more strident movement drowns the voices of those who are going more quietly about their work. But let us suppose that the woman's movement as we know it had taken quite another turn, and that " Back to the Home ! " was the modern woman's cry, and that women threatened that they would withdraw themselves entirely from the outside world if man did not do something or other, and would henceforth do nothing but mind their own homes and babies. If that threat were held over our heads — if we were told that we should have to carry on the State and the industry and all the professions of the country without woman's assistance — with what composure should we receive the announcement, nay, with what relief! And that will help us to realise how far woman is unnecessary in the State — not only the governmental State into which she wishes to penetrate, and in which she is, at any rate, no more necessary than a man in a nunnery, but that wider aspect of the State which means the whole community outside the home. Now reverse the case. Consider, if you can, an out- side world in which man took no part, and in which its work was left entirely to woman. You must not con- ceive a race of women so changed in nature as to be able to perform man's work in some fashion or other. You must conceive of woman, as we know her to-day, doing man's work as we know it to-day in such a world as that in which we live. The difficulty of that con- ception, and its contrast with the ease with which we can conceive an outside world in which woman takes no part (a conception actually realised so far as the State into which she wishes to enter is concerned, and sufficiently realised in regard even to the State con- sidered as a community) that contrast, I say, is the result of our enquiry into the question stated in the last chapter, viz. : How far woman's physical inferiority to man has carried her. It has carried her to the point that she has no necessary relation whatsoever to the 54 WOMAN ADRIFT work of the State and the community — except in so far as she contributes to the only kind of state and community in which we can pleasantly imagine her to be pre-eminent, by her duties as a wife and mother in that little kingdom of her own, the family home. The rest of this book is really unnecessary. That truth is the unanswerable answer to the '■ demand " of woman to share in the control of the State. She is utterly unnecessary to the control of the State. Nevertheless, we may as well proceed. CHAPTER VT. The Two Hemispheres Of Mankind. MAN AS THE COOK— MAN THE ORIGINATOR — WOMAN'S DOMESTIC FUNCTIONS IN THE COMMUNITY— THE CHANNEL THAT DIVIDES SEX— COMMON GROUND. CHAPTER VI. The Two Hemispheres Of Mankind In the last chapter a passing reference was made to M Soyer. But he deserves, for what he has done, rather more attention than a passing reference. He has not only invented a system of cookery for which women have been expressing their gratitude to him, hailing his system as a boon and a blessing, but he has established some claim on the gratitude of his fellow men. Greater men have done greater things than M. Soyer, but it is the timely significance of his accomplishment that makes it stand out in relief. As far as the women are concerned he has only done that which man has done from the very beginning — show them how things should be done. But for men M. Soyer has done something in^nitely greater. For he has — or he ought to have done — restored men's own faith in themselves at a time when a little fillip to our esteem was very badly needed. For these are the days when women allude to us as " You men . . . ' " derogatively, derisively, even contemptuously. It has become a difficult thing in these days to raise one's voice in praise of one's own sex. I have found that merely to contend that man has, after all, not done so badly with his opportunities has been to lay myself open to the rebuke, " Oh, evidently you are no democrat ! " And in certain feminine circles in which I have found myself occasionally marooned, I have gathered that it is no longer considered good form to have a manly opinion of the masculine sex, but that one was expected to assume, between shy nibbles at cake, that we men are a dreadfully decadent lot, just as to be a " good Imperialist" you must too often E 57 58 WOMAN ADKIFT assent to the impotence and decadence and backward- ness of one's own motherland. But unfortunately I have not the subtle tempera- ment that is necessary for that polite acquiescence in a fashionable opinion ; and I decline to subscribe to the prevailing heresy that my sex should now adopt an apologetic attitude and humble itself diffidently before its betters. I have steadfastly refused to effeminise myself by joining in the tenor chorus that has exalted woman by dispraising man. I have had no sympathy with the male adulators of the female sex who have been so assiduously discovering the miserable shortcomings of their own. Nevertheless I have spoken of them in terms which should have pleased them, for the terms have implied that they had in some measure contracted themselves out of the sex whose demerits they have sung. And so I had nothing to recant when M. Soyer came upon the scene to show woman that she had to wait for a man to teach her how food could be cooked in the most effective fashion. Having pre- served my faith in man, in his achievements and capacities, having realised that most of the good work done in the material world has been man's and must continue to be his, the timely and portentous advent of M. Soyer did not astonish me — I could have pre- dicted that with the hour the man would come. And he came not to surprise me, but to vindicate my faith in my own sex. But to others less stalwart in their faith, impressed by all the chatter about man's muddle- headedness in the management of the affairs of a world ridiculously easy to manage on a gynascocratic plan, M. Soyer came to rehabilitate them in their own esteem. For consider what M. Soyer did, Man as the Cook. Throughout the ages woman has cooked food. It is a function, so they say, thrust upon her by " the tyrant." And I have no doubt that when she began her culinary duties man showed her how to perform MANKIND'S TWO HEMISPHERES 59 them, i have no doubt that in some prehistoric cave some domestic drama was enacted that would seem quite modern : " Excuse me, my dear, but the next diplodoccus cutlets I bring home I'll jolly well cook myself, and you shall just watch how the thing should be done, these are simply uneatable ! " And I have no doubt that long before Prometheus stole the fire of the gods some primitive male person, sitting down on his haunches outside his cave, rubbed two pieces of wood together while his wife stood at the cave entrance wondering why he did not come in to his raw and cold collation, and wondering what devil's game he was playing at with two sticks. And man, who invented fire, unquestionably told woman to what purpose it might be put and how to apply it. And then he left her to her work — having other things to do himself — and for countless generations he has been satisfied with her cooking — though taking care to do it himself when it was necessary to excel for the palates of kings, and emperors, and such. But though woman has had a virtual monopoly of the cooking art she has invented nothing — not even a frying-pan — to improve and further it. To each man who has cooked there have been a million women who have tried to, The kitchen has been her domain — so much her domain that she revolts against the tyranny which keeps her there, wasting her valuable time and trifling with her unused talents. And yet — and yet — into her own domain it is reserved that a man shall enter and show her again how things shall be done. So she is not supreme even in her own sphere. She must be a disciple even in her own school. Even on her own ground she is beaten. M. Soyer's very name suggests, not fancifully, the supremacy of man. Be- tween " Soyez ! " and " Soyons ! " there is all the difference between to will and to wish — between man and woman. He is the dynamic force, the creator, the originator, the imperative voice. She is — some- times charming ! 60 WOMAN ADRIFT Man the Originator. And so it does not surprise me that a man has again come along to remind us that man is still the origin- ator. He has not only taught the housewife — he has filled her with a new enthusiasm for her duties. He has even been hailed as the benefactor of the Bachelor Girl — that summit of female emancipation and in- dependence, that defiant exemplar of " the cause " — the woman who was to make an Adamless Eden out of a chintz-covered three-roomed flat, and show man how unnecessary he was to her existence. And now a man has come along into this Adamless Eden to show her how she can cook her lonely rasher ! But, as I say, it did not surprise me. It is all of a piece with everything else that man has accomplished. Supreme in his own sphere — in war, in ships, in coal mines, in the building of bridges, in the City Police, on the Stock Exchange, in the arts, philosophy, and ethics — he also has found time not only to make love to woman, and to provide her with a home, but to furnish her with the indispensable aids for running it — to help her to accomplish the one task he has " assigned " to her. Woman has used the needle for a good many ages, but man invented the sewing-machine to save her fingers. She has been washing clothes for many, many years, but man has invented magic soaps and wringers and mangles, and has equipped laundries with electrical machinery to save her knuckles. She has been sweep- ing carpets for many generations, but man has provided her with carpet-sweepers and vacuum cleaners to save her back. He has given her patent mops to save her from housemaid's knee — potato peelers to save her from cutting her fingers. He has compounded wonder- ful baby foods to save her offspring from her own deficiencies. He has designed her dresses, and dis- tilled perfumes for her to exhale. Supreme in his own sphere, he has shown her that she is dependent on him for a good many things even in hers. He has taught her everything she knows, except what Dame Nature taught her — and what Eve taught Adam ! MANKIND'S TWO HEMISPHERES 6i Woman's Domestic Functions in the Community. Well, after that pleasant little interlude with M. Soyer, if anybody any longer talks of equality between man and woman in the physical and material sphere, at any rate, he or she has to answer the question of how it comes about that, outside the home, the world can be carried on by man entirely without woman's assistance ; and that even in her own domestic sphere woman must go to man if she wants a thing done better than she could do it herself The two spheres do, then, overlap — with this important differ- ence : that in the case of woman's entrance into man's sphere, she is merely a superfluity, an intruder, and there because she wants to go into the sphere and not because the sphere needs her ; but in the case of man's intrusion into the sphere of woman, he goes there, if at all, only as a benefactor. But, in considering all those industries, professions, and occupations lying outside the home that man can manage for himself, is there not one that woman could do even better ? Yes, there is one. At a pinch, man could do it himself, if woman insisted upon it and absolutely shut herself up in the home. But as a just and candid being man will admit that there is certainly one thing, outside the home, that woman can do better than he. It is not any handicraft, demanding a delicate touch — the most wonderfully delicate mechanism like certain scales used in research work, and such work as very fine filigree or diamond cutting, is made by man. There is one thing, however, that woman can do better, and what is it ? Nursing. And nursing is a domestic and even a maternal duty. If you thought of the occupation which next to medical nursing she might do rather better than man, you would say : Teaching — at any rate, teaching children and girls. And that, too, is a domestic and a maternal function. After nursing and teaching there is nothing else that I or any man can think of that woman would do better than man, outside the home — not even 62 WOMAN ADRIFT charing and cleaning city offices. That, too, is a domestic duty, but men perform it quite competently and much more quickly than the poor creatures to whom it is really often a dreadful drudgery. We find, then, that in the sphere that " man has assigned to woman " man can even enter with advantage ; whilst in the sphere that man has " taken to himself" woman is inessential to it altogether, but is of advantage to him in two occupations, and those two occupations are really her own domestic occupations carried out into the external world. Could any proof be clearer that the sphere which man has " taken " to himself and that which he has "assigned" to her are not a fanciful or arbitrary delimitation, but are in strict accordance with each other's natural capacities ? We are justified, then, in saying that man is rightly supreme in his own domain and woman rightly supreme in hers, and that whatever individual men and women may do the sphere of duty in life for each sex is mapped out as clearly as England is marked out from France on the map. The Channel that Divides Sex. But the Channel that flows between England and France, though it divides them, yet unites them. It enables Englishmen to pass into France, and French- men to pass into England. We do not find that absurd or unnatural — it is well that France and England should meet on common ground (if the Channel may be so alluded to) and though the English- man is rather more at home on the common ground than the Frenchman, both often cross over into each other's domain. So it is between man and woman in our own land. The channel of sex divides them, but their common humanity and race unites them, and each meets on the common ground of their human needs. But just as we cannot conceive Englishmen migrating in a body to France, or Frenchmen performing the MANKIND'S TWO HEMISPHERES 63 counter feat, just as we cannot conceive Frenchmen and Englishmen in a body de-nationalising themselves, so we cannot conceive men and women as inter- changeable parts in the social mechanism. England might migrate to France en bloc, and France might perform the reciprocal action, but it would then be hard to say what names should figure on the map, and whether ancient Gaul should not compromise by calling herself Anglo-Francia and England call he-self something or other like it, the other way round. And man and woman might so invade each other's domain that it would be difficult to say whether the very names that denote sex would not have to be compromised to describe the horrid hybrid product. But both French- men and Englishmen, and both man and woman, are by the conditions of their existence prevented from committing any such act of topsy-turvydom. To do them justice, neither the Frenchman nor the English- man wants it — each, in his different way, is proud and satisfied with his own nationality. And man and woman — in the mass — are just the same. Each recognises the territory of the other, and each respects his and her natural state. There are exceptions, of course. Some Frenchmen have become anglophiles by long residence in England — but the woman who covets a dwelling in man's territory is, perversely enough, not an androphile, but, if anything, an androphobe. Common Ground. We may carry the analogy a little further without straining it. Though Frenchmen and Englishmen have their own separate pride of nationality — just as normal men and women have their own natural pride of sex — and though they differ in many ways, and have even quarrelled at times, yet happily there is an entente cordiale between them which maintains the happiest relations, and there is much common ground that they occupy in relations that are neither French nor English, but relations of art, science, and even politics wherein both are of accord. 64 WOMAN ADRIFT So it IS between man and woman. Lying in the gulf between sex, even encroaching here and there on each other's territory, is a field large enough for their common action and the association of each with the other. But woman can no more become man — in any conception we can make of life — than France can become England in any development of cosmo- politanism that we can foresee. The true Frenchman, I am sure, never wishes to become anglicised — no Englishman I ever met wished he were a Frenchman ; and nothing so bizarre, one hopes, can ever come to pass as that man should wish to effeminise himself and woman should try to make herself a man. Now it is possible that a rare Frenchman sometimes asks himself, " Why on earth am I a Frenchman and not an Englishman ? " ; just as one has sometimes heard a young girl say, "Oh, why am I not a man ! " In each case the explanation is simple — they were both born so. And just as the geographical difference is the deciding factor of nationalitx- in the Frenchman's case, so physical difference is the deciding factor in the case of sex. We have now seen how far physical difference has carried man and woman — it has delimited their spheres. And the physical difference has thrown into relief the quality of physical force, making man superior to woman in the exercise of force, solely because his physical difference happens to make him stronger. Having now seen how man's physical difference from woman has produced the outstanding fact that in his relations to the State he is independent of woman altogether, we have now to consider whether the quality of force has any necessary connection with the State, making the exercise of it inherent in government. In other words. What has force got to do with the vote ? CHAPTER VII. The Man Behind The Vote. POWER ESSENTIAL TO A VOTE — MORAL FORCE AND PHYSICAL FORCE — THE MORALITY OF FORCE — THE NEED FOR PHYSICAL FORCE — A WORKING MODEL OF PHYSICAL FORCE— MALE MILITARY SERVICE — IDEALISTS AND PHYSICAL FORCE. CHAPTER VII, The Man Behind The Vote. If we want to understand what relation force has to a vote, the obvious thing to do is to consider what a vote is, A vote, say the Suffragists, is an opinion ; and that is quite true. It is as true as saying that a gun is a piece of mechanism. A vote is an opinion, certainly, but the difference between a vote and an opinion merely is that one is merely an opinion, but a vote is an opinion that can be enforced. The differ- ence between a vote and an opinion, in short, is the difference between a charged cartridge and a blank cartridge. They both look very much the same, but the similarity ends with the outward appearance. And a parliamentary vote looks a very harmless, peaceful, and amiable way of saying, " This shall be done ! " — any woman or child could mark the paper — but the value of a vote depends not alone on the intelligence which expresses the opinion (as to which much might be said) but upon the force behind it that gives it any validity. The force may be in reserve and not apparent, but the point is that it is in reserve, if needed. Power Essential to a Vote. Even a shareholder's vote is a vote only because of the power behind it. At a turbulent meeting of shareholders you may sometimes see a motion pro- posed and seconded to the effect that some policy or other shall be forced upon the Board. Hands are held up, a poll demanded, and the superior force carries the day — the force employed in this case being the number of pounds sterling possessed respectively in 67 WOMAN ADRIFT tne concern by the victors and the vanquished. Each man backs his opinion by the power of his purse — and hence his opinion becomes a vote. But the matter does not end there, though it appears to do so. It really appears as though mere money carries the day, but in reality it is physical force that wins, even in the peaceful vote of a shareholders' meeting. For suppose the vanquished refused to accept defeat — suppose the directors, though outvoted, persisted in ignoring the policy thrust upon them by the vote. Such things rarely happen, but the point is that they may, and they do not happen often only because of that ultimate factor in government — force. The shareholders then invoke the law of the land to aid them, and the judge (in such a case no jury happens to be necessary) gives his vote that the directors shall carry out the policy voted by the shareholders, even if it involve the removal of the directors from the Board. And again the judge's vote has validity only because of the physical force held in reserve to enforce it. Still the directors might resist, and it might then be that their physical expulsion from their own works and offices became necessary. But, to the very last, the physical force held in reserve is really operative all the time, for a shareholder's legal vote is held up by the law of the land, and the law of the land is upheld by the physical force at the disposal of all govern- ments that effectively govern, and the physical force which the government controls and moves about is that of men. It is true that in practice the process does not work out by a series of defiances met and overcome at each stage by superior force ; and it is true that the shareholders, in giving their vote and the directors in accepting it, take the vote as the end of the matter. But that is because we live under a system of settled law and government, upheld in the last resort by force ; and the vote goes through only becau.se both shareholders and directors know quite THE MAN BEHIND THE VOTE 69 well — so well that they do not stop to think a second about it — that a legal thing will be supported by the law of the land, and that the law of the land will be supported by sufficient force to compel its obedience. Thus we may say that even the vote of a shareholders' meeting (which in itself is a vote only because it represents one kind of force) depends for its real validity upon physical force. Moral Force and Physical Force, But, say the Suffragists, that sort ot argument may be all very well for some South American republic, but in our country we are governed by public opinion, by moral force. Public opinion — an unstable and very unascertainable quantity — may influence the giving of votes, but it has nothing whatever to do with the validity of the votes given. One shareholder's speech may influence another shareholder to vote in a given way, but it is not the first shareholder's speech that makes the vote of the second shareholder a valid and effective thing. And moral force is merely a factor in the formation of public opinion — though that does not mean that public opinion is always a moral force. It may be merely an hysterical and irrational clamour. But moral force and public opinion undoubtedly influence votes, often for good, and in the formation of that general influence women have their share, and may beneficently exercise it, though they do not possess the vote — and that for the excellent reason that they stand entirely outside that power which is called upon to enforce it. And a vote without the power behind it to give it force is merely an opinion ; but if it is an opinion that pretends to have behind it a force it does not possess, then sooner or later, in some sudden crisis, the vote which is really nothing more than an opinion falls into contempt. It is obvious that moral force, though it may in- fluence a government, does not govern. If it did, we should need no government at all, but each man would 70 WOMAN ADRIFT be a law to himself — and that would no doubt be an excellent thing, except that one man's view of what was morally right would come into conflict with other men's, and they would come to blows, and the victors would form a government, and the vanquished would have to accept the inevitable, and so we should soon come back to where we are already, except that it would clearly be understood that when the majority said a certain thing should be done, by voting for it, they meant it to be quite understood (to save a pitched battle for every fresh law) that they meant exactly what they said. The Morality of Force. But the opinion is nevertheless held that if moral force does not actually govern the world, it ought to — which is not the same thing, however. But that opinion is held in strange places. Mr Cecil Chap- man, for instance, who is a London stipendiary magis- trate, as well as a Suffragist, recently uttered the aphorism : " So far as the world is governed by physical force, it is wrongly governed." It is a tenable opinion, but strange in the mouth of a magistrate, who daily has to listen sympathetically to a policeman telling him : " As the prisoner would not go away, and became very abusive, your worship, I took him into custody ! " and who daily has to utter the formula, " Ten shillings or fourteen days ! " The opinion is to be respected, no doubt, but the man who sincerely holds it must certainly feel that he has been too complacent towards the unkind fate that offered to make him a stipendiary magistrate in a London police court. But it is doubtful whether the opinion is entitled to more respect, in a world of realities, than one gives to any other amiable delusion. It belongs to the same order of opinion as that which would hold, " So far as the day is divided into day and night, it is wrongly divided." For we cannot well conceive of a world in which phj'sical force did not prevail. Physical force is not an immoral force — it is merely a non-moral force THE MAN BEHIND THE VOTE 7i capable of being set in motion by both moral and immoral impulses. Before we condemn an act of physical force, we must enquire into the purpose for which it is used. And it so happens that not only mankind as a race, but man as a sex, can wield physical force morally. Man is a very fit person to exercise physical force, because he is also a morally perceptive being, and combines the two forces, at their highest in combination, in his own personality. If he has produced Samsons and Sandows, he has also pro- duced Platos and Tolstoys — moral giants as well as physical giants. Moreover, physical force does not necessarily mean brute force, as Suffragists so often try to make out when they answer the physical force argument by saying that that means that a navvy should rule men like Herbert Spencer. For physical force does not necessarily mean brute and primitive physical force — the strength of an elephant is laid low by a bullet not as big as one of its little eyes. And though if, by kind permission of the Rev. F. B. Meyer, Mr Johnson had defeated Bombardier Wells in an elemental bruising match, the black people of the earth would have em- braced the illusion that the black man was proving himself as good a man as the white, the result would not, as we know very well, have justified that con- clusion. For physical force can be directed by in- telligence just as much as it can be inspired by morality, and the white man would not fight the black man with his fists any more than with a bow and arrow. Man has produced not only his Jem Maces and J. L. Sullivans, but his Napoleon and Napoleon's victor. Chief Superintendent Wells of the Metropolitan Police — a familiar personage to Suffragists — could have done much physical damage to the militant ladies if he had not so intelligently disposed and controlled his forces that the militant ladies were enabled only to do the minimum amount of damage even to themselves. Man is therefore an excellent repository of physical force, for allied to that capacity are the capacities of intelli- 72 WOMAN ADRIFT gence and morality to direct and inspire it. And so though the world is governed by physical force — i.e., by man — there are safeguards against its improper use, so that we may vary the magisterial aphorism and say, " Though the world is governed by physical force, man's intelligence and morality help to make it rightly governed." The brute who beats his wife governs, for the time being, by physical force ; but so does the policeman who takes him into custody ; and so does Mr Cecil Chapman himself, who, I hope, suffers no spiritual agonies when he gives him a good stiff sentence. The Need for Physical Force. It is not merely clear that physical force governs the world, but so clear that even those who least like to admit it do admit it. But the Suffragists never- theless contend that while the rest of the world may be so governed, Great Britain is not. " Great Britain is merely governed by votes, and as we are a law-abiding people, physical force has nothing to do with the matter in practice, whatever it may have to do with it in theory." So they contend. But, as we have seen what a vote is, that contention is merely the repetition of a fallacy already demolished. Still we will test the question on the facts as well as by theory. To begin with, we are not all a law-abiding people —every criminal in gaol is a personal illustration of that fact. Nay, even the Suffragists are not law- abiding. There is, at the moment of writing, a ridicu- lous league in existence called the Taxation Resistance League. It is founded on the assumption — which will be examined later — that as women do not possess a vote they should not be called upon to pay taxes, and so they refuse to pay inhabited house duty, income- tax, or a dog license. One of these ladies was un- fortunately sent to prison for her contumacy, under a law which apparently does not explicitly say how long such offenders should be kept there. After a week she THE MAN BEHIND THE VOTE 73 was liberated, and since her release her relations and sympathisers have contended with quite a comical vehemence that the moral victbry lies with her. " For the Government must have spent five pounds at least to recover four shillings and sixpence, and she was let out of prison in a week ! " The moral victory may or may not have been hers — as she did not pay the four- and-sixpence after all, I think it was — but the physical victory (which is the final test) undoubtedly rested with the Government ; for the point is not whether they let her out of prison when they decided to do so, but that they sent her to prison when they wanted to do so, and so vindicated the fact that government rests on compulsion by physical force. And herein arises the crowning absurdity of the Suffragists in their dilemma over this subject. They deny that the Government is based upon physical force, and yet (often times in the same speech) they go on to defend the physical violence of the militant school, and not only to defend it, but to threaten its renewal if their demands are not met. I allude to that point here merely to show that physical force is always so near the surface of any human struggle that even those who deny that force rules the State, reach out, in the most natural manner, to seize the weapon of force and destructiveness against the State.