Here we enter the realms of pure conjecture,—realms in which everything can be asserted and denied, nothing proved or disproved. It may be that when women become voters, legislators, and officeholders, they will do the better work for this profound and touching belief in their own perfectibility. Or it may be that a perilous self-confidence will—until corrected by experience—lead them astray. These speculations would be of small concern, were it not that the claim to moral superiority, which women advance without a blush, disposes many of them to ignore the hard conditions under which men struggle, and fail, and struggle again. It narrows their outlook, confuses their judgment, and cheapens their point of view.
When a prominent American feminist said smartly that war is the hysteria of men, she betrayed that lamentable lack of perspective which ignorance can only partly excuse. The heartless shallowness of such a speech commended it to many hearers; but of all generalizations it is the least legitimate. There was as little hysteria in the well-ordered, deeply laid plans of Germany as there was in the heroic defence of France and Belgium, or in the slow awakening of England, who took a deal of rousing from her sleep. “Most women,” says Mr. Martin Chaloner, “regard politics as a kind of foolishness that men play at.” But the campaign in Belgium is not to be classed as “foolishness” or “hysteria.” The attack was a crime past all forgiveness; the defence was one of flawless valour. If it be hysterical to prize home and country more than life, then we must re-write that temperate old axiom which has swayed men’s souls for centuries: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, an English-woman and an advanced feminist, has devoted many busy months to persuading American women that the incapacity of men to rule the world is abundantly proven by the present state of Europe, and that the downfall of all that civilization has held dear is due to their arrogant rejection of feminine advice. Women, she asserts, are the “natural custodians of the human race”; they have for years “sought to find entrance into the councils of the human commonwealth, in order that they might there represent the supreme issue of race-preservation and development”; now at last their hands must be free “to build up a surer and safer structure of humanity.”
“To-day it is for men to stand down, and for the women whom they have belittled to take the seat of judgment. No picture, however overdrawn, of woman’s ignorance, error, or folly could exceed in fantastic yet tragic horror the spectacle which male governments are furnishing history to-day. The foundation of the structure of civilization which they have erected in Europe has proved rotten. The edifice, seemingly so secure, has collapsed. The failure of male statecraft in Europe is complete.”
This is a bitter indictment, and one not to be lightly disregarded. But its terms are too general to support an argument. What could the women of Belgium and the women of France have done to save their countries from invasion? When we are told that “the woman-movement and war cannot flourish together,” and that we should never have witnessed this “campaign of race-suicide,” had women been justly represented, we have no answer to make, because a denial would be as hypothetical as is the assertion. But when Mrs. Lawrence ventures to call the war “a great dog-fight,” caused by an “obsession of materialism,” we recognize a smallness of vision and coarseness of speech incompatible with clear thinking, or with that distinction of mind which commands attention and respect. If this militant pacifist sees in the conduct of England and in the conduct of France only the greed of two dogs, squabbling with Germany over a bone, which apparently belongs to none of them, we can but hope she is not expressing the views, or illustrating the knowledge of her countrywomen.
Great events, however lamentable, must be looked at greatly. There is much to be commended in the peace platform endorsed by the suffragists in Washington, January, 1915. There is everything to be hoped for in the sane and just settlement of national disputes by an international tribunal, which might advantageously include women representatives. The decisions of such a tribunal must, however, be supported by something stronger than sentiment, which has proved singularly inefficacious in the past. It is well that men and women should work hand in hand for peace and for prosperity; but it is not well that women should invite themselves to “take the seat of judgment”; or that they should be complacently sure that their arguments would have prevailed, when similar arguments, advanced by men, have been unheeded.
What, after all, is the line of reasoning which Mrs. Lawrence sincerely believes would have swayed the councils of the nations? After assuring us that “the woman’s movement is spiritual and religious, founded on the belief that human life is sacred,” she continues: “As mothers, women would have impressed upon men the cost of human replenishment; as chancellors of the family exchequer, their influence would have been felt in forcing legislatures to recognize the direct relation between the plenteousness of the food-supply, endangered and restricted by war, and the health and growth of the rising generation.”
If this is not “an obsession of materialism,” where shall we look for such a quality? The world has not waited until now to learn the cost of war. It was one of the stock arguments urged upon every conference at The Hague. It was one of the indubitable facts upon which we all relied to keep the nations at peace. And it has failed us, as materialism always does fail us in every great national crisis. Germany knows the cost of war, but she is out for conquest, and the spoils of conquest. She recalls with pleasure the two hundred million pounds extorted from France in 1871, she hopes this time to “bleed her white” (Bismarck’s cruel phrase is a compendium of Prussian policy), she dangles before German eyes the promise of indemnities which will make good all losses, and she enjoys a foretaste of bliss by levying ruinous fines upon French and Flemish towns which have tasted the utmost bitterness of defeat. France knows the cost of war, and is ill prepared to pay it; but her alternative is yielding her soil, and all she holds sacred and dear, to a ruthless invader. Even a nation of Quakers, or, we hope, a nation with women in “the seat of judgment,” would reject submission on such terms. England knows the cost of war, but she also knows the cost of German supremacy. She is at last aware that her national life is at stake. She must fight to preserve it, or sink into insignificance,—her glorious past as much a thing of memory as is the past of Rome.
For all these reasons the nations are spending their money on armaments, and spilling their blood on the battlefield. The sacredness of life is being violated; but is it life, or is it the moral worth of life, which we hold sacred? Life is a thing given us for a few years. Its only value lies in the use we make of it. Lose it we must, and very soon. But honour and duty are for all time. Why do we see a “soldiers’ monument” in nearly every town of every state which fought for the Union? Not because these men lived, but because they died. What must it have cost Mr. Lincoln, whose heart was big enough for much suffering, to order from an exhausted country the last draft of half a million men! And why does an ingenious writer, like Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson, cudgel his brain to find abstract causes for war? The concrete causes which have come within the personal experiences of most of us will answer our rational questionings.
If it were possible that the women of all nations could ever be brought to think and feel alike,—a miracle of unity never vouchsafed to men,—then they might run the world harmoniously. If, for example, a Frau Professor Treitschke, a Frau General von Bernhardi, and the more august spouse of the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg had succeeded in talking down their martial husbands, and persuading Germany that her duty was to breed in peace within her own frontier, then a Madame Poincaré, a Madame Joffre, a Mrs. Asquith, a Lady Kitchener would have had no difficulty in holding back France and England from war. If the Kaiserin were an autocratic “peace-lady,” ruling her “war-lord” into submission, then the Queen of England and the Queen of Belgium might be drinking tea with her to-day. But unless the good Teuton women had kept their men at home, how could the good French and Belgian women have warded off attack? And would the good British women have said, “We are safe for a little while. Let us stand cringing by, and see injustice done”?