“I am not arguing to get the Feminist in a hole, but simply to clear the ground of brambles.
“She does want license, as a matter of fact; one would be blind who looked at her programme and did not see that.
“And the license she wants is not the license to steal, or lie, or murder, or commit arson. When she talks of forming her own morals, she has one morality entirely and solely in view—the morality that presides over Love; and when she asks for license, it is license in Love.
“Men have more license in this matter than women. That is undoubtedly so.
“Men, since the beginning of the world, have had more license than women; but that license is a relic of barbarism. It was useful once, but it is becoming less useful every day, and pari passu men are becoming more moral.”
“Useful once?”
“In this way. Men in the past were the fertilisers of the world. Who brought Roman blood to England, Norman blood, Norse blood? Men. Roman, Norman, and Norse women had nothing to do with the matter. Their duty was to stay at home and be moral. Armed and roaming men fertilised the world, just as bees fertilise a field of clover, crossed the races, and made the vitality of them.
“Roman, Norse, and Norman virtues that make England great were born of Roman, Norse, and Norman license. The same fact applies to all Europe. But the day of the free-lance in love is gone. He who was once a world-maker is now a world-curse. He is not now a world-maker, but a Home-wrecker and a woman-wrecker.
“Nations no longer require him for a fertiliser. Men no longer travel in masses, armed with spears; they go in railway carriages, accompanied by their families, and the world can get all the fertilisation it wants by immigration.