^ It is such trifling with reason — so characteristic of the ' A Suffragist who was sent to prison from the Old Bailey in January, 1912, for the crime of attempting to set fire to the con- tents of letter-boxes, addressed the judge in defence of her action, and said : " It was felt that the original methods of the Suffragists could not be allowed to continue on account of the injury which resulted to the women concerned ; and it was therefore decided that attacks should be made first upon Government property, and then upon the private property of individuals." And Miss C. Pankhurst, at Northampton, Feb. 10, 1912, said, " We are going to pester the Government as we have never done before, but we shall not sacrifice precious bodies of delicate women to be battered by police, for it is better to break windows than women." Suffrag- ists are constantly justifying their physical campaign on the ground that men obtained their freedom by physical force. But violent demonstrations that are abandoned because the demonstrators are themselves afraid of getting hurt, become mere wantonness. 74 WOMAN ADRIFT puerilities of argument and action marking theSuffragist campaign — that has driven to the side of their oppon- ents many who might otherwise hav^e supported them (that is to say, people who have paid no respect to the fundamental objections against Woman Suffrage) but who, seeing so many absurdities and excesses, have taken the other short-cut of saying that whether it would be a democratic thing or not to give women the vote, it would certainly be a very foolish thing, since those who make most clamour for the vote have given tlie most evidence that they are the last people to use it wisely. A Working Model of Physical Force. To return now to the immediate point, it is precisely because all people are not law-abiding that it is still necessary to retain, deliberately, a form of government that depends for its control upon force. But there is force in revolt as well as in government, and the events of the second week of August, 191 1, came (in timely fashion enough) to shock us with the proof that so long as the muscles and passions of men endure, just so long must they be reckoned at their potential value. There is no need to dwell upon the actual events of that week — not the fact, but what the fact revealed, is all that concerns us here. The best evidence of the gravity of the events of that week is that though the Government — a Government as little inclined to panic and to a distrust of the populace as any we have ever had — took precautions that appeared to cover the gravest contingencies, nobody felt that the precautions went an inch beyond the proper pro- visions and prudence of a Government determined to maintain the reign of law and order and the public safety. It was a week that weakened and cheapened even the prestige of the Vote and that brought us, with a sudden realisation, up to the blank brick wall that Force — in revolt or in government — is the ultimate factor in politics. Who thought of Woman Suffrage THE MAN BEHIND THE VOTE 75 that week? Who cared twopence that week for the argument that women would purify politics ? Where, indeed, did women come into any essential relation with the State during the week when England stood on the verge of a precipice below which lay the abyss of civil war ? ^ That week was a working model of the essential function of government — which is to govern — and of the instrument of this final and essential function, which is the disposal and control of armed forces of men. And where did women, who "claim their full share in the government of this country," then come in to take their share in the very vindication of govern- ment ? Woman was not in the ranks of soldiers and police who were stoned and pelted with bricks and bottles, and yet the soldiers and police, and they alone, were the instruments of the Government's will and power. Yet though she was not in the ranks, she was represented there, and the work done by soldiers and police was just as much in the interests of women who have no votes as of the men who have. And it was not women who were sworn in as special constables — though I am surprised that some enterprising Suffragist did not present herself for enrolment for the reclame of being refused. But the Suffragists kept very quiet indeed that week, for that week brought us down to the bed-rock of what a government and the State really mean, and theory was confounded by fact. Now, we are as entitled to consider what would have happened if the situation had become graver as we are entitled to recall that the situation was grave. It might easily have become so grave that all the forces of government and all the orderly portion of the nation's manhood would have been engaged not only in re- sisting force by force, but in securing the distribution of food under the protection of force. We should then have seen no longer a working model, but the fact ' See the speech by Mr Winston Churchill, then Honie Secre- tary, at Dundee, September, 191 1, for his view of the gravity of the situation. 76 WOMAN ADRIFT itself, of the relative functions of men and of women in the State as discussed in an earlier chapter, for the men would have been outside the home securing food, and the women and children would have been staying at home, anxiously waiting for it. We did not come to that actual pinch, but that is what was involved, and our intelligences may bridge the slight gulf there was between possibility and reality. Male Military Service. But before leaving the " physical force " argument, some attention must be paid to the objections to its validity that are raised by Suffragists. It is first of all objected that " the battlefield of maternity " counter- balances man's military capacity and service, and that contention will be dealt with in the next chapter. And then it is pointed out by Suffragists that all men do not fight, and that therefore the exclusive possession by males of a vote on the strength of military capacity must fall to the ground. But the sex that wields physical force, at the instance of the State and to uphold the State, is exclusively male and not female. And the objection to the validity of the physical force argument on this ground can be also met even by the statement that if the sex which is called upon to perform the function of physical defence and control, cares to excuse certain members of it from the actual performance of those functions it may logically do so without depriving them of the vote, on the sufficient ground that they belong to the sex which is called upon to perform those functions. Or, again, we may say that the sex delegates the function, in normal times to certain specialised members of it, as a matter of sub-division of labour, but that the liability rests upon the sex as a whole in case of ultimate need. So that if it is said that all men do not uphold the State by physical force, the reply is that that is only true because all men are not ordinarily necessary at one and the same time to uphold it ; THE MAN BEHIND THE VOTE 77 but the sex that does uphold the State, the sex that vindicates its law and order internally, and which defends the State externally, is the male and not the female sex. Moreover, those men who are engaged in the task of upholding the State act merely as the deputies of the rest of the manhood of the nation, but could not act for a day except by its assent — unless they were acting as the representatives of the State against a revolutionary movement on the part of a portion of the manhood of the State, in which case we should see the function of male physical force exhibited in its two capacities — the capacity that upholds government and the capacity that destroys government. Moreover, it is at any rate within the bounds of possibility that our own nation may some day be driven, either by the force of external circumstances acting suddenly, or by the votes of the electorate given deliberately, to assume national miHtary service ; but a State in which all men were liable to military service, but in which the political power had passed over to a majority of women, suggests a picture of an ill-balanced con- stitution that is too grotesque to be thought upon. Idealists and Physical Force. Then there is another objection made by Suffragists to the physical force argument — an objection to the argumei>t itself. It is repugnant to the type of mind that is most favourable to Suffragism ; and I can even sympathise with the repugnance, considered ethically as a civilized emotion, though I have no sympathy with it considered in relation to the rationality of the matter. For the mistake made by these objectors is that they confuse two things in their condemnation or repugnance : they confuse a mental recognition of the fact as a disagreeable necessity with a moral sympathy with the necessity itself. But it is not exalting physical force, or falling down ecstatically before it, to point out its function In connection with the State — it is merely recognising 78 WOMAN ADRIFT facts as they are. The only point to consider is whether there is any relevant connection between the claims of Suffragism and the fact that government still depends upon physical force ; and though I respect the pacific ideals of the Suffragists to whom that recognition is abhorrent, I cannot respect the mind that will not confront the rationality of this recognition as an argument against Woman Suffrage. Herbert Spencer hated physical force so much that he took no pleasure, he tells us in his Autobiography, in reading that sanguinary epic, the Iliad ; but, never- theless, as one possessing a rational mind, and also a first class intellect which, at any rate, cannot be treated with contempt, he recognised and affirmed the validity of the physical force argument when he said (" Social Ethics ") : " Unless, therefore, women furnish contingents to the Army and iVavy such as men furnish, it is manifest that, ethically considered, the question of the equal ' political rights,' so called, of women, cannot be entertained until there is reached a state of permanent peace. Then only will it be possible (whether desirable or not) to make the political position of men and women the same." That time, unhappily, is not yet reached, and whether it will ever be reached no man can say. The present signs, at any rate, are not favourable to the mind that denounces the Anti-suffragist who uses the physical force argument as a blind wor- shipper of force. Indeed, excluding altogether the international and racial problems that still show the nations of the world to be in a state of flux and unrest, we may turn our eyes much nearer home to discover, if we have a discerning mind, in the in- creasing unrest and complexity of our social existence, and in the consequences that may immediately follow upon the duty of Government to uphold the social order and keep open the vital avenues of its daily needs, and in the slackening of allegiance to all forms of authority that we may see on every hand — in these ominous signs we may discern sufficient indication THE MAN BEHIND THE VOTE 79 that the reign of a millennial peace amongst us is not yet at hand, and that the " man's work " in the world, or in our own kingdom, is not yet done. No one but a savage could rejoice at the fact — nobody but a fool can shut his eyes to it. And when one comes soberly to think of some of the problems that may at any time confront statesmanship in our land, the demand of Woman Suffrage here and now must strike the reflective mind with a sense of the aloofness of Suffragists from all the realities of life, just as the indignation caused by the alleged shortage of soap in the concentration camps of a war-ravaged country struck the sober mind as evidence of a total absence of rationalised imagination in all those who made it a complaint. We have now seen, I think, (i) that though women claim to take their full share of the control of the State, they are wholly inessential to it ; (2) that the validity of a vote, as an instrument of government, depends upon the physical power to enforce it ; (3) that the whole burden of enforcing it falls upon men, and consequently (4) that though women claim to have a control of the State equal to man's, they are ruled out absolutely from the function of upholding the very existence of the State. These should really be the final considerations to decide the claim of women to vote, if we are at all to consider the claim to a share in the control of the State as needing a corresponding power of service to the State. But are there any other considerations so over- whelmingly strong in themselves, and on quite another plane of consideration, as to over-ride those funda- mental objections ? Though the vote is not woman's " right," and it is a misuse of language to " demand " it, though the State has absolutely no need of woman at all outside the Home and its allied social functions, though government rests ultimately on the physical force which she does not exercise, and though votes 80 WOMAN ADRIFT for women would therefore be paper shams, just like bank-notes issued by a bank that had not the gold reserve to meet them — yet, notwithstanding these objections, in themselves a complete a?td final answer, are there any other reasons for giving votes to women which should justify us in giving them as an act of grace — a concession from the strong to the weak ? It must be admitted, I think, that they must be very strong reasons indeed, and that they must first over- whelm whatever answers there may be to them in themselves, before we are called upon to weigh them against those fatal and final considerations hitherto presented. But to consider them will bring us to closer quarters with the arguments of the Suffragists, after giving (as I think has now been done) that part of the case of their opponents which they are com- pelled to leave wholly unanswered. CHAPTER VIII. The Three " Rights." VOTES AND TAXES — A CLAIM AND A DELUSION — A POLITICAL WATCHWORD — THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH — THE FIRST SPEECH BY A CABINET MINISTER — PANDEMONIUM — THE SQUINT OF SUFF- RAGISM — THE BATTLEFIELD OF MATERNITY — MATER- NITY AND THE RACE. CHAPTER Vril. The Three "Rights." In the last chapter, the concession of votes to women was spoken of as an act of grace. But before coming to the consideration of the question on that plane, notice must be taken of one claim that they make to the vote as a right, and it is the only right that they attempt to prove, so that it is worth while devoting a brief chapter to demolishing that proof. The par- ticular claim now referred to is that their payment of taxes in itself entitles them to votes, on the principle of " No Taxation without Representation," and the Taxation Resistance League exists specifically to vin- dicate the right that is claimed to a vote from the fact that some women pay taxes just as most men do. And it is well to answer it because that ever- green fallacy, " The lady and her gardener," is in- volved in this question — the lady who has not got a vote and pays taxes (though she probably derives her wealth entirely from some male source) whilst her gardener, whom she employs, does possess a vote. Votes and Taxes. In November last a lady doctor, writing in The Daily Chronicle, raised this question specifically in an article which asked, in its heading, " Should Women Pay Rates and Taxes?" seeing that they have no vote. On the face of it, it looks a very simple and reasonable question, but when it is examined it is seen really to belong to the order of such silly-season questions as " Do Bachelors make Good Husbands ? " and " Are Wives Happy ? " For it all depends. And the answer to the question, " Should Women Pay 84 WOMAN ADRIFT Rates and Taxes?" even though they have not a vote, is that it all depends upon the woman. If she is a sensible, fair and just woman, she will say : " Yes. For the benefits I receive for the payment of rates and taxes are ample return for the money asked of me. For my rates, I receive all the advantages of a wonderfully organised municipal community — the streets in my town are lit, the roads are paved, the sewage from my house is taken away in drains that 1 could no more command, except as a ratepayer, than I could command the supply of water which is brought to my house from distant hills ; and the sinks and pipes of my house are linked up with a wonderful sanitary system. The police patrol before my home and guard my property ; the dustman calls to remove the refuse that, if it remained, would poison the atmosphere surrounding me even worse than it would poison the atmosphere surrounding my neighbour. I have a fine library if I want a book, and a cheap bath if I want a swim. I have a thous- and advantages which I could not obtain if I were an isolated unit not paying rates, and if anybody tried to shut me out of these advantages by declining to take my rates, I could invoke the law of England to enforce my share in them. And, in addition to these advantages, necessary to the last degree to modern life, and all the results of the exertions of men, I also have a municipal vote which interests me so little that I can with difficulty be persuaded to go to the poll, so satisfied I am with what is done for me." That is what she would say in answer to the question so far as rates are concerned. A Claim and a Delusion. And as to taxes, she would say : " Yes. For the little I pay is little enough for the protection it affords me ; for the dignity it gives to me, wherever I may be, as a citizeness of the best ordered and most respected State in the world ; for the security of its laws, the best administered of any laws in the world ; and THE THREE "RIGHTS" 85 for the thousand amenities and conveniences which the State provides. And, finally, I receive the pro- tection of those physical forces of government in which I take no share and have no part whatever beyond the infinitesimal sum I contribute to their financial maintenance." That is how she would answer the question if she were a sensible, fair-minded, just and rational woman. But if she were none of these things, but the victim of an overmastering idea that warped her judgment, she would then join the Taxation Resistance League, and refuse to pay taxes. And she would base her resistance on the formula relied upon by the League, " No Taxation without Representation." And she would imagine that that phrase gave her a right to something she did not possess — a parliamentary vote. So that if she kept a dog or a carriage or lived in "an inhabited house" in Great Britain she would claim the right to have a voice in the government of an Empire that comprises one-fifth of the inhabitants of the globe. But she would, nevertheless, be basing her claim upon a delusion. The maxim, " No Taxation without Representation," no more means that those who pay taxes have a right to a parliamentary vote than the Liberal watchword of " Peace, Retrenchment and Reform " means that every man has the right to live in a world in which no wars, extravagance, or un- reformed abuses shall flourish. The maxim never has meant what the Taxation Resistance League thinks ; means it less than ever to-day, when the franchise is not based upon the payment of taxes at all ; and is negatived at every turn. If it meant what she thinks, every boy who buys a packet of cigarettes could make out a case for a vote : every alien who lives in an inhabited house could make out a case for a vote. But it does not mean what she thinks. Many people pay taxes who can have no vote, and who do have no vote, and who never will have a vote. Not only does every 86 WOMAN ADRIFT alien resident in this country pay taxes without having a vote, but even if he lives abroad he is liable to the British Government for income-tax on that part of his income which comes to him from the United Kingdom when he is alive, and is liable to the Govern- ment for death duties on that part of his property which is situated in the United Kingdom when he is dead. It is the property, in fact, and not the person, that is taxed. A Political Watchword. Moreover, thousands and thousands of men pay tarxes who have no vote ; and even if we regard Man- hood Suffrage as an accomplished fact, there yet re- main many males under twenty-five years of age who will still pay taxes without having a vote. But what does the maxim mean ? It means, and meant, simply this : That no taxes shall be levied by a King without the consent of Parliament. It did not mean, and never could mean in a rational State, that no taxes should be levied without the consent of every individual who paid them. The framers of that maxim no more contemplated that it would give every taxpayer, and therefore every woman who pays taxes, the right to a vote, than they meant that it would entitle them to three acres and a cow. It is not a part of the British Constitution, as the Tax Resisters seem to think, but merely an assertion of one of the most elementary attributes of parliamentary government. It is a political watchword merely — a watchword of parliamentary government against kingly despotism, and has no more to do with the basis of the franchise than it has to do with the right to a commission in the Salvation Army. Yet the principle does find expression in our Con- stitution. And where is it found ? It is found in the Petition of Right which Lords and Commons and the threat of armed men forced upon Charles the First. And what is the form in which it finds expression? The words are : — THE THREE ' ' RIGHTS ' ' 87 " That no man shall be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge without common consent by Act of Parliament." The Taxation Resistance League is therefore march- ing to ridicule under the grotesque battle cry of a sheer delusion. And though the Taxation Resistance League marches under the John Hampden banner, that banner has no more to do with their cause than " No Taxation without Representation " has to do with the basis of the franchise. For John Hampden was not a voteless man protesting against the payment of taxes because he had no vote. John Hampden was a member of Parliament — a member of the very Parliament that forced the Petition of Right upon Charles the First, and he protested against the Ship Money being levied by the king ivithout the consent of Parliament, as every schoolboy ought to know. So that both banner and watchword of the Taxation Resistance League have " nothing to do with the case." On the wider question I believe that the State would so little miss the contributions that women make to it, except by indirect taxation (which is shared by every youth who buys a screw of tobacco and every girl who buys an ounce of tea, and for whom, at any rate, votes are out of the question) that the State could relieve every woman from direct taxation without imposing any further burden upon men than men would be willing to bear, if that price were necessary to keep the control of the State within their own hands. But that price is not necessary, for rates and taxes are paid for value re- ceived. Moreover, if that grievance were removed, its removal would only create a fresh one. For somebody, no doubt, would then form a Taxation Insistence League. But if women still insisted on paying taxes they could send the amount to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as conscience money. And if they then insisted on being compelled to pay taxes, well, no doubt most of us would by then be out of this mad world altogether. 