Some of the young Europeans of eighteen or twenty will come home from the trenches when peace is declared, and beyond a doubt will compel the love if not the respect of damsels of twenty-five and upward. But will they care whether they fascinate spinsters of twenty-five and upward, or not? The fact is not to be overlooked that there will be as many young girls as youths, and as these girls also have matured during their long apprenticeship to sorrow and duty, it is not to be imagined they will fail to interest young warriors of their own age—nor fail to battle for their rights with every device known to the sex.
Temperament must be taken into consideration, of course, and a certain percentage of men and women of unbalanced ages will be drawn together. That happens in times of peace. Moreover it is likely that a large number of young Germans in this country either will conceive it their duty to return to Germany and marry there or import the forlorn in large numbers. If they have already taken to themselves American wives it is on the cards that they will renounce them also. There is nothing a German cannot be made to believe is his duty to the Fatherland, and he was brought up not to think. But if monarchy falls in Germany, and a republic, socialistic or merely democratic, rises on the ruins, then it is more than likely that the superfluous women will be encouraged to transfer themselves and their maidenly dreams to the great dumping-ground of the world.
Unless we legislate meanwhile.
V
FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED
There are four other ways in which women (exclusive of the artist class) are enjoying remunerative careers: as social secretaries, play brokers, librarians, and editors; and it seems to me that I cannot do better than to drop generalities in this final chapter and give four of the most notable instances in which women have "made good" in these highly distinctive professions. I have selected four whom I happen to know well enough to portray at length: Maria de Barril, Alice Kauser, Belle da Costa Greene, and Honoré Willsie. It is true that Mrs. Willsie, being a novelist, belongs to the artist class, but she is also an editor, which to my mind makes her success in both spheres the more remarkable. To edit means hours daily of routine, details, contacts; mechanical work, business, that would drive most writers of fiction quite mad. But Mrs. Willsie is exceptionally well balanced.