“Yours sincerely,
“M. G. Fawcett.”
Later I wrote a long article in the Fortnightly Review, entitled “Women and Work,” on the strength of which I received the following note from the pioneer of the movement:
“June 1st, 1911.
“My dear Mrs. Tweedie,
“I am quite delighted by your article, and thank you very much for sending it to me. It is a very valuable armoury of facts, which will be of great value to our speakers and workers.
“Yours sincerely,
“M. G. Fawcett.”
Every youthful person is a revolutionary at heart; anyway, I was, but as years have mounted up, even my radical tendencies have diminished. The real guides of a nation are the thinkers. Democracy must obey leadership, and leadership is the outcome of brains and learning. Here and there a great man rises from the millions; but the larger percentage of great men are to be found in the aristocracy and upper middle classes, not in the lower tenth, or even the lower middle class. I am becoming more conservative with years. It seems so much more easy to pull down than to build, and all this Socialistic cry is towards pulling down, upsetting, upheaving, without the slightest idea how to draw up a programme of reform or produce a single leader of worth.
It requires brains to appreciate brains. It requires talent to understand talent. It requires knowledge and experience to value the beautiful, and vast capacity to build, to organise, to make or to govern.
Many women nowadays have the full courage of their opinions. They say things and write things; lecture on them. But for myself—well, no!—not yet quite.