88 WOMAN ADRIFT But if women were relieved altogether from the payment of taxes, they would still persist in their claim for a vote on other grounds than that payment of taxes gave a right to vote. To which we should reply that we oppose giving them votes on other grounds than that a payment of taxes gave no right to a vote, so that we should start afresh all over again. Which is just what we now can do, after clearing the ground of the claim that the payment of taxes gives a woman a " right " to a vote. That claim being now demolished, and being the only specific " right " brought to support the demand for a vote, we are now free henceforth to consider the granting of the vote to women merely as an act of grace. For although there is another claim made to the vote on the ground of a special qualification, and that qualification, strangely enough, is maternity, it hardly amounts to a claim by " right." But it is worth while giving some little attention to the maternity claim, because so many people seem to think they are exercising their minds logically by making that claim, when as a matter of fact they are simply allowing their reason to remain in abeyance and are surrendering their minds to an unreasoning sentiment. The Right of Free Speech. But before we come to consider the " oattlefield of maternity " fallacy, the chapter which exposes the senselessness of the " No Taxation without Repre- sentation " cry is a fitting place for considering another aberration of reason in this strange con- troversy, for although it has little to do with granting the vote, it has a great deal to do with the rationality of those who ask for it. It concerns the right of free speech. There are certain people who strangely imagine that the noisy " Suffragettes " who interrupt public meetings, and who specially delight in interrupting speakers entirely favourable to their cause, are " vin- THE THEEE "RIGHTS" 89 dicating the right of free speech." But to ayy ordinary intelligence (though I fear that what we call ordinary intelligence is really a rare thing) it must be obvious that, so far from vindicating free speech, those who make it impossible are positively preventing it. Now- adays people seem to allow themselves to be hypno- tised by a phrase without examining what it means. " No Taxation witiiout Representation " does not mean what those who use it think ; and " the right of free speech " does not mean the right to prevent free speech. But so dismal is the outlook for our national sanity that it is possible to find men and women who believe that those who prevent a speaker speaking freely are vindicating the very thing that they are really killing. " The right of free speech," it should not be necessary to explain, means the right of any Englishman to express his opinions (not in themselves treasonable) publicly upon any pubNc matter without fear of the Crown or Government. John Wilkes and Sir Frances Burdett were, of course, almost the last vindicators of free speech, with which principle is linked the doctrine of " the freedom of the Press." But apparently there are people so invincibly ignorant and so devoid of any power of reflection that they imagine that if those who make free speech impossible are ejected from a public meeting to which they may not even have been invited, "the right of free speech" is being denied to them, that is to say to the very people who are denying it to others. And in such inversions of all reason, in such perversions of all sense, this Suffrage campaign is so rich that it is worth whiJe paying a little detailed attention to the most conspicuous example of the denial of free speech that has marked the campaign. The First Speech by a Cabinet Minister. On December 5, 1908, Mr Lloyd George was an- nounced to deliver an important speech to a meeting convened by the Women's Liberal Federation in the a 90 WOMAN ADRIFT Albert Hall. It is important to notice that the meeting was convened by a certain political body, which paid for the hire of the hall and went to all the trouble and expense of convening the meeting. But nevertheless it was expected that women who had nothing to do with the political body convening the meeting would secure admission and would endeavour to " wreck the meeting"; and that is exactly what happened. But circulated in the hall were leaflets addressed to the militant Suffragists by the chairwoman, then Lady M'Laren, in which this appeal was made : " We have cast aside physical defences, and fair play at this meeting rests with you. For ourselves we ask nothing — for our guest and friend we request a hearing. If you wreck this meet- ing you strike a cruel blow at women, their organisation and their cause. Shall it be said that when a Cabinet Minister stood for the first time on a Suffrage platform to plead for woman's freedom women would not hear him ? In the name of our common womanhood and our common cause, I entreat your courtesy. Whatever you do, we renounce all retaliation. "Nora M'Laren." Now, no person could be found alive and sane to doubt that if such an appeal had been addressed to men — an appeal so courteous, so unprovocative, so reasonable, so perfectly unimpugnable as an appeal to manners and the barest intelligence, an appeal, in fact, so abject — no man in any audience would have defied it, for he would have felt that he was put upon his honour to behave properly, even though he were an interloper. But it is also perfectly certain that to no assembly of men would an appeal for order have been made that renounced all retaliation. And it is further perfectly certain that if any man had defied such an appeal to the most elementary sense of honour and decency, he would have found himself outside the Albert Hall more dead than alive. And, finally, it is certain that no voice in the land would have held that he did not richly deserve his con- tusions. And now what happened at the meeting of women, to a hundred of whom (out of some five or six thousand) this appeal for self-control was made ? THE THREE "RIGHTS" 9i The meeting was no ordinary meeting. For the first time in our history, as Mr Lloyd George himself also reminded the interrupters, a Cabinet Minister stood on a Woman Suffrage platform. So little advanced was the cause, so far was it from being a fully debated issue, so far is it still from being a cause sufficiently commended to the country to con- done violence if it be not at once conceded, that it was not until the last month of the year 1908 that any responsible politician had ever consented to appear on a platform of its supporters. And Mr Lloyd George was not there merely to support it, but he was there to make a most important pronouncement of the in- tentions of the Government in regard to the cause — a statement of intentions, by the way that Mr Asquith ratified to the very letter, and then beyond it, in the same month three years later. And, again, what happened ? Well, it would be necessary to quote column after column of the full descriptive reports to do justice to that unparalleled scene. But the barest facts must suffice. *' Pandemonium." Mr Lloyd George, for anything the meeting knew, might have been ready to announce that he had resigned from the Liberal Government as a protest against the opinions of his chief, and would forthwith stand or fall by " the cause " alone. He might have been ready and prepared to say anything, for anything anybody knew. But before anybody could know anything of what he was going to say, before he had left behind him the bare opening words of his speech, the interruptions began. Other speakers had already spoken, had been uninterrupted, and had sat down. A resolution had been passed, a collection had been taken. Nothing had happened. The women who had come to the meeting in prison garb had not yet melodramatically opened their cloaks to re- veal their costume ; the dog-whips they had brought with them were still up their sleeves ; even their voices 92 WOMAN ADRIFT had been still. And the chairwoman had just uttered the words, " Suffragist ladies, we commend ourselves to your courtesy. Hear the message of a friend. I call upon Mr Lloyd George." And, at his rising, pandemonium began. The dog- whip soon appeared. From every corner of the vast hall the frenzied interruptions came. " Free speech " was killed before the speaker had got a hundred words out of his mouth. Twice Mr Lloyd George sat down. And, at last, in this meeting of w^omen, the men stewards had to do the dirty work of turning out a few of the hundred women who were not only making free speech impossible, but who were setting at nought the convenience, the peace, the very happiness of five or six thousand women belonging to a body with which the hundred women had nothing to do. Again and again and again Mr George endeavoured to raise his voice above the din ; again and again the chairwoman made her appeals ; but the meeting had gone to pieces. Here and there two or three women were droning out, for ten minutes at a stretch, the chant, " Deeds not words ! " in a frenzied monotone. Others were crying out " The message ! Give us the mes- sage ! " Women jumped on the platform and shouted insults at the first Cabinet Minister who had ever stood on a Woman Suffrage platform. Every sentence he could manage to shout out was countered by some- thing shouted back at him, even when he was actually saying, under these grotesquely unpropitious circum- stances, words in praise of woman's judgment, ability, and aptitude for government ! In short, the speech of the first Cabinet Minister who had ever appeared on a Woman Suffrage platform became, even in its quieter moments, an exercise of battledore and shuttlecock repartee Ijetween him and Suffragists. In the words of a sympathiser, a woman writer, "pandemonium reigned for two hours" during the first speech made by a Cabinet Minister to an audience of Suffragists. Well, no comment is necessaiy on the main fact, for it defies comment, though the ordinary intelligence THE THREE "RIGHTS" 93 will note the fact that the creators of this pande- moiiium are the driving force of the Suffragist move- ment. Nor can one comment on the extraordinary fact that Mr Lloyd George's convictions apparently survived that scene, and that he positively " worked off" (no more respectful phrase is possible under the circumstances) his peroration, and closed that speech with the words, which he was just able to make audible : "... that they should call in the aid, the counsel, and inspira- tion of women to help in the fashioning of legislation to cleanse, purify, and fill with plenty the homes upon which the future destiny of this great commonwealth of nations depended." These things are amazing enough, and defy com- ment, bijt what is perhaps less hmazing but more disturbing is that there were actually people in these islands, which Montaigne called the home of common sense, who held that the right of free speech had been denied to those who would not let Mr Lloyd George get three consecutive sentences past his lips. The Squint of Suffragism. The newspapers, it is true, were flooded with corres- pondence from people who from that moment washed their hands of Woman Suffrage for good ; but amongst other letters were some from extraordinary people who imagined that a hundred women were vindicating the right of free speech by flourishing dog-whips, droning out a mechanical chorus, and making all speech im- possible — letters from people who positively did not understand that the right of free speech does not mean the right to prevent free speech, but does mean the right (apart from all question of manners) to speak, and to speak in peace. But there seems to be a strange liability to a kind of mental strabismus in all who champion the cause. For one of the sanest newspapers in the country, a news- paper that holds up at their highest the traditions of English journalism. The Manchester Guardian, ex- hibited this strange perversity in its next issue. From 94 WOMAN ADRIFT one page of that issue I take three editorial references to this unparalleled scene. First, the leading article judicially " divided the shame evenly." " At all costs and under whatever provocation there should have been no laying on of hands, no violence, no ejections." Excellent counsel, illustrating marvellously that chivalry expected of man under difficult circumstances which we shall afterwards have to consider. The leader-writer's restraint and self-control, exhibited 200 miles from such a scene and 24 hours after it had taken place, was most praiseworthy. And we all honour the spirit of the melodramatic tag : " The man who lays his hand on a woman save in the way of ke-ind- ness ..." etc. But obviously it requires only the merest extension of that doctrine, if it were held to apply to such a scene as that, to lay down the prin- ciple that no policeman should ever lay hands on a woman to take her into custody — and, indeed, the extension needed would be very slight to carry that principle into effect if ever \v6 got a woman's Parlia- ment. The next reference on that page shows the poison of Suffragism more subtly at work. For " A Woman's Impressions," given as a descriptive report of the meeting, contains the amazing rebuke to Mr Lloyd George that he should not have trifled with the meet- ing by making any allusion to Queen Elizabeth ! — that he should not have made his speech in his own way, but that he should have yelled out his message to begin with and then, I suppose, have gone home, after satisfying the frenzied impatience of a hundred women out of six thousand ! The passage in which this strange squint comes out ran, with the running commentary that one is forced to make upon it, in these words : " He can hardly have gauged the temper of the meeting he was to handle." (The "temper" was that of a sixtieth part of the meeting defying the pleasure and desires of all the rest. Moreover, not the least interruption had taken place to reveal to him "the temper of the meeting" until he himself arose) "and it is surprising in one who can be a rhetorician that he should have begun with academic references to Queen Elizabeth ... Mr Lloyd THE THKEB " RIGHTS " 95 George considers that the position of one who advocates Woman's Suffrage is one which still requires justification by argument" (which was hardly strange, indeed, when his was "the first speech ever made by a Cabinet Minister" on a Woman Sufifrage platform), "and he had doubtless prepared a speech which would in due course have arrived from Queen Elizabeth by gentJe degrees to the present day, when he could in ten minutes have given the gist of his message." Well, good manners, of course, have nothing to do with such a case and such a plea as that, but I wonder what on earth would have been said by the Manchester Guardian, or by any other respected and respectable organ of opinion, if another paper had allowed a contributor to lecture a statesman on the very order with which he chose to frame his speech, because a hundred male rowdies (not even opposed to his cause, to carry the thing into the most rarefied atmosphere of dizzy bewilderment) chose to exhibit a calculated frenzy of impatience ostensibly, but not really, because he chose to lead up to his point in his own way ? It is difficult to say which was the more insolent of the two — the offence itself or the excuse made for it. But the third instance of mental strabismus as the result of association with Suffragism is even more staggering. It appeared also in the editorial columns, and on the same page, and was not the expression of any irresponsible contributor : " Probably Mr Lloyd George would have done more wisely if he had kept any general matter intended for outside con- sumption to the end of the speech. But the line he took is one more of the curious indications that even sympathisers with the movement among men are perpetually failing to see the real position of women on the question. It is so inevitably a failure that it might almost become a rule now that no man should be the chief speaker at a meeting on Woman's Suffrage." I could forgive the sanest man in England if, after reading such a passage, he went out and drowned himself out of sheer mental prostration and giddiness. A Cabinet Minister addresses a meeting of Women Suffragists for the first time in the histor)' of a move- ment that has none too many friends. He is first rebuked for assuming that Woman Suffrage still 96 WOMAN ADETFT requires "justification by argumsnt." And then he is told that because a hundred women out of six thou- sand prevent him making a coherent speech at all, the rule should henceforth be that no male supporter should show himself prominently on a Woman Suffrage platform. I agree that after such an experience no man of spirit would want to show himself at all, but that he should be told to appear furtively, and to hide behind the chairwoman's petticoats, and not make himself very visible, and not to provoke the audience of women by supporting their cause too prominently — that these things could be written and the cause stiU, survive, is really a very disconcerting and depressing symptom indeed. Only one man who ever lived could really have done justice to such a situation, and that was Dr Johnson. But I fear that even his invincible sanity w ould have confessed itself beaten, and that in despair he would have drunk five pots of tea straight off, and then have settled down to the adventures of Pantagruel to lose himself in' what (Cambronne not then having spoken his mot de Waterloo) would have been congenial company. There are, of course, a priori grounds for supposing that an eruption of feminism is only possible in, and is the very sign of, an age which is losing its virility ; but the condonation of the Albert Hall pandemonium is in itself a suffi- ciently disturbing indication of the truth of that theory. I have dwelt on that scene and its condonation at length, however, because it was the shortest way of correcting the truly extraordinary notion that to resent, and to endeavour to frustrate, the avowed intentions of people to wreck a political meeting and to prevent free speech, is to deny " the right of free speech." It is only in an age in which the national sanity is waning that such a task should be necessary as to point out that the right of free speech is the right of a man to address a public meeting ; and that the negation of the right of free speech is the effrontery and unintelligent insolence of those who make free speech impossible. THE THREE "RIGHTS" 97 The '^Battlefield of Maternity." It has been well to sandwich that little matter of the right of free speech between the consideration of two other illusory " rig4its " — the right to a vote by a payment of taxes, and the argument that the fact and act of maternity gives a right to a vote. The maternity fallacy is, of course, put forth as an answer to the physical force argument. That argument is really final and conclusive and unanswerable, but in a moment of misguided iiispiration somebody suddenly remembered that if soldiers die in battle, women sometimes die in childbirth, and so the phrase " the battlefield of maternity" was coined. It got taken up enthusiastically, and was soon elevated into an argument. It is not uttered irresponsibly, but by people who ought to be able at least to think clearly, seeing that they assume, or are entrusted with, the function of instructing others. It appears, for instance, as a prominent argument in one of the few leading articles that a certain London Liberal newspaper has devoted to reasoning out the cause — for nine out of ten editorial references to the cause have dealt only with parliamentary tactics, and have not even endeavoured to do what must be done before the question of tactics becomes relevant, viz., make out the case for Woman Suffrage by answering the case against it. The "battlefield of maternity" cry does not, of course, attain the dignity of an argument — it is merely an example of the unreflecting sentimentalism that marks the cause. If it be the death of women, or the risk of women, in childbirth that is set off against the male military function, then we can answer it merely by saying that it is not alone soldiers among men who risk and encounter death and injury as the result of doing work which woman does not do. For coal-mining is just as deadly a " battlefield " as maternity, and railway-shunting, bridge-building, ship- building and ship-sailing, and other industrial and 98 WOMAN ADRIFT peaceful occupations, in which most men are working for wages to keep some women as well as themselves, also exact their toll of men's lives. But the maternity argument is advanced also to contend that women serve the State by being mothers and continuing the supply of citizens, just as men serve the State by upholding it. Well, if it comes to that, women no more serve the State by being mothers of citizens than men serve the State by being fathers of citizens, and one service must simply cancel the other. The fact that some women die through childbirth, whilst no men die through pro- creation, has nothing to do with the relative service of each to the State. The only point proved by that difference is rtiat the sexes and their functions are so separated that a woman cannot be a mother without physical disablement and risk, but that men can be fathers and still go on with their work as though nothing had happened except that they hav^e one more mouth to feed. The battlefield of maternity argument, in fact, merely points to one of those many differences of sex which we are constantly encountering, but which Suffragists are constantly denying. Their main and basic position is that there is no differenoe between the two sexes. " We want votes because men have got votes, and we want votes on the same terms as men have got them," they say. And if you then reply : " That is all very well, but if women want votes because men have got them, we must first consider the differences between men and women," then they begin to point to a few women who are doing men's work, and they argue from isolated and exceptional examples the identity of the two sexes. But when it is pointed out that even if women here and there perform indifferently some forms of work that could be much better done by men, they do not do the material work of the world nor uphold the State in any direct way, then a complete somersault, figuratively speaking, is turned, and the Suffragist begins to plead the very sex differences she denies, THE THREE "RIGHTS" 99 and to talk of the exacting nature of maternal duties, and of" the battlefield where life is born," The Race and Maternity. But maternity is not a battlefield at all, except that it is a warfare between natural causes and effects — between mortal beings and the common grim enemy of us all. A man fights pretty much the same battle every time he is down on what may prove to be his deathbed through w-orking for his wife and family, and going out to business when he ought to have " lain up " at home. Maternity, moreover, is a natural function — soldiering is not. And a woman does not have children " to serve the State." She looks forward, not to giving birth to "a little son of Empire," but to giving birth to her own child. If she lived on a beautiful tropical island alone with her mate, she would have just the same joy and pains in giving birth to her child, although there was no such thing as a State for it to be born into. In short it is not the State she serves by her maternity, but the race. The man serves the race just as much by his paternity as she does by her maternity, but the simple difference between them is that to serve the race by perpetuating his species does not interfere with his work either for the State or for his mate, whilst for her to serve the State, first by her maternity and then by her maternal duties in rearing a child that takes longer than any other animal to reach maturity, does incapacitate her for the direct service of the State. If women ceased to be mothers, the State would certainly come to an end, as would the Conservative party and the Liberal party and the Votes for Women party. But the same thing would happen if men ceased to be fathers, and there is as much connection between fatherhood and the State as there is between motherhood and the State — that is to say very little. For men and women are fathers and mothers not as citizens, consciously performing services to the State, but as normal beings gratifying their own instincts — which gratification is the only 100 WOMAN ADRIFT guarantee for the perpetuation not only of the State, but of the race whence States arise. Parenthood, in short, is an individual and personal matter, and existed before there were such things as States. And (to come to the point that immediately exposes the fallacy) States do impose compulsory military service on men, but no State can impose compulsory maternity on women. Indeed, many of the predestined and irreclaimable Suffragists protest vehemently against the monstrous notion that all women should be expected to sacrifice themselves to maternity — " expected " not by the State, but by social opinion merely, for there has never been any suggestion that the State should impose any pains or penalties upon those women who shirk the pains and penalties of maternity, or who repudiate the maternal function of women altogether. And so the "battlefield of maternity" argument is merely part of the quibbling sentimentality by which the cause, in its minor issues, is supported. It becomes nonsense the moment it is looked at rationally, but it has to be looked at, not because there is any point or reason in it, but simply because a good many people who will not think for themselves must have their thinking done for them. ' But "the battlefield of maternity" argument is put forward rather to answer the unanswerable " physical force " argument than as specifically constituting a " right," as the " payment of taxes " fallacy is put forward. That fallacy, and others, having been disposed of, we are now free henceforth to consider the granting of votes to women not as a right at all, for there is no such right either on abstract or on particular grounds, but as an act of grace. And the answers of Anti-suffragists to the claim for the suffi-age as an act of grace are those which oppose it on the ground of expediency. CHAPTER IX. The Two Kinds Of Women. NOISE V, NUMBERS — WOMEN AS ORATORS — THE OB- SESSION OF SUFFRAGISM — THE PSEUDO-INTELLECT- UALS—THE SOIL OF SUFFRAGISM — "STARTLING THE NATIVE" — EXPLOITING THE MULTITUDE— SENSE AND SINCERITY — A LITTLE REFERENDUM — NUMBERS IGNORED — THE WOMEN WHO DON'T. CHAPTER IX. The Two Kinds Of Women. But before we come to consider the claim of women to votes even as an act of grace, the preliminary question must be answered of whether women wa-^t votes at all — that is, women generally. " But what nonsense ! " it may be said, " to ask if women want votes ! What of the demonstrations, processions, imprisonments, martyrdoms, and the entire active propaganda? There has never been a political cause in modern times carried on with more energy than the later development of this Woman Suffrage campaign." Well, we can admit a good deal of that, but still not be silenced by it by any means. For we must not mistake noise for numbers, or even the persistence of some for the demands of the many. It is a fact that the Suffragists have displayed wonder- ful ingenuity, resource and determination — not to admit that would be as foolish as for others to deny that their campaign has been characterised by absurdities and profitless and pointless excesses. But we must not be too much awed by the stage army of militants who pass through Bow Street at recurrent intervals. And apart from the militants altogether the determination of a comparative few does not prove the case that women want the vote at all. If there are as many women as earnestly determined to oppose the vote as there are women earnestly determined to secure it, the two determinations cancel each other so far as affording any index of what women, speaking generally, want. But in ad- dition to those who oppose the vote publicly and with determination, there is a huge body of women who oppose the granting of the vote when they are asked 103 I04 WOMAN ADKIFT to give an opinion upon the matter ; and if there is, further, an even vaster body of women who have so little aptitude for politics, and take such little interest in politics, that even the supreme question of the "enfranchisement" of their sex leaves them indifferent (so indifferent that they will give neither a yea nor a nay upon it) and if this indifference and opposition is characteristic of the mass of women, then we shall know that so far from women wanting the vote, only a certain few women want it. And that is the truth, as will presently be shown, so far as the truth can be ascertained both from negative and positive evidence of the extent to which the demand for Votes for Women corresponds with any general desire amongst women as a sex. Noise V. Numbers. But it will be said that the women who do want the vote want it terrifically, passionately, desperately. Let us admit it — though the very superlative character of those adverbs ought to make us pause. For if, viewing some of the actions by which they supple- ment their desire, I were to add the word " hysterically," it would only be carrying the topmost note of the other adverbs into the highest register of shrillness with which they clamour for the vote. But because you do not hear the w'omen who oppose the vote speaking in the same shrill accents, and "demanding" of the Prime Minister (at deputations during which the Prime Minister is treated none too civilly) that they shall not have the vote, you must not suppose that their determination to oppose the vote is any less than the determination of those who ask for it. And if you say, " Well, at least the women who don't want the vote haven't gone to prison to get it," the answer is that apart from the fact that going to prison is not going to settle the matter one way or the other, there would reaHy be nothing gained by going to prison to protest against having what they have not got when they have not got it. THE TWO KINDS OF WOMEN io5 But it is necessary to remember two or three very important things in considering the apparent relative strength of the two sections. The first important thing is that a negative cause is always at a disad- vantage against a positive cause. If there is a certain inert strength in one position, there is a greater dynamic force in the other. The women who agree with those champions of the cause that want the vote feel that the champions are at any rate doing something — asking for something, getting forwarder somewhere or other, and not merely standing still. And though safety, prudence and all wisdom may lie in standing still rather than in rushing onward, nevertheless those who ask for the vote, especially if they invoke the cause of the " downtrodden," seem to be doing more than those who say, " let well alone, and let womanhood develop on existing lines," But it is a grievous mistake to suppose that because the women who do not want the vote do not organise processions and demonstrations (though as a matter of tactics I think they ought to do), and do not give the police a lot of trouble, and do not indulge in the spectacular propaganda of the more ardent wing of the Suffragists, that therefore they do not feel deeply, sincerely, and even passionately that the cause of Votes for Women is a mistaken cause and one which, if it were a successful cause, would bring women a greater plague of evils than any that would be removed. But the women who feel these things are, in the mass, not voluble women, skilled in the arts of public controversy (which always demand a certain audacity of temperament, in male or female). Some of them are so skilled, and — intelligence against in- telligence — they are much more than a match for the best spokeswomen among the Suffragists. Women as Orators. And here let me step out of the march of the argument for a moment just to answer a point that arises from the last sentence. "You admit," it may H io6 WOMAN ADRIFT be said, "that the women who are Anti-sufifragist, and who publicly champion their cause, exhibit a very fine intelligence and capacity as public speakers. Does not that prove that women are not unfitted to take part in public life ? " The point, of course, is only a debating point, and looks much more for- midable than it really is, but it is quite good enough to be met. Well, it can hardly be doubted that even the extremely intelligent women who publicly oppose the suffrage are not typical of their sex — not as regards intelligence, but as regards their capacity for public vi^ork and speech. And they do not come out into public controversy because they wish to do so, or because the platform attracts them, but simply because of their compelling conviction that when certain women arrogate to themselves the right to speak for their entire sex, it is incumbent upon them to throw their prejudices aside, and even to try to rise above their own limitations, and come forward to declare that women do not want votes as emphatically as other women declare that they do. This is not only a man's question as against a woman's question — it is a question in which one type and ideal of woman is opposed to another type and ideal of woman. Hence, those women who oppose the movement by public speaking are simply women who feel com- pelled, when the sex is threatened by what they regard not as a liberation but as a danger, to come out in the open and meet the enemy on her own ground and beat her with her own weapons. And the fact that some women make capital public speakers — both