THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN

I

In the long and painful history of man's more or less total failure to value and to honour woman for her greatest, her most vital and self-sacrificing part in human affairs, none has approached in obliquity his recent deplorable blunder of awarding her the suffrage and the right to sit in Parliament, as recognition of her War-services.

All the long ages of Mother-surrender, of quiet heroism and attainment, all the best, beautiful years of women's lives which the burden and sickness, the weariness, danger and anguish have devoured down the centuries, while the mothers were giving themselves to be the nation's bone and blood and brain, to nourish, cherish, and upbring it—All were passed over without word or sign.

Not for her long ages of devoted duty to the nation's sick and helpless, for rearing and safeguarding its priceless infant and child-life, for administering its homes—fashioning, cleansing, beautifying, contriving, making the utmost of its means and ends—Not for her inestimable services as man's good comrade and wise counseller, his love and friend and faithful help, in sorrow, evil and adversity; not even for her age-long, arduous labours and achievements in Religion, Charity, Reform. For none of these, her great intrinsic and eternal ministries to Life and to Humanity, has man now set her by him in the Van of Things.

But for filling shells and felling trees, for turning lathes and driving motors, ploughing fields and lighting street-lamps—all valuable duties, it is true, in the crisis we have passed through, and indispensable to carrying on the nation's business. Yet what a drop from the supreme and tender to the trite and banal, from the vital and essential to the merely incidental, is seen in this belated recompense.

Not woman, Generatrix of Humanity and inspiration of all that is fairest in Humanity, has been now honoured—but woman the bus-conductor, ticket-clipper, clerk and agricultural labourer, woman in breeches and workman's overall, woman whom German frightfulness had dislocated for a space from her high lot and labours; twisting her powers awry to fit a hideous revulsion of barbarism.

How, if the gods ever laugh at the fantastic tricks of poor mankind, they must now have laughed (or wept) over the opportunity that one sex had—and forfeited—to requite the other's finest merit.

How deeply-moving and far-reaching in its impulse and its inspiration would have been the tribute, had it been made in reverent gratitude to the mothers-of-men who had saved the world by mothering the men who saved the Empire—For achievement stamped with the high and unique quality of service that woman alone could have rendered. And not because, when tested by men's standards, she proved herself a worthy second-best in doing things that men have always done.

The gods must long have wept, I think, that men had thought so lightly of the women living every day beside them, surrendering their lives and powers, their interests, desires and individuation; toiling over cooking-pans and wash-tubs, tied for years to children's cots, for life to some or another person's sick-bed; smothering talents, impulse, hopes, impatiences, to find the soft and simple word; solacing, inspiring, making-believe above an aching spirit and a breaking heart that all was fair and well with the world. And, moreover, in every generation making these beautiful fictions ever a fraction more truth and less fiction. For the gods alone know how that kindlier, purer and more tender Home-environment which women have created in men's stony-hearted cities involves the most laborious, heart-wearing, complex and widest exercise of faculty of any human task.

Women themselves had long been tiring of it; stung to the soul and mortified by centuries of man's ingratitude—when not contempt. Nevertheless, where love and duty did not, chains of custom and tradition bound them faithful to their oars.

Till German Frightfulness releasing them, the cry is now:

Since you can do something better and more profitable than merely to row the old Galley of Life—since you can do men's work, forsooth, come out into the market-place and help us pay our big War-Bill!

And yet—Whither will drift the Galley of Life when its rowers put their strength elsewhere?

II

In the haze of false sentiment exaggerating—not the value of masculine work done by the sex during War, because this was, of course, invaluable and indispensable, but exaggerating, absolutely, the values of this work as compared with the woman's work it had been doing previously, the decision to admit women to Parliament was a precipitate and an ill-considered measure, by no means innocent of party motive.

Threatening, as it does, a drastic sweep of all political, economic and every other difference between the standards, training, and employment of the sexes, it was pressed forward, nevertheless, not only with characteristic masculine failure to recognise the vital significance of the other sex in Human Things, but in utter blindness to social and racial consequences, immediate and remote, which make it possibly the most momentous decision ever arrived at in the history of human progress.

Showing how little it was known for the turning-point in our great destiny, the question was debated with unseemly levity, while less than half the parliamentary members troubled (or had hardihood) to record their votes; the abstention of the others proving which way blew the straws of their faint wills. And of those voting in favour, half, perhaps, did so (as some confessed) under intimidation of otherwise losing their seats. (What would be said of the soldier who should turn his back upon the enemy for fear of losing life even?)

No more than twenty-five found courage to say their "No's" like honest gentleman.

Yet far from Enfranchisement having been a burning need blazing in the hearts of women, their newly-awarded vote required to be spurred and whipped out of all but a small minority. Or coaxed from them by abandoning appeal on all the wider issues of Imperial and national policy, and, in so far as their interest was sought, by reducing the programme to personal and domestic issues—electric lighting in their parlours, hot-water taps in their kitchens, and so forth.

