Finally, the story will have failed in its purpose, if it has not shown something of what women feel towards war; if it has not shown that militarism is likely to find in woman, its most vigorous opponent, not because woman lacks courage to face death, but because she is awake to the duty of facing life; life as the basis, the evolutionary basis, of a higher life.

Until woman had obtained some experience of war, she could only express sentiments concerning war; but now she is at liberty to give opinions as to the meaning of war. And in the opinion of woman—at least, of one woman, who is, presumably, representative of some other women—war means—the failure of society.

Society has failed to protect its members from its own more savage elements; it has failed to overcome the tendency to atavism, latent in all living creatures; it has failed in its primary function of preserving life. In all its dealings with life, society shows cynicism and inconsistency. It punishes the taking of life, called "murder," by a further taking of life, which it calls the "death penalty." Again, society holds that no motive justifies murder when it is retail, and concerns individuals; but that when murder is wholesale, and concerns nations, no motive justifies abstention from the murder-fields.

Society thus teaches that the taking of life, though it is regarded as the biggest crime, and receives the biggest punishment, is not, in itself, wrong. It is only, on some occasions, and for some social purposes, inexpedient. Society is not yet awake to the idea that, for spiritual purposes, the taking of human life is always inexpedient, because human life is not an end in itself, but a stepping-stone to further life, which may possibly be forfeited by blundering mankind.

In the eyes of woman, war also means the negation of civilisation and of progress. Of what use the care and labour spent in science, art, culture, education, if, at the command of militarism, these and their votaries are to be periodically blotted out.

Civilisation, as we were taught, meant the progress of the human race in ideals, spiritual and moral. Civilisation, as our children are being taught, means progress in the invention of machines for destroying life—the one thing on earth which can't be made by machines. (The word "artillery," with its present murderous meaning, derived from Latin "ars," "artis," art!)

War means that all the finest intellects, of the finest of God's creatures, are set to vie one with the other—on what false track of evolution are we rushing?—to vie, one with the other, how best to destroy life and to precipitate death! Death is sacred, but not life.

War means blood, slaughter, brutality, deformities, and always death, death, death. Is man jealous of God, that he destroys God's handiwork, and spares his own, when he runs amok? When the Germans destroyed, at Louvain, the works of man, a howl of horror rose from every voice and newspaper throughout the civilised world. But during this European war, thousands of unique specimens of the works of God, Europe's finest manhood, are every day being destroyed, and we are still waiting for the howl of horror.

The other day I was told by one who witnessed it, that, from one trench, 800 men were killed within three minutes. Now it takes women years and years of infinite love, and patience, of sacrifice, and devotion, to mould their sons—their creations—after the image of God, in body, soul and mind. They fashion, with infinite pains, these precious lives for God, and the end is—to be blown to pieces, 800 in three minutes. To this end has the wisdom of Man brought Man. Could the wisdom of Woman bring us to a worse abyss than this? However desperate the remedy, must not the help of woman be hailed, to save life from the abyss?

This thought came to me vividly one summer night in Serbia. It was during the typhus epidemic, and I stumbled unawares upon an open grave. It was three-quarters full of naked corpses. They were typhus victims. They had been prisoners of war, and the grave would not be closed until there were enough dead to fill it. Heavy rain had fallen, and the bodies were half-submerged in water; but I saw one man above the others. His body, long and strong-limbed, was all uncovered, but his face, fine featured, proudly ignorant of the ignominy, his face was covered with—flies; filthy, bloodsucking flies. Round his finely-cut nostrils, his mouth, his half-opened eyes, squatting, buzzing, sucking, shunting one another for best place—flies, flies, flies, and no one to beat them off. Flies in thousands, squabbling for his blood, and no one to beat them off. Only flies knew where he was. His mother was, perhaps, at this moment, picturing him as a hero, and he was—food for flies.

The night, in old parlance, would have been called glorious. But is there glory on this bloodstained earth? The stars of heaven were shining; but could stars be of heaven, and blink, and blink, and blink complacently, and nothing else, when they might have set the heavens ablaze, in a million fiery points of indignation, at the bloody sights which they were seeing on the earth?

And the moon—cold, cruel, heartless moon, hidden at first, behind a thunder cloud—emerged suddenly, with revengeful triumph, to illumine the grave, lest I might miss the horror; turned on full candle-power to show me, a woman, to show me that, and other things unspeakable. I walked away quickly, tears burning in my eyes; angry, cursing in my heart, the ways of men who bring these things to pass. But I remembered that he was unmourned—alone—and for her sake, his mother's sake, I came back, and knelt beside that charnel pit, to spread round him, as she would have done, thoughts of love, and, oh, God! how difficult, of Faith and Hope. "You're not alone!" I cried aloud, that the stars and moon, and God, if He were near, should hear, and understand. "You are not alone, for the hearts of all the mothers on the earth are with you—in your open grave—and will one day rescue you and all their sons from—flies."