for and against the cause — no more proves that all women are, could, and should be engaged in public controversy than the fact that some women work on the pit-brow proves that to be a desirable occupation for all women in general. When you hear of an Anti-sufiragist woman speaker who gets so fascinated with her platform success that she deserts her side to go over to the enemy, then you will have something to talk about. But that miracle has not THE TWO KINDS OF WOMEN 107 yet happened. Till then, therefore, the answer to the point that even those women who do not want the vote deserve it because they show they are so in- telligent, is that they are so intelligent that they do not want it. Besides, even a capacity for public speaking is not the last test of the fitness for a vote. There is more in public life than platform oratory, though the two things have become sadly confounded. And some of the most intelligent men, and even the strongest physically, have a dread of public speaking so profound that it paralyses their intelligence when they try it. The Obsession of Suffragism. We now return to the high road after this divergence to meet a debating point. The fact that the women who oppose the vote do not make as much stir in the public world as the women who want the vote, must not blind you to the fact that the women who do not want the vote are going about their work and doing what they conceive to be woman's duty without noise, riot, or notoriety ; whereas with those who do want the vote it has become a preoccupation, almost a sole occupation, sometimes a profession, and even an obsession, precluding any other form of activity whatever. Do you suppose that many of the pro- minent Suffragists spend much time at home, I will not say performing domestic duties, but even directing others to perform them ? But it would be doing womanhood a great injustice to suppose that only those wonten who are most prominent just now in the public eye are the real spokeswomen of their sex. The best examples of womanhood in the laud (even if you say, " Only from the old-fashioned point of view") are those who are going about their work in their own quiet way, and a few of them have the courage and the skill to emerge to counteract by decorous public debate the noisier but not the more effective work of the prominent Suffragists. Of course, the Suffragists have sedulously fostered 108 WOMAN ADRIFT the notion that they are the women of the country. But that is nierely not true. Only those who have mixed in circles where Suffragism is the prevailing creed know how arrogant and intolerant are Suffragists to all who oppose them, whether men or women. Free Traders and Tariff Reformers may meet amicably any- where (except in public, where their amity is not required) but if it be known in a Suffragist circle that an Anti-suffragist is present, the poor man or woman is fetched out of the social sphere and atmosphere altogether, and put through his paces as though he were a candidate on a platform, waiting and willing to be heckled. And in such circles Suffragism is often only a particular manifestation of a general tendency. The Pseudo-Intellectuals. For there is just now abroad a certain type of " in- tellectualism " that is opposed to its natural enemy, which is merely intelligence. It reveals itself not only in politics, but in art — not only in art, but even in feeding. Common sense is, in these circles, a very hum- drum, philistinic, bourgeois, commonplace sort of virtue indeed. If you eat beef, you are vulgar. A toleration for melodrama (even though you tolerate it only as you tolerate the art of the pavement artist) puts you amongst the " intellectually " damned You must talk the jargon of art until, if you are a healthy-minded man, you want to go outside and enter the first low " pub" you can find and drink a pint of common beer out of a common tankard. Personally I don't mind admiring art (though I do not admire everything done in the name of art) and I respect artists (with many notable exceptions), and I believe that it is a great pity, from the point of view exclusively of artistic con- siderations, that the British public does not greatly understand or esteem art. But, on the other hand, I am quite sure that a nation of artists would be a nation in decadence, and that a certain bovine, healthy philis- tinism is what keeps the general mind sound in the general body. And that is why the jargon of art really THE TWO KINDS OF WOMEN 109 becomes the language of decadents. Shakespeare didn't go about talking art, Mr Max Bcerbohm's cartoon no doubt showed clearly enough Browning's attitude to the Browning Society, and Tennyson smoked clay pipes, and Meredith liked a good tramp over the downs. And all great creative artists have got in them something of the healthy and sane philis- tinism of Dr Johnson. But if, in the circles I speak of, you frankly called "post impressionism" the second childhood of art, you were thought to live secretly somewhere in the neighbourhood of Peckham. In such circles, also, you must have " broad views " about mar- riage, but that is the mere cant of " intellectualism," for if you carried your broad views into practice you would be looked upon as a more degraded being than even the Bohemian of the eighties, who was a healthy, albeit rather a grubby being. And, in short, if you stand up for any orthodox view whatever, you are looked upon as a musty survival of mid-Victorianism (that deadly epithet !) and are classed with chandeliers, the Family Bible, Yorkshire pudding, and a heavy mid-day dinner on a Sunday. And if you sincerely believe that wives and mothers are, potentially, as noble creatures as any beings created by the Creator, you are regarded as being hopelessly behind the times and as old-fashioned as an antimacassar. No percep- tion that the elemental truths are those that never go out of fashion ever enters the minds of the "Intel- lectuals." The Soil of Suffragism. It is in this soil — this favourable nidus for abnormal growths — that one phase of Suffragism flourishes. It is no more representative of womanhood than " the artistic temperament" is the prevailing temperament of the British working man. It does not stand for progress so much as for decadence, and the happiness of woman no more depends upon it than the salvation of the human race depends upon embracing the artistic principles of the Cubists. But nevertheless, by a 'cute no WOMAN ADRIFT alliance between the principles of decadence and the arts of modern advertisement, a wholly false idea has been given of the importance and intellectual quality of the movement, and the arrogance of this type of Suffragist towards their sisters who oppose them par- takes of something of the spirit of a vendetta. I do not wish to be unfair, and if that statement needs some qualification, it shall have it. There are many women Suffragists who take a much more human view of their creed. They see in it, however mistakenly, the re- generation of their sex, but do not perceive that if their sex is to be born again it must be born again tn its own likeness. But these women may yet be won to the cause and side of their own sex, which is not Suffragism. And the most arrogant and " intellectual " form of Suffragism has its nest and home in another soil. The soil is that in which overblown flowers run to an untimely seed — energy is there, and some good purpose, but it has overshot itself, outgrown its strength, and its roots are not in mother earth. Whether over-development or arrested development is the obscure cause, the result is that they have been turned into " sports " — not in the colloquial, but in what I believe is the botanist's sense of that word. " Startling the Native." Coming back now to the political rather than the " intellectual " Suffragists, I do not think it can be denied that on the spectacular side the cause has made more progress than it has on the argumentative side. The militants, on their own statement, have taken to the more strenuous form of propaganda mainly to call attention to their cause — to epaier le bourgeois — to startle the native — rather than because they expected their activities to appeal to the intelligence. Lady Selborne, for instance, who is not a militant, wrote a letter to herself in another lady's name (though with- out her authority) to point out what she thought a curious thing : THE TWO KINDS OF WOMEN m "You hold a crowded meeting in the centre of London, with an ex-Cabinet Minister as chief speaker, and you get a short para- graph on a back sheet in most of the papers. Now, if I threw a stone at the Prime Minister's carriage I should get a column on the first page, and perforce people's attention is directed to our cause." So Lady Selborne wrote to herself, signing the letter with the name of Lady Constance Lytton, and she sent the little invention to The Times with a letter to the Editor saying : " Sir, I have received the enclosed letter from Lady Constance Lytton. It seems to me there is a certain truth in what she says, so I should be much obliged if you would insert it in The Times, March lo, 19 li." We need not be hard on Lady Selborne. The innocent fraud reveals a curious notion on the part of women of what is the regulation way of conducting a public controversy, but as Lady Constance Lytton afterwards endorsed the sentiments attributed to her by Lady Selborne, no particular harm was done, and no doubt Lady Selborne learned a salutary lesson by the exposure of what was, though a thoughtless, not really a deceitful act. But she was annoyed that her husband, the Cabinet Minister referred to, should speak of Woman Suffrage and get no attention from the Press, whilst if a militant threw a brick at the Prime Minister's carriage she would get a column of notoriety. Hence Lady Sel- borne (addressing herself in the name of another lady) felt that the militant method was the better of the two. Well, the phenomenon of an ex-Cabinet Minister addressing a public meeting is, in itself, not very remarkable ; but it is not every day, fortunately, that stones are thrown at a Prime Minister's carriage, though the newspapers have already discovered that that sort of thing has lost a good deal of its news value (for the bourgeois soon gets tired of a joke after being once epate). But Lady Selborne's fallacy is in sup- posing that " the cause " is advanced by such antics. A tradesman standing on his head outside his shop would no doubt attract " people's attention," but they 112 WOMAN ADRIFT might be more entertained by his eccentricity than induced to go inside his shop and buy his wares. And the miHtant Suffragettes have really insulted the intelligence of democracy by supposing that their cause gained by the mere inanity of their public misbehaviour. Exploiting the Multitude. Yet there is some truth in the words Lady Selborne put into the mouth of Lady Constance Lytton, and so far as they are true th^y ought to stimulate every man and woman in the islands to prove them false in the long run. Unfortunately it is true that the arts of irrelevant advertisement are those which impose upon the multitude, though only up to a certain point. And the greatest danger to which the democracy is exposed is that it may be exploited by clever advertise- ment. The pitiable shifts and devices to which parlia- mentary candidates have to abandon themselves to secure votes — even from men — do show that demo- cracy is a little too ready to make itself the prey of the arts of the showman as against the sincerity and truth of the man who appeals merely to their intelligence. In a London paper the other day was the news of the appointment of a certain lawyer to a judgeship of a criminal court, and the paper concluded its notice of the appointment and its brief biography of the new judge with the words : " He has a keen sense of humour, a fund of good stories, and a knack of ready repartee — gifts which should go far to brighten the courts over which he presides." Now, you will ask, " What on earth has that to do with Votes for Women ? " It has a good deal to do with your attitude towards the spectacular campaign of the Suffragists. It has, in fact, just as much to do with that as a fund of good stories has not to do with a good judge. Now, why were the readers of a news- paper — a newspaper, moreover, that does its best to enlighten democracy in other ways — told that a judge who had the liberties of men and women in his hands, THE TWO KINDS OF WOMEN ii3 numbers among his qualifications such incongruous virtues as that he has a fund of good stories and a knack of ready repartee ? The answer is that the intelligence of democracy is sometimes insulted even by its friends. They assume that it does not think, and that it is readier to laugh than to reflect, and that all that is necessary to commend a new judge to the man in the street is to say that he promises to make his criminal court a gay and lively place and to pro- vide piquant paragraphs in the newspapers. Now, precisely the same really contemptuous atti- tude to the public that is shown in that fatuous com- mendation of a new judge — a commendation that mentions every virtue except those that we look for in a judge, and that no doubt did the judge himself an injustice — is shown by the picturesque, spectacular, and wholly irrelevant part of the Suffragists' militant campaign. Their martyrdoms and disturbances were really meant to take your mind off the question rather than to concentrate it on the question ; that question being whether it is a good or a bad thing that women should be plunged, as a sex, into the welter of politics and economic rivalry with man. That was the purpose. But whether they had that effect depends entirely upon how far people are able to distinguish the real from the false, the relevant thing from the irrele- vant thing, and the sensible thing from the senseless. Sense and Sincerity. But it may be said. If women will do such extra- ordinary and unwomanly things as to fasten themselves to a pillar in a place of worship, and howl at a Prime Minister who has attended to deliver an address far removed from politics, they must indeed be suffering under a very strong sense of the injustice of being kept without votes. Well, even that assumption is going too far, for the psychological motives of con- duct are very obscure, and people will do strange things. But it is not surprising that women who deride everything that other women think "womanly" 114 WOMAN ADRIFT should do and say those things which are thought and called unwomanly. But the point is not whether they are earnest or sincere or not. We should have believed in their earnestness and sincerity no less, but a good deal more, if they had behaved, not irrationally, but with the force of reason merely. And their earnest- ness and sincerity are equalled by those women who do not find it necessary to be gagged and get arrested in order to prove these qualities, and who have re- frained from assaulting even those prominent politicians who are prepared to do the thing they abhor — give votes to women. Besides, the militants have not only annoyed Mr Asquith, who is against them, but Mr Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey, who are in favour of their cause. Mr Lloyd George apparently likes it, but Sir Edward Grey, taking a more normal view of things, has announced that if the annoyance and mis- behaviour to his friends the Prime Minister and others does not cease, he is not going to waste his time and breath over commending a cause so hopelessly damned in the eyes of the nation. Nevertheless he has begun to commend the cause. And the point to condemn about militancy is that it seeks to achieve by annoyance what it does not secure by argument, and it will not do to give en- couragement to any cause — even if it were deserving and unanswerable — to try to seek its triumph by disorderliness and misdemeanours. Tariff Reform has been a cause for nearly a decade, but Tariff Reformers do not waylay Free Traders, and either of those creeds is upheld by an immeasurably greater number ot people than assent even to the bare principle of Woman Suffrage. But we could not afford to allow militancy to triumph and set the example of a tyranny of insubordination, or each sect in the State would make itself a power by the sheer force of becoming a nuisance, and Christian " Scientists " might enforce a clamour for State endowment by a policy of passive resistance and the resources of a voluntary martyrdom. The fact, then, that Suffragism has been supported THE TWO KINDS OF WOMEN us by the vehemence and disorderliness of a few women is no commendation whatever of the vote being granted as an act of grace. Their earnestness is counter- balanced by the orderly earnestness of women who do 7iot want woman to be enfranchised. And if we leave emotion on one side, and come to numerical strength, the claim is no more valid. Even the most implacable opponent of the cause would be content to abide by the result of a referendum of the question to the mass of existing voters, and would sorrowfully capitulate before the evidence that the vote was desired by an overwhelming majority of the women themselves. But that submission of the issue to a democratic decision is not what the Suffragists want. With a blind impetuosity that has no parallel in politics, they simply wish to rush the position through what is now an omnipotent House of Commons, and before the opposition to the revolution can be con- solidated. A Little Referendum. The Anti-suffragists, on the other hand, ardently desire to place their opposition at the mercy of the real will of the nation, or even of the wish of the women themselves. There is, to be sure, nothing Quixotic in this desire, for they know quite well that the mass of opinion in the country is with them, and that makes it all the more bewildering that we should have a Parliament, many of whose members talk quite glibly about Woman Suffrage becoming law during this session, a complacent prophecy that ap- parently assumes the House of Lords to be eager to abrogate even its suspensory veto. And the organised Anti-suffragists have done their best to secure an in- dication of what the women of the country think by sending out at great trouble and expense many thousands of postcards asking a plain "Yes" to one or other of the simple questions, "Do you think women should have the parliamentary vote ? " and " Do you think women should not have the parlia- ii6 WOMAN ADRIFT mentary vote ? " The results of this canvass, con- ducted among the women voters on the municipal register of 103 districts, proves absolutely (1) That more than twice as many women are opposed to the vote as arc in favour of it ; (2) that many more women are neutral or are indifferent to it than are even against it. For out of 135,481 women municipal voters asked to vote, 57,112 disdained even to reply. The assumption must be made that these 57,112 arc, at any rate, not Suffragists, for if a woman wanted a vote she would at least go to the trouble of saying she did when asked. But the majority of the 57,112 are probably women who have such little patience, sympathy, or interest in the claim, and who regard the danger of the suffrage as so remote from pro- bability, that they merely put the postcard in the fire' And though only 21,725 women municipal electors were in favour of Woman Suffrage, 47,286 were against it, to say nothing of 9,358 who were neutral, and who therefore at any rate did not want the vote, and to say nothing of the 57,112 women who did not bother about the matter at all. Now, these figures reveal that less than one woman in six is in favour of Woman Suffrage — roughly two in thirteen. And it is a very curious and instructive thing that that figure holds good in two other refer- enda that have been taken. The first was conducted by Colonel Seely, M.P., among the adult women of his constituency of Ilkeston, and the second was conducted by the Scottish National Anti-Suffrage League. It is v/orth while setting out these figures, together with those resulting from the referendum taken by the English League for opposing Woman Suffrage, for they constitute a Referendum in miniature, and answer overwhelmingly, both by the indication of direct op- position and of positive indifference to the Suffrage claim, any contention that the Suffragists may have the hardihood to make of the extent to which their " demand " for the franchise has any response from the sex. THE TWO KINDS OF WOMEN 117 Voters Votes Recorded For or Against For Against No Reply Ilkeston Scottish League English League 6,600 66,055 135,481 2,855 29,740 69,011 1074 10,740 21,725 1811 19,000 47,286 3,745 34,261 57,112 Neutral Numbers Ignored. If, then, we measure the claim for a vote by the intensity or by the numerical strength of the opposi- tion to it, we are forced to set out on our enquiry as to the expediency of granting the vote as an act of grace, hampered (or relieved) by the knowledge that, as a matter of fact, the women of Britain do not want, so far as any evidence goes, to have the vote at all. And this fact is recognised even by the Suffragists, for we have representative spokeswomen among them deny- ing that the vote depends either upon whether the existing male voters will give it or not or upon whether the majority of women want it or not. From which we are to conclude that they are, in their own estima- tion, of such transcendent importance that they are the only people in the State whose opinion upon a very grave matter of State is to be consulted. To show that I do them no injustice in thus stating their attitude, I will quote a passage from a letter written {Daily Chronicle, September 191 1) by an official of the National Union of Woman Suffrage Societies, in answer to the voting taken by the opponents : "The leaders of a movement which can bring 40,000 women together from every part of the country, and which is being carried on with equal enthusiasm all the world over, will scarcely set much value on the actual numerical value or the actual numerical figures of those who are for or against." If numerical strength is to be ignored, why on earth does she wish to impress us by the mention of the figure of 40,000 ? And she goes on : " They know that even if the proportion were ten to one against them, the intensity of desire in the smaller number would be so much greater than in the larger that mere numbers would be a minor consideration." ii8 WOMAN ADRIFT Well, it is impossible to argue or even to be on speaking terms with such a point of view as that. You meet it, you shake your head, and mutter to yourself a pious sympathy, but you know the case of such a point of view is hopeless, and you pass on. 1 The Women Who DON'T. Now, there is not only a practical and determining significance in this outstanding and unchallengeable fact that the women of England, considered in the mass, do not zvant the vote. There is a moral signifi- cance even greater, and even as fatal to the hope. For you cannot enfranchise a whole sex against the wish of the vast majority of the sex. Indeed, the word " en- franchisement " becomes nonsense if the majority of the sex consider not that you are going to liberate them, but are doing your best to fetter them with a responsi- bility they cannot discharge and to burden them with a duty which is repugnant to them. And that is the position — in itself a proof that the movement is arti- ficial, factitious, and has no roots in the needs of their sex. Clearly, then, to give the vote as an act of grace means also imposing the vote as a distasteful burden. But it is the curious nature of this agitation that it produces the strangest twists and turns of logic — when you have vanquished one point as an argument it ' No doubt by the time these words are in print the logical conclusion of this unreason will have been reached. For the move- ment now begun in favour of a Referendum will have its effect upon a Parliamentary majority that will be prepared to grasp that escape from the dilemma created by its own complacence. But the Suffragists, seeing that the parliamentary game is against them, and confronted with the fact that a Referendum would reveal the fact that so far from the nation wanting the suffrage, only a few voluntary societies want it, will then boldly come out to say that they want it irrespective of anybody else's wishes altogether, and irrespective also of the wills of the nation, whether expressed by the House of Commons, acting without a mandate, or by the House of Commons acting through a mandate obtained either by a general election or a referendum. We shall then see exactly where we are, and that the movement constitutes a phase of irrationality that must be allowed to run its course and pass away. THE TWO KINDS OF WOMEN ii9 comes to life again as an absurdity. And so, although it be admitted that more women hate the idea of being burdened with a vote than have an " intense desire " for it, supporters still say, " Well, why not let the women who want it have it, and those who do not want it can go without it ? " Well, a vote is not a toy. It is not something given to play with — to be used until it no longer interests or to be put away in a drawer and not used at all. A vote is an instrument of power, and so a vote is a thing which concerns other people besides those who do not particularly wish to exercise their own vote. So it is no use to say, " Let the women who do not want it yet wait and be edu- cated up to it ! " For the simple fact is that they don't want it because they are already educated beyoiid it. And if we are to consider women at all, we must consider one portif)n as much as another, and not ignore it because it happens to be the more numerous and the better behaved of the two. For the women who do not want the vote object to being governed by other women — and that is not sufficiently appreciated as their point of view. They recognise that if other women had the vote, they them- selves would have to take up the same weapon, and shoulder a burden they do not want, in order to take care that their type and ideal of woman could prevail against a type and an ideal with which they have no sympathy. And this brings us to another consideration con- cerning giving the vote to women as an act of grace, and that is, the opinion that men and women have of each other and of themselves. CHAPTER X. Sex And Politics. SEX DIFFERENCES — THE THEORY OF SEX TYRANNY — " POWER " AND POWER — " THE IMMORALITY OF AUTHORITY " — WOMEN'S OPINION OF WOMEN. I 1 CHAPTER X. Sex and Politics. It has now become a commonplace of the Suffragist case that " men have a contempt for women," and regard them as " inferior creatures." Every man must answer that charge for himself. My own answer is given in the dedication of this book, and I imagine that most men alive can refer their respect for women to the same source. But when the taunt is made to you it is as well to answer it gently. For I have found that the first ray of light that could be made to penetrate the Suffragist mind concerning men's attitude to Woman Suffrage, proceeds from the illumination that a man might oppose the political enfranchisement of women not because he thought they were inferior creatures, but from the motive that he dreaded that their last state might be worse than the first. I am firmly convinced that the starting point in the minds of many Suffragists has been this moral heresy concerning man's opinion of women. In that war of the sexes that must, perhaps, be eternally waged at the bidding of an instinct, men do many injustices to women. Those injustices can never be remedied, it may be, so long as the race does not become effete — the spiritual carnage of broken hearts through broken faith is inherent in the struggle of sex, and when it ceases the end of the race must be in sight. For it can only come when the sexes have lost their curiosity about each other, and nothing would assist that calamity more than that the sexes should be so modified and approximated as to weaken the force of sexual attraction. But even men who sin agaias* women do not lose their respect for women, '23 124 WOMAN ADRIFT unless they belong to that worthless class of men whom men do not respect. Many a man makes a shrine of that altar upon which a woman has given herself in sacrifice to him. Sex Differences. But all this modern talk of sex antagonism, it is curious to note, comes not from men but from women ; and exclusively from those women who accuse men of regarding woman as an inferior being. And nothing is more irrelevant to the discussion of this question than whether man or woman be the superior being. The only point at which the two questions touch is at the point whether woman, in her relation to the State, occupies the same position as man, considered as a factor in the State. It is true that that^point, which turns upon the physical superiority of man, carries the consequences very far ; but it really does not involve such a general contrast as Which is the higher being, man or woman ? They are not compar- able to that extent, nor is there any profit in tr} ing to establish such a far-reaching comparison. There are similarities, but there are dissimilarities, and the only point in making any contrast at all is to help us to decide whether woman is sufficiently different from man as to make it undesirable to thrust upon her the same place in the State and life that man