And here was seen, at once, the threat of a grave and an increasing diversion from that purely political outlook of men, which should be impersonal in issue, broad in enterprise. Not that the human and domestic side is a whit less momentous than the more abstract and national. But appealing to a different order of mind, it demands that different order of mind which characterises the woman-sex, to deal with it effectively.

The plea that women will acquire in time the masculine political view-point threatens, on the other hand, the loss in them of their own highly-specialised and invaluable interests, morale and qualities; which, being womanly of impulse and of trend, make for the individual welfare, happiness and elevation of the nation's members.

III

As with every other human function, there are two departments of politics. And the House of Commons represents man's.

It stands for all that is best accomplished politically by his highly-specialised order of brain; by his concrete energy and initiative, his justice and rationalism, his power of administration, and his uncompromising sternness—pitilessness, if need be—to deal with and to punish crime and aggression, national and international. It stands, in a word, for that virile outlook and the virile grip in Statesmanship which are indispensable to materialise a people's prosperity and to pioneer its progress. These are the functions of men. Just as the Army and Navy, Science and Commerce, are the functions of men. Because the male bent and intellect are those best fitted to raise these developments to their highest and most effective issues, just as the male physique and energy are best fitted to achieve these issues in material results.

Had anything been needed to emphasise the values of such virile characteristics in the administration of a nation's policy, the War furnished it. And the many blunders and vacillations marring the conduct of the War emphasised the lack of these invaluable masculine qualities in the concurrent House of Commons. Army, Navy, and Air-Services proved their manhood doughtily in their respective provinces. Had they been supplemented by an equally virile Statesmanship, the War, having begun, would have been brought to a speedy termination. In point of fact, it would never have begun.

If now, our British politics are already so lacking in the manly ability and grip indispensable to national permanence and progress, the presence of women in Parliament can but further emasculate these. It may be said that some women outside the House are more male of mind and mode (not to speak of muscle) than are some men inside. But this is reason, surely, for replacing these weak males by stronger ones, rather than for adulterating British statesmanship with Femaleness.

The presence of a masculine woman in a house—whether this be writ with a small or a capital letter—far from stiffening the manly calibre of weak men in it, only further enervates and paralyses them. To serve on a committee of mixed sex is to realise this.

Women should be represented in the counsels of the nation—but not in the councils of men. They should have a House of their own, wherein to foster the interests of women and children mainly, as well as to further The Humanities and The Moralities; which are, at the same time, woman's true political sphere and her chiefest concern—because she and the child most suffer from failures thereof. Thus, the House of Men would be relieved of problems their sex is unqualified to deal with. While more time and energy would be left them to dispose of affairs they are best fitted to administer.

As already pointed out, the all-potent factor of Sex intervening, members of neither sex are capable of doing their best work while in association with the other. Sex-rivalries are stirred, or sex-antagonisms. Either of which range the sexes on opposite sides; thus precluding amicable co-operation. Or they engender sex-ascendancy. Which, making one sex dominate or defer to the other, precludes intelligent co-operation. Through all, moreover, only too often run threads of intrigue, to entangle and hamper the powers of both.

British politics have notably declined since woman's incursion therein. British commerce, once supreme among the nations, has notably declined since women entered business-houses. Good and thorough work demands, beyond all things, undivided concentration of the powers upon it. And for nine persons out of ten, this concentration is impossible while in the presence of members of the opposite sex. And emphatically this is true of the male, since woman exercises a hypnotic, and, accordingly, an enervating influence upon him. Worse still, he poses for her: becoming meretricious and insincere. It is held by some that women in Parliament might elevate the codes and modes of latter-day politics, many of our best men withholding themselves therefrom because of bad odour imparted by self-seeking and unscrupulous politicians.

But let us keep our House of Commons a House of men, and make it representative of the nation's finest manhood. It is the first and foremost function of the sex, the way of national success and progress. And just as the presence of women would blunt the pioneering spirit and cripple the action of a party of Arctic explorers, so women in the House must blunt the enterprise and hamper the exploits of Statesmanship.

So far, the good sense alike of women as of men has declared against the innovation; rejecting, by large majorities, all but one of women Parliamentary candidates. It remains to be seen, however, whether men outside the House will later endorse the new departure, by electing members of the other sex to represent them. A thing impossible for one sex to do for the other, of course, seeing that not only do men and women arrive at their different conclusions by wholly different routes, but all questions bear wholly different values for them.

It may be argued that the existence of dual departments of politics, and dual points-of-view is argument for electing representatives of both sexes to The Commons. Not so, however. Each sex is specialist in its own domain. And an aurist wastes time, and most likely blunders, when he applies himself to treat eye-diseases. An oculist wastes time, and probably blunders, when delicate ear-operations are required of him.