The glamour, the adventure, the chivalry, which of old gilded the horrors of war, have vanished. War is now a bloody business; a business for butchers, not for high-souled gentlemen. Modern militarism involves tortures and extermination, not only of the fighting, but of the non-fighting portion of the population, in a manner which would have shocked even the heroes of the Old Testament.

War is not merely an encounter between rival armies of men. War is, in these days, an encounter between equipped armies, and unequipped women and children, with results that are bestial and humiliating; between equipped armies and unequipped civilisation, with results that are destructive of civilisation.

War, with brutal butchery, destroys millions of human lives for paltry purposes: to avenge the death of an Archduke or to gain commercial profits. But if life is a thing of meaning, a divine gift, to be divinely handled, for divine purposes; if life is, as mankind generally professes, the chain upon which the evolution towards super-conscious man is strung, the chain upon which the pearl of immortality is hung; if life, as an abstract possession of the human race, is all this, and more besides, then war, which aims at the destruction of this priceless gift, is a cosmic blunder, which only devils bent upon the annihilation of the human race, could have conceived.

Militarism has, in one country at least, reached a climax, and I believe it is because we women feel in our souls, that life has a meaning, and a value, which are in danger of being lost in militarism, that we are, at this moment, instinctively asking society to give us a share in safeguarding the destinies of those human lives, for which Nature has made us specially responsible.

The idea of votes for women, or justice for women, is not here my concern; the idea, which, as a result of my small experiences, engulfs all others, is the necessity of votes for life, justice for humankind. This can only be achieved by the suppression of war, and wars will never be suppressed by men alone. Man, says Bacon, loves danger better than travail; man, says Nietzsche, loves danger better than play. Men still regard battles as magnified football scrums; war is still for many men a glorified sport, as letters from the soldiers at the front daily testify. "The spirit of our boys was splendid. They simply loved the fun." "He simply turned from right to left, and fired as if he was in a shooting saloon. It was the best bit of fancy shooting I have seen," etc. (Daily News, Saturday, July 8th, 1916). The courage required for facing battlefields is superb, but that same courage, channelled for moral, social, and spiritual purposes, might create a new heaven and earth. The more "natural" it seems for man to fight his fellow-man, in order to acquire supremacy, the more urgent is it for society to intervene; for the progress of man is secured, not by yielding to natural environment, but by resistance to environment.

Society has failed in its primary function of preserving life. But society has hitherto been controlled by men only, and men have always been more interested in producing death, than in preserving life. Bergson shows that man, who is so knowing when he deals with the tangible dead life of machines, is quite unseeing when confronted with the intangible life of humans. We have yet to see whether Bergson's "man" should also include woman. Had one-tenth part of the money spent by society in producing death—and we, in this country, are spending five million pounds sterling for that purpose every day—been spent on investigations as to the best methods of preserving life, the world might have reached a higher stage of evolution than its present phase of militarism. But Nature, in her beneficence, generally arranges that side by side with the poisonous plant, the antidote shall grow, and thus, side by side with the growth of militarism, has also grown the woman's movement.

The care of life, before and after birth, has been given by God, and by man, to woman. Woman has hitherto protected the concrete life of individuals; must she not now, in an enlarged sphere, also protect the abstract life of humankind?

Democracy, in which pacifists had placed high hopes, has failed as a protective social force; but democracy is not yet democracy, for it consists of men only, and democratic men do not differ from other men in instinct.

The Scriptures say that it was a woman who first had courage to taste the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (symbol of the dawn of human consciousness). That woman was, at the time, blamed by both God and man; but man certainly would not, if he could, go back to the state of sub-conscious life from which she delivered him, and God, if He is all-powerful, permitted the deliverance.

And now the Tree of Life, of spiritual life, or super-consciousness, still stands in the unwalled garden, waiting for some daring soul to force an entrance, to taste of its fruit, and live for ever. With prophetic insight, the poets of Genesis predicted the order of salvation: first, the Tree of Knowledge, material knowledge, and then the Tree of Life, spiritual life. But they tell us, that the way to the Tree of Life, is past the flaming sword, which turns north, south, east, and west; and we, in these days, can well believe it. Now man, with his physical force, has failed to extinguish the flame, which flames at this moment more forbiddingly than ever. Man has failed, but may not this be because the force required for the extinction of the flame, is not physical, but spiritual? And now woman, who has not her own interests, but the interests of human kind, at heart, suggests, with all humbleness, that if human kind is ever to reach the Tree of Life, the spiritual power of woman must be added to the physical force of man, in a determined effort to extinguish that flaming sword—for ever and ever. Amen.