occupies, or is sufficiently like man to make her function towards the State and the outside world exactly the same as his. Now, the task of deciding between these two alternatives is fortunately made easier by the extreme view taken by the most representative Suffragists. The most penetrating and philosophical mind would shrink from the task of adequately explaining, to the last shade of moral and mental difference, wherein man and woman differ. But happily we are saved from entering upon a discussion which would land us into a labyrinth like that of the Bangorian con- troversy, which found men still contending when SEX AND POLITICS 125 the original point of Bishop Hoadley's controversy was forgotten and most of the original disputants had passed away. For it is almost of the essence of the position of the Suffragists that there is practic- ally no difference in man and woman beyond the physical fact of sex. Indeed, it has been called by them the " accident " of sex and " the mere fact " of sex. And to say that but for the accident of sex a woman would be a man is like saying that but for the accident of death a dead man would be alive. And a lot of trouble is saved by taking the Suffragists on their own extreme ground, for it simplifies and narrows the discussion. But for present purposes it is only necessary to say that we must take the difference between the sexes as self-evident. The physical difference has been discussed in an earlier chapter, and we have seen how far it takes us ; that it has shown woman to be inessential to the State, however fitted or unfitted she may be for the home. But that thread of sex- difference will have to be dropped now, and perhaps picked up again later, for now we are concerned with what Suffragists really mean when they say that man looks upon woman as an inferior being. The Theory of Sex Tyranny, The pithiest and truest answer to that charge is that the foolish and benighted men who have a low opinion of women can be matched in folly and beaten in numbers and influence by those benighted women who have a poor opinion of men ; and for a moment we will merely let one sex cancel the other so far as that exchange of compliments is concerned. But the implication of the charge is that as men think women inferior, they treat them accordingly — that is, tyrannically, taking advantage of their " unprotected " political condition to pass laws concerning them which press hardly upon them. This charge is one which is of too specific a nature to succeed, because it can be specifically examined 126 WOMAN ADKIFT and refuted, and it will not be waste of time to devote an entire chapter to refuting it. In this place, how- ever, taking it as a refutable charge, we shall merely stop to consider what is implied by this charge of man's unfairness to women. The charge overshoots itself by the terms in which it is made, for it is often stated in terms which imply that it is a natural and inevitable thing for one sex to be unfair to the other, seeing that neither sex understands the other nor is in complete sympathy with it. But if that were true, women would be equally unfair to men if they obtained political power, and as they would be, as a sex, in a majority over men, we are being asked to transpose the positions, with our eyes open, and make ourselves the downtrodden sex by enthroning another sex over us. And, I need hardly say, we are not likely to do that. Men would, of course, have their ultimate weapon for their hands if this sex tyranny were carried to the unendurable point ; and that consideration, coming at this juncture again, serves afresh to show how grotesque would be the situation which gave power to one sex to tyrannise over the other by parliamentary enactment when that other sex would have it in its power to sweep away the parliamentary enactments, and even the Parliament that gave them birth, by ignoring both in a simple act of revolution. And though that danger, of deliberate sex tyranny by women, would be remote, it is just as well to consider a very real danger which, whilst falling short in degree of anything that could be called tyranny, might carry us very near to the point when legislative and administrative measures, carried by women's votes, would be repudiated by the men outvoted. That danger is this : It is becoming more ■and more the tendency in parliamentary legislation to sail very near to the wind of antagonising the big electoral minority by the use of the power of the big parliamentary majority. Both parties in the State are guilty in turn of succumbing to this temptation SEX AND POLITICS 127 to make their party hay while the sun of their majority shines. The Conservatives succumbed over the licensing and educational legislation ; the Liberals by their financial legislation, and even in the con- stitutional issue, have done the same. Each party legislates almost up to the line when the minority is ready to rebel, leaving a small margin between acquiescence and revolt. And so we move forwards by violent oscillations of the pendulum, and the national spirit of compromise is perhaps failing of its charm. But, as things are, with male voters only, even a very big minority respects the bigger majority. It grumbles, growls and threatens, and saves up its scores, and hopes some day to pay the enemy back in its own coin : but all the time each party sails near the wind of exasperating and outraging a portion of the nation less by only a few hundred thousands than its own supporters, even though among its own supporters it may include many who give a very doubting assent to what is done by their party. "Power" And Power. But let us imagine a Parliament returned by the votes of women as well as men ; let us further imagine, or realise, that the votes of women would be in a majority. Then let us consider the almost certain contingency that some highly controversial measure (and Heaven knows what acute controversies our national politics might not develop with a female electorate) were passed solely because the votes of women, allied with those of a few men, turned the scale. Can one imagine that laws so passed, forced upon men to their repugnance by women ; scrambling through Parliament only by virtue of the female franchise, would command the respect that it is desirable even obnoxious laws should command ? To ask the question is to answer it, and there would be no stability in a State in which the distribution of parliamentary power did not correspond with the 128 WOMAN ADRIFT distribution of that final and effective power in earthly matters, the wills and strength of men. And this possibility would be reached not by the conscious and deliberate " tyranny " of women over men (which we might reasonably expect according to the Suffragist theory of natural sex antagonism), but it would be reached by the easily conceivable, and extremely probable alliance of the votes of women with the votes of a section of men. I do not know or care whether women would be conservative or revolutionary in political power. No one can say, because we have no experience of woman's behaviour in the political sphere of a modern democracy. Domestically, they are generally cautious and con- servative — politically, they might be mad-cap revolu- tionaries, sentimental visionaries, or the most mulish Tories ; or they might be none of these things, but might impart quite a new and startling standard to political thought and action. But the point is that, even if we do reject the Suffragist's theory of sex antagonism, women would hold a parliamentary power which had no equipoise in their real and effective power, and so might act irresponsibly. And so men would in fact be,- however praiseworthy the motives of the women who helped to outvote them, the " slaves " of women — up to the point when the votes of women no longer counted. And so it is not necessary to accept the sex antagonism theory in order to prove that the danger would be real if women had political power, though the danger is imaginary while men only have political power. The full proof that it is imaginary waits for a later chapter, when we come to consider the legal position of woman. But meanwhile we may ask, How many women believe it? How many women believe that man uses his political power as a tyrant? The Suffragists think so, of course, but they are in a hopeless minority ; and if the tyranny were obvious, would not all women be conscious of it? The fact that they are not, the fact that more women do not SEX AND POLITICS 129 seem to care a straw whether their sex is enfranchised than there are even women who do not want their sex to be enfranchised at all, proves to any reasonable mind that the talk of man's political tyranny politically exercised over woman must be judged merely as so much empty rhetoric. It sounds plausible, and what might happen, but the truth is that it doesn't. "The Immorality of Authority." Here, perhaps, we must step aside to meet a certain amiable theory. There are people whose political theories are abstractions, having no relation to life, who assert that it is bad even for one sex to be placed in a superior political position over the other, and that men would gain in moral stature by ad- mitting the other sex to an equality — an equality, by the way, that would actually be a superiority. Mill urges this point very eloquently, but it has no point until men are proved, to their own admission, to be unjust to women ; for if a man does not believe he is committing an injustice, it is useless to tell him he will feel nobler when the injustice ceases. But there is really no necessity to meet this argument. For the argument is really anarchistic. It implies that control, authority, and governance are immoral things, automatically converting the controllers and the governors into tyrants and the controlled into slaves and the downtrodden. Now, that theory is nonsense. It is part of the greater nonsense which just now is substituting revolt as a superior moral quality to discipline — which is beginning almost to regard revolt as an end in itself, in itself good, and not a desperate attempted remedy. But the notion that in this world authority is an immoral force needs to be combated, as it very easily can be. In this life all of us have to bow to some superior force or other, from a mere creditor to Death itself. A few months ago the very schoolboys of England, catching the infection of revolt from their elders, went out on strike. But we had no difficulty there in satisfying 130 WOMAN ADRIFT ourselves of whether authority was immoral or not. We had no difficulty in deciding that as between schoolboys on strike and parents and teachers who did not sympathise with the object of the strike, it was the might of parents and teachers that must prevail, and abstract " rights " must take care of themselves. Parents and teachers simply assumed, in the most brutal fashion, that they knew better than the schoolboys what was good for them, and back to school they went. Now the illogical Suffragist mind will say that I am, like a characteristic man, basing my opposition to the Suffrage on the ground that man's relation to woman is that of the parent to the child or the pedagogue to the pupil. I am, of course, doing noth- ing of the kind — though even that proposition is tenable so far as man and woman in the State are concerned. But I am merely answering the argument that authority in itself is bad, engendering tyranny and slavishness, and that man had better renounce his political supremacy on that ground and for his own sake. And to that argument (which really comes from Mill) I can only reply that if it were true, parents should renounce their supremacy and authority over their children. And if it is then said that though parents may know best what is good for their children yet men do not know what is good for women, the briefest answer is the best. As far as this question is concerned, men tliink they know best, and most women agree with them. Women's Opinion of Women. And in coming back to consider whether women are inferior to men as political animals we must be struck by this curious thing : that it is not only men, but most women, who think women are so inferior. You never hear a man say, " I am tired of being governed by men. Men weren't made for politics ! " But you do hear women say, " I shudder at the idea of being governed by women. Women SEX AND POLITICS i3> were never made for politics ! " And most women think that, whether they say it or not. The Suffragist, of course, will say, " Oh, that is merely the prejudice of some women — we are going to educate them out of that." And, indeed, Suffragists are adepts in the art of explaining every thing that does not suit their case by some theory that goes out of its way to avoid the obvious. And in this case the obvious deduction to be drawn from the fact that most women think woman is unfitted for politics, is that they think so because they know tlieir oii n sex. Let us ignore altogether the fact that men hold that opinion of woman's political incapacity ; let us ignore the fact that the normal and average woman lives a life which does not bring her into contact with those realities which make up political pheno- mena ; let us ignore every actual indication of ex- perience (such as the Suffragists themselves so abundantly supply) that women are really unfitted for political thought and activity ; and there is still left the extremely awkward and difficult fact that most women think so too, and that many repre- sentative women, from Queen Victoria down to the late Mrs Craigie and Mrs Humphrey Ward, hold that woman is unfitted for all that is implied in political enfranchisement. Queen Victoria, of course, may be struck off the list — she was hopelessly Victorian, I suppose the Suffragists will say, and therefore doesn't count. But Mrs Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes) had one of the most penetrating original minds to be found among modern women, and Mrs Humphrey Ward's eminence needs no affirmation. The fact that certain eminent women hold that view does not, of course, settle the question ; but when we find that the view is not exceptionally or sparsely held by women, but is held by the vast majority of women, it is really ridiculous to contend that it is only man's impertinence that holds woman to be his inferior in political capacity. But one may say that the view is not held so much as that it is a 132 WOMAN ADRIFT feeling instinctively felt by women themselves ; and instinct is a safer guide even than reason in a matter which logic does not touch, with which arith- metic has nothing to do, of which we have no experience, and which cannot be proved either way by any strictly logical process. But the burden of proof, if it were possible to give any, should rest upon those women who argumentatively deny the instinctive feeling of the vast majority of their sex. We have now reached a point, I think, when we can decide the first question concerned with giving votes to women as an act of grace. And the answer is, to put the statement beyond argument, that more women pray that votes may not be given as an act of grace, or for any other reason, than ask for the vote as a right or on any other ground. The point then arises, whether we should force the Vote upon those who don't want it for the sake of those who do. That would obviously be doing a good deal more than we have a right to do, even if we ignored entirely the feelings of men in the matter, as the electorate actually charged with the responsibility of deciding. But even the words " for the sake of those who do" begs the question, unless "their sake" is to mean nothing more than the bare gratification of their own de- sires, irrespective of the desires of other people. But let us see whether if the vote were thrust upon women who don't want it for the sake of pleasing those who do, the State would be likely to gain anything commensurate with such an outrage upon all understandable principles of government. And I think any reasonable person will agree that the case must again be overwhelming, and must reveal, in fact, some startling consideration hitherto undreamt of in man's philosophy. CHAPTER XI. How Could Woman Serve The State ? woman's political judgment — man's universal- ity — man as woman's representative — woman's moral nature — woman's deficiency of public virtue — her domestic virtue — the danger of MORAL excellence IN GOVERNMENT — THE SUB- JECTION OF WOMAN TO CLERICAL INFLUENCE — THE SYMMETRICAL STATE — HOME, WOMAN, AND THE PER- FECT STATE— ONE IN TWO. CHAPTER XI. How Could Woman Serve The State? We are going to try to discover that startling consider- ation which would justify a vote being given to all women against the wishes of the majority of women ; and against all those considerations, from the point of view of men, that have so far been urged. It is a big task, but if I fail I shall have succeeded entirely to my own satisfaction. Indeed, I may truly say that I am looking for what I do not expect to find in order to prove that it is not there. But we may try a cast or two. And here we are not yet considering whether what woman or the State gained by woman's political activity would be lost by the woman or the State through her withdrawal from her present activities. We are assuming that all her political interests and pursuits conflict with no other interests whatever — that although all she has to do is to leave home behind her and go into the world of general industry and politics, home will not suffer by her withdrawal. Woman's Political Judgment. Well, what effect is she likely to have upon the world of politics and the State so far as we now know her ? It is said that she will bring " a larger view " to the consideration of political questions. I think I know that " larger view " — it is generally the impracticable, the unpractical, the irrelevant, the lax, and even the narrow view. But whence and how can this " larger view " come to woman ? Con- sidered as an intellectual manifestation it cannot come at all, for we know that man's mental capacity is at least as large as woman's — and, of course, I am 135 136 WOMAN ADEIFT putting my case at the lowest, for we really know that woman is man's intellectual inferior, even if the standard be set by sheer pound and ounces of brain. It will then be said, of course, that woman is man's inferior only because she has not had man's opportun- ities and experience for intellectual development. But, leaving aside altogether the very wide question of how far her intellectual inferiority may be inherent in her as a secondaty sex characteristic, or whether she could educate herself out of any intellectual limitation, all we can say is that in order to reach man's level she would have to duplicate man through- out all his experiences, and by the time she had done that she would, unquestionably, have educated herself out of all her secondary sex characteristics. And it is a moot point whether she could not even go so far as to negative or modify some of her primary sex characteristics, for what evidence we have of that tendency powerfully suggests that intellectual develop- ment plays havoc with the maternal functions and weakens and even destroys the desire to exercise it. But, taking women as they are, we can only say that the potentiality of their intellectual equality with man can be proved neither one way nor the other, and that as to the actuality, the case is against them. For, apart altogether from man's superior quality or quantity of brain, the mere power of concentration that he has for any intellectual task makes him woman's intellectual superior. Some of the most pathetic words in literature are those, to my mind, in which Gibbon speaks of his walk in his garden at Lausanne at the end of his long task, and of how much of his life has gone with the doing of it. One simply cannot imagine a woman undertaking so stu- pendous a task as "The Decline and Fall," or producing such a system of philosophy, against chronic ill-health, as Herbert Spencer's long life-work. But if it be con- tested that woman is not man's intellectual inferior, I can only ask in what intellectual occupation she shows herself his superior, and pass on whilst waiting for the WOMAN AND THE STATE i37 reply. We have no reason whatever, not the remotest reason from any ascertained fact at all, to suppose that a Parliament of women or an electorate of women would or could take any saner, wiser, or really larger view of a given political question than a Parliament or an electorate of men — though I am by no means con- tending that those men who do find their way into Parliament are the intellectual champions of their sex i that the male electorate has reached finality in intelligence. Man's Universality. Nor would their experience of life help them to give a saner and completer judgment. After all, with the one exception of maternity, man has every experience under the sun. If finance is talked of, forward come the bankers. If foreign affairs are talked of, forward come the diplomatists and travellers, If arts, science or literature are discussed, forward come the artists, the scientists, the men of letters. And so on to the end of the chapter of every human activity. And even those questions and conditions directly and even exclusively affecting women have their male experts — maternity homes, female wards of workhouses, even dressmaking, laundries, and the work of pit-brow women are familiar ground to men, and they can speak of the conditions prevailing not only without great ignorance but often with the completest possible knowledge. But how innumerable are those activities and interests of men concerning which women know next to nothing — and it is these affairs of men rather than the affairs of women that make up the main body of political questions. It is therefore supremely ridicul- ous to suppose that by actual experience of life and affairs, any more than by intellectual capacity, woman will reveal a larger vision of any political measure or proposal than man — short of some proposal touching the home itself But even thereupon man has some- thing to say, and he knows a good deal more about the affairs of the home than woman knows of those affairs E 138 WOMAN ADRIFT of his which are practically inaccessible to her — those innumerable male interests into which woman does not penetrate at all. Moreover, so long as men live in houses, the home is man's affair too. Where, then, is the larger vision of woman to come from ? She is not going to sit down and cerebrate herself into a higher degree of intellect than she has got brain power to provide and be the mother of the race and the worker in it at the same time. Where, then, is she going to get her superior or equal political acumen from ? What reason have we to suppose that woman, in entering politics, will do more than she has done in entering every other sphere — bring subordinate and second rate intellect and powers, even at their highest, and so merely increase the number of represent- tative opinions without increasing the stock of human wisdom ? How and why is she going to contribute anything really worth the price of a big revolution to those problems which vex the soul and mind of man, although he knows most about them, and although his mind is at any rate not inferior to hers ? I see no hope for this new and larger vision — no hidden spring from which this surprise is to come. Women would be, let us say, very like men, only less so. Possibly. But the idea that woman could bring any superlative quality to politics, is a wild assumption which there is nothing we know concerning woman to justify. Man as Woman's Representative. But, to step again out of the line of argument to meet an irrelevancy, the Suffragist who has no answer to that may say, " Whether we brought any original talents to politics isn't the point. We still think we should, but the point is that we should be able to look after and control our own interests." Well, even that begs the question, for most women would still rather trust their own material interests in the hands of men. But in giving them power to control their own in- terests — which I should not object to if they could WOMAN AND THE STATE i39 be segregated from ours — they would be given also the power to control the interests of men, and that point is entirely forgotten when Suffragists say, " We merely want to look after our own interests in our own way," and when fervent but rather loose-thinkin§> politicians fling out their arms and say, " All we ask is that the custodian of that cupboard shall have a weapon with which to defend her children's bread ! " — a passage that simply nauseavss the intellect. If some political genius could devise a constitution which would first separate the interests of men and women, and then allow them to be voted upon separately by each, leaving man to be the ruler as now over all those many things in which differences of sex-interest disappeared, I think he would deserve to be listened to, if only for his ingenuity. But the argument that in admitting women to political power you are doing no more than justice to them by giving them power to control their own affairs, is answered by the obvious fact that you are also giving them power to control your affairs. And that is not the sort of Home Rule for the sexes that is possible. Even Ireland says, " Let us manage our own affairs, and you can do what the devil you like with yours ! " But the separate interests of Ireland and Great Britain are much more easily delimited than the separate interests of the sexes. Moreover. except in legislation for protecting women, man has always legislated in the spirit that the well-being of one sex is the well-being of the other. I noticed that a lady Suffragist argued some months ago that in Parliament " teachers, milliners, laundry girls, factory girls, and women workers generally " were imperfectly represented, and " mothers and wives not at all " ! Well, if Parliament were a Trades' Union Congress, and the electoral constituencies were not towns but trades and not counties but professions, that would be a very intelligent argument indeed, and it would be a pleasure to come across it. But the Imperial Parliament is not a Trades' Union Congress, HO WOMAN ADRIFT but is the executive government of a big Empire And Parliament represents not trades and professions but the men, women, and children of the various classes of the community, so that the women of each class are represented in the Commons just as much as peeresses are represented in the Lords. And as to " mothers and wives " being " not represented at all," how could a man in any given class vote so as not to represent his wife upon any ordinary question sub- mitted to Parliament ? We can only assume, in a rational world, that he represents her interests by his vote, just as he represents her interests by his labour. I marvel at the essential meanness of the mind that, looking round on man's little territory of power (for woman's power over man in everything that politics does not touch is great enough already), covets that, and wishes to enter it, and yet cannot and does not hope to share in those more arduous fields wherein man is representing woman by every hour he works and by every shilling he earns. And now we can return to the high road again. Woman's Moral Nature. But if women cannot bring higher intellectual gifts or greater experience to politics than men, is there nothing in their natures which gives them some advantage over men ? Man is their physical superior, and is at least not their mental inferior, but have they no quality which makes them superior to men and which they could place at the service of the State ? Well, those are fair questions, though I ask them of myself Physically and intellectually, man is woman's superior ; in moral qualities, I think, woman is man's superior. But the moral qualities act differently in each. Man is certainly not inferior to woman in moral perception. That is clear when we think that all the great ethical teachers, all the great inculcators of moral principles, have been men, though woman has certainly been placed in no position of disadvantage by man that has restrained her from expressing herself as WOMAN AND THE STATE 141 an ethical teacher. And at the other end of the scale men have finer perceptions in regard to those minor moral points which come within what we call a code of honour. For instance, a woman has less scruple about paying her gambling debts than men, and it is doing no injustice to the sex to say that they are the finest kleptomaniacs, if I may so express the point, in the world. But though woman has no better grasp of moral principles than man, though her moral per- ceptions are no keener than his, her moral example acts more directly than man's, and it needs a personal object for its expression. Woman's morality, in fact, is seen at its best advantage in direct personal influence, and that is why we pity children who have lost their mother early, and say of a girl, " Ah, poor child ! she never had the benefit of a mother." You do not so often hear that a child has suffered, in his moral upbringing, because he lost his father at an early age. But man exerts his moral influence as a great teacher of men — of men in the mass. I suppose that even the last rumblings of political prejudice will not mutter a denial of the supreme moral