Since by his dual constitution, moreover, man possesses, by inheritance from his mother, the quotum of woman-apprehension, foresight, and altruism required to present the woman-bent and view-point in his outlook and conduct of political and civic affairs, woman's personal intervention in these is as superfluous as it would be harmful.

Further, there are two orders of men: An order strictly male in trend and talent, and an order whose mentality is tinctured with a higher than average proportion of womanly conservatism, sympathy and intuition. And these two orders of male—typified, respectively, by the Conservative and the Radical parties—perpetually struggling to secure the measures prompted by their respective orders of mind, and intermittently gaining ascendancy, sustain a poise, or mean, between the unduly conservative and traditional, and the unduly radical and transitional in our political administration.

These two orders of mentality are found again in Youth and Age. All healthy and vigorous-minded young men are radical of bias; hot-headed, precipitate and intolerant of crusted orthodoxy, keen to demolish old institutions and established methods. While maturity makes for conservatism. It knows. And having learned by experience the values of institutions which have become institutions because of their values, it is prudent in its counsels of slow and stable reform, in its distrust of drastic, precipitate change, and, beyond all, in its wise misdoubtings of the world in general as being better than it is, and ripe, accordingly, for the best things.

For the present, there are numberless problems and questions of women's industrial employment, of children's employment, of the industrial supervision of young girls and their moral protection; problems of female drunkenness and prostitution, crimes of children, crimes against infants and children; questions of health, of the education and upbringing of the young, of dress and conduct, and of the general moral purification and the mental elevation of the Race—with all of which women are essentially qualified to deal; and the vital national importance whereof men have proved themselves as incapable of apprehending as they have shown themselves powerless to administer them.

The two classes of national problems, or the two departments into which most of these problems might be advantageously sub-classed, should be recognised as being the functions, respectively, of the one or of the other sex, and should be deputed for consideration to the House of Men or to the House of Women. With the result that in both, every problem of reform would be dealt with by the sex specialised by nature, by sympathy, and by training, best to understand and best to legislate for it.

As with The Lords, either House should have power to question or to reject the conclusions of the other.

We need urgently, indeed, such a House of Women to employ its native wisdom, its intuitive apprehension, and its moral and emotional impulse, and, moreover, to bring its experience and tact to bear upon a hundred-and-one tangled and neglected issues of moral and social reform. In order to remedy evils that have come, from long neglect, to be a cancer, slowly and surely sapping and vitiating our national life and endangering our racial supremacy.

IV

That women may do useful work in male departments of politics and economics is quite beside the question. Far more valuable work is needed and is possible from them in their own especial fields of aptitude. In these latter, moreover, they would be fostering, in place of sacrificing, that morale and those distinctive talents Nature has specialised in them. While their withdrawal in toto from male political and economic functions would put men on their mettle, and stimulate their efforts and achievement therein.

Woman's influence, like that of Religion, is most potent when it is indirect and inspirational. Like the Church, when she exchanges her indirect and devotional ministrations for direct and material ones, temporal or militant, she destroys herself or the peoples she dominates. Or she destroys both.

It is common fallacy that so long as the world's work is done and its affairs tolerably well conducted, it is of no significance whatsoever by which sex these ends are attained.

Sight is lost of the intrinsic truth that Life exists for Man—not Man for Life; its purpose being the evolution of the human Species by way of the evolution of human Faculty. The world's work has no slightest value save as spur and instrument of human education. And the evolution of the dual orders of human Faculty having differentiated the human Species into two sexes, each representing a wholly different order of Faculty—obviously the perfection of both orders of Faculty and, accordingly, the further evolution of both sexes wherein these orders are respectively specialised, can be attained only by the exercise, by each order, of the rÔle and the functions that best evoke its powers. If, therefore, the male sex repudiates its allotted rÔle and functions, and forfeits, in consequence, the education of its distinctive talents and moral, by shelving its responsibilities upon the other sex, howsoever capable a substitute this other sex may prove itself, man acts as foolishly and fatuously as the schoolboy who shirks his schooling and the discipline thereof, by enlisting his capable sister to do his lessons for him.

It is, at the same time, man's duty and his privilege manfully to shoulder and ably to perform his own allotted part in Life's affairs. Evading this, or from a false conception of chivalry allowing woman to usurp a share therein, he degenerates inevitably; in default of his natural spur to development. Moreover he obliges—or connives at woman doing likewise, in respect of her allotted part.

That he has already grown so slack, his virile pride and enterprise have so far lapsed, as to reconcile him to woman's usurpation of his masculine functions and prerogatives should warn him of incipient dry-rot in him. As too, the portentous fact that had he not declined in physical and mental calibre, she could never so readily and efficiently have taken his place as we have seen her doing. So efficiently, indeed, that he will be hard put to it to regain and to retain his lost professional and industrial footing, by proving himself appreciably the better man.

