Delegate. I'm not at all sure that that victory is a desirable one. Indeed, I'm sure it is not. When you've succeeded in giving the woman complete independence through hard work; when you have taken her children from her and handed them over to a crèche; when you've severed her from her domestic duties and also from all domestic happiness and joy, how d'you know she won't turn round and demand to have her old slavery back again? The quietness and peace of her own home? The right to care for her own husband and nurse her own child?
Thérèse. But can't you see that it's just that that the immense majority of women are demanding now? We want the women to stay at home just as much as you do. But how are you going to make that possible? At present the money spent on drink equals the total of the salaries paid to women. So the problem is to get rid of drunkenness. But the middle classes refuse to meet this evil straightforwardly because the votes which keep them in power are in the pockets of the publicans; and you socialist leaders refuse just as much as the middle classes really to tackle the drink question because you're as keen for votes as they are. You've got to look the situation in the face. We're on the threshold of a new era. In every civilized country, in the towns and in the rural districts, from the destitute and from the poor, from every home that a man has deserted for drink or left empty because men have no longer the courage to marry, a woman will appear, who comes out from that home and will sit down by your side in the workshop, in the factory, at the office, in the counting house. You don't want her as housewife; and as she refuses to be a prostitute, she will become a woman-worker, a competitor; and finally, because she has more energy than you have, and because she is not a drunkard, she will take your places.
Delegate [brutally] Well, before another hour's gone over our heads you'll find that she won't start that game here.
Monsieur Féliat comes in.
Féliat [to the delegate] My dear sir, a thousand pardons for interrupting you, but as I've just turned your friend out of my house because he took advantage of being in it to start a propaganda against me, what's the use of your going on talking to this lady about a course of action she will no more consent to than I shall?
Delegate. Very well, Monsieur. I shall telephone to Paris for instructions. Probably you will refuse to let me use your instrument.
Féliat. I most certainly shall.
Delegate. So I shall go to the Post Office, and in ten minutes—
Féliat. Go, my dear sir, go. But let me tell you in a friendly way that it'll take you more than ten minutes to get on to Paris.
Delegate. It takes you more, perhaps, but not me. Good-morning. [The delegate goes out]