influence of Gladstone — but I suppose no one will deny, either, that Mrs Gladstone made it possible for him to be a great man. He may not have found his inspiration in her — that came from his own moral character (or perhaps ultimately from his religious faith), whatever be thought by partisan opinion of its excesses in action. But unquestionably he found in her the solace and support which sustained him in his public action as a political moralist — and as a matter of fact, one can hardly find the respective functions of man and woman, in their perfection of delimitation, better personified than in Gladstone and his wife. She was really the other half of him, his complement — as all perfect wives are to the husbands who deserve them. But it does not by any means follow that the simple possession of high moral qualities fits their possessor X42 WOMAN ADRIFT for any function of government. Some of the saintliest men and women the human race has ever produced would have been the most impossible people in the world to be set over others in actual authority. When high moral qualities are valuable is when they are allied to that breadth of view and that experience of life which alone can make them most effective and that alone can prevent them becoming even dangerous to the State. Nor does it follow that because woman's moral qualities are generally found exerted for the benefit of those people in whose lives she has a direct personal concern, that they would be found equally pronounced when set to the service of the State. Woman's Deficiency of "Public Virtue." It is difficult for any one to deny that women allow their hostile prejudices, and their very self-protective wariness, to be aroused much more easily than men. Mr Gladstone was once attending the funeral of a well- known Englishman, during the first Home Rule ferment, and it was mentioned, in the hearing of an old lady at the graveside, that that illustrious but then maligned statesman was standing near to her. " Oh, dear ! " she said, as she stole a horrified look at him, " I do hope that he won't make any disturbance ! " Now, most old ladies might not have said that, but certainly no old gentleman who ever lived could have said it. And the particular psychological operation that sent those grotesquely comic yet really awful words to her lips, is precisely the operation that prevents a woman seeing any question dispassionately when it concerns her own personal interests (for I am sure that the old lady in the churchyard had perverted the strong language concerning Mr Gladstone that she had heard from the male members of her family into her own settled conviction that Gladstone was an atheistical and criminal-minded character). I do not say that this WOMAN AND THE STATE i43 limitation is a fault of woman's nature. On the contrary, it is in its way and short of absurd excesses, a very desirable trait, for it indicates that her first thought is for her own — not necessarily for herself at all — but that narrow and concentrated habit of mind produces a defect of judgment which might make women even a danger in politics. But it will perhaps be objected that I am libelling the sex in saying that a woman cannot see any question dispassionately when it touches the interests of herself or her own people. Well, to take a large question, many women are now found suggesting that the institution of marriage should go into the melting pot, and in many cases the bias in their mind against marriage arises from the unhappiness of their own personal experience. But men do not so readily allow their own personal experiences to condemn an existing institution. Many men, themselves un- happily married, may nevertheless desire to maintain the institution of marriage because they see in it a form of regulatifig the relations of the sexes which, if it brings individual hardship, nevertheless ensures the general social stability. In such a question, in fact, men take the large view, or, at any rate, the dispassionate view. And to take a smaller issue, most people's domestic experience will reveal, ifthey make a littfe effort in ra^mory, some crisis or state of affairs when It was a question of a man stepping outside his own sphere of interests to do something that would not bring him any personal advantage, but might even damage it, and when the bias of the woman's advice has been "to leave things alone" — and very often it may be very good advice, too. But the view taken is not the "larger" view at all — it is the nari'ow, prudent, self-preserving view. But again it may be said, " That is merely your own prejudit<;d generalisation, and there is no real truth in it." And I should have to leave it at that — my assertion, supported by a good many people's ex- perience, against the denial — but for the fact that I 144 WOMAN ADRIFT can call a witness to support me whose evidence even Suffragists have got to accept, for he is their own witness, and upon this point is speaking in their caus;. The witness is John Stuart Mill, and the evidence is to be found in " The Subjection of Women." "I am afraid it must be said" (he writes, page i6i, ed. 1869) "that disinterestedness in the general conduct of life — the de- votion of the energies to purposes which hold out no promise of direct advantage to the family — is very seldom encouraged or supported by women's influence. It is small blame to them that they discourage objects of which they have not learned to see the advantage, and which withdraw their men from them, and from the interests of the family. But the consequence is that women's influence is often anything but favourable to public virtue." Of course Mill believed that experience of public life would cultivate in women public virtues, but they could, on his own showing, only be cultivated at the expense of what is really another high and important virtue — a solicitude for the family interests. And the plain, simple and human truth is that we do not need women to cultivate public virtues at all, especially if they are going to upset the balance between the two forces now acting : the public sense of the man and the private and family sense of the woman. What Mill loo'.ed upon as a defect in woman that public experience might remedy, I venture to look upon as a safeguard for the family interests that an acquired sense of public virtues would destroy. Her Domestic Virtue. Mill had, in fact, stumbled upon a bigger admission than he thought he was making or hoped would be perceived, for nothing could better illustrate the danger of woman crossing over from one sphere and entering another than that both she and man would then be moving in the same direction as far as public activities are concerned, and that direction away from the interests of the home. And whether or not, as Mill was contending, experience of public affairs would negative this natural predilection of woman for the WOMAN AND THE STATE i45 family interests, it is certain that the fact that she has got the predilection at all is an excellent thing, and some proof that she is in just the place where she is most wanted when she is at home looking after the interests of the family — the guardian, the conserver, the upholder of family life. And upon this point we may in all reason say that in so far as women are disqualified by the limitation Mill speaks of from disinterested public service, they are qualified eminently and wholesomely as the guardians of family interests ; and that they would only laboriously acquire a virtue which the world does not need in them at the expense of a virtue in them which the family cannot spare. The Danger of Moral Excellence in Government. A few pages back I said that high moral qualities, unsupported by breadth of view which a practical experience of life affords, might even be dangerous in the State, and Mr Frederic Harrison — one of the great humanists of our time — in whose long life high moral qualities and a wide experience of life assuredly meet, each in a high degree of perfection — brings out very clearly in what is practically his autobiography, " Realities and Ideals," the disability that hampers the moral reformer in political action, and the defect of his qualities : " It is a fixed psychologic law that the earnestness of moral and spiritual emotion — which is the strength and beauty of the higher natures — too often shuts off from the ken of those most deeply moved the nice adjustment of balance in competing good and evil, usefulness and risk. St Bernard, St Francis, F^nelon, Wesley, the Slavery and the Drink Abolitionists, had noble messages to deliver, but they would prove most oppressive legis- lators and judges. Their very merit lay in their bold defiance of obstacles, their indifference to all countervailing risks, their disdain of compromise. But compromise is the daily and hourly necessity of practical affairs. And those who disdain com- promise are ever on the verge of oppression and disaeter, and too often face both together with a light heart. We are bound to bear and weigh all that such men can urge. But it is for men of 146 WOMAN ADRIFT a very different stamp— ofterj it may be men of a stamp more common and less fine — to decide the issue and abide the result. Now women in the average, as a sex, share this nature. They form opinions more quickly, less patiently, less coolly than do men. Emotion, prejudice, sentiment, play a larger part in their decisions than in those of men. They are less in the habit of facing practical risks and dilemmas. They will not take pains to walk all round embarrassing crises before they decide ; nor do they habitually weigh all sides of a question with a fair, im- partial temper. It would be laughable to tell us that men and women are equally fitted by nature to form a balanced judgment of this kind. Common sense records the contrary as a fact. But all political questions and all parliamentary elections really turn, or ought to turn, on nicely balanced judgments of this sort The real objection to 'Votes for Women,' over and obove that it risks imposing on men sacrifices of labour and life which women do not share, is this — that it degrades and weakens the moral and emotional influence which women indirectly give to men and have never failed to give. The power of women to moralise life and to modify action is not lost because it is exerted in society, in the home, in literature, in education. To sink this high and ennobling influence in the rousih-and-tumble of elections would be to debtroy and debase it." I do not think I need carry any further than those words, in support of my own, the argument that the superior moral character of woman would not neces- sarily be manifest as a gain to the State ; but that it would necessarily work to the disadvantage of that calm judgment in political affairs which even as things are, is not too conspicuous, for it seems to be the peculiar property of political discussiori to em- phasise the meanest as well as the noblest side of the human character. ** The Subjection of Women " to Clerical Influence. But if women can exert a strong moral influence, they can also be influenced ; and one influence to which they are said to be subject is that of clerical influence. As I have no first hand evidence of this, from any personal knowledge, I should not raise the point but for being able to give what I think is very satisfactory testimony of the experience of others. Mr WOMAN AND THE STATE U7 John Massie, a Liberal ex-M.P., is one of the foremost opponents of Woman Suffrage, and he cites a clergy- man who said to the Member for his Division : " I don't believe in Woman Suffrage for the country, but I suppose it would be good for our voluntary schools ! " and the implication of that musing is pretty apparent. But so many instances of that kind have been given that one almost ceases to appreciate the general truth in so much reiteration. But far better evidence than that can be given of the " subjection of women " to clerical influence — which was, by the way, one of Mill's own admissions against them. For the Church, like the Imperial Parliament, has its two houses, with a House of Laymen in each Province, and the lay representatives are men, elected upon a male franchise ; so that the Church is now governed by men, just as is the State. But the Bishop of Oxford, Dr Gore, happens to be a Suffragist, and he wishes the Church to be brought into line with the woman's movement in the secular sphere. But, in passing, I should say that he is the sort of Suffragist (in the Church) who knows where to draw the line where women are concerned. For in proposing that the franchise for election to the Houses of Laymen should be altered to include women, he was careful to say that " the great negative principle of the Church was that the priesthood should belong to men ; on the other hand, the Church admitted women as deacon- esses, patronesses, and churchwardens." And that is just the sort of distinction that Anti-suffragists make : " the great negative principle of the State is that the government should belong to men ; on the other hand, the State has admitted women to be members of school boards, town councils, and boards of guardians." But the proposal of the Bishop that the Houses of Laymen should be based upon a female as well as a male franchise was strenuously opposed at a sitting of the Representative Church Council on November 22, 191 1. And the opposition to the proposal, stated not by anti-churchmen, but by prominent laymen in the 148 WOMAN ADRIFT Church, and to the faces of the Archbishop of Canter- bury and all the Bishops present, was that women were so prone to clerical influence that the Houses of Lay- men would no longer represent the laity, but the clergy. So that, as Mr H. J. Torr said, " the introduction of a large element of feminine intellect would seriously disturb the balance between lay and clerical influence." And then, before all the Bishops, he tried to make his point clearer : "You have to face the fact," he continued, "that a large proportion of women voters would be influenced by — " and then he stopped, somewhat embarrassed, finally adding, amid laughter, "You know what I mean!" {The Standard report, Nov. 2 J, igii.) And he concluded : " What we need in the Church is to get the masculine lay mind to bear on Church questions. But if we were to clericalise that lay mind, we should undo very much of the value of the lay voice." No doubt it required some courage to express that point of view before the assembled Bishops, and I can quite understand the momentary embarrassment which, however, was triumphed over by courage. And Canon Hensley Henson, who is obviously not a layman, said : " If they were to throw the franchise (for the Houses of Laymen) open to women on equal terms with men, it would give an immense and very undesirable excess of influence to the unmarried Bishop ! " That debate, among Bishops and laymen, goes very far indeed towards establishing the truth that women are subject to clerical influence ; and though clerical influence in Church matters may or may not be a desirable thing (though it could hardly be that if it would clericalise the Houses of Laymen) clerical in- fluence in the State is not desirable, if only because it works in a rather subterranean fashion, and is not easily counteracted. No doubt some of the Suffragists themselves might be altogether above that influence, and do not greatly come into contact with it, but in opposing Woman Suffrage it has to be opposed not because of what Suffragists themselves might or might WOMAN AND THE STATE i49 not do, but on the grounds of considerations applying to one sex and the other sex, taken as such. So that in one direction at least the women might be expected not to " purify " politics so much as to clericalise them. The Symmetrical State. There is one other question that may be briefly dealt with in this chapter, for it concerns, though not so closely, the enquiry with which the chapter began, of what the State would gain by woman's political activity. There are some theorists who hold that the extension of political power to women is, even though it be a final and remote step, the indispensable step to the accomplishment of the perfect State. They do not necessarily say so because they favour the extension of the Suffrage now, or because they think the time has yet come for it, but they think it must come, if at some distant day, in order to complete the symmetry of the State. The point is of more than abstract importance, of course, for in it is involved this question : Whether the extension of political power to women is part of the process of social and political evolution, or whether it is going off the track altogether. And these theorists, many of them even regretfully, no doubt, think that it must be part of the evolutionary process, because they cannot conceive the State as a symmetri- cally complete thing if it does not include women in it. Well, a State is not a work of art, so we may disregard the symmetry that is visualised onie by the aesthetic imagination. The only symmetry v hich need concern us is that which does not satisfy the eye, but which gives stability to the structure, and which saves it from being lop-sided or top-heavy. And if we consider the State either in the narrower sense and truer sense of a political entity, or in the wider sense of the active industrial and productive com- munity, a State which is based upon democratic manhood control is broadly based, at any rate, and the strength and stability of the structure, and therefore its real symmetry, will entirely depend upon no ISO WOMAN ADRIFT material being built into it which is not equal to the strain that it might have to bear ; and that danger at any rate would be averted by the structure being confined to man. But there is a still wider conception of the State, if we include in it the whole community, and imagine it not as a structure with a base and an apex, but a social organism — a collection of human beings, getting through life in the happiest way. From any such conception it is difficult to exclude the home, unless the mind travels far enough to perceive the State as pervading the entire life of the community as matter pervades the material world, when the activities of the State were organised up to such a point in the governing of men's lives that men would thank the gods for the escape that death provided. That ultimate conception of the State is certainly possible, and he would be as bold a man who would deny this possibility as he who asserted it : that some day a democracy may rise to uncoil itself from its own chains, free itself from its own tyrannies, and shake off its own bureaucrats. Home, Woman, and the Perfect State. But if we think of the State as a community in which government is not carried up to the point at which men have put their own individualities in a Statec^-^igeonhole, and in which a man can still call his c ^.uren his own, the home must surely still hold its placfe if only as the temple of the one side of life left CO the individual man's own government. And the more perfectly ordered the State was (if it had not lost sight of human happiness as its aim) the more inviolate from the State would be that last little bit of territory whereon the individual man could take his stand. And in that inviolacy woman would then hold a prouder place — prouder, because we may at least suppose that in the perfect State we are discussing the perfection would dJt any rate have WOMAN AND THE STATE 151 gone far enough to ensure the material needs of the home, and to relieve woman of the domestic cares that beset her to-day. For we are considering the perfect and symmetrical State — unattainable ideal though it may be. And not only is there no sense of a lack of symmetry in a conception of the State as one in which men looked after their work and the women looked after their homes, but it is the very perfection of its symmetry which baulks the imagination and makes the concep- tion difficult. But it is certainly a more pleasing and symmetrical conception of the State than that of a State in which the industrialism of women ran along- side that of men, and the two sexes flowed in rivalry along the same channels of material and political activity, and the home became subject to State inspection as a consequence of the employment of State foster-mothers, charged with the duty of supplementing the impaired superintendence of a mother somewhere else in the State's employ ; or a State in which we can visualise each individual adult unit dwelling in a cubicle, and the State's children marched off at curfew time to the State dormitories. But, dealing with conditions so far remote from anything we can clearly conceive at all, it is at least as easy to suppose that the more highly organised a State was, and the more settled the conditions of life within it were, the greater security, dignity, and authority there would be in woman's position in the home ; as it is to suppose that in the perfect State she would have carried her public virtues into every department of the State's activity, and have arrived at that negation of the family virtues which was apparently Mill's ideal. " One in Two/' Miss Christabel Pankhurst, who can be much more interesting and effective as an argumentative force than as an exponent of a blind-alley militancy, has defended the imitation of man by woman because she thinks 152 WOMAN ADRIFT it illustrates the whole process of biological evolution — a progress from the simple to the complex, with a corresponding " variety of function." But the progress from the simple to the complex works out in quite another way, for it is attained dy diff et entiaiion of function, and not by one structure doing the work for which another structure was intended. Heaven knows what may happen to us as things are going, and the heart and the liver may some day start imitating each other, but when they do there will be a dreadful physiological chaos. And it is not by women imitating man, but by differing from him as widely as may be, and by performing wholly different functions that the line of real biological development will be followed in our social structure. Certainly, there is no reason to suppose that there is any connection whatever between the perfect symmetrical State and woman's position in it as man's political equal. On the contrary, as mankind itself starts the differentiating process by being divided into two sexes to begin with, the differentiation of function and the progress from the simple to the complex, seem to be provided for only by further specialisations — which in fact is what happens, if only we let well alone. But the mistake of the whole body of Suffragism may be seen here : Suffragism supposes that man and woman are separate, individual units. They are not. The human being is the unit. Man and woman are only the beginning of that differentia- tion of function which points out to us clearly enough, unless we shut our eyes and are wilfully blind, in what direction true development lies, that direction being, not to try to jumble up together what Nature began by separating, but by taking mankind as the unit, man and woman as the first subdivisions, and then developing each sex on its own lines. We had to chase the theorists into a conception of a State that made our speculations almost " void for remoteness," in trying to test the notion that as woman's political equality with man is essential to WOMAN AND THE STATE i53 the symmetrical State, it was only a question of time whether she should have the vote now or next century. And I have tried to show that so far from it being I merely a question of time, it is a question simply of I keeping to the right track or going off the track altogether. But we can lea|/e theory aside and come close to our own day in order to test whether the political and general freedom of women is inseparable from any conception of ultimate political development. A Russian Suffragist, speaking to her English fellows a few weeks ago, and indignantly contrasting our backward land with hers, declared that in Russia the men were wholly in favour of the emancipation of women, and that there the men and women were political comrades. And we know ourselves, indeed, that in Russia women take such an equal part in political life that they languish in the fortress of St. Peter and Paul and perish in the snows of Siberia* So that women may and do hold an equal position with men in a State whose political development has not yet even enfranchised the men, let alone developed its symmetry. The United States is not comparable with Russia — in most things it is in advance, and in one or two things rather worse for being so. In several of the Western and undeveloped P'ederal States Woman Suffrage now prevails, but all through the States women hold a position of freedom, according to them- selves, and to the most prominent American Suffragists far in advance of any other race of women on earth. I do not doubt it, but what does it prove ? In the English newspapers of November 21, 191 1, there is the account of an interview with Mrs Leeds, a wealthy American lady, who is leaving the land of her birth for England — not because she is " an anglomaniac," as she says, but because she finds America unendurable. The men there are what women make them, she says, and she does not think much of them. And as for the women, her opinion of them is implied along with her prefer- ence for the Englishman over her own countrymen : 154 WOMAN ADRIFT " I confess I think all women like the masterful type which I find among Enghshmen. I sometimes think it is because American men lack this quality, and are too indulgent to their wives, that the latter tire of them and divorce them." If that be true — and I for one do not doubt it is — even the domestic freedom of women has its bad side. But although the American woman is not emancipated poHtically throughout all the States, no one will deny what they say themselves, that they are freer and more independent than the women of any other country. And nowhere — except in the fantastic administration of China — is public life more corrupt. Indeed, it is so corrupt that Mrs Oilman, the most prominent Suffragist of America, apparently believes that men want to keep political power to themselves because of the graft and boodle that it affords. We may therefore deduce from these contemporary instances, a better notion of whether the conception of a perfect symmetrical State is inseparable from the political and general freedom of women, than we can deduce it by pursuing the theorists into the mists beyond our ken. To end this chapter by recalling the question with which it opened, there is no clear indication, still less any certainty, that woman would bring to the service of the State any gifts that would justify granting her the vote as an act of grace, and outweigh those prime facts and considerations which forbid it to her as a right. There remains, I think, only one main question to consider, in clearing the ground for the final and supreme consideration which, apart from everything else and when all is said and done, governs the whole matter. That remaining question is : — Does the fact that political power is confined to men involve, in truth and reality and not rhetorically, any injustice to woman? And that question has two branches: (i) the laws affecting woman and their administration, and (2) the economic position of woman. And these two branches of the remaining question can next be considered in their order. CHAPTER XII. The Woman And The Law. THE GROUNDS OF DIVORCE — THE DUAL CODE OF MORALITY — EQUAL LAW — THE HEAD OF THE HOME — HUSBAND AND WIFE — WIFE PROTECTION AND MAINTENANCE — FATHER AND CHILDREN, CHAPTER XII. The Woman And The Law. Disregarding minor legal grievances which are cap- able of receiving, without fuss or excitement, the attention they may deserve (and which it is reasonable to suppose they will receive from a Parliament of men, for just the same reason that a Parliament of men has considered past grievances of women and remedied them by man-made laws) — disregarding these minor, disputable, and even imaginary grievances, there is one outstanding grievance which Suffragists say illustrates and proves the inveterate tendency of man to do in- justice in his laws to woman. That grievance is the different grounds for divorce allowed to husband and wife. The Grounds of Divorce. If a husband wishes to divorce his wife, the fact of her adultery is sufficient ground for his case. But before a wife can divorce her husband, she must prove that he has been cruel as well as unfa'thfu^ — though the difference is more apparent than real, because Ine courts give a wide interpretation to the term "cruelty." A husband, however, has me.ely to prove that his wife has been unfaith'"'jl, and the Suffragists say that this distinction is a survival of the Eastern notion of a wife's status, and illu.strates the injustice that man perpetrates aga'nst woman when the two interests com.e into conflict. In a robustcr age Dr Johnson p.;t into pla-n language the difference between the offence of infidelity in the husband and the wife, and the far-reaching differences between men and women very soon touch, naturally enough, this question. The potential injury to the »57 158 WOMAN ADRIFT wife of a husband's infidelity begins and ends with the wife herself, and is not comparable with