As Dr. Havelock Ellis says, if they are to cope with the new Feminism, men must needs look to their laurels and produce a new Masculinism. For truly these weak-chinned, neurotic young men of the rising generation are no match at all for the heavy-jawed, sinewy, resolute young women Feminist aims and methods are giving us.

On every side, in politics, literature, journalism, oratory, commerce, even in scientific invention, women are swiftly coming up abreast of men, and threaten shortly to out-distance them.—And this upon their own ground.

On the other hand, the finer and more exquisite womanly qualities and aptitudes, the emotions and devotions; purity, sweetness, patience, forbearance, tenderness, lovingness and lovableness, together with the courtesies and graces, have fallen out of culture and are fast declining toward extinction. And this, in the measure of the mushroom-growth of masculine abilities and aims and bent, now substituted for them in the sex. With which decline of womanly characteristics, the religion and nobility, virility and chivalry, manly reverence and regard for women, wherewith the true mother illumines the souls of her sons, and which are man's response to the appeal of true woman, are waning rapidly also.

There is, in all men worth the name, an instinctive recognition that the world's most strenuous labours and the world's administration are their natural functions, and that upon their sex, accordingly, rests the responsibility alike of progress or decline in these directions.

This sense of responsibility is both stimulating and uplifting, in the degrees of its realisation and fulfilment. The yielding, by man, to the other sex, of masculine essential rights and obligations is, at the same time, a symptom in him of declining virility, physical and mental, and a cause inevitable of his further speedy decadence. The position yielded, and equality in all things ceded to woman, that pride in his sex, in himself, and in his work, which were his strongest incentives to progress, drop to ever lower grades. Until he comes at last to the state of the decadent savage, who keeps as many wives to work for him as their work for him enables him to keep.

The spirit and pride of Sex are normal and inspiring, and are the expression of that impulse which has directed, in both sexes, the contrary trend of both. No man of mettle feels ever again the same zest or spur to achievement in a rÔle that has become equally woman's. Arrogance? Possibly. But wholesome and energising. Defect of that pride in his man's mission which inspired Drake, Columbus, Nelson, CÆsar, Shakespeare, Newton, to great conquest. Without it, man ceases to be man. That it is a factor to be reckoned with, was proved by the recent election, which was signalised by being woman's first authorised entry into the political arena—and was characterised by nothing so much as by man's indifference, even his neglect to record his vote. And that it is a factor to be reckoned with, is further and seriously proved by the slackness and diminished zest and output of masculine Labour, since the other sex has invaded the field.

Woman, for her part, is characterised by a similar spirit and pride of her sex. Equally she loses it when men intrude upon her province. And this Sex-pride and spirit in her would be nobly intensified and uplifted to ever higher levels of expression and attainment, were she but assured of the fine quality and issues of those woman-faculties and functions, by way of which it is her privilege first to create Life, and afterwards to minister to it.

A potent factor in man's impotence to hold his own either in moral or achievement, when pitted directly against the other sex, is that power many women exercise of recruiting their vital forces from those of persons—and of men, particularly—in association with them. The highest levels of work and inspiration are the product of reserve and surplus forces. When these are depleted, only languid and lower-grade aims and capacities are possible.

The extent to which over-worked women may impair the health and constitutional vigour of men associated with them in work was strikingly shown during the changed conditions of War. Surrounded by over-wrought girls and women, who kept themselves going by stimulus of nervous excitement, of strong tea or more dangerous drugs, many men, co-workers or heads of departments, became neurasthenic wrecks. Others lapsed to the condition of infirm old men. The like was seen in fathers and husbands of such over-wrought War-workers. And nervous depletion occasioned by working-wives has doubtless much to do with the inanition and depression now crippling our industrial output.

I may be charged with holding a brief for the Enemy-sex. If so, it is not only because man's cause is woman's, but, moreover, because his present disposition to surrender his prerogatives all round shows him dangerously blind to the truth of woman's power; misdirection whereof from its natural channels menaces not only him, but woman herself, and the Race. Find the woman! said the French cynic. Jestingly: because he no more than other men had gauged the profundity of the saying, in all its deep and vast biological phenomena and implications.

Our national survival stands in jeopardy already, indeed, from the lower-grade males—narrow-brained neurotics or feeble-brained neurasthenics—whom latter-day women are producing yearly in tens of thousands. And the deplorable truth of this degeneracy is overlooked, because no more than a fractional number of our doctors distinguish between The Normal and The Average. With the result, that comparing an abnormal with others more abnormal, they declare the less abnormal satisfactory. Of the fine physique, the vital health and faculty, the zest and joy of living which characterise true Normality—and which are the birthright of every human being—only the few have any conception.

It is significant that the sole ancient civilisations now surviving, India and China, have never hazarded their chances of survival by emancipating their women. On the other hand, because their women are in bondage, personally and psychologically, and because their women's vital powers are exhausted by laborious and de-sexing occupations, the moral and material progress of these peoples is at low ebb.

