Margaret sat up straight, with nerves and muscles tense. As a button pressed a thousand miles away starts all the ponderous machinery, so had this sentence been the electric spark to put her in instant touch with the speaker and her subject. Heart, soul, and mind were alert now.
"And yet—there are laws in this District which impliedly deny that a mother has an equal right with the father to those children. More than this, there are laws which give that father a right to will away from her her child. Nay, more even than that,—there are laws which give him the power to will away her unborn child! Do you say that our statutes need no revision when this is where they place women in the closing years of our vaunted nineteenth-century civilization?... You do not believe that this is true? Study the laws. Find out for yourselves. Do not take my word for it. But let me tell you in verification of my statement that there is pending even now in the Courts of this District just such a case. A father willed away his child from its mother, and one court has sustained the will.... You have not known of this?... My friend, that is because it has not touched you."
Margaret was staring at her with fascinated eyes. How had this woman known? Was it her cause they were espousing? Was this the touch of nature that made the whole world kin? She heard as in a dream Mrs. Greuze's closing words.
"We do all honor in this land of ours to the brave men who have risked their lives for their country; the soldier's claim to a nation's gratitude is sung everywhere,—sometimes not over-modestly. In Washington we talk of it not in empty words, but in marble, stone, and bronze. We build our Soldiers' Home for the disabled veterans; we employ armies of men for the disbursement of the millions we pour willingly at their feet; when we can do no more we lay them to rest in our beautiful city of the dead and deck their graves with laurel. Is this all? Nay, we have made the Nation's capital a monumental city, raising memorials on every hand 'lest we forget.' And we do well to honor them.
"But after all, how long does a battle last or a war, even though it be a fratricidal conflict kept up until the flower of the land is cut down and the rivers run red with blood? Not long. Not long as God counts time. But oh, my friends, there is somewhere a brave woman fighting the battle of maternity in every minute of time, and has been since the world began, and they always have met it and always will meet it gallantly and gladly. They have not marched into battle with the pomp and panoply of war—with flags flying, drums beating, and the cheers of comrades in their ears. Their fight has been single-handed, in the stillness of the night watches and in the darkened chamber. But never a soldier among them but has known that she faced death.
"And this great army of mothers all over the world, in all the ages past and to come, ask no pensions, crave no honors, expect not even to have written over their modest tombs, 'Here lies one who has fought a good fight.' All they ask is the same rights to children, property, and persons that their husbands and fathers have always enjoyed."
When the lecture was over Margaret went straight to the speaker.
"I am one the law has touched," she said. "Let me help."