the poten- tial injury of the wife's infidelity to the husband ; for superadded to the violation of the marriage vow, which we may take to be the same in both cases, is the stark fact that a man might work and lavish his affection upon children of whom his worst enemy might be the father — of whom, indeed, it may truly be said that his worst enemy must be the father. And a more poignant human wrong can hardly be con- ceived than that. And if we suppose that a husband does not remain in ignorance of the paternity of his wife's child, but forgives her (as has been done by men either of a nobly magnanimous nature or of a strange deficiency of sensibility) there still remains a large distinction between the two offences. For the presence of the alien child in his household, or even the knowledge of its existence outside (though unless he rebutted his paternity in a divorce suit he would still be responsible for its maintenance) is enough to perpetuate through- out his life his sense of the wrong done him. But a husband's infidelity cannot, in the nature of things, perpetrate the same wrong upon the wife. In the one case, the child may be born and reared in his very home, and in the other the wife's sense of injury could hardly come home to her with the same acuteness if she knew that a child of her husband's existed else- where. A celebrated novelist who died some ten years ago lived on terms of the greatest affection with his wife although, to her knowledge and with her assent, he was the parent of children, denied to her, by a woman whom she treated with all respect and consider- ation — though it is not a menage that goes well with a monogamous system of marriage. But it would be almost beyond the imagination to consider a husband occupying that position of acquiescence towards his wife and the father of her children — a consideration that belongs to another set of differences between men and women, the psychological differences. And as THE WOMAN AND THE LAW 159 a matter of fact and experience, we know that ordinarily a wife does not feel it so difficult to forgive a husband for infidelity as a husband finds it to forgive a wife, and the very root meaning of the word adultery may be said to indicate a difference not only in degree but in kind. The Dual Code of Morality. And though those who seek to regard men and women as identical creatures will deny it, the reason why a husband finds it more difficult to forgive is a very simple one, considered psychologically and not physiologically. The difference may thus be expressed : If a wife is unfaithful to her husband a bigger revolu- tion takes place in her moral nature than may take place in the moral nature of the husband. That, too, may be denied, but it is nevertheless true. For before a woman — that is, a self-respecting woman — can be unfaithful to her husband, her husband must have been displaced entirely in her affections by another man. The same process, it is true, also accounts for the infidelity of some husbands. A husband may yield to a passion for another woman which is not an ignoble passion at all, though he may renounce his own un- lawful happiness because of his sense of the unfair- ness of forcing upon his wife the alternative of either separating from him, with all the cruelty that that would involve because of her economic dependence upon him, or of enduring an association which would otherwise become repugnant to her. But that is not the commonest kind of a husband's infidelity. A learned judge, and late President of the Divorce Division, in giving evidence before the Royal Commission on the Divorce Law in 191 1, spoke of the "accidental" adultery of a husband. Probably he was misreported, and said " incidental " — a word which better expresses the other kind of adultery of which the husband is most frequently guilty. It is an act of bodily unfaithfulness to his wife rather than of i6o WOMAN ADRIFT spiritual unfaithfulness, and though it has not any spiritual passion for its object to redeem or extenuate it, the fact is that it causes less unhappiness than an infidelity which goes deeper in his nature, for incidental adultery often begins and ends with the isolated incident itself The husband has not necessarily lost either his respect or affection for his wife, and though in such a case neither the respect nor the affection may be very deep, his infidelity on the other hand does not go so far as to endanger the home. But a wife does not abandon herself at all to that " incidental " degree of infidelity, unless she is really an abandoned woman, and a wanton. The view of dual morality implied by the last word outrages many people whose views properly command great respect. Nevertheless it is borne out by the experience of all those who know something of their fellow men and women. Those whom the view out- rages contend that the dual morality which social sanction allows to men and women is wrong, is unjust to the woman and too lenient to the man. It may be so, though before that were admitted it would be necessary to carry the question a little further than can be done here. But some indication of the problem to be resolved even in settling that point may be derived from considering how incidental are the functions of fatherhood in contrast with the sustained burden of maternity. Our monogamous system of marriage, in fact, imposes a restraint upon the man, viewed in the light of Nature's intentions, which it does not impose upon the woman. Or, to put the point succinctly, man is probably a polygamous being, and monogamous marriage keeps the birth-rate down. Equal Law. But it is not necessary to justify a different code of morality for the sexes, in order to prove that in any case, whether it be right to condone it or not, a wife does not commit " incidental " infidelity as a husband may, unless she has the nature of a wanton. But, THE WOMAN AND THE LAW i6i taking her as a normal self-respecting woman, the act of infidelity in her case spreads wider mischief, from the point of view of the marriage state, than in that of the man. It weakens in her her love for her children, and her regard for the home, to say nothing of her love for her husband. She is undoubtedly stronger to resist temptation than a man ; for either superior morality, as I believe, or merely the fear of the social standard of dual morality, as others seem to believe, does restrain her under temptations to which a man (who knows that so far as he is con- cerned, he is not putting wife, home and children in the melting pot), would succumb. But when she does succumb the fall is greater. She burns her boats, and husband, home, and even children become secondary to her infatuation or even to her sincere passion. And so the wife's infidelity differs from the husband's, in degree of effect, in two very important particulars • she does a potential injury to him which he cannot do to her, and she brings much nearer the crisis of a disruption in the home. And if we lived in times when questions were weighed and sifted with dis- passionate penetration, those two very important distinctions of degree between the infidelity of one and of the other might suffice to leave the law as it stands. But, as things are, it is very likely that the change will be made. The practical considerations, in any case, diminish the importance of the distinction. For if a woman desired to divorce her husband for a single act of infidelity, the assumption might be made that it was desirable, by the mere fact of her own desire, that the union should be dissolved. For either she would feel the wound too deeply to forgive him (a sentiment which in itself upholds the sanctity of the marriage state), or she would welcome the opportunity afforded her to end a union otherwise distasteful ; and as in either case there would be little guarantee of future happiness, the union might just as well be dissolved. And no doubt the law will be changed so as to allow i62 WOMAN ADRIFT of equal rights of divorce, on the ground that the real and simple nature of the offence is the breach of the marriage vow, and that breach should be sufficient to entitle either party to relief. I have gone rather fully into this matter mainly because it is the most out- standing example of "unequal laws" made by man against woman to which Suffragists point ; but also to show that even one who takes what is, from their standpoint, the extreme man's view, is prepared to see that inequality remedied. The Head of the Home. We can now consider how the law, as between husband and wife, stands generally. And I think it will be seen that unless the law of England is to deprive a husband and father of all authority and dignity, and reduce him to the position of inequality against which the Suffragists protest, it would be dif¥icult to imagine a code of laws that gave more protection to the wife consistent with the view that she had any obligations at all or he any rights whatever. He is the head of the home in common law — a not unnatural arrangement, seeing that he is responsible for it, from the responsibility of its upkeep down to the responsibility of paying the fine, if his wife or her servant sets the chimney on fire. Besides, the common law of England does not take the Feminist view of the unimportance of man. And even in a home somebody must have the last word — though it is certainly not the husband who always has it. And he is not only the head of the home, but he can decide where the home shall be — which again is not an un- natural arrangement, seeing that he generally provides the home, and also that the place of his occupation generally governs the place of his residence. And if a husband could not decide that elementary matter, then the wife would have to decide it, which would be an injustice against the husband just as much as it is now contended that "arbitrary power" is an injustice THE WOMAN AND THE LAW 163 to the wife. But there are even husbands who sacrifice their business and personal convenience to the resi- dential wishes of their wives, just as there are wives who will not allow their husbands to do any such thing. In other words, husband and wife generally behave like reasonable beings ; and in those cases where they do not, in such elementary and funda- mental matters as these, then the husband can only fall back upon his common law rights and decide for himself how far his own self-respect compels him to assert them. But when his power of final decision in such initial matters is held to be one of the tyrannies of the present marriage state, then we are obviously approaching a time when the cultivated animosities of human nature make marriage an im- possible state, at any rate for " impossible " people. Husband and Wife. But the husband's common law rights in other respects have been greatly modified by statute law ; and in considering the present state of the law as between husband and wife it will be best to contrast it with the law, as stated by Mill, when he was inspired to protest that a wife was the only legal slave left in England. There is first the advantage of com- pressing the subject into a small space ; and then the greater advantage furnished by the actual contrast. For it is not necessary here to consider exhaustively whether the law as it affects women, any more than as it affects men, is capable of improvement. We are only called upon to consider whether the law as affecting women is biassed against them by the fact that it is man-made. Mill not only said it was, but that no alteration was to be looked for until women had the vote. And so we may limit ourselves to considering the legal grievances which supplied him with the material for his main argument, and then show that those grievances have been remedied by legislature and justiciary without women having the vote. i64 WOMAN ADRIFT " Meanwhile the wife is the actual bond-servant of her husband ; no less so, so far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called." So Mill wrote in 1869. In 1912 a husband can compel his wife to do nothing except to cohabit with him. But he can only compel her to do that negatively ; that is, by being no longer responsible for her maintenance if she declines to cohabit with him without just cause ; for if she declined to cohabit with him for good and sufficient cause, she would be able to pledge his credit for her maintenance. But she is now no more his bond-servant than he is hers — in actual practice, often not so much. He cannot compel her to do even her " domestic duties." If she wishes to take Miss Cicely Hamilton's exalted advice, and " shirk them," she may, without forfeiting anything more serious and valuable than her husband's respect. Many wives, indeed, contrive to shirk them without forfeiting even that. " She can acquire no property but for him ; the instant it becomes hers, even by inheritance, it becomes ipso facto his." So wrote Mill in 1869. In 1870 was passed the first of those Married Women's Property Acts which now allow a wife to own anything and everything she may honestly acquire, to her own absolute and exclusive use, just as though she had no husband, and were herself merely a man. .'\nd even when Mill wrote he did not make sufficient allowance for that extremely important principle of " separate use," which was invented and acted upon by the courts of equity before the legislature put the principle into statute law — a principle which invaded very successfully indeed the husband's rights over his wife's property at common law. But now he has absolutely no rights whatever — what is hers is her own, and what is his is hers to the extent of her proper maintenance. Wife Protection and Maintenance. ** No amount of ill-usage, without adultery super- THE WOMAN AND THE LAW 165 added, will in England free a wife from her tormentor." So wrote Mill in 1869. In 1912 she can free herself from her tormentor if she merely does not like the sound of his voice or objects to him smoking pipes. That is to say, she can leave her husband whenever she chooses and for whatever she chooses, with good reason or for no reason whatever, and Regina v. Jackson (1891) settled that he possesses no power to force her back to him. The only thing she cannot impose upon him under such conditions is that he should maintain her for the rest of his life exactly as though she were a loving wife who had not left home, for no husband is compelled to support a wife who refuses to cohabit with him without just cause. And as to " ill-usage," she has the remedy of a judicial separation (equivalent to the divorce a jnensd et thoro of the old spiritual courts), if (i) he has been convicted of an aggravated assault upon her, or (2) if he has been guilty of persistent cruelty to her. (Summary Juris- diction Act, 1895.) She can also obtain her order under the same Act if her husband is an habitual drunkard, and seven years later, remembering the man's side to such a case, the legislature gave the same right to the husband (under the Licensing Act of 1902). And she can also obtain her judicial separation if he " has been guilty of wilful neglect to provide reasonable maintenance for her, or for her infant children, whom he is legally bound to maintain, inclu ling illegitimate children of the wife born before marriage^ (Macqueen, page 222.) Moreover, the court of summary jurisdiction may not only grant her the separation, but the custody of the children ; and, further, a payment for maintenance up to £2 a week, in default of paying which the husband may be comniltted to prison. And it has been held that the courts of summary jurisdiction, in assessing the amount that a husband may be ordered to pay for the support of his wife, should be guided by the practice by which alimony is granted in ease of judicial separation by the High Court. Consequently, where there are no children 166 WOMAN ADRIFT of the marriage, or where there are children and the wife has not to support them, " she should be allotted one third of her husband's net income." It is needless to say that if a husband secures a judicial separation from his wife, she is under no obligation to work to support him. Nor has she any liability to support his and her children unless and until the husband cannot do so ; but the husband is obliged to support, in a separation under this Act, not only his own children, but any children she may have by a former marriage that he would have to support if they were his own, to say nothing of any illegitimate child under sixteen years of age that his wife may have had before marriage. The fact that a husband has to support children of his own by a former marriage makes no difference to the alimony allotted by the court to his wife. If a husband deserts his wife he is deemed " an idle and disorderly person," and is punishable by imprison- ment with hard labour. No wife has any obligation to maintain her husband unless he becomes chargeable to the parish ; and only then is she liable to the parish authorities for the cost of his maintenance ; but even so it is only her separate estate against which the liability is charged, and not herself: — "In consequence of the impersonal character of the only judgment obtainable against a married woman — that is, against her separate estate, and not against her person — an attachment of her person is impossible." (Macqueen.) A man is liable for the debts of the woman with whom he cohabits if he allows it to be thought she is his wife, and she can pledge his credit as a wife can for necessaries ; and necessaries are held to be the means of living in accordance with the husband's position, and also to include the wife's costs in any matrimonial action she brings against him ; and even if a man divorces a guilty wife he must pay the costs properly incurred by her for her defence. A person who has advanced money to a deserted wife for necessaries can recover from her husband ; and if a wife separates from THE WOMAN AND THE LAW 167 a husband for any cause that leaves him liable for her maintenance, " the common practice of advertising in the newspapers ' that he will not be responsible for any debts she may contract,' is of no efficiency." A widow acts as administratrix of her husband's estate if he dies intestate, and takes one third of his estate if there are children, and one half if there are none. A husband is not bound to bequeath any of his property to his widow, and no wife with a separate estate is bound to leave any of it to him. Finally, when the husband dies, his next-of-kin are responsible for his burial, but a husband is bound to provide for his wife's burial, and is liable to any stranger who has paid the expenses of her funeral, " the same having been suitable to the rank and fortune of her husband." Father and Children. " They are by law his children," wrote Mill, in 1869. " He alone has any legal right over them." In nothing is the law more tenacious of common law rights than in the way it upholds the authority of the father over his children, but even that " sacred right " has been modified by legislation, and the courts constantly deprive fathers of the custody of their children. " The right of the father to the custody and control of his children is one of the most sacred of rights. No doubt the law may take from him this right, or may interfere with his exercise of it, just as it may take away his life or his property or his liberty, but it must be for some sufficient cause known to the law." (Lord Justice James, in re Agar Ellis, 1878.) And four years only after Mill wrote, an Act was passed dealing with the custody of children, the object of which was that " a wife might be at liberty to assert her rights as a wife without the risk of any injury being done to her feelings as a mother " — that is to say, she could bring a bad husband to book and not only still have access to her children, but obtain the custody of them. The Summary Jurisdiction Act also gives this comfort and power to the wife, if she be a successful applicant i68 WOMAN ADRIFT for a separation. " Even after he is dead," wrote Mill, 'she is not their legal guardian, unless he by will has made her so." That was not true, for when he wrote it had b decided more than a century before (Roach V. Garvan) that in the absence of any testamentary guardian appointed by the father, the mother, on his death, became the guardian " by nature and nurture " — and a very natural state of affairs, too. But no provision seems to exist enabling a mother to show cause why the testamentary guardian appointed by her husband should not be appointed, but the custody of the children left to her. Short of that solitary fact (though he did not specifically call attention to it as an omission) the whole indictment of Mill now falls completely to the ground. And if so much has been done by man-made laws to protect the interests of women, without their having the vote, in all reason we may suppose that the same motive will still con- tinue to influence the legislature and judiciary of men. Of those laws lying outside the relations of husband and wife, which give specific protection to women as against men, there is no need to speak. They simply attest the root difference between the sexes, protecting the female against those wrongful acts of the male which she, in her turn, cannot commit against him, and which therefore exhibit the unilateral arrangement of Nature — exhibit, that is to say, the contrast between the activity and initiative of the male and the passivity and receptivity of the female. Man can take no credit for those man-made laws, however, except in so far as they show him to be a just being, wishful to do his best to redress by his own system of laws the unequal balance of the laws of Nature. B"t those who com- prehensively deny the significance of any difference between men and women might pay some little attention to the extent to which those laws of Nature go, tor they may even be said to symbolise the relations between men and women. Enough has now been said to show that woman does not need the vote to protect her interests against the THE WOMAN AND THE LAW 169 tyranny of man's laws, seeing that the code of man- made laws as a London Stipendiary magistrate (Mr Paul Taylor) said recently, " are all in favour of the wife." But it is not only the law we have to consider. Its administration affords as good an index of his sense of justice. For instance, in law there is an equal right on the part of men and women to sue each other for breach of promise of marriage. But, as we know, that law is interpreted quite differently by judge and jury when man is the suitor than when a woman is the plaintiff. He gets nothing but ridicule and derision. She gets the sympathy of the jury and the damages. But as the question of man's administration of the law really belongs to the department of what may be comprehensively called " chivalry " — we will let it take its place in a chapter devoted to that interesting aspect of man's relation to woman. CHAPTER XIII. Chivalry And Martyrdom. JUSTICE AND CHIVALRY— " THE WEAKER VESSEL" — PUNISHMENT OF WOMAN. AND MAN — MAN'S DEFER- ENCE TO WOMAN— THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITANCY- ELECTIONEERING VALUE OF MARTYRDOM— CHIVALRY AND CONTROVERSY. CHAPTER XIII. Chivalry And Martyrdom. In one of these strange street disturbances which this movement has engendered — or rather, one may almost say, which have engendered the movement as it exists to-day — two workmen stood on the edge of a crowd watching a cordon of police patiently striving to save some violent women from damaging either party to the melee — themselves, the active attackers, and the passive resisters drawn up in a line near a certain official residence. One of the workmen — whose trade was carried on his back, for he was a sandwich man — muttered rather to himself than for general consumption the sentiment: " 'Eroes ! 'Eroes ! That's what I calls women like that ! " And he went on sucking his grimy clay. " 'Eroes ! " said the man next to him, " 'Eroes you call 'em, do yer? You just try the same monkey-tricks, and see the sort o' bran mash they'd well make of you ! " Each of the speakers paid, though one more con- sciously and more sanely than the other, his tribute of chivalry to woman. And the women themselves, charging furiously at the harassed policemen, were really admitting, whether they knew it or not, that the policemen who bore insults and violence that would have pleasantly aroused their combative masculine instincts if men had been the offenders, were also exhibiting the chivalry of man towards woman. And the whole militant campaign, though it be the very insensate extreme of a movement based upon a denial of the justice of man to woman, is in itself a witness to the fact that man treats woman with chivalrous respect. It will be time to prove that grotesque irony 173 174 WOMAN ADRIFT true when we have first considered some examples of man's chivalry to woman in actual daily experience. And the first place to look for them is in man's behaviour to woman in his public capacity. For, after all, the chivalrous respect that a man pays to woman in social and private life, or even the fact that he did not pay it at all, has nothing to do whatever with the Suffragists' case. If it were proved that so far as man in the State were concerned he was not unfair to woman, but erred on her side rather than against her ; if the case for his public behaviour could be set no higher than that ; and if in his social and private behaviour to woman he gave her no more chivalrous consideration than, say, the mistress of a household ordinarily gives to her domestic servant, the Suffragist case that man is unjust to woman would still be defeated. She has, on her own showing, no right to ask for any respectful consideration whatever from man to her because she is a woman. She is his equal, his rival, a struggle-for-lifer like himself. In- deed, not only must she not complain if man treated her with no more respect than bare good manners, " from one gentleman to another," as they say in Clapham ; but she would be cutting the ground from underneath her own position if she accepted more from him. And, to do Suffragists justice, some of them are carrying out their creed to its logical conclusion, if I may judge from the somewhat ill-mannered " No thank you ! " that is occasionally snapped out when one offers the commonplace courtesy of one's seat in a train. And the logical Feminist has the courage (a courage which even the Anti-suffragist may respect) to disdain and disown the illogical Suffragist's attitude in complaining that woman does not get that chivalry which it is the very essence of her creed to say is the sign and symbol of woman's " subjection." But, at any rate, I am under no obligation whatever to prove that men behave with any chivalrous respect to women in private and social life. All that it is necessary to show to rebut the Suffragist position, is CHIVALRY AND MARTYRDOM i75 that in those public affairs within the control of men they do no injustice to woman but give her a bare preferential consideration. Justice and Chivalry. Well, there is no place like the courts of justice for discovering how things stand in this matter. And there the evidence is overwhelming that women are treated not only with a bare preferential consideration, but with a leniency and indulgence that man does not mete out to his own sex — indeed, if he carried leniency and indulgence so far for his own sex, he would think he was defeating the very ends of justice. If you ask me to adduce the evidence that man so treats woman, where am I to begin and where am I to end ? How, indeed, can one give evidence at all of a fact so notorious, so naturally received, so much the expected thing, that one only realises it is the rule by some occasional breach that creates comment or stirs one's indignation ? I have attended criminal and civil courts during twenty years, and the actual instances of the judges' consideration for women have dropped from my memory only because they were too common to make any durable impression. The judges of the English High Court are, I suppose no one will deny, the most eminent administrators of the law in the world ; and I have seen them all in the judgment seat, except those appointed within the last few years. But even those who had a reputation for severity — " hanging judges " and " terrors " for certain classes of crime — always touched their judgment with some compassion, and loosened the strings of mercy, when they were dealing with any woman short of one whose crime was so revolting as to make men in- stinctively say, " Lucky thing for her she hasn't a judge and jury of women to deal with ! " And yet these same judges, dealing with men charged with crimes against women, were implacably and sometimes even cruelly severe. But, of course, it would almost be stooping to imbecility to try and prove by actual 176 WOMAN ADKIFT instances the truth of something so notorious as that, in the administration of the law, judges always import into justice some of that consideration for womanhood which still, we may be thankful, marks man's attitude to woman amongst every class and degree of English- man — systematic wife-beaters excepted, though they, thanks to the discouragement which they receive from summary jurisdiction, are a dwindling band, the last upholders of the tradition that man is a brute to woman, "The Weaker Vessel." But, to give some