V

Recruiting statistics have shown us the Damocles-sword of Decadence suspended by a hair above our heads; have shown us our great people so riddled with disease, defect and abnormality, that nearly half our manhood was declared unfitted for man's elementary duty of fighting for his country (55·9 per cent. only being classed in Grade I.). All that our centuries of evolutionary progress have achieved for us, all that the Race has achieved for itself by faculty and enterprise, integrity and industry, threatens now to be sacrificed to a Feminist fanaticism, which, denying to woman any more vital or tender human faculties or offices than those of man, has increasingly repudiated all else for her than rights to pit her wits and muscles against his.

England has long been, and has once again proved herself supreme among the nations. Because England, more than any other land, had freed her women from the more laborious industrial employments; leaving them, in consequence, more vital power to put into the making of a splendid Race, fine of body, stable of character; the men of it charged with virile energy and enterprise, the women house-proud, home-abiding; faithful wives and admirable mothers.

Recruiting statistics have valuably emphasised the truth that in those localities where women are most employed in labour, there disease and degeneracy are most rampant. Significantly it was shown that colliery-districts and the Universities (the latter with about 80 per cent. of Grade I. men), were conspicuous in providing the greatest number of men qualified for military service. Why? Because neither the mothers of men enrolled in Universities, nor, for the most part, those of colliery-districts, are employed industrially.

While, on the other hand, the health and physique of cotton-mill operatives proved so "alarmingly low" that of 184 weavers and spinners only 57 could even be passed for Army-training. Of 290 examined, only 57 men of one cotton-spinning town were graded I.; only 64 were graded II., while 169 were graded III. and IV.

Again, Why? Because, unlike colliery-districts where the standard of health was notably good, in cotton-towns where physique and health were "alarmingly low" the vast majority of wives and mothers are employed in factories. It is important, moreover, to note that in such gradings of men for military service, even those classed first were by no means necessarily normal or vigorous. On the contrary, many passed were later shown defective, by breakdown under stress of military discipline.

Further, that so many as 20 per cent. of the young manhood of our highest culture were disqualified for Grade I. is a serious circumstance.

Mr. Lloyd George has said regarding this most vital question: "The next great lesson of the war is that if Britain has to be thoroughly equipped to meet any emergencies, the State must take a more constant and a more intelligent interest in the health and fitness of the people. If the Empire is to be equal to its task, the men and women who make up the Empire must be equal to it. The number of B2 and C3 men is prodigious. I asked the Minister of National Service how many more men could we have put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had been properly looked after. I staggered at the reply: 'At least a million.' A virile race has been wasted by neglect and want of forethought, and it is a danger to the State and to the Empire. I solemnly warn my fellow countrymen that you cannot maintain an A1 Empire with a C3 population."

This estimate of abnormality, by reason of a million of the nation's young manhood disqualified by definite disease, defect or degeneracy, is far below the mark. Because owing to the urgent need for fighting men, the standard of fitness was compulsorily low. And the estimate takes no account of the huge number of such low-grade "Fit," who succumbed in death or incapacitation to the strain of military training, or to the vicissitudes of active service.

The British Medical Journal has published figures showing that of 2,080,709 men examined by Medical Boards—the men constituting "a fair sample of the male population between the ages of 18 and 43, and a smaller proportion of the more fit between 43 and 51"—only 1 in 3 could be classed in Grade I. That is, out of every 150 members of our British manhood in its best years of life, only 50 were up to the mark in health and normality.

The Journal comments on "this mass of physical inefficiency, with all its concomitant human misery, and direct loss to the country."

Sir Auckland Geddes, addressing the Federation of British Industries, stated that "appalling facts about the health of the nation have been disclosed in reports of medical examinations carried out by recruiting authorities." One of the most startling and disquieting of these disclosures was that of hundreds of thousands of our men, between the ages of 18 and 43, dying of tuberculosis.

Despite all this, however, because our authorities fear to face the truth and the drastic economic upheaval involved in the prohibition of all young wives and mothers from the stress of breadwinning, attempt is being made to shelve the whole blame of this appalling state of national health upon faulty industrial and hygienic conditions; too long hours of work, imperfect ventilation, bad housing, inferior cooking, poor wages, and so forth. All factors, of course, but only contributory to the great vital one. And in order to placate the public conscience, reforms in these directions are promised. Excellent and sadly needed reforms, it is true—in so far as they go; but bound to failure because they will not go to the root of things. They will be tried, no doubt, in our promised Reconstruction-scheme. But being palliative merely, further holocausts of human life and faculty and happiness will be sacrificed in the experiment.

Sooner or later—and Heaven send it be sooner lest it come too late!—the truth must be confronted, and the crisis met. The further the Feminism now threatening our downfall secures footing, however, and more and more diverts the nation's life-resources into merely economic channels, more and more squanders them in abnormal ambitions and output, the more deeply-rooted and more desperate will have become the cancer of our national decadence. And incalculably the more difficult and dangerous will be the task of its eradication.

