M. Émile Faguet, that most radical and least sentimental of French feminists, would have opened wide to women every door of which man holds the key. He would have given them every legal right and burden which they are physically fitted to enjoy and to bear. He was as unvexed by doubts as he was uncheered by illusions. He had no more fear of the downfall of existing institutions than he had hope for the regeneration of the world. The equality of men and women, as he saw it, lay, not in their strength, but in their weakness; not in their intelligence, but in their stupidity; not in their virtues, but in their perversity. Yet there was no taint of pessimism in his rational refusal to be deceived. No man saw more clearly, or recognized more justly, the art with which his countrywomen have cemented and upheld a social state at once flexible and orderly, enjoyable and inspiriting. That they have been the allies, and not the rulers, of men in building this fine fabric of civilization was also plain to his mind. Allies and equals he held them, but nothing more. “La femme est parfaitement l’égale de l’homme, mais elle n’est que son égale.”
Naturally to such a man the attitude of Americans toward women was as unsympathetic as was the attitude of Dahomeyans. He did not condemn it (possibly he did not condemn the Dahomeyans, seeing that the civic and social ideals of France and Dahomey are in no wise comparable); but he explained with careful emphasis that the French woman, unlike her American sister, is not, and does not desire to be, “un objet sacro-saint.” The reverence for women in the United States he assumed to be a national trait, a sort of national institution among a proud and patriotic people. “L’idolâtrie de la femme est une chose américaine par excellence.”
The superlative complacency of American women is due largely to the oratorical adulation of American men,—an adulation that has no more substance than has the foam on beer. I have heard a candidate for office tell his female audience that men are weak and women are strong, that men are foolish and women are wise, that men are shallow and women are deep, that men are submissive tools whom women, the leaders of the race, must instruct to vote for him. He did not believe a word that he said, and his hearers did not believe that he believed it; yet the grossness of his flattery kept pace with the hypocrisy of his self-depreciation. The few men present wore an attitude of dejection, not unlike that of the little boy in “Punch” who has been told that he is made of
“Snips and snails,
And puppy dogs’ tails,”
and can “hardly believe it.”
What Mr. Roosevelt called the “lunatic fringe” of every movement is painfully obtrusive in the great and noble movement which seeks fair play for women. The “full habit of speech” is never more regrettable than when the cause is so good that it needs but temperate championing. “Without the aid of women, England could not carry on this war,” said Mr. Asquith in the second year of the great struggle,—an obvious statement, no doubt, but simple, truthful, and worthy to be spoken. Why should the “New Republic,” in an article bearing the singularly ill-mannered title, “Thank You For Nothing!” have heaped scorn upon these words? Why should its writer have made the angry assertion that the British Empire had been “deprived of two generations of women’s leadership,” because only a world’s war could drill a new idea into a statesman’s head? The war has drilled a great many new ideas into all our heads. Absence of brain matter could alone have prevented this infusion. But “leadership” is a large word. It is not what men are asking, and it is not what women are offering, even at this stage of the game. Partnership is as far as obligation on the one side and ambition on the other are prepared to go; and a clear understanding of this truth has accomplished great results.
Therefore, when we are told that the women of to-day are “giving their vitality to an anæmic world,” we wonder if the speaker has read a newspaper for the past half-dozen years. The passionate cruelty and the passionate heroism of men have soaked the earth with blood. Never, since it came from its Maker’s hands, has it seen such shame and glory. There may be some who still believe that this blood would not have been spilled had women shared in the citizenship of nations; but the arguments they advance in support of an undemonstrable theory show a soothing ignorance of events.
“War will pass,” says Olive Schreiner, “when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to the female an equal share in the control and government of modern national life.” And why? Because “Arbitration and compensation will naturally occur to her as cheaper and simpler methods of bridging the gaps in national relationship.”
Strange that this idea never “naturally” occurred to man! Strange that no delegate to The Hague should have perceived so straight a path to peace! Strange that when Germany struck her long-planned, well-prepared blow, this cheap and simple measure failed to stay her hand! War will pass when injustice passes. Never before, unless hope leaves the world.