concrete instances of man's judicial attitude to woman, let me take first a case which came before the Courts long enough ago for one to be able to recall it now without recalling the case to the public memory. It was notable for the fact that the petitioner was a young woman who had, after a rash and impulsive adventure that ended in an unfortunate marriage, committed adultery ; and this guilt on her part, brought to the notice of the Court by the King's Proctor, barred her from the relief she had sought and obtained, unless the judge exercised the discretion which is left to him in such cases, and made the decree nisi absolute. It is a discretion sparingly exercised in exculpation, and in this case one can only say that it was exercised very generously indeed. But what the judge said is more important than what he did. I quote from the report in The Westminster Gazette on the day of his decision : "The petitioner was charged with misconduct, which she denied, but the jury had not believed her. He quite agreed with the jury, who could have come to no other conclusion. There- fore they had a case where the petitioner not only had been guilty of misconduct but, in her denial of misconduct, had com- mitted perjury. The question was, what had he to do with the matter under his powers of discretion? Some people, said his lordship, were foolish enough to think that a woman and a man should be treated the same. This Court never had done so, and he hoped never would hold that a woman was not the weaker vessel. Her constitution and habit of thought and feminine weakness might lead her to do things which might be excusable CHIVALRY AND MARTYRDOM i77 in her, although the same conduct might not be excusable in a man." And so the judge exercised his discretion in favour of the petitioner, reproving her for her perjury, but adding that it was always better for people to deal frankly with the Court, " for this Court is always ready to recognise the weakness of the sex in certain matters." Well, I am not concerned to say whether I agree with everything the judge said, or to enquire whether it is quite discreet for a judge of the Divorce Court to declare so uncompromisingly that woman is "the weaker vessel " in that particular department of human frailty over which he judicially presides. But could a better illustration be found of the treatment meted out to woman by man in his public and judicial capacity ? And could we have a better instance to prove that sex carries its differences even into the sphere of justice, than this recognition of woman's " constitution and habits of thought and feminine weakness ? " Could we also have a clearer proof that though men contend that woman's " constitution and habits of thought and feminine weakness" debar her from certain spheres and activities of life, they are nevertheless even pleaded by man himself, in her interest and for her benefit, when he sits in judgment upon her ? And only the day before that judgment was pro- nounced, a very different case came before the House of Lords and a very different treatment was meted out, again, to the man concerned than to the woman. It was a case into which there is no need to enter beyond saying that the prisoners were sister and brother, and that the House of Lords had to decide the unique case of whether it could restore a conviction that had been quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal. It was a case in which the equality of the guilt could not be question- ed, but in restoring the conviction, the House of Lords sentenced the man to three years' penal servitude and the woman to six months' imprisonment in the second division : a distinction in punishment infinitely greater 178 WOMAN ADRIFT than any possible difference in the offence could have been, short of such a difference as would have made the woman not the co-prisoner she was, but the com- plainant, which she was not. I think these two instances are quite sufficient to bring in support of a truth so notorious that it is in the very bone and fibre of commonplace experience — the truth that man, so far from denying justice to women, judicially and publicly, renders to her something that a sexless justice could not grant. Punishment of Woman and Man. But before we leave this part of the subject, let me try to bring it right down to date. And I cannot do that in a fairer or better way than to reach out my hand for the newspaper of the day on which I write, and see what that has to tell us, in the judicial reports, of the different treatment accorded by judges to men and women offenders. One case upon which my eye immediately lights is that of a woman charged with cruelly ill-treating her own son, a " weak-minded lad of thirteen." " A neigh- bour spoke to hearing the child screaming in the night and to finding him naked in the rain and covered with weals and bruises. She had never seen such marks on a child." The presiding magistrate "characterised the offence as shameful and inhuman. The defendant, he said, was a vile and vicious woman. A fine of £^ and costs was imposed, or a month's imprisonment." As there is no other case recorded in the paper in which the man's offence is on all fours with that, or anything like it, I cannot put it in parallel columns, but I very much doubt whether, if the father of the lad had been charged with the same offence and the same cruelty proved, he would have got off with anything like so inadequate a sentence. The other cases, however, are better put in parallel columns and left entirely to tell their own tale. CHIVALRY AND MARTYRDOM i79 MEN, At the Kent Assizes, at Maid- stone, George pleaded guilty to obtaining by fraud money from three resi- dents of Whitstable. He had deluded various women by marrying them bigamously, and obtaining money from them, and had been sentenced on two counts to three years' and five years' penal servitude. These offences were now re- called against hiin, and the prisoner was sentenced to four years' penal servitude in addi- tion to the two unexpired years of his previous sentence. WOMEN. At the Kent (the same) Assizes a young woman named pleaded guiliy to a charge of attempting to drown her two - year - old child. For the defence it was stated that the prisoner became engaged to a respectable man shortly before she committed the offence. The man was not the father of the child, but knew all about the prisoner's history. They decided not to marry until the case had been dealt with. The prisoner was bound over and discharged. At the Glamorgan Assizes Mr Justice Lawrence passed sen- tences ranging from three months' to twelve months' hard labour on the prisoners found guilty in connection with the strike riots in Rhondda Valley. Twenty-one prisoners were sentenced in all. Sen- tencing the ringleadeis, the judge said: " Somebody must have the courage to prevent this state of things going on, and each of you must be sent to prison for 12 months' hard labour." At Bow Street a second batch of "Suffragette" priso- ners were dealt with for the damage to property com- mitted bv them during their demonstration two days be- fore. The following traders were mentioned as having suffered damage : Grand Hotel Buildings, j^ioo ; Swan and Edgar, £,20 ; Hippell, chemist, ^35 ; Fendick and Co., tailors, ;^8o. Penalties varied from los to 40s, accord ing to the amount of damage done and the " record "against the defendants. " Mrs Pe- thick Lawrence, the leader of the demonstration," charged with assaulting a constable, was sentenced to a month's imprisonment in the second division (against which decision she appealed). ^ ' After the window-smashing raid, on a much larger scale, of March, 1912, the magistrates deemed it their duty to add hard labour to the sentences on the offenders. But the distinction made between the sexes in the administration of justice pursues us even in the Prison Regulations, for the schedule of hard labour for women prisoners is much less severe than that for male prisoners. i8o WOMAN ADRIFT Man's Deference to Woman, Now, I am not going to waste my time in proving that in social life men treat women, in the mass, with the same chivalrous sort of consideration as in the public sphere. Those who believe it is so will require no proof of a fact which their own daily experience attests, in the home, in the street, and wherever men and women meet. And the only people who deny it are those who say that they do not want any prefer- ential treatment from men, and whose whole case of " equality for the sexes " excludes it altogether. And yet even when they deny that men are chivalrous, a note of indignation creeps into their voices — so in- grained even in the breasts of those who repudiate chivalry is the recognition of it. A typical utterance is that of Mrs Zangwill : — " Men have never shown any chivalry to women, except perhaps to a few pretty women of the middle class." Well, sweeping mis- statements of that kind are really not worth pursuing. Every mother's son contradicts that one — for how else can be explained that tender deference which a son pays to his mother in contrast with the more assertive obedience which he pays to his father ? But the existence of chivalrous feeling towards women is not only denied, but the sentiment itself is even derided. And that I cannot understand, for even if it be a mistaken notion on man's part that he is chivalrous to women, it is difficult to see why the sentiment should be derided, though its practice were merely an illusion. But the odd thing — one of a thousand odd things in an amazing tangle of contradictions and absurdities — is that the Suffragists themselves admit the existence of a considerate attitude on the part of men for which there is no better or shorter name than chivalry. They admit it despite themselves. Just as Mill claimed on the one hand that women were the equals of men in intelligence when he wanted to prove their fitness for the franchise, but pictured them all as a brainless lot when he wanted to show the defects of their CHIVALRY AND MARTYRDOM i8r " narrow " education, so the Suffragists are constantly driven to admit that very chivalry which they deny and deride. Miss Cicely Hamilton, for instance, wish- ing to prove the fantastic doctrine that women acquire their bad manners in the home, and would acquire better manners if they went out into the world of com- merce, is driven to make the admission that men are considerate to women ; for the two choses vues she selects are that of ill-mannered women — one blocking a booking-office window and the other taking a large and unpleasant dog into a 'bus — testing the manners and patience of men in a way and to an extent that we may suppose would not have been the case if each had not been, as Miss Hamilton put it, " what is usually termed a lady." But if we want to discover the strongest admission of this chivalry in men, we shall discover it in that word-defying movement of militancy. It is difficult, perhaps, in a book dealing with this question of Votes for Women to avoid saying a good deal about the militant movement, as an auxiliary of propaganda. Nevertheless, one can do difficult things if one tries, and of the militant movement I will merely say that I have nothing to say beyond the statement that nothing I could say would have any real quantitative relation to what might be said. The militant movement stands by itself. One can only say of it that in this strange world strange things happen, and the militant move- ment is one of them. Marvelling and saddened, but admitting that it certainly has made the Suffrage a " live " question we can only pass on. ' Those who wish to know something of the militant move- ment from the inside may read Mrs Billington-Greig's book on that subject with the sub-title " Emancipation in a Hurry." Mrs Billington-Greig charges the leaders of that movement with betraying the cause ; and the decision announced in the middle of January 1912 to resume militant tactics against the Govern- ment unless it will itself press a Woman Suffrage Measure through the House enables us to understand Mrs Billington-Greig's point of view. For if Woman Suffrage ever had a chance of becoming law, it is in this Parliament, but if the Government were, or could be driven to the choice of taking up the responsibility or I i82 WOMAN ADRIFT The Psychology of Militancy. But of its relation to this question of chivalry it is possible to say something, for here the resources ot one's language are adequate, as nothing more is needed than to point out what is really obvious. And the obvious thing about the militant movement is that it is itself a wonderful tribute to man's chivalry towards woman. For the psychological process of its devotees is summed up entirely in the words and actions of the henpecking wife who, slapping her husband in the face, said, " There, you big bully ! Why don't you hit me back, you coward ! " The tactics of the movement, in short, are so to embarrass the guardians of law and order that they shall be faced with one of two dis- agreeable alternatives : — either to give up maintaining law and order, or to maintain it only by incurring the odium of treating women exactly as men would be treated under precisely the same circumstances. If any bigger acknowledgement could be made of man's treatment of woman than that, I should be very pleased to receive it. There is no need to prove the case. It can be gathered from the newspaper files. A prominent militant has, indeed, obligingly collected all the evidence that is necessary upon the point in a book going out of office, it would certainly go out of office, we should have a general election with Woman Suffrage as the prime issue, and votes for women would have to wait until there was a majority in Parliament specifically returned to carry it. There- fore, unless there is somethinjj profound in these tactics that the masculine mind cannot fathom, it looks rather as though the militants wished to postpone that achievement of their cause which would, by its very success, render the continuance of the organisations now existing to attain it unnecessary. A Govern- ment, by the way, returned to carry Woman Suffrage would have nothing else to do, for Mr Lloyd George and Mr Balfour would be colleagues. A Government returned to kill Woman Suflfrage could do nothing at all, for Mr Asquith and Mr M'Kenna and Mr Austin Chamberlain and Mr F. E. Smith would sit looking helplessly at Mr Balfour, Mr Bonar Law, Mr Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey. It is this consideration which makes the iproposal for a Referendum so eminently sane. CHIVALRY AND MARTYRDOM ^^3 in which the exploits of militancy are chronicled with pride. But taking only the very last ebullition of militancy up to the time of writing, two or three incidents of that window-smashing orgie may be extracted from the newspaper accounts of that even- ing's diversion, and I take them from one single newspaper. "To their credit it must be said that the police were thoroughly good humoured, 'Now, Mrs Pethick Lawrence,' they would say, as though remonstrating with her mildly, for all the trouble she was giving. Obviously the police were very loth to take her into custody, but at last the Inspector gave the word. 'We must take her in,' he said. — Daily Chronicle, Nov. 22, 191 1." That incident needs no comment — it straightfor- wardly proves the point. The next incident is slightly more complex, but the same truth emerges : " Thwarted by the mounted police in their attempt to break the line they seized the bridles of the horses and clung to them des- perately. I saw one officer trying in vain to unclasp the little hand that claspedhis horse's bit, and the crowd howled as he made his horse plunge so that the woman was in grave danger of injury. This perilous device was tried by several women, and as a result the operations of the police were much hampered. It was only the strength of a number of unmounted policemen who could release the bridles from the grip of those women's hands." The " howling crowd " did not apparently appreciate the difficult task of the police, nor grasp the fact that militancy is designed merely to thrust upon the police, as I have said, an odious alternative. But the crowd did howl at police who, if they had been dealing with the crowd, would have loosened the hands on their horses' bridles, not by trying to unclasp the hands, but by attacking the seat of the will that kept the hands there — that is, by cracking their heads. P'or policemen do not deal very gently with riotous men who lay hold of their horses' bridles. But even the " howling crowd " attested the chivalry of man towards woman. The next instance is also a straightforward proof of my contention : "One painful incident happened and aroused some feeling in the crowd. It wa« the arrest of Miss , one of the most WOMAN ADRIFT notable figures in the Suffrage movement. She is a cripple, and in all the raids has been familiar in her hand-driven cycle chair. She wheeled this indomitably against the lines of the police until their patience was exhausted, and, lifted bodily up by two in- spectors and seven constables, she was carried into Cannon Row Police Station." Now, I suppose I need not strive to prove to any intelligence that the crippled militant was there not because of her militant capacity, but because of her crippled incapacity. She was there, in short, not to awe or overpower the police, but merely to enhance the odium of the alternative I have spoken of. She was brought into the firing line, we may almost say, in the hope that she would be hurt, but certainly with the intention to represent the police as ruffians if they even accidentally hurt her. The plan, however, appar- ently provides for no such compromise as that which the police adopted, in merely detaching a number of their body, as another account says, " to take her out of harm's way." ' Of course, I have been pointing out and proving the ' The perfect reduciio ad absurdum of this matter has been accomplished by Mr F. T. Jane, the well-known writer on military topics. A proposal was made by several ladies that the work of national defence should be served by raising a few regiments of women to shame the men. It was pointed out that with a modern rifle a woman might do very good shooting, and war was imagined as a sort of picnic in which ladies could be motored to the scene of action, find a marquee erected for lunch, and the enemy waiting obligingly until lunch was over. No idea that war is unlike a shooting-party marked the suggestion. Mr Jane then seriously comments : " Any expeditionary force we might employ would be heavily depleted by the necessity of a home garrison left to deal with possible rioters. Here .the women regiments would be useful. Even the worst of hooligans would hesitate at organised bottle-throwing at women ; or, if any such throwing took place, public opinion would take a stronger view than it has done when male soldiers and policemen were the target . . . and the most virulent of M.P.'s would hardly dare to justify attacks upon women seeking to preserve law and order." — The Standard, Oct. 6, 191 1. Mr Jane adds: "Thus the whole vexed question of Votes for Women would be auto- matically solved." Tiie subtlety of no opponent is so deadly as this charming ingenuousness of Mr Jane. CHIVALBY AND MARTYRDOM 185 glaringly obvious thing in showing that not only is Suffragist militancy a recognition of the preferential treatment that man accords to woman, but that its very object is to take advantage of it, although the " equality of the sexes " creed actually relieves man of this obligation ; whilst if that obligation be modified or abrogated, under stress of the very circumstances that are intended to provoke its abrogation, he is held up to opprobrium for brutal behaviour to women. And so the involutions of topsy-turvydom go on until it requires a real effort of the mind to pursue Absurdity through the mazes of Heaven-knows-what« to-call-it. But unfortunately so many people fail to see the obvious — witness the crowds who howled — that now- adays the task of anybody taking part in public affairs is not to be profound and to think deeply so much as to think clearly and speak plainly. It is, in fact, rather in the correction of fundamental error than in the pursuit of ultimate truth that the energies of the mind are taxed in these democratic days. And that is why some special words must be devoted to that active phase of militancy which, in its passive aspect, was known as " forcible feeding." For I have known otherwise intelligent people who did not spare their intelligence in general condemnation of militancy surrender their intelligence altogether upon the ques- tion of the "forcible feeding" of women prisoners. Though, on the other hand, I have heard of instances of sympathisers whose sympathy for the cause has been weakened by that phase of militancy, for as parents of theirs, as surgeons in his Majesty's prisons, had been forcibly feeding male prisoners, at every meal-time, for their varying periods of incarceration, they knew that forcible feeding was the only way " officiously to keep alive " obdurate male prisoners. But "forcible feeding" was, of course, another expedi- ent to force the same dilemma upon the authorities. The unexpressed formula was : " Either you shall let a woman break the prison regulations and come out i86 WOMAN ADRIFT )f prison ill and thin, or you shall odiously feed her 'brcibly." And I need hardly say that such a formula implied by male prisoners would not have availed them in the slightest degree or have secured anybody's sym- pathy. Those who have seen male prisoners fed forcibly know what a very unpleasant business it is, even for the prison surgeons ; and they feel, I am sure, that it adds quite unnecessarily to their duties. But there is an obligation upon them not to allow prisoners in their medical charge to injure their health, and so they feed prisoners forcibly with just the same humane motive as they would sew up the wound if a prisoner cut his throat with a dinner tin. And that is the long and the short and the top and the bottom of the forcible feeding adjunct of militancy exhibited by Suffragist prisoners, most of whom, moreover, have gone to prison because they refused (another phase and stage of martyrdom) to take advantage of that option which has not been given to male prisoners who have allied themselves to the cause and com- mitted the same class of offences. And this rationa' view of the matter in no way precludes sympathy ana even admiration for any women in whom the motive of the propagandist value of " martyrdom " was un- conscious or actually subordinated to one of " protest." Electioneering Value of Martyrdom. But, of course, the aspect of a thing depends on how you look at it, and the best way of looking at anything is to look at it sanely. The militants, of course, presented that phase distorted, and they hoped that there was not enough clear vision in the public mind to correct the distortion. For we cannot suppose that the militants themselves were under any illusion as to the rationality of the matter — though that is the beginning of another dreadful maze into which I have neither time nor inclination to grope my way, and I am quite willing to make allowances to one side if allowances be also made to the other. CHIVALRY AND MARTYRDOM i«7 But a little exhibit I once saw in a Suffrage committee room window forcibly suggests that even forcible feeding was an inspiration meant to serve the purposes of propa- ganda rather than a martyrdom self - imposed and enjoyed for its own sake. A bye-election was taking place in Bermondsey, and in the murk and drizzle of a winter night the Suffragist committee rooms made a welcome little patch of light. Having no violent prejudices I sought, with a companion, the shelter of the shop front. But in the window, fascinating a little crowd of urchins, was a realistic and beautifully executed little waxwork exhibit, that seemed to have come from some diminutive Chamber of Horrors in a Lilliputian Madame Tussaud's. It was a group — a group of prison doctors, warders and wardresses, and they were gathered round the figure of a woman prisoner, held down in a chair. There were tiny indiarubber pipes, tiny tin bowls, and all the mechanism and paraphernalia of the operation represented — which was, of course, the operation of forcible feeding. It was, as I say, a beautifully executed example of the wax - modeller's art ; and its cheap realism — in a double sense — awed and delighted the urchins of Bermondsey enormously. But I was thinking of its effects upon the adult mind — of the effect intended and of how difficult a thing it is to chase those electoral mendacities that are implied and not stated, and thinking of the meanness of such methods of con- troversy, when a member of the committee came to the door. She noticed with interest two fairly intelligent looking men gazing at the piece de conviction, and my companion felt it was really necessary, for the self - respect of his sex, that she should be under no illusion as to what we thought about it all. So, with one eye on the exhibit, and the other on the committee-woman, he exclaimed, "Barbarous! I call it simply barbarous ! Can such things be allowed in a Christian country ! " And then, address- ing the committee-woman, he asked her, " But why on earth won't they let her take it in the ordinary way ? " 1 88 WOMAN ADRIFT Thi propaganda had apparently not provided an answer for the unanswerable, and the committee- woman wisely did not attempt the impossible. The question, I daresay, was not necessary to enlighten her mind — it merely enlightened her as to the intelligence of other minds, and as to the futility of such perverted martyrdoms and upside-down methods of controversy. Yet none who condemned militancy, and yet made a reservation concerning man's cruelty in regard to forcible feeding, can ever have troubled to put that simple intelligent question to themselves in terms so fatal to the electioneering imposture. Well, if women are coming out into the rough and tumble of politic^ they will, at any rate, be able to keep up what I fear i« the traditional reputation that politics have acquired for cultivating the deceitful arts of mankind. Nay, so far from purifying politics, they may even beat men at their own game. Chivalry and Controversy. But they will not be allowed to have it all their own way even then. Chivalry will indeed have to fly out of the window when political woman comes in at the door. But now, even in this controversy, we " make allowances " — and Heaven knows they are needed ! For it seems to be a difficult thing for the Suffragist case to be presented courteously, to say nothing of it being presented rationally. If 1 may give an example from my own experience, it is merely because it is typical of the arrogance with which men, fighting for womanhood more than for their own sex, and for humanity more than either, are treated by women Suffragists in this controversy. In the Westminster Gazette some two or three years ago I wrote an article, entitled " Man, Woman and Nature." It was a very gentle and reasonable contribution, unprovocative of anything except the thought required to answer it. And the most controversial speculation it contained was this : that the tendency of woman's enlargement of her sphere must necessarily be towards identification CHIVALRY AND MARTYRDOM 189 with man's habit's, duties and pursuits in innumerable ways, which might in turn involve a modification of the temperamental and other sex distinctions, tending towards sex convergence instead of that sexual divergence which Nature requires for the best reproduc- tion of the race. It was not a vicious, stupid, malevolent or anything but, I hope, an intelligent speculation — as, indeed, biologists who have since entered into the controversy have proved by making, with more authority, the same point. But it did not save me from letters abusing the male intelligence in general, and my own in particular ; and a male correspondent unwisely sought to correct me in the columns of the Wesintinster Gazette. But his measure was easily taken, for he was such a careless contro- versialist that he based his argument upon figures taken from the census, which were perfectly correct, except that they applied to men and not to women ; as may be seen from the fact that he stated that 83 per cent of the women of Great Britain, which is just the figure for men, were industrial wage-earners ! I answered him adequately, and he disappeared from the scene. But into the correspondence then rushed Lady to support him. And after saying that she " did not happen to see " the article which was the origin of the whole matter, she proceeded to say : " I unhesitatingly affirm that the standpoint of those who ' oppose Woman Suffrage in old England ' does not appear to those who are working" for the Suffrage in this country as at all ' elevated ' or entitled from any point of view, except perhaps their own, to the smallest respect!^' Now, if a male controversialist, having admitted that he had never read my views, had " un- hesitatingly affirmed " that they were not entitled to the smallest respect, I should have known what to say to him. But in the case of Lady I naturally held my pen. Well, that may be thought by some a small point to make. I do not think so, but if it be small in itself, it has to do with