The reform should have come while man still held the reins securely in his grasp—ere Feminism had entrenched itself and its deforming aims and powers behind an enfranchised woman-sex; to intimidate and out-number his own. Because women in general, misled by these false standards, and, moreover, deteriorated by de-sexing training, become every year less and less disposed toward home and family-life; less and less willing to burden themselves with the duties and sacrifices indispensable to the proper fulfilment of wife and motherhood. And now, more than ever, when they are still further to be pitted against men in the industrial struggle, woman-instincts and aptitudes will become ever more warped and enfeebled in them.

The Danger menacing us is the graver because, while Disease is the expression of a healthy vital conscience protesting, in terms of pain and disability, against conditions, environmental or personal, adverse to normal states of health and development (and to which the healthy living organism declines therefore to conform), Degeneracy is characterised by a vital conscience of so low an order that it conforms and adapts the type, without pain or protest, to conditions perversive of healthy normality and of further evolutionary advance.

There comes a stage, accordingly, in Racial decline, when the Racial vital conscience no longer rebels, in terms of Disease, but conforms, in terms of Degeneracy, to artificial, abnormal and evil conditions of living, environmental and personal. And then as happened to those mighty civilisations snuffed out before us—the major portion of the community having lapsed from health and normality into decadent states of mind and body, vice and corruption become its Normal both of mind and body. Evil and chaos run riot. Till Nature, defied and transgressed at every turn, opens the vials of her wrath, and pours forth her microbic myriads to sow death and destruction wholesale.

Thus she sweeps from the board of Life another great Race—that had failed.

VI

Already, there are disquieting signs that the physical disease and abnormality among us have engendered such degrees of mental and of moral aberration as may lead at any hour to grave disruption. Below the quiet order of our British constitution are heard, from time to time, the rumble of chaotic and disintegrating forces. With growing frequency, the shriek of anarchy shrills. Red flags break. We shall be truly fortunate if we succeed in bridging over, without more or less serious upheaval, the critical gap between War and Peace.

Woman is Nature's peacemaker and welder. She it is who, in the home, knits the loose ends of the multiple incongruous and turbulent human elements into social unities—families, friendly communities, townships and peoples—by her annealing powers of affection and sympathy, of charity and intuitive understanding.

"Keep the Home-fires burning!" sang our soldiers. No considerations of The British Constitution, the London Stock Exchange, or Worshipful Civic Company, fired them to heroism, spurred them to victory. But for the Home-fires burning in suburban villas, in four-roomed cottages or two-room lodgings—as equally in hereditary mansions—it was, our gallants dared and died, and reaped their glorious triumph.

My father, an early and an earnest advocate of Female enfranchisement, used to counsel Lord Beaconsfield that to enfranchise women would be to establish the Conservative party for a century, at least. Because nine out of ten women were, in those days, Conservative.

Since then, Feminism has been active, however. Less by way of direct propaganda of anarchy or Bolshevism, be it said, than by fostering that masculine bent and spirit of material unrest and discontent which destroy in women all the finer, fairer ideals and attributes of their intrinsic womanhood, and those self-denying ordinances which so sweeten and dignify the humblest tasks as to content the doers of them with the inspiring sense that they are worth the while. With the result that nothing so characterises the great mass of latter-day working women as a smouldering irrational and intemperate Socialism. And the Socialism of working-women (as, too, of the majority of working-men) is based on total ignorance of the impracticability and evil of making for universal equality in a vast Scheme of Things, the values and the ultimate successes whereof depend absolutely on preserving those highly-specialised diversities and inequalities, alike of faculty and bent, into which Life, with its countless degrees of evolutionary development, has progressively graded living creatures, brute and human. The innumerable orders and classes of our sociology are as inevitable as they are invaluable. Because they serve for stages of faculty and avocation upon that biological gradient of Ascent by which we climb.

As was pointed out earlier in this book, woman, although passive and reposeful of inherence, is variable and unstable of temperament; her powers being eternally at ebb and flux, in order that she may be the medium of those evolutionary mutations which engender human progress. A nature truly perilous when too great dominance is permitted the sex in affairs so momentous as those of State-administration, upon the firm stability and permanence whereof depend so many destinies. Because this evolutionary impulsiveness of hers is dangerously liable to express itself in irresponsible, chaotic and anarchical outbreaks. As history shows, wreckage of many once mighty, but now extinct, civilisations set in when the males thereof weakly, or basely, surrendered their manhood's rights of rule to a sex disqualified by its native non-conformability to rule in national and international policies.

Should women ever come to exercise political power identical with man's, they would be liable to subvert the whole national and international administration of their country on an impulse. Not solely from craving for novelty, but, too, as result of their inherent bent toward forward and precipitate movement, and their implicit faith in change as being necessarily reform.

