MITCHENER. I did not utter a sound.
LADY CORINTHIA (smiling). It is easy to read your thoughts. I am one of those women who are accustomed to rule the world through men. Man is ruled by beauty, by charm. The men who are not have no influence. The Salic Law, which forbade women to occupy a throne, is founded on the fact that when a woman is on the throne the country is ruled by men, and therefore ruled badly; whereas when a man is on the throne, the country is ruled by women, and therefore ruled well. The suffragets would degrade women from being rulers to being voters, mere politicians, the drudges of the caucus and the polling booth. We should lose our influence completely under such a state of affairs. The New Zealand women have the vote. What is the result? No poet ever makes a New Zealand woman his heroine. One might as well be romantic about New Zealand mutton. Look at the suffragets themselves. The only ones who are popular are the pretty ones, who flirt with mobs as ordinary women flirt with officers.
MITCHENER. Then I understand you to hold that the country should be governed by the women after all.
LADY CORINTHIA. Not by all the women. By certain women. I had almost said by one woman. By the women who have charm—who have artistic talent—who wield a legitimate, a refining influence over the men. (She sits down gracefully, smiling, and arranging her draperies with conscious elegance.)
MITCHENER. In short, madam, you think that if you give the vote to the man, you give the power to the women who can get round the man.
LADY CORINTHIA. That is not a very delicate way of putting it; but I suppose that is how you would express what I mean.
MITCHENER. Perhaps youve never had any experience of garrison life. If you had, you'd have noticed that the sort of woman who is clever at getting round men is sometimes rather a bad lot.
LADY CORINTHIA. What do you mean by a bad lot?
MITCHENER. I mean a woman who would play the very devil if the other women didnt keep her in pretty strict order. I dont approve of democracy, because its rot; and Im against giving the vote to women because Im not accustomed to it and therefore am able to see with an unprejudiced eye what infernal nonsense it is. But I tell you plainly, Lady Corinthia, that there is one game that I dislike more than either Democracy or Votes For Women: and that is the game of Antony and Cleopatra. If I must be ruled by women, let me have decent women and not—well, not the other sort.
LADY CORINTHIA. You have a coarse mind, General Mitchener.