Nations in which the feminine element is strong betray the native fickleness thereof in perpetual change of Ministry—even in frequent revolution. This element of instability is Ireland's curse, the flaw in her people's splendid Celtic faculty.

In view of the stern and strenuous and narrowly-rationalistic creed and claims of Feminism, as too of the steel-brained, steel-willed fighting women leading it, men may scoff, with sense of false security, at odds of danger from feminine weakness and fickleness in Feminist ranks. They scoffed just so at the menace of Prussianism—whereof Feminism is the female rendering.

It must always be remembered, moreover, that the civic and political privileges ceded to Woman, the Feminist, are ceded alike to that freakish, irresponsible creature Woman, the Femininist, who, to counterbalance the decline of woman-quality in those others of her sex, adds to her number and her freakishness as those others wax in number and in stern determination. And in a House of Commons of mixed sex, Feminists would find, to their undoing, that here as elsewhere the Ultra-Feminines would speedily outnumber and out-power themselves. The Movement, inaugurated in all the stern and sterile sex-insensibility of the Feminist code, would soon be dry-rotten and corrupt with the weaknesses bred of Effeminacy.

Nor should it be forgotten that the present Feminist leaders it was who, by their dangerous Bolshevist tactics of Militant Suffragism, proclaimed the anarchy seething in themselves and their adherents.

So long as there survives within the breast of man a spark of that Chivalry which has been both the inspiring and impelling power of his virile development, he can neither meet, nor can he treat with woman upon equal terms.

Always the aspects of her in capacities of mother, wife or love (or mistress) must intervene to disarm, and to incapacitate him from exerting his full strength against her. Whether her appeal to him be sacred or profane, accordingly—that of woman at her best or at her worst—always so long as he is man, her highest and most tender (as her basest) appeal will be by way of those woman-Unfitnesses which in every age have served as highest incentive of his Fitnesses; that he might win, safeguard and cherish her. This chivalrous instinct it was, in part—for behind it lurked the recognition of more than half a nation suffering from the wrong of Unenfranchisement—which disarmed and paralysed his action in respect of those same Suffragist outbreaks. And so long as he is man, will he be similarly disarmed and dangerously inhibited from meeting and from battling successfully with woman.

History repeats itself. And if men suppose that they have seen the last of female Militancy, and overlook the menacing truth that their own incapacity to cope with this must increase inevitably in direct proportion to woman's waxing power, they are blind, indeed, to dangerous breakers ahead.

Having sown the fickle wind of woman's variability, they are like to reap the whirlwind in her inherent non-conformability; a difficult and parlous factor such as they have never previously encountered in political and industrial administration. Such non-conformability as is seen at an extreme in the anarchy of revolutions; in which women, having lost control and balance, plunge deeper and deeper into excesses, without power, it would seem, of recoil. While men reach a maximum, recover poise, and then setting about to re-constitute order out of chaos, more often than not evolve a higher form of order than had previously obtained.

VII

Secure in their traditional superior strength, however, and with characteristic complacency in this relation, men have no suspicion of the sex-antagonism—hatred even—seething against them in Feminism. And this far from having been annealed or softened, has been, on the contrary, greatly aggravated by the concessions and new privileges lately accorded the sex.

Strange to say, the chief talk of extremist women in their new War-capacities was bitterest grievance and hostility against the male, because, although installed in masculine positions, they were denied rights identical with his; of rank and recognition, of responsibility and pay. That they held these capacities temporarily merely, and as novices and amateurs, while men held theirs as experts, for long service or for superior values by right of masculine abilities, had no weight whatsoever. Never in all her days of so-called subjection has woman been so loud and denunciatory of the injustices of The Oppressor, of his conspiracies and crimes against her, as since she has been yielded a number of those rights which Feminism claims.

Feminists will say this is because complete equality in all things has not yet been granted—has yet to be fought for. The truth is, however, that the interests and functions of men fail wholly to satisfy the wholly dissimilar natures of women. But until they have realised this—the true reason of their discontent—an ever-increasing number of women will continue to make these their coveted goal, and to chafe with anger and bitterest resentment against the other sex for denying them full measure of things—without intrinsic value for them.

* * * * *

It needs no saying by me, that, apart from the Feminist extremist faction, the Woman's Movement includes a number of the sex characterised by the noblest ideals and impulse, as by the finest achievements; their creed and aims being pure of self-seeking or materialist ambitions for themselves or for their kin. And these it is to whom we owe it, that, amid the clamour and the combat of those others, the spirit of true Womanhood, devoted, wise and altruistic, is making itself felt everywhere in modern thought and modern progress. Such women for the most part discredit Feminism, in many cases directly oppose both its doctrine and practice.

VIII

The huge numerical preponderance of women must, of itself, presently swamp all masculine power and initiative in State affairs unless the political functions of the sexes be separated. Thenceforward, Vox populi must be the voice of Woman—man's having ceased to be heard.

And man's chiefest menace lies, be it reiterated to the point of tedium, in that momentous fact of the biological investment in woman, of the Racial Trustfund. For this is, at the same time, his sole heritage and that of the nation. And not only does it constitute her the custodian of Human Life and Faculty but it makes her arbitress as well of man's and of the nation's destiny.

In yielding his House of Parliament, man has surrendered not only his highest and most characteristic prerogative, but he has yielded the last exclusive stronghold of his manhood. An entrenchment indispensable to his difficult task of holding his own against a sex overwhelmingly superior in number, and chartered, by right of womanhood, with time-honoured baffling privileges which handicap and defeat him at all turns. A sex Nature has armoured with charms, moreover, and with weaknesses for his disarming; by appeal, on the one hand, to his chivalry, on the other, to his senses.

Entrenched in his last stronghold, he stood some chance of exerting his allotted dominance in life's affairs. All his strongholds invaded, he stands none.

For the rest, it can only be said that men who should reject their own, and elect members of the opposite sex to represent them in Parliament, would by that vote alone of non-confidence in the ability or the good faith of their kind, proclaim the human male a pitiful failure in species; an order without specialisation of brain, of character, or of moral, to give it essential values in Human concerns.

Woman, on the other hand, would stand acclaimed a Super-Being. One not only highly-specialised by God and Nature, as creatrix of the Race, and endowed with gifts to be the Racial nurse and guide and teacher, but, added to these most vital of human capacities, she would stand accredited by man with such superior qualifications also for the administration of the State as to lead him to adjudge her his superior in this capacity likewise. While her still further pre-eminence is now to be emphasised by pitting her on equal terms against the male, in all the Arts and Crafts, the professions and the businesses.

Truly—poor Super-Being that she is to be—burdened and spent by her super-tax of faculties and functions, she will need, indeed, to break into the Racial Trust-Fund, in order to equip herself for these her multifarious exactions. Because not only will it be her affliction to produce the Race and mother it, but she must provide for it too; moreover, must doctor it, play lawyer, parson and accountant to it; paint its pictures, mould its statuary, plan its architecture, build its houses, compose its music, blow its trumpets, beat its drums; and, over and beyond all these, must administer its politics, and serve it presently, no doubt, as Premier, Primate and Chancellor.

While it must be merely a matter of brief time, when, to her other tasks, will be added the manning of its Army, its Navy and Air-Services, and the serving of its guns.

Should Feminist aims be realised—and already they are more than half-won—it will be a case, truly, of Exit Man!

Rejected on all counts, as possessing no intrinsic sex-values, to offset woman's vital and pre-eminent one of the creation of Life (for his biological part in this is so slight and brief as to be unworthy of note were it not indispensable, and will be insignificant, indeed, when he no longer serves as highly-specialised agent and artificer of the Racial faculty); possessing no distinctive qualities and no obligations of fatherhood, to protect and to provide for offspring, and thereby to offset woman's vital and important one of nurturing and rearing this; no more than woman's equal (if that) in the Sciences and Arts, in Politics and Commerce—Truly no alternative will be left him save to retire, abased, into the dim background of the Human Pageant; a self-admitted failure, without place or standing, by virile and exclusive right and power of body, brain and office.

IX

A more inspiring picture presents itself, however.

Of a Manhood, worthy of its racial and national traditions, waking timely to a recognition of its manhood's powers and duties, and, having emancipated itself from woman's rule in all beside her natural province, reinstating its supremacy in every virile field and function; and thus re-shouldering bravely its allotted burdens in Labour, Faculty and Administration.

Of a Womanhood re-finding itself also, and finding itself and its natural lot upon a fairer and a nobler plane—the plane of Life, as ever, but illumined now by broader outlook, and instinct with higher understanding.

And these two working for the common good, of our Anglo-Saxon Race, recruited by their sympathetic impulse and reciprocal achievement, having been set, in course of a few generations, upon routes of such a Human Renaissance as should carry it forward to fulfilment of its splendid destiny.

In this New Human Dispensation would be a House of Women to serve as a second—a balancing and an uplifting—wing to the House of Men.

Thus in the national as in the natural life, The Sexes would be most effectively operating and co-operating; travelling each along its own inherent and allotted lines, employing each its own intrinsic powers and fulfilling its intrinsic functions, apart from, but abreast of and in continual touch with the other; inspiring, fortifying, supplementing and complementing the attributes, the trend and the achievements, each of each.

* * * * *

Said Mazzini, "Man and Woman are the two human Wings that lift the soul toward the Ideal we are destined to attain." And the value and the effectiveness of these two human, as of other wings, lie in the degree to which, although they work in unison, they move in different areas; apart from and independent, each of the other; balancing and correlating, but, nevertheless, each sustaining its own